This is an archive of past Clarification and Amendment requests. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to file a new clarification or amendment request, you should follow the instructions at the top of this page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | → | Archive 40 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Ncmvocalist ( talk) at 09:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected:
(all users have been notified)
A recent AE request was filed by Kaldari based on a ban that was imposed by Sandstein in June 2009 (on Alastair Haines), and which was supposed to last until June 2010. The ban on Alastair Haines was imposed in response to a separate AE request (that was filed by Kaldari in June). In June, Sandstein had invoked remedy 1 of the case which read "Should Alastair make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be disruptive, he may be banned from any affected page or set of pages. The ban will take effect once a notice has been posted on his talk page by the administrator. Should he violate this ban, he may be blocked for...up to a month in the event of repeated violations. All blocks are to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alastair Haines#Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions." Remedy 1 expired in September 2009. Tznkai held off enforcement due to uncertainty over whether sanctions imposed under standard ArbCom probation (or discretionary sanctions) were intended to outlive the the case remedies. Sandstein has since accepted that he regrettably did not take this expiry date into account when he specified 1 year in his ban, and Skomorokh has declined the AE request accordingly. The case log, which still specifies the ban, has not been amended. It is clear that our AE admins are clearly surrounded by an unfortunate dilemma, and uncertainty.
Here's a scenario. The community imposes a standard probation for a period of time on a user or area. The user was page-banned for 3 months, 2 days before the probation was set to expire. Would it not be incredibly foolish to refuse to recognise the child sanction (page ban) 1 month down the track, because the mother sanction (probation) passed away 2 days after giving birth to the child sanction? Can ArbCom clarify what the problem is - are we not drafting things properly, or do inadequate guidelines (if any) exist regarding AE? Personally, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. This formal request for clarification was opened to assist future AE.
In the meantime, I am concerned by the AE that led to this clarification. In addition to the probation, Alastair Haines was also "required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page" in the case. This was the revert that unambiguously violated the page ban, and was obviously problematic. No accompanying discussion of the content reversion exists. At the AE request, Alastair Haines also asserted "I am very happy for this matter to come up, because it demonstrates how defamatory the ArbCom publication last year actually was. If discussion shows people think less of me because of that ArbCom publication, then it proves defamation has occurred." There are other problematic assertions he made there. I believe the relevant now-expired case remedies intended to address certain problems, and need to be re-enacted "indefinitely" rather than "for one year". Rather than subjecting the community to a number of issues, like wikilawyering, potential courtesy blanking issues, other issues the ArbCom case has already encountered, etc. etc., I am requesting ArbCom to nip it in the bud (perhaps using a motion). Ncmvocalist ( talk) 09:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
It is good practice to provide all relevant links in any post to any forum. The relevant remedy is here (direct link because Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alastair Haines is, strangely, blanked); the AE threads are here (1 year topic ban imposed, June 2009) and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Alastair Haines (enforcement of topic ban declined, December 2009). I have no opinion beyond what is stated in the latter thread. Sandstein 10:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Alastair Haines has managed to be continually disruptive on Wikipedia for over a year now while evading or ignoring any effective remedies against him (apart from about 10 brief blocks). Each time, he has pleaded innocence and received undeserved allowances. I've tried numerous times to get relief through the proper channels, and each time, it ends up being nothing more than a brief respite, or in this last case, a complete waste of time. I would have filed a separate Rfa in the beginning, but I was encouraged to request relief through the existing Rfa (which was still in force at the time). If I attempted to create a new Rfa at this point, it would probably be rejected to due to the age of most of the evidence. Am I really left with no alternative than to start the process completely from scratch and act as if there is a clean slate? Such a scenario would be quite unfortunate, and IMO a reward for bad behavior. I am requesting the ArbCom review the actions of Alastair since the enactment of the original decision and if appropriate enact further sanctions via ArbCom motion rather than a completely new Rfa. Kaldari ( talk) 16:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I have no opinion on Alastair Haines, Kaladari, or the case that led to this point, but my view point on the AE process is simple: enforcing administrators are not in the business of litigation, and they are not in the business of extending, shrinking or overturning Arbitration cases. A good enforcing admin will look beyond what information is given, but they are not obligated to have a omniscient wisdom and clairvoyance as to history, extenuating circumstances and various twists and turns. It is the participating parties who must make what they want, and why we should listen to them, clear.
On the matter of the relevant provision, time limited discretionary sanction remedies need to be better drafted to ensure whatever discretionary sanctions are imposed are either limited by the time sanction, or not. I've given it a shot. My instinct is with Sandstein, that discretionary sanctions should not live past their host remedy.
As a final thought, again professing ignorance and ambivalence to the case at hand, Arbitration remedies like this seem to be running under the assumption that a sanctioned editor is mucking up the article creation process, and not trying to, but it can also make them vulnerable to baiting and someone using enforcement as leverage for a content position, again, without really trying to. I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, but I operate under the assumption that ArbCom was aware of this danger, and thought it was worth the risk. I try to keep an eye out for manipulation of the process anyway, and I presume my fellow patrolling admins do as well.-- Tznkai ( talk) 17:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
It appears I neglected the word "not" in my statement above, which is embarrassing, but I'm going to qualify it anyway in a moment.
When ArbCom puts a time limit on a remedy, it seems to be telling enforcing administrators that it only believes the remedy needs to last for a certain time, or that ArbCom wants an opportunity to review it. The use of administrator discretion to extend a remedy past that time, or exercising discretion to extend remedies (somewhat like wishing for more wishes) seems contrary to the intent and the purpose of a time limit. Blocking in general is supposedly actually controlled by the enforcement provision, in this case up to a month, all of which seem to be signals against a year long ban. That said, I'm hardly going to argue against administrator discretion and flexibility, so maybe the rule of thumb is that a discretionary sanction should live past its host remedy, but not live longer.-- Tznkai ( talk) 01:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it's okay to review this, however, I don't think any sanction that was initiated at the time was wrong to begin with (in real-life a law that becomes ineffective do not retroactively apply to old situations.) - Penwhale | Blast him / Follow his steps 17:04, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
As for the specifics of this incident: (1) The case blanking was a courtesy (to respond to Sandstein's comment); (2) Alastair Haines should have at the very least asked for clarification on what the status of his topic ban was before his edits to articles in the Patriarchy topic; (3) Alastair Haines has said "I expect and welcome some rigorous content debate at Gender of God, Patriarchy and other places, when I get back to them, who knows when? But those articles have never have been my priority at Wiki and nor has discussion there reached fever-pitch much at all." - I have three questions here: (a) What is your priority at Wiki? (b) Where has discussion reached fever-pitch (not a good thing)? (c) Do others agree with what Alastair Haines has said here? But other than that, if Alastair Haines is willing to abide by the topic ban until it expires in June 2010, and Kaldari is happy with the original arbitration enforcement that led to that topic ban for Alastair Haines (and does not want to raise further issues), and future infractions of that topic ban are sanctioned as needed, then we are done here. Carcharoth ( talk) 18:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Canadian Monkey ( talk) at 20:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Can topic-banned users, who have been “prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project” participate in AfD discussions related to articles that fall within the scope of the topic ban?
Earlier this year, as an outcome of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria , I, along with 7 other editors, were topic banned from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project. Two of the topic-banned editors have been actively participating in an AfD discussion regarding Jonathan Cook, a freelance journalist whose notability arises from his writing on the I-P conflict, as is stated in the first two sentences of the lead of his article. Several other participants in the AfD have expressed concerns that this violates the topic ban. ( [8]; [9]), and have removed the banned users’ comments from the AfD ( [10]; [11]; [12]). These comments were re-inserted into the AfD, one of these re-insertions being done by User:Nableezy, who is himself subject to a similar topic ban, arising from a different Arbitration Enforcement ( [13].
The editors themselves have acknowledged that their participation is questionable (e.g: User:Nickhh: “I wonder if I'm allowed to say anything here, given the topics the man tends to write about” ( [14]; User:Nishidani: “Yes, technically we should keep out of it.” ( [15]), so a clarification seems to be in order.
I don't know if this is a violation of the topic ban - this is why I am asking for clarification here, rather than for enforcement at AE. Since this topic ban affects me, I'd be happy to know the answer - perhaps I've been foolishly avoiding contentious AfDs in the I-P area, when in fact I am free to participate.
As regards your own topic ban, the update you linked to clearly states "Nableezy banned for 2 months from all pages within subject areas relating to this arbitration case, except article talk pages" - I don't think an AfD project page is an "article talk page" - but perhaps I'm wrong, and a clarification with regards to this would be good, too.
If CM or any other user feels it is a violation of the topic ban the proper venue for that complaint is WP:AE. That is all that I asked those who were taking it upon themselves to make that determination to do instead of remove other peoples comments. Those removals also left the replies to the comments, making parts of the page completely unintelligible. And CM, you may want to look at this regarding my being subject to a similar topic ban.
Cptnono, the edits to the file had nothing to do with the conflict. When a file is listed as an orphaned fair use image it is deleted after 7 days. The images, at the time of my edit, were not orphaned fair use images (one is now). Besides that, they were listed as orphaned as fair use images by a sockpuppet of the banned User:NoCal100 ( User:Millmoss). But my edits to the files had nothing to do with conflict, I did not change the description or add the image to any article. This petty game of trying to catch me on something is getting tiresome, would you mind finding a new hobby? If you feel my edits to those images violated my topic ban, which had nothing to do with Judea and Samaria case which this request for clarification is about, WP:AE is thataway. nableezy - 04:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
It would appear that CM has himself "likely" commented in the AfD in question and was one of the users who removed the comments by Nick and Nishidani ( [16]. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mr. Hicks The III) nableezy - 01:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I apologize to both Arbcom, and whoever found my remark there objectionable. I allowed my spontaneous disconcertion at what was happening (a perfectable reasonable page on a perfectly notable journalist and author being pushed for deletion on no other grounds than a patently political WP:IDONTLIKEIT sense one might get away with wiping Cook out, and, with the vote at 4-2 in favour of deletion, I dropped my comment, and I think most, Canadian Monkey and arbitrators, would be right in saying I am in breach of a sanction, though certainly my remark is not characteristic of a member of a 'gang of bullies' as Gilabrand suggested. If you think my ban should extend beyond the I/P area, to elsewhere, I won't object. Indeed, it would be logical, though I must confess I haven't examined this thread, or the fine print of the decision to see if there is wriggle room to sneak out of this lapse and its consequences. I admit I felt strongly, once the edit went up, that, though rational and eminently appropriate to the aims of the encyclopedia, that I was in breach, and should have shut up. Nishidani ( talk) 22:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
As noted on my own talk page, of course this does run close to the ban. However, I did not "vote" on the AfD, and I did not discuss his politics in my comments. I simply observed that there were other journalists of far less notability and who have not made such serious contributions to the journalistic record who have pages, and that - as a journalist - he would seem to pass the inclusion threshold. I also said that the AfD should avoid the politics, and left a note on the WP:JOURNALISM project page asking for outside input, in a bid to steer the discussion down that road. Overall, that seemed to be a constructive contribution. My interest on WP (and my fairly sporadic edit count) has always been far more about media issues, general politics and other topics than it ever has been about I-P issues per se. Sometimes these overlap, and there are borderline areas in relation to the - totally bizarre, but that's another matter - topic ban. I acknowledge this is one of those. Having said that, I'm not sure exactly what clarification is being requested, and whether the litigant is actually after some form of punishment or enforcement. And I note from their own submission that editors were deleting comments from the AfD page - personally I'm far more concerned about that, about politically motivated deletion drives and about the risk that if it survives, the Jonathan Cook page will now become a magnet for BLP-violating contributions from those who dislike what he writes. Perhaps fortunately, I'm not allowed to get entangled in any of those issues in any substantive way of course. That at least, we can be clear about. -- Nickhh ( talk) 17:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
ps: in response to Vassyana below, I don't think anyone's claiming that relevant AfD pages - in principle - are not covered by the topic ban as worded. I'm certainly not, and agree that they pretty clearly would be. The point is more about whether making a general comment about journalistic notability in an AfD debate about one journalist's page is indeed a breach of a ban that stops editors discussing I-P issues. Also note that Nableezy's situation is different from that pertaining to me and Nishidani, as he has explained. I would add as well that brief humourous notes on friendly user talk pages surely do not need to be policed with quite the same rigour as a substantive intervention on article pages. Nor, as far as I am aware, are they usually. We're all muddling through here in an online environment, not building a correctional facility
I think clarification is definetely needed. In Nableezy's case, he edited files within the topic here and here. These were helpful edits and they were not contentious. He also edited user talk pages in discussions of the topic. These reverts ( here and here) could be a concern but they also could just be considered keeping an eye out. The decision was "all pages (including both article and article talk pages) within those topic areas". Was the intent of the decision to prevent edits to the articles and their talk pages and not files or discussion on the topic in general? Cptnono ( talk) 01:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Hrm. As similar questions were raised back in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive46#Jayjg about MM coming off a 6-month absence to "get Jay", it is worth noting that Canadian Monkey here is back from an absence of the same time frame to file this? Tarc ( talk) 19:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
A clarification may be appropriate, since there appears to be more pushing at the boundries of this decision than in most cases, partly because of the large number of interested editors who arrive at enforcement discussions and obscure what is generally done.
If there is a clarification, however, I would like to raise two more points:
One enforcement discussion, here, addressed both of these issues, with confusion about whether this edit would violate the topic ban. The point has been raised since, with what seems to be ongoing confusion. I have some concerns about the ban, but I think that certainly the boundries should be as clear as possible so that everyone can understand the scope. Mackan79 ( talk) 19:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I have just filed a report here regarding apparent sock puppetry relating to this arbitration case. A checkuser has been run and found it "likely" that NoCal100 and Canadian Monkey (both having been sanctioned in this case) are both the same editor as User:Mr. Hicks The III, an account that has recently been attempting to enforce this remedy. User:NoCal100 has already been banned for socking that preceded this case. This may be separate from whether a clarification is needed, or perhaps it is relevant, but it does seem that more eyes will be needed to sort all of this. Mackan79 ( talk) 03:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
A few minor remarks. Regarding Mackan79's remark, Jayjg's edit to the section on anti-semitism in the Unification Church is not comparable to editing Jonathan Cook. In the Unification case, the section is primarily about remarks made claiming that the Holocaust was retribution to the Jews crucifying Jesus. Completely separate. Indeed, everyone seems to agree that the insertion of Israel related material in that article was utterly irrelevant. It seems unreasonable that the addition of marginally related material that probably should not be in an article would somehow add the article to the I-P umbrella. Worse, if so, does the article permanently go under it? Does it only stay as long as the material stays? This way lies madness.
Cook on the other hand is a journalist who primarily reports on Middle-Eastern issues. He has multiple books about the I-P conflict and related issues. His most recent book is "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair." I'm thus puzzled by Mackan's characterization as Jonathan Cook as being an article "not directly related to the IP conflict".
The next issue then is whether edits to AfDs should be included in the ban. That seems to me to be pretty obviously yes as a matter both of how the ban is worded and what the ban was trying to solve. Many of the most serious problems on I-P articles have been in AfDs. So yes, it seems pretty clear that the AfDs should be included in the ban (and for that matter, *fDs in general). JoshuaZ ( talk) 03:00, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
As to nableezy:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 08:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
As to Nishidani:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 15:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
As to Nickhh:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 15:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Enforcement of arbitration is handled here and sockpuppets are handled here. You will find this is not merely bureaucratic shuffle, but non overlapping specialties.
Also, seriously? Topic bans means write about something else. Not some thing the same, but different. -- Tznkai ( talk) 10:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past Clarification and Amendment requests. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to file a new clarification or amendment request, you should follow the instructions at the top of this page. |
Archive 30 | ← | Archive 33 | Archive 34 | Archive 35 | Archive 36 | Archive 37 | → | Archive 40 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Ncmvocalist ( talk) at 09:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected:
(all users have been notified)
A recent AE request was filed by Kaldari based on a ban that was imposed by Sandstein in June 2009 (on Alastair Haines), and which was supposed to last until June 2010. The ban on Alastair Haines was imposed in response to a separate AE request (that was filed by Kaldari in June). In June, Sandstein had invoked remedy 1 of the case which read "Should Alastair make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be disruptive, he may be banned from any affected page or set of pages. The ban will take effect once a notice has been posted on his talk page by the administrator. Should he violate this ban, he may be blocked for...up to a month in the event of repeated violations. All blocks are to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alastair Haines#Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions." Remedy 1 expired in September 2009. Tznkai held off enforcement due to uncertainty over whether sanctions imposed under standard ArbCom probation (or discretionary sanctions) were intended to outlive the the case remedies. Sandstein has since accepted that he regrettably did not take this expiry date into account when he specified 1 year in his ban, and Skomorokh has declined the AE request accordingly. The case log, which still specifies the ban, has not been amended. It is clear that our AE admins are clearly surrounded by an unfortunate dilemma, and uncertainty.
Here's a scenario. The community imposes a standard probation for a period of time on a user or area. The user was page-banned for 3 months, 2 days before the probation was set to expire. Would it not be incredibly foolish to refuse to recognise the child sanction (page ban) 1 month down the track, because the mother sanction (probation) passed away 2 days after giving birth to the child sanction? Can ArbCom clarify what the problem is - are we not drafting things properly, or do inadequate guidelines (if any) exist regarding AE? Personally, I'm inclined to think it's the latter. This formal request for clarification was opened to assist future AE.
In the meantime, I am concerned by the AE that led to this clarification. In addition to the probation, Alastair Haines was also "required to discuss any content reversions on the page's talk page" in the case. This was the revert that unambiguously violated the page ban, and was obviously problematic. No accompanying discussion of the content reversion exists. At the AE request, Alastair Haines also asserted "I am very happy for this matter to come up, because it demonstrates how defamatory the ArbCom publication last year actually was. If discussion shows people think less of me because of that ArbCom publication, then it proves defamation has occurred." There are other problematic assertions he made there. I believe the relevant now-expired case remedies intended to address certain problems, and need to be re-enacted "indefinitely" rather than "for one year". Rather than subjecting the community to a number of issues, like wikilawyering, potential courtesy blanking issues, other issues the ArbCom case has already encountered, etc. etc., I am requesting ArbCom to nip it in the bud (perhaps using a motion). Ncmvocalist ( talk) 09:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
It is good practice to provide all relevant links in any post to any forum. The relevant remedy is here (direct link because Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Alastair Haines is, strangely, blanked); the AE threads are here (1 year topic ban imposed, June 2009) and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Alastair Haines (enforcement of topic ban declined, December 2009). I have no opinion beyond what is stated in the latter thread. Sandstein 10:11, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Alastair Haines has managed to be continually disruptive on Wikipedia for over a year now while evading or ignoring any effective remedies against him (apart from about 10 brief blocks). Each time, he has pleaded innocence and received undeserved allowances. I've tried numerous times to get relief through the proper channels, and each time, it ends up being nothing more than a brief respite, or in this last case, a complete waste of time. I would have filed a separate Rfa in the beginning, but I was encouraged to request relief through the existing Rfa (which was still in force at the time). If I attempted to create a new Rfa at this point, it would probably be rejected to due to the age of most of the evidence. Am I really left with no alternative than to start the process completely from scratch and act as if there is a clean slate? Such a scenario would be quite unfortunate, and IMO a reward for bad behavior. I am requesting the ArbCom review the actions of Alastair since the enactment of the original decision and if appropriate enact further sanctions via ArbCom motion rather than a completely new Rfa. Kaldari ( talk) 16:05, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
I have no opinion on Alastair Haines, Kaladari, or the case that led to this point, but my view point on the AE process is simple: enforcing administrators are not in the business of litigation, and they are not in the business of extending, shrinking or overturning Arbitration cases. A good enforcing admin will look beyond what information is given, but they are not obligated to have a omniscient wisdom and clairvoyance as to history, extenuating circumstances and various twists and turns. It is the participating parties who must make what they want, and why we should listen to them, clear.
On the matter of the relevant provision, time limited discretionary sanction remedies need to be better drafted to ensure whatever discretionary sanctions are imposed are either limited by the time sanction, or not. I've given it a shot. My instinct is with Sandstein, that discretionary sanctions should not live past their host remedy.
As a final thought, again professing ignorance and ambivalence to the case at hand, Arbitration remedies like this seem to be running under the assumption that a sanctioned editor is mucking up the article creation process, and not trying to, but it can also make them vulnerable to baiting and someone using enforcement as leverage for a content position, again, without really trying to. I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, but I operate under the assumption that ArbCom was aware of this danger, and thought it was worth the risk. I try to keep an eye out for manipulation of the process anyway, and I presume my fellow patrolling admins do as well.-- Tznkai ( talk) 17:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
It appears I neglected the word "not" in my statement above, which is embarrassing, but I'm going to qualify it anyway in a moment.
When ArbCom puts a time limit on a remedy, it seems to be telling enforcing administrators that it only believes the remedy needs to last for a certain time, or that ArbCom wants an opportunity to review it. The use of administrator discretion to extend a remedy past that time, or exercising discretion to extend remedies (somewhat like wishing for more wishes) seems contrary to the intent and the purpose of a time limit. Blocking in general is supposedly actually controlled by the enforcement provision, in this case up to a month, all of which seem to be signals against a year long ban. That said, I'm hardly going to argue against administrator discretion and flexibility, so maybe the rule of thumb is that a discretionary sanction should live past its host remedy, but not live longer.-- Tznkai ( talk) 01:21, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
I think it's okay to review this, however, I don't think any sanction that was initiated at the time was wrong to begin with (in real-life a law that becomes ineffective do not retroactively apply to old situations.) - Penwhale | Blast him / Follow his steps 17:04, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
As for the specifics of this incident: (1) The case blanking was a courtesy (to respond to Sandstein's comment); (2) Alastair Haines should have at the very least asked for clarification on what the status of his topic ban was before his edits to articles in the Patriarchy topic; (3) Alastair Haines has said "I expect and welcome some rigorous content debate at Gender of God, Patriarchy and other places, when I get back to them, who knows when? But those articles have never have been my priority at Wiki and nor has discussion there reached fever-pitch much at all." - I have three questions here: (a) What is your priority at Wiki? (b) Where has discussion reached fever-pitch (not a good thing)? (c) Do others agree with what Alastair Haines has said here? But other than that, if Alastair Haines is willing to abide by the topic ban until it expires in June 2010, and Kaldari is happy with the original arbitration enforcement that led to that topic ban for Alastair Haines (and does not want to raise further issues), and future infractions of that topic ban are sanctioned as needed, then we are done here. Carcharoth ( talk) 18:14, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Canadian Monkey ( talk) at 20:45, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Can topic-banned users, who have been “prohibited from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project” participate in AfD discussions related to articles that fall within the scope of the topic ban?
Earlier this year, as an outcome of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/West Bank - Judea and Samaria , I, along with 7 other editors, were topic banned from editing any Arab-Israeli conflict-related article/talk page or discussing on the dispute anywhere else on the project. Two of the topic-banned editors have been actively participating in an AfD discussion regarding Jonathan Cook, a freelance journalist whose notability arises from his writing on the I-P conflict, as is stated in the first two sentences of the lead of his article. Several other participants in the AfD have expressed concerns that this violates the topic ban. ( [8]; [9]), and have removed the banned users’ comments from the AfD ( [10]; [11]; [12]). These comments were re-inserted into the AfD, one of these re-insertions being done by User:Nableezy, who is himself subject to a similar topic ban, arising from a different Arbitration Enforcement ( [13].
The editors themselves have acknowledged that their participation is questionable (e.g: User:Nickhh: “I wonder if I'm allowed to say anything here, given the topics the man tends to write about” ( [14]; User:Nishidani: “Yes, technically we should keep out of it.” ( [15]), so a clarification seems to be in order.
I don't know if this is a violation of the topic ban - this is why I am asking for clarification here, rather than for enforcement at AE. Since this topic ban affects me, I'd be happy to know the answer - perhaps I've been foolishly avoiding contentious AfDs in the I-P area, when in fact I am free to participate.
As regards your own topic ban, the update you linked to clearly states "Nableezy banned for 2 months from all pages within subject areas relating to this arbitration case, except article talk pages" - I don't think an AfD project page is an "article talk page" - but perhaps I'm wrong, and a clarification with regards to this would be good, too.
If CM or any other user feels it is a violation of the topic ban the proper venue for that complaint is WP:AE. That is all that I asked those who were taking it upon themselves to make that determination to do instead of remove other peoples comments. Those removals also left the replies to the comments, making parts of the page completely unintelligible. And CM, you may want to look at this regarding my being subject to a similar topic ban.
Cptnono, the edits to the file had nothing to do with the conflict. When a file is listed as an orphaned fair use image it is deleted after 7 days. The images, at the time of my edit, were not orphaned fair use images (one is now). Besides that, they were listed as orphaned as fair use images by a sockpuppet of the banned User:NoCal100 ( User:Millmoss). But my edits to the files had nothing to do with conflict, I did not change the description or add the image to any article. This petty game of trying to catch me on something is getting tiresome, would you mind finding a new hobby? If you feel my edits to those images violated my topic ban, which had nothing to do with Judea and Samaria case which this request for clarification is about, WP:AE is thataway. nableezy - 04:50, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
It would appear that CM has himself "likely" commented in the AfD in question and was one of the users who removed the comments by Nick and Nishidani ( [16]. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Mr. Hicks The III) nableezy - 01:37, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
I apologize to both Arbcom, and whoever found my remark there objectionable. I allowed my spontaneous disconcertion at what was happening (a perfectable reasonable page on a perfectly notable journalist and author being pushed for deletion on no other grounds than a patently political WP:IDONTLIKEIT sense one might get away with wiping Cook out, and, with the vote at 4-2 in favour of deletion, I dropped my comment, and I think most, Canadian Monkey and arbitrators, would be right in saying I am in breach of a sanction, though certainly my remark is not characteristic of a member of a 'gang of bullies' as Gilabrand suggested. If you think my ban should extend beyond the I/P area, to elsewhere, I won't object. Indeed, it would be logical, though I must confess I haven't examined this thread, or the fine print of the decision to see if there is wriggle room to sneak out of this lapse and its consequences. I admit I felt strongly, once the edit went up, that, though rational and eminently appropriate to the aims of the encyclopedia, that I was in breach, and should have shut up. Nishidani ( talk) 22:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
As noted on my own talk page, of course this does run close to the ban. However, I did not "vote" on the AfD, and I did not discuss his politics in my comments. I simply observed that there were other journalists of far less notability and who have not made such serious contributions to the journalistic record who have pages, and that - as a journalist - he would seem to pass the inclusion threshold. I also said that the AfD should avoid the politics, and left a note on the WP:JOURNALISM project page asking for outside input, in a bid to steer the discussion down that road. Overall, that seemed to be a constructive contribution. My interest on WP (and my fairly sporadic edit count) has always been far more about media issues, general politics and other topics than it ever has been about I-P issues per se. Sometimes these overlap, and there are borderline areas in relation to the - totally bizarre, but that's another matter - topic ban. I acknowledge this is one of those. Having said that, I'm not sure exactly what clarification is being requested, and whether the litigant is actually after some form of punishment or enforcement. And I note from their own submission that editors were deleting comments from the AfD page - personally I'm far more concerned about that, about politically motivated deletion drives and about the risk that if it survives, the Jonathan Cook page will now become a magnet for BLP-violating contributions from those who dislike what he writes. Perhaps fortunately, I'm not allowed to get entangled in any of those issues in any substantive way of course. That at least, we can be clear about. -- Nickhh ( talk) 17:15, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
ps: in response to Vassyana below, I don't think anyone's claiming that relevant AfD pages - in principle - are not covered by the topic ban as worded. I'm certainly not, and agree that they pretty clearly would be. The point is more about whether making a general comment about journalistic notability in an AfD debate about one journalist's page is indeed a breach of a ban that stops editors discussing I-P issues. Also note that Nableezy's situation is different from that pertaining to me and Nishidani, as he has explained. I would add as well that brief humourous notes on friendly user talk pages surely do not need to be policed with quite the same rigour as a substantive intervention on article pages. Nor, as far as I am aware, are they usually. We're all muddling through here in an online environment, not building a correctional facility
I think clarification is definetely needed. In Nableezy's case, he edited files within the topic here and here. These were helpful edits and they were not contentious. He also edited user talk pages in discussions of the topic. These reverts ( here and here) could be a concern but they also could just be considered keeping an eye out. The decision was "all pages (including both article and article talk pages) within those topic areas". Was the intent of the decision to prevent edits to the articles and their talk pages and not files or discussion on the topic in general? Cptnono ( talk) 01:20, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
Hrm. As similar questions were raised back in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive46#Jayjg about MM coming off a 6-month absence to "get Jay", it is worth noting that Canadian Monkey here is back from an absence of the same time frame to file this? Tarc ( talk) 19:25, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
A clarification may be appropriate, since there appears to be more pushing at the boundries of this decision than in most cases, partly because of the large number of interested editors who arrive at enforcement discussions and obscure what is generally done.
If there is a clarification, however, I would like to raise two more points:
One enforcement discussion, here, addressed both of these issues, with confusion about whether this edit would violate the topic ban. The point has been raised since, with what seems to be ongoing confusion. I have some concerns about the ban, but I think that certainly the boundries should be as clear as possible so that everyone can understand the scope. Mackan79 ( talk) 19:28, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
I have just filed a report here regarding apparent sock puppetry relating to this arbitration case. A checkuser has been run and found it "likely" that NoCal100 and Canadian Monkey (both having been sanctioned in this case) are both the same editor as User:Mr. Hicks The III, an account that has recently been attempting to enforce this remedy. User:NoCal100 has already been banned for socking that preceded this case. This may be separate from whether a clarification is needed, or perhaps it is relevant, but it does seem that more eyes will be needed to sort all of this. Mackan79 ( talk) 03:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
A few minor remarks. Regarding Mackan79's remark, Jayjg's edit to the section on anti-semitism in the Unification Church is not comparable to editing Jonathan Cook. In the Unification case, the section is primarily about remarks made claiming that the Holocaust was retribution to the Jews crucifying Jesus. Completely separate. Indeed, everyone seems to agree that the insertion of Israel related material in that article was utterly irrelevant. It seems unreasonable that the addition of marginally related material that probably should not be in an article would somehow add the article to the I-P umbrella. Worse, if so, does the article permanently go under it? Does it only stay as long as the material stays? This way lies madness.
Cook on the other hand is a journalist who primarily reports on Middle-Eastern issues. He has multiple books about the I-P conflict and related issues. His most recent book is "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair." I'm thus puzzled by Mackan's characterization as Jonathan Cook as being an article "not directly related to the IP conflict".
The next issue then is whether edits to AfDs should be included in the ban. That seems to me to be pretty obviously yes as a matter both of how the ban is worded and what the ban was trying to solve. Many of the most serious problems on I-P articles have been in AfDs. So yes, it seems pretty clear that the AfDs should be included in the ban (and for that matter, *fDs in general). JoshuaZ ( talk) 03:00, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
As to nableezy:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 08:01, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
As to Nishidani:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 15:40, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
As to Nickhh:
-- Epeefleche ( talk) 15:53, 7 December 2009 (UTC)
Enforcement of arbitration is handled here and sockpuppets are handled here. You will find this is not merely bureaucratic shuffle, but non overlapping specialties.
Also, seriously? Topic bans means write about something else. Not some thing the same, but different. -- Tznkai ( talk) 10:42, 4 December 2009 (UTC)