English Wikireality/Battle of Sea Otter

Battle of Sea Otter, Sea Otter War or the Autumn War in Russian Wikipedia — is the name of the conflict between Evgeny Genkin and other users over numerous errors in EvgenyGenkin's article about sea otters in Russian Wikipedia. As a result of this war the term "kalanization" was coined. It means a full-scale public peer review.

Genkin's activity
Evgeny Genkin is a well-known administrator of Russian Wikipedia. He claims himself an author of many featured articles and therefore a wikipedian member capable of doing wiki-management. Genkin is a mass wiki-opposition blocking proponent though in the past he claimed himself to be neutral. When he was an arbitrator (AC-4 and AC-7) there were periods of mass blocking which include but not limited to blocks of Serebr, Smartass, Lvova, desysop of Obersachse, Drbug. In 2009 he continued racing for power by creating a Border Control Manifesto and battling against Drbug who tried to stop him.

Background
In the end of August 2009 Genkin published his manifesto effectively calling for massive blocking of those who has mental problems and who is not good at Russian (he contemptiously compared these two groups of users with bums). This essay was then discussed in the opposition LJ-blog ru_wikipedia. During the discussion Viktor Perfilov recollected the Kalan featured article written by Genkin. Many errors and inaccuracies were found in the article. Genkin replied by claiming a harassment coordinated outside Wikipedia. This claim resulted in a start of public peer review.

Start
On 2 September the public review started in ru_wikipedia LiveJournal blog. Many stylistic absurdities surfaced as well as serious factual errors.

On 3 September Vlad Jaroslavlev made corrections in the article and placed special template on unsourced statements. Genkin undid Jaroslavlev's edits and pointed him to an article talk page.

The next day Jaroslavlev posted a thread in which he pointed out to the uncivility of EvgenyGenkin having mentioned his undos in the Sea Otter article as well as errors in the Urartu article. An arbitratorНа следующий день на форуме Википедии Ярославлев обратил внимание на неэтичное поведение Генкина, отметив в том числе и его откаты в статье про калана и ошибки в статье про Урарту. One of the arbitrators, Yaroslav Blanter, tried to take a neutral position by saying: "I think that both you and Evgeny are wrong in different ways". In the mean time Mstislavl expressed her support of Genkin and blocked Jaroslavlev for 3 days. After that the latter posted in ru_wikipedia community "I made a mistake and now serving a three-day sentence", indirectly admitting that the block for trolling was not groundless.

Drbug Conflict
At the same time the conflict with Drbug continued to develop.

Battle continuation
In the mean time after Jaroslavlev's 5 September block an anonymous sockpuppet-bathyscaphe with a provocative name "Clever man Voyager" made some corrections to the article. A sockpuppet was indefblocked but his edit was not reverted.

Later another sockpuppet called "The Karelian crab" emerged in the discussion. It was created by another bathyscaphe called "Afinogenoff Prophet". These may have been created by one of the reasonable sysops so as to attract attention to remarks and not be accused of reading ru_wikipedia LJ-community referred to by the wiki-opposition opponents as "Soviet newspapers". Checkusers noted that the sockpuppet was owned by one of the serial vandals. On 7 September Scorpion-811 semi-protected the article and its discussion page for one month. After this Jaroslavlev threatened with filing an arbitration case. His statement was posted in ru_wikipedia.

On 8 September, after the block expiration, Jaroslavleff demanded the protection of Sea Otter article and its talk page to be lifted. . Sysop Shchurov replied to that by accusing Jaroslavleff of harassing Genkin and threatened him with execution. Mstislavl also classified Jaroslavleff's demands as "harassment ordered by "sites with the low culture of moderation" and blocked him for a week".

On the same day Ole Førsten started a peer review of the article. Unfortunately, the peer review mostly consisted of the insults of the "Soviet newspapers" instead of the article review itself.

As a result, the article was left protected what was a violation of page protection policy as opposition's actions were not vandalism. On 9 September Genkin returned, removed other users' comments on the talk page and added back the word "hands" to the article. He also critised the intention to continue the peer review in ru_wikipedia LJ community.

Ссылки

 * Записи с тегом «калан» в блоге ru_wikipedia.