Directory:Wikisynergy/Adam Cuerden

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File:Adam cuerden shoemakers holiday.jpg

Adam Cuerden

Adam Cuerden edits Wikipedia under the name Shoemaker's Holiday. He formerly edited Wikipedia as an administrator under his real name, Adam Cuerden. He functions as an extreme skeptic of fringe ideas.

Cuerden, a former farmer, lives in Edinburgh where he is a biology student. Cuerden was raised in the United Statesas a Fundamentalist Christian

According to the historical archives of a case brought before Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee, Cuerden abused his administrative tools by using them against editors who opposed his point of view on articles such as Homeopathy. He was removed as a Wikipedia administrator by the Committee but not banned, and almost immediately started editing as Shoemaker's Holiday. The Committee later withdrew the case findings on appeal insofar as they reflected adversely on Cuerden, after an agreement was reached in which Cuerden would consult the Committee before he tried to regain administrative powers. After further appeals, the Commitee made a further statement saying that the case was nullified, yet still not returning Curden's administrative powers, which were removed in the case.

During his hearing before the Arbitration Committee, proceedings were suspended so that Cuerden could undergo one of the formalities of Wikipedia, the Request for Comment. This constituted a chance for Cuerden to convince the committee that its findings in the Arbitration case were wrong, but the Committee was not convinced (see Adam Cuerden's RfC and this evidence page).

Partial timeline of Cuerden's editing

In reading the following timeline, keep in mind this quote by someone who formerly supported Cuerden:

“	This has long since ceased to be a matter for ANI, but since respectable Wikipedians are asking direct questions here's a reply. Only two Wikipedia arbitration cases have ever been vacated; Shoemaker's Holiday was the subject of one of them. For more than I year I campaigned on Shoemaker's Holiday's behalf to get its findings vacated. Throughout that time I was his strongest advocate, friend, and supporter--frequently putting his needs ahead of my own. This was not easy because his conduct was erratic: for a number of months he initiated more arbitration motions than any other editor. Often he would agree in private that his actions were poor choices and attribute them to his health. I made many difficult choices to support him--or at least excuse him--because he often seemed to be doing the right thing in all the wrong ways. There were people who believed his outbursts were staged; I trusted him. I prioritized his arbitration appeal ahead of my own and made no appeal of my own case until after his had been vacated. After his case was vacated, though, he acted in ways that undermined my appeal. Other incidents occurred with other editors where he failed to share credit where credit was due or undermined other editors where their priorities differed from his own. [Cuerden] boasted that his onsite outbursts had indeed been staged throughout his arbitration appeals: he would email a request to the Committee and if he didn't get the response he wanted he would raise a fuss at the boards, and his strategy was to resume the outbursts and tie up arbitrator time until they vacated his case to get rid of him. He thought it was clever to do that. So the skeptics were right: he had been lying to me all those months. He had exploited my goodwill. Until he made that boast I was unable to correlate those events because he usually hadn't informed his friends when he was emailing ArbCom. At first I was speechless. Then I asked a former Committee member whether this chain of events had really taken place; in light of the self-disclosure that person was able to affirm in very general terms that it had.— Durova	„

2 December 2007

The request for arbitration which resulted in Cuerden losing his administrative powers is filed.

9 February 2008

Adam Cuerden requests change of username to "Vanished user."

Approximately 9 February 2008

Cuerden creates the sock puppet Vainished User, and begins editing (and blanking his real name from pages).

14 Feburary 2008

Vanished user is blocked with the edit summary "You must stop editing if you vanish, see m:Right to vanish."

17 February 2008

Cuerden's last edit as Vanished User (he was blocked but could still edit his talk page).

18 February 2008

Cuerden's first edit as Shoemaker's Holiday.

13 July 2008

Cuerden again requested that he be made a Wikipedia administrator. This was within the 6 month period during which the Arbitration Committee had stipulated that Cuerden could not under any circumstances regain his administrative powers. He could only regain his administrative powers after 6 months by application to the Committee.

Concerning previous troubles, Cuerden initially stated during his request for administrative powers:

I should note that I have a previous account, abandoned and renamed due to real name issues,User:Vanished user.

Other editors revealed that he was under sanction from the Arbitration Committee, and Cuerden withdrew the request.

12 November 2008: Cuerden says he had left Wikipedia

Cuerden (as Shoemaker's Holiday) makes a statement to the Arbitration committee which states in part:

"In this case, the arbcom, while I was suffering from severe depression, illness, and on the verge of nervous breakdown from the monetary situation at the time - I was literally faced with being homeless - opened a case with no prior dispute resolution - I had never had so much as an RfC on me - and chose me to be a test case. In the end, combined with the other events, this forced me to drop out of university. I left Wikipedia over it, and it was only the active, constant encouragement of User:Newyorkbrad, User:Durova and a few others that brought me back after several months." (emphasis added)

A graphical representation of Adam Cuerden/Vanished user's edits may be seen here.

Continuous presence on Wikipedia

Shoemaker's Holiday edited pretty much continuously between the creation of the sock and 12 November 2008: certainly there do not seem to be any stretches of time during which he was absent from Wikipedia just after he was removed as a Wikipedia administrator and changed his username. Indeed, he only missed a few scattered days over the months between the creation of the Shoemaker's Holiday sock and the statements below.

The following is a screenshot of Shoemaker's Holiday's edits from this tool:

File:Adam cuerden chart1.png

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File:Adam cuerden chart2.png

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During his request to regain his administrative powers, Cuerden had stated:

I was kind of disillusioned with Wikipedia over the real name issues, so I left for a couple months, but "Vanished user" was considered a bad username, so User:Newyorkbrad told me to create a new account if/when I came back.

Cuerden had never left Wikipedia for more than a few days during the time period in question (see graph above).

12 November 2008 (again)

Shoemaker's Holiday makes an appeal to the Arbitration Committee to vacate the case.

15 November 2008

Some of the Committee members were for this, some against, and there were several rejected proposals.

Cuerden Agrees to be bound by an informal agreement that he will consult the Committee if he ever seeks adminship again.

16 November 2008

The Committee agrees 6 to 3 to uphold a ruling which withdrew the case insomuch as it "reflected adversely" on Cuerden.

It is not clear what they intended. Some of the Committee felt that the case had been properly decided. Others seemed to feel that procedural concerns were paramount. However, the "withdrawal" did not include the reinstatement of Cuerden's administrative privileges. Arbitrator FT2 opposed on the grounds that "Findings that were properly decided, and accurately represent principles, actions, incidents, decisions, and communal norms related to these, would remain valid. I'm not quite sure how one "unfinds" that admin tools were misused, for example, when the evidence even on review makes it clear to an uninvolved administrator or user that this was the case." Sam Blacketer supported with the comment "I can accept this wording and hope it helps remove some of the hurt in this case."

The Committee agrees to put up a notice on the blanked case pages saying "findings and remedies contained in this case's final decision are withdrawn insofar as they reflect adversely on" Cuerden.

April 29, 2009

Cuerden requested a further, complete renunciation of the case against him, citing the existence of this article as his reason. He stated that he still considers the case invalid, but would refrain from going into detail because he didn't want to expose the Arbitration Committee's wrongdoing:

I still consider the entire case nothing more than official harassment (If nothing else, the committee allowed a sitting member of Arbcom to attack and belittle multiple editors, and when this was complained about, as seen above, they defended his right to do so.) I was willing to agree to a face-saving compromise before, but now that it's being used to attack me, I feel that I must ask you to revisit, and make a stronger statement... I don't want to say too much about the case: it would simply serve to drag the Arbcom's dirty laundry further into the public eye.

Commenting on the new request, Newyorkbrad, who wrote the original retraction said:

I do not understand what specific purpose the page [this page at WikiSynergy] is intended to serve, and I would urge the people responsible for the external site in question to, at a minimum, substantially redact it. If the page is intended as criticism of a particular former Wikipedia administrator, I submit that it is needless, both because the individual in question is no longer an administrator and will not imminently be one, and because as noted above the arbitration findings reflecting upon him, which were determined to have resulted from a flawed process, have been withdrawn.

It is difficult to understand what Newyorkbrad intended by this statement. If the findings were truly withdrawn then Cuerden ought to have his administrative tools reinstated. It is also difficult to understand why it is necessary for Cuerden to agree to consult with the Committee prior to regaining administrative powers, if the case is entirely withdrawn. The Committee was aware of this agreement, since one of Arbitrators referred to it during Cuerden's latest appeal.

June 8 2009

Cuerden states that he is leaving Wikipedia:

I turn 30 today. That's too old to put up with this shit any more.

June 18 2009

The Arbitration Committee says it completely withdraws the Matthew Hoffman against Cuerden, noting that irregularities resulted in a fundamentally flawed process. Yet, Cuerden's administrative tools which were removed during the case are not returned. The Committee notes again that "Shoemaker's Holiday has agreed to consult with the Committee prior to re-seeking adminship."

June 25, 2009

Adam Cuerden returns to Wikipedia

In his returning edit, Cuerden asks the Wikipedia Signpost:

Can you do me a favour and make sure Wikipedia:AC/N#Statement_regarding_the_Matthew_Hoffman_case is given a decent amount of prominence? It's really rather time, and after all the shit I got over this - partially from the Signpost itself, partially from this damn woo Wiki [WikiSynergy] making articles based on it to attack me as a prominent skeptic - I'd like this trumpeted to the world.

July 6 2009

Adam Cuerden is blocked from WikiSynergy for vandalizing this article [3][4].

March 4 2010

Note: Adam Cuerden leads an active life on Wikipedia, and certain dramas have not been covered here

Cuerden again claims to be leaving Wikipedia, claiming harassment from another user, Durova. Cuerden posted links on his talk page which had to be removed from the Wikipedia history (so that normal users cannot see it) by Administrator and member of the Arbitration Committee Rlevse. Cuerden said he re-posted the comment on the Administrator's noticeboard under the heading "Abuse of Page Protection tools." Cuerden said,

"I supported her goals, incredibly strongly, but, in the end, the goals were less important to me than getting out of a relationship where, days after telling her I had just experienced a massive personal crisis, she was brutally attacking and bullying me over trivial matters."

Speaking of Durova he said

"Of course, this exhibit was never talked of again once she got access to archives she wanted, because she's a manipulative little bitch that way, but we didn't know that at the time...If you want me back, Durova needs to face consequences for her actions, or at least be warned, or, in a far more unlikely event, Durova accepts wrongdoing, apologises, and promises never to use harassment to suppress free commentary of her restoration work again. Barring that, I'm NOT coming back. Shoemaker's Holiday talk 20:46, 6 March 2010 (UTC) " (emphasis added)

User Staxringold responded:

"I highly doubt most of this. Since she's been nothing but nice to be despite any disagreements we've had and given what I've seen from you, Shoe, exploding at the slightest provocation on numerous occasions."

Cuerden claimed Durova harassed him, but links to a blog which Cuerden said proved his case were deleted from the Wikipedia histories. Cuerden was told that if Durova was harassing him on Wikipedia, he should provide proof, which Curden refused to do saying "Oh, fuck Wikipedia". Curden was told to simply stop interacting with Durova.

"Shoe, when did you "give Wikipedia it's last chance"? You came back after months to complain about page protection, and then after getting a handshake and everyone agreeing lets just let this be water under the bridge and move on you start exploding about a completely different subject. And during none of this have you actually done anything on the project. Tired of a user? Here's an idea, don't interact with them. BOOM. Done. Drama, in a case like this where Durova is very clearly not doing anything to you on site, is something you are entirely bringing on yourself. Staxringold talkcontribs 21:17, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

March 9 2010

Adam Cuerden files a request for Arbitration to deal with Durova, stating "I left Wikipedia over harassment by Durova."

4 April 2010

Cuerden leaves a note on his userpage stating that "I had been gone for five months." He had made only a small handful of edits between 30 October 2009 and 4 March 2010, a period which seems to be about 4 months.

Cuerden "leaves" Wikipedia, stating that "This user has permanently left Wikipedia, over the attacks by User:Durova, supported by her cronies. It's been made clear noone is willing to deal with it if it's her, so I am unwilling to stay on this site.". Cuerden immediately revised this post to read "This user has left Wikipedia, over the attacks by [[User:Durova]}. Her cronies have proven highly capable of suppressing any discussion of her behaviour, and I am unwilling to work in a hostile situation." This edit was done 10 March 2010, but his contributions list shows his last edit as Shoemaker's Holiday was 25 April 2010.

13 July 2010

Adam Cuerden returns to Wikipedia under his real name.

The right to vanish (background)

According to Wikipedia's page on the right to vanish

If you wish to leave permanently, and to remove any association with your past edits, you may exercise your right to vanish....The right to vanish might not be extended to users who have been abusive or disruptive, who left when they lost the trust of the community, or who have been banned.

It also states

The right to vanish is only available to users who are also exercising their right to leave. The "right to vanish" is not a "right to a fresh start" under a new identity. Vanishing means that the individual is vanishing, not just the account. Vanished users have no right to silently return under a new identity.

At the time that Cuerden "vanished," it also stated

The right to vanish does not extend to... requests for arbitration...

Although the editing history of Adam Cuerden was combined with Vanished User, so that it appears in the Wikipedia records that Adam Cuerden does not exist, Shoemaker's Holiday is not associated in that record with Vanished user/Adam Cuerden.

See also

• Homeopathy edit war

References