![]() | The need for this page has arisen unexpectedly, and involves a lot of time consuming digging through the archives, which has not been finished yet. I intend to make this a complete report of my involvement; every use of tools, every comment I've made. Anyone is welcome to comment on the talk page, however I would appreciate it if only people who are not involved in this conflict edit this page. |
This page contains further detail on my involvement in Azerbaijan-Armenia related topics. I had believed these to be addressed in my questions, and I had pledged to recuse utterly from all Azeri-Armenian topics due to that involvement.
Despite this commitment, concerns have been raised and there is evidence of a campaign centered on this issue. I would ask that users maintain the decorum of the election. Hopefully the following will be of use in assessing it.
In order to assist with my recollection, I am building an complete list of related edits at User:Jayvdb/Middle East-Caucasus edit history - the scope there is wider in order to assist see why I ended up in the topical area of AA.
As disclosed a year ago, I have been in dialog with various Azeri editors in this dispute since around April 2007, notably User:Grandmaster and User:AdilBaguirov. This was for a long time almost exclusively regarding sources and Wikisource, the other main Wikimedia project I am involved in, however I now classify my dialog with User:Grandmaster as a friendship, since over that time we have discussed wider topics and personal family lives.
I have always answered questions asked about this accurately. Here are two examples of answers I have given:
Most editors have one or two topics they become close to. I have recognized that this is one such for me, and have fully disclosed and pledged to formally recuse on all matters related to it.
I have created many new articles, and a reasonable percent are related to topics in this region, and of those, a few are Azeri because I have spent more time working on Azeri topics. A voter has suggested that this list indicates I might have a conflict of interest.
I take that as a compliment. No other editor assisted me at all in the creation of any of those. They are mostly topics to do with educational institutions, which is my topic of interest. I have never had any association with any of those education institutions. Each of these is related to wiki editing I was doing at the time; my contribution history clearly shows what I was doing, however my Wikipedia contributions also often revolve around my Wikisource contributions.
fwiw, I also created Postage stamps and postal history of Azerbaijan and let it be deleted due to time constraints. If I was employed to write about these topics, my employer would have been mighty mad I did not fight for that one, especially since I have a near perfect record of retaining any article that I vote "keep" on.
AFD is an area where I have spent a lot of my time, especially prior to being an admin. One AFD that has been used as an example of bais is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caucasian Albanians.
User:Hajji Piruz created this article, and like many other articles to do with regions, it was moved back and forth without no consensus. Admin User:El C eventually protected it. I had been involved in the discussion before hand at Talk:Caucasian_Albanians, with User:Pejman47 eventually suggesting an AFD might be the solution. The AFD lasted 8 days, and only User:Hajji Piruz wanted to keep it as a separate article. There is still very little sourced information provided; not enough to warrant a separate article.
IIRC, I came into contact with this due to AFD, which is an area I worked quite heavily at the time (see 5000 contrib list - need a better linky)
I was informed offwiki on September 12 2007 that Grandmaster and Andranikpasha had reported each other to WP:AE.
The reporting admin was User:Orderinchaos who I have known in the real world for many years; this was disclosed during my RFA and repeated whenever appropriate. Orderinchaos is uninvolved in the area, knew I had an interest in Azerbaijan-Armenian topics, and thought (in a "mentoring" way) that I would find it useful to be aware of an AA matter at Arbitration Enforcement. This was during my own RFA (+sysop September 13 2007). I took no part in those actual discussion, as they were way over my head at the time. (So far as I can see, the only time I hit a noticeboard prior to this was in pursuit of more librarian work to do)
I had not had much interaction with Andranikpasha onwiki (I have yet to confirm how much; probably none), so I started to take an interest. English was obviously not his first language, and a search for accounts on other projects called "Andranikpasha" site:wikipedia.org quickly drew me to his Russian userpage of the same name ru:User:Andranikpasha and the June checkuser where he was banned a day after account creation for sock-puppetry. This was my first encounter with User:Andranikpasha, and because of it I was vaguely aware of his ban and checkuser record in December.
On 6th of December, Andranikpasha did a copy/paste move instead of using the move button. I fixed the problem quickly to prevent the edit history ending up messy, and left a note at User_talk:Andranikpasha#Armenian-Tartar_massacres_1905-1907 telling the user to use the move button if they want to rename a page, but also mentioned that the move button shouldnt be used unless there is "100% consensus", as renames of these AA pages is always a very touchy subject. The talk page looked like this at that time.
It was clear that the principle person who was opposing it was Folantin who had moved it from Armenian-Tartar to Armenian-Azeri back in October, had no idea of the AA battles, and was actively discussing the new name with Andranikpasha. Grandmaster had posted the most recent comment, also opposing the rename. There was clearly no consensus for rename.
After fixing the copy/paste on the article, I then did some analysis on the name "Armenian-Tatar War" (a capital "W" was being used to indicate it was a proper name - the sources didnt appear to support that part of the intro). In fact as I noted on the talk page, this was an error: De Waal actually used "war". See here where Andranikpasha attributes "War" to De Waal. Following talk page discussion, I rewrote the intro to remove the unattributed proper name but not making any other significant changes.
Unrelated to "Andranikpasha", Grandmaster and I chat for 2 1/2 hours on the 15th of December tossing back and forth a few IP ranges that seem related to the attacks on admins. I was convinced there is something nasty going on with these IPs, so I started doing some analysis, and looking for more attacks on the same people.
On the 17th, Grandmaster mentions the Russian CU of "Andranikpasha", and my ears prick up of course. I did further and on the 18th I email Lar with a truckload of evidence that is concerning me, but this is my first CU request and it affected many Wikisource and Wikipedia projects, so I was asking for advice - the same day he told me that those types of requests go on meta. I do some more digging, and on the 20th I raise the request, and continue to build it for an additional day - my edit history over on meta is "live", recording each additional piece of information that was a reasonable suspicion. This was all collated by myself. Also on the 20th, I let Grandmaster know about the meta request and the rest of a short conversation is about Christmas. All hell breaks loose some time around here, Grandmaster and I quickly say hi offline, but we are both too busy with family and friends to do much more than a few edits. At no time does Grandmaster give me any assistance other than the two times when we were tossing around a few possibilities on the 15th and 17th. I stitched it all together - it is my name on the request.
The data in the meta CU request was compiled by looking at all articles created/edited by the IP ranges, and all the named accounts. There was significant overlap in topics, and in the users that were being attacked. The attacks were usually in regards to administrative interaction on the same topics.
Nishkid64 and I spoke on IRC about this; IIRC this was mentioned when the Ehud Lesar block erupted on ANI.
![]() | The need for this page has arisen unexpectedly, and involves a lot of time consuming digging through the archives, which has not been finished yet. I intend to make this a complete report of my involvement; every use of tools, every comment I've made. Anyone is welcome to comment on the talk page, however I would appreciate it if only people who are not involved in this conflict edit this page. |
This page contains further detail on my involvement in Azerbaijan-Armenia related topics. I had believed these to be addressed in my questions, and I had pledged to recuse utterly from all Azeri-Armenian topics due to that involvement.
Despite this commitment, concerns have been raised and there is evidence of a campaign centered on this issue. I would ask that users maintain the decorum of the election. Hopefully the following will be of use in assessing it.
In order to assist with my recollection, I am building an complete list of related edits at User:Jayvdb/Middle East-Caucasus edit history - the scope there is wider in order to assist see why I ended up in the topical area of AA.
As disclosed a year ago, I have been in dialog with various Azeri editors in this dispute since around April 2007, notably User:Grandmaster and User:AdilBaguirov. This was for a long time almost exclusively regarding sources and Wikisource, the other main Wikimedia project I am involved in, however I now classify my dialog with User:Grandmaster as a friendship, since over that time we have discussed wider topics and personal family lives.
I have always answered questions asked about this accurately. Here are two examples of answers I have given:
Most editors have one or two topics they become close to. I have recognized that this is one such for me, and have fully disclosed and pledged to formally recuse on all matters related to it.
I have created many new articles, and a reasonable percent are related to topics in this region, and of those, a few are Azeri because I have spent more time working on Azeri topics. A voter has suggested that this list indicates I might have a conflict of interest.
I take that as a compliment. No other editor assisted me at all in the creation of any of those. They are mostly topics to do with educational institutions, which is my topic of interest. I have never had any association with any of those education institutions. Each of these is related to wiki editing I was doing at the time; my contribution history clearly shows what I was doing, however my Wikipedia contributions also often revolve around my Wikisource contributions.
fwiw, I also created Postage stamps and postal history of Azerbaijan and let it be deleted due to time constraints. If I was employed to write about these topics, my employer would have been mighty mad I did not fight for that one, especially since I have a near perfect record of retaining any article that I vote "keep" on.
AFD is an area where I have spent a lot of my time, especially prior to being an admin. One AFD that has been used as an example of bais is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caucasian Albanians.
User:Hajji Piruz created this article, and like many other articles to do with regions, it was moved back and forth without no consensus. Admin User:El C eventually protected it. I had been involved in the discussion before hand at Talk:Caucasian_Albanians, with User:Pejman47 eventually suggesting an AFD might be the solution. The AFD lasted 8 days, and only User:Hajji Piruz wanted to keep it as a separate article. There is still very little sourced information provided; not enough to warrant a separate article.
IIRC, I came into contact with this due to AFD, which is an area I worked quite heavily at the time (see 5000 contrib list - need a better linky)
I was informed offwiki on September 12 2007 that Grandmaster and Andranikpasha had reported each other to WP:AE.
The reporting admin was User:Orderinchaos who I have known in the real world for many years; this was disclosed during my RFA and repeated whenever appropriate. Orderinchaos is uninvolved in the area, knew I had an interest in Azerbaijan-Armenian topics, and thought (in a "mentoring" way) that I would find it useful to be aware of an AA matter at Arbitration Enforcement. This was during my own RFA (+sysop September 13 2007). I took no part in those actual discussion, as they were way over my head at the time. (So far as I can see, the only time I hit a noticeboard prior to this was in pursuit of more librarian work to do)
I had not had much interaction with Andranikpasha onwiki (I have yet to confirm how much; probably none), so I started to take an interest. English was obviously not his first language, and a search for accounts on other projects called "Andranikpasha" site:wikipedia.org quickly drew me to his Russian userpage of the same name ru:User:Andranikpasha and the June checkuser where he was banned a day after account creation for sock-puppetry. This was my first encounter with User:Andranikpasha, and because of it I was vaguely aware of his ban and checkuser record in December.
On 6th of December, Andranikpasha did a copy/paste move instead of using the move button. I fixed the problem quickly to prevent the edit history ending up messy, and left a note at User_talk:Andranikpasha#Armenian-Tartar_massacres_1905-1907 telling the user to use the move button if they want to rename a page, but also mentioned that the move button shouldnt be used unless there is "100% consensus", as renames of these AA pages is always a very touchy subject. The talk page looked like this at that time.
It was clear that the principle person who was opposing it was Folantin who had moved it from Armenian-Tartar to Armenian-Azeri back in October, had no idea of the AA battles, and was actively discussing the new name with Andranikpasha. Grandmaster had posted the most recent comment, also opposing the rename. There was clearly no consensus for rename.
After fixing the copy/paste on the article, I then did some analysis on the name "Armenian-Tatar War" (a capital "W" was being used to indicate it was a proper name - the sources didnt appear to support that part of the intro). In fact as I noted on the talk page, this was an error: De Waal actually used "war". See here where Andranikpasha attributes "War" to De Waal. Following talk page discussion, I rewrote the intro to remove the unattributed proper name but not making any other significant changes.
Unrelated to "Andranikpasha", Grandmaster and I chat for 2 1/2 hours on the 15th of December tossing back and forth a few IP ranges that seem related to the attacks on admins. I was convinced there is something nasty going on with these IPs, so I started doing some analysis, and looking for more attacks on the same people.
On the 17th, Grandmaster mentions the Russian CU of "Andranikpasha", and my ears prick up of course. I did further and on the 18th I email Lar with a truckload of evidence that is concerning me, but this is my first CU request and it affected many Wikisource and Wikipedia projects, so I was asking for advice - the same day he told me that those types of requests go on meta. I do some more digging, and on the 20th I raise the request, and continue to build it for an additional day - my edit history over on meta is "live", recording each additional piece of information that was a reasonable suspicion. This was all collated by myself. Also on the 20th, I let Grandmaster know about the meta request and the rest of a short conversation is about Christmas. All hell breaks loose some time around here, Grandmaster and I quickly say hi offline, but we are both too busy with family and friends to do much more than a few edits. At no time does Grandmaster give me any assistance other than the two times when we were tossing around a few possibilities on the 15th and 17th. I stitched it all together - it is my name on the request.
The data in the meta CU request was compiled by looking at all articles created/edited by the IP ranges, and all the named accounts. There was significant overlap in topics, and in the users that were being attacked. The attacks were usually in regards to administrative interaction on the same topics.
Nishkid64 and I spoke on IRC about this; IIRC this was mentioned when the Ehud Lesar block erupted on ANI.