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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 Magog the Ogre ( talk) at 20:09, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
ArbCom previously denied [7] a request to hear a new case . At the time, I opined that I thought this issue would remain unresolved, and it has. Since that time, numerous discussions, blocks, and threads on ANI have occurred, and yet the only difference between now and then is that both TopGun and Darkness Shines have received a 1RR probation.
It is my opinion the editor Darkness Shines is an unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them", an opinion echoed by other editors at ANI threads and other editors not involved in this dispute (cf. Talk:British Pakistanis). JCAla has been just as bad, but has not edited as much in the past several months. TopGun faces POV-pushing issues himself, as does Mar4d.
As you can see from the links below, this has been a huge drain on community time, and I respectfully ask Arbcom to amend the remedy of the case to allow the sanctions. All previous attempts at fixing the issue have failed, and the only reason RFC's have not been tried is that everyone knows they would fail. To not allow an amendment would leave the community once again to try to implement a fix, something which it has failed at before (cf. with the interaction ban, which was eventually lifted as ineffective).
The following has a link to the discussions that have occurred just revolving around a few different users, all attempts to get the parties in line with proper conduct (the noticeboard links are just the ones that have occurred since ArbCom's rejection of the case 6 months ago; there are more in the archive, if an arbcom member wishes to look at the link I provided above of the previous decline):
PS. I am willing to remove myself from any action related to any one or more of the above parties regarding enforcement if ArbCom, the community, or any non-involved party whatsoever thinks this is important. Magog the Ogre ( talk) 00:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
PPS. FPaS is entirely correct about filibustering: the common tactic I've seen in use is textbook WP:SOUP, and it has been marvelously successful at confusing ANI and pushing blocks ever further away. Also, I forgot to mention there is rampant sockpuppetry in the area ( User:Nangparbat and User:Lagoo sab). Finally, you will note below the traveling circus of POV-pushers that FPaS speaks of which all find no fault in editors on their own side. But you decide for yourselves if this editor (DS), which everyone below maintains if a bastion of neutrality, is a POV-pusher: his requests for unblock are mostly denied, he's been blocked by other admins on several occasions, he would have been blocked by other admins at some points if I hadn't stepped in, ( Personal attack removed), and he makes wildly POV-pushy edits like this one (which I'll note he still maintains was a completely legitimate and neutral edit). His and JCAla's tactic of claiming that I am biased (which is ludicrous, seeing as I give not a single fuck about the parties in this dispute; JCAla in his diffs below cherry picked the two admins who didn't support my block versus the ~9 who did.) and trying to leverage that into claiming I'm too involved to block has been employed against other admins (e.g., User:TParis), in an attempt to chase off anyone who looks closely enough into the area to recognize their WP:BATTLEGROUND agenda. Magog the Ogre ( talk) 20:15, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, please, do something. The situation is out of control [8] [9] [10]. Last time I suggested imposing discretionary sanctions on a community basis, the ANI folks couldn't agree on anything. Admins have been curiously reluctant to use their tools in a decisive fashion – people in this field can collect seven or eight blocks in a row for disruptive editing within a few months, but admins will still not escalate the block lengths beyond a week or two, when it's pretty obvious that indef would be the only rational response [11] [12]. The topic area is poisoned by the presence of a small number of determined, incorrigible agenda editors, whose constants fights with each other have led a larger number of associates/allies/enablers into joining the "travelling circus", conforming their own editing to that same "us-versus-them" mold defined by their ringleaders' obsessions. The ringleaders need to be taken out. Don't ask us to take them to RFC/U first – an RFC/U works only on the optimistic assumption that a person might be prepared to listen. These guys have known their editing is offensive for ages; if they haven't begun listening yet, what reasons have we for hoping they ever will? Don't ask us to wait for mediation between them – that's a colossal waste of time, serving only to pamper their egos and train them to become even better filibusterers. We are dealing with a number of people here who are deeply, fundamentally unwilling to accept or even to conceive of "neutrality" as a desirable goal to strive for.
Do something. No matter what: take a full case, or decide per amendment motion. Ban the central figures yourselves, or just impose disc-sancs. But do something. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:47, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
I have to disagree with Magog the Ogre's statement. I don't think that DarknessShines is a "unrepentant POV-pusher". Magog has blocked him many times, and this one specially raises concerns. So does this. As of TopGun, he shows serious neutrality concerns. Along with attacking editors on the basis of their nationality, he has a history of making highly controversial and questionable edits and reverts, citing WP:BRD; and when someone reverts him, he harasses him crying hounding. The sad point is that he also gets support for his false accusations. The main purpose of TopGun, while editing Wikipedia, is evidently to push Pakistani POV, and he is also supported by other editors. This, and even this, shows some signs of blockshopping. Another point which I noticed, is that this case case came when DS was all set to open a case against MTO. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 14:28, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Now I hope that no one other will put such allegations, and still if he/she wants, then I will be more happy to solve out those too. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 14:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
A user puts tons of sources in the favour of keeping an article, despite the fact that they have no mention of the topic, and when a user does nothing rather than blindly accusing me of hounding, I think I am supposed to term those comments as baseless. Also watching someone' talk page is completely allowed, and its not my headache if you are involved in every dispute of this topic's articles. TopGun’s accusation that I am following his DYK noms is another baseless one. Please note that I have around 20 DYK credits and various DYK reviews, I am an active contributor to the DYK page, and I have reviewed various dyk noms. 1, 2 and 3 to name a few. Most, or I should say all DYK noms by TopGun have highly non-neutral hooks, and the article also aren't different. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 10:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
Regarding blocks
As I pointed out to Magog I began to look into TG's edits after the fiasco at the Taliban article per WP:HOUND Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. Magog ignored all the above infractions of policy by TG and focused on my actions for reasons known only to himself. Darkness Shines ( talk) 14:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
Well, to tell the truth, I'm not sure discretionary sanctions will be particularly helpful in this case due to the peculiarities of the topic area. First of all, it has been plagued by constant blockshopping, with users complaining about their opponents' edits on the talk pages of many different admins — disclosure: I have received several requests to examine somebody else's edits —. This is the area where an interaction ban between two editors had to be lifted because it was creating more drama than it was preventing, after all. Furthermore, only very few sysops have acted in an administrative capacity and, on top of that, some, though not all, have not always appeared neutral when brandishing their mops — disclosure: and in a couple of circumstances, I have commented to that effect on the blockee's talk page —. This does not mean they were not neutral, merely that they did not appear to be. Besides, owing to the incredible litigiousness of all editors involved, the sanctions imposed have not always received the appropriate level of review by the community. Actually, the reaction on ANI has been either aww, jeez, not this **** again or a chorus of let's ban them all and be done with them. Moreover, the editors involved in this topic area are very few (fewer than ten). I realise that the ongoing disruption needs to be stopped; however, as I have already said, I'm not sure the imposition of discretionary sanctions is the best way forward. That said, if the Committee were to consider them unavoidable, I'd like to urge you to consider not imposing the standard set of discretionary sanctions, but to shape them in a way that takes into account the peculiarities of the topic area (particularly the litigiousness, lack of appearance of neutrality and blockshopping). Salvio Let's talk about it! 22:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
As it is evident by the diffs provided by the many editors here, this is more of a user conduct issue which could have been handled in a better way by uninvolved admins. The block shopping and subsequent blocks by involved admins have brought this here. It will not be appropriate to put up Discretionary sanctions to block any of the editors in this topic area, just by the wrong doings of individual users above. The action by Arbcom if any should be taken on the erring users and not the topic area as a whole.-- DBig Xray 17:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
AS evident by the comments of admins User:Magog the Ogre and User:Future Perfect at Sunrise above, I will also request the arbcom to prevent these two admins from taking administrative actions against the editors in this topic area, as they are clearly involved and their admin actions are biased while dealing with few specific editors in this topic area. -- DBig Xray 19:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I completely disagree when MTO calls DS an "unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them"". DS's edits may look controversial but none of them are disputing neutrality or using unreliable sources. As far as his reverts for TGs edits are concerned, TG's edits were controversial and subject to eventual talks or RFCs at talk pages or user talk pages. MTO being an admin has made few uncivil kind of personal attacks to DS ( [68]). Especially this didn't look appropriate at all as the editor wasn't even warned or asked for clarification prior to the block. This isn't my main point at this statement. I will have to say that it is actually TopGun and at times Mar4d who have pushed POV and they seem to remove addition of any content that sheds a poor light on Pakistan. They have also been adding data which is not so in favor of Indian authorities at Jammu & Kashmir or related issues negatively. The best example of this "biased behavior" can be found at [69] where TG and M4 introduced links ( I Protest, Rape in Jammu and Kashmir, Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir and Media curbs and usage of social networking sites in Kashmir) which have no connection whatsoever to separatist movement. These links don't even have any content related to the movement and still get a place in the template. Another example is Pakistan Zindabad where TG removes data which is completely sourced with WP:RS and the incident is notable enough to have a mention but still it was removed just because it was proving a bad point for his country, I was totally shocked by such biased behavior (Pakistan Zindabad incident lead to a Talk:Pakistan_Zindabad#Controversial_Usage RFC where editors are in clear support of inclusion). This is nothing but clear POV pushing. He also accused Vibhijain of HOUNDING which was not a case there. HOUNDING says that edits that are intended to dispute or badger the editor in a wrong way is HOUNDING but addition of material and other fixes in good faith are not HOUNDING. Since long TG has accused people of HOUNDING and still does as he doesn't seem to understand what WP:HOUND is. Since long TopGun has followed such behavior and has faced many blocks due to incivility or personal attacks (hostile editing against Darkness Shines, improper calling of "sock") or breaking IBAN or Disruptive editing. He has since long continued to make this site WP:BATTLEGROUND and one of the instances can be found here. This dispute doesn't look like it is going to end. I believe that a ban from Indo-Pak related articles will be the best possible solution to this continued conflict. — TheSpecialUser ( TSU) 05:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I have been an active Wikipedia editor for the past 6 months. I edit many articles, and that includes articles about my country, India. I have observed the process of edits, reverts and ANI proceedings from the sidelines for some time. I am here as an editor whose willingness to edit, add content and removed vandalism/violations from these articles has been diminished. This is because of two reasons:
I would urge the ArbCom to ponder over these issues.
Thanking you all,
Anir1uph ( talk) 21:37, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I completely disagree with Magog the Ogre's description of Darkness Shines as a unrepentant POV-pusher.Darkness Shines has been doing great service to neutralize the POV pushing that plagues many(most) of the Indo-Pakistani articles.Magog the Ogre was always involved in the dispute when he repeatedly blocked Darkness Shines.There was obviously some kind of blockshopping due to which Darkness Shines was indiscriminately blocked many times.MTO ridiculously accuses DS of Anti-Pakistani editing while he supports TG and Mar4d who openly push anti-india propoganda.
Mar4d's follows a different pattern of POV pushing where he pushes his point silently so that no one notices his edits.He doesn't appear on other user talk pages as frequently as TG but his effect on articles is quite high too.
I hereby request the ArbCom to take necessary action against TopGun and Mar4d-Discrete Sanctions or Ban.Darkness Shines and JCAla, who have been working for NPOV in the conflicted articles must be freed of the charges.Vibhijain and DBigXray who were dragged into the dispute by TG have no major role in it and hence I think must be removed from the list. Sincerely, TheStrike Σagle 13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
The only major POV dispute I have ever been involved was a userbox I created.Mar4d nominated it for deletion saying that it was not in use and unnecessary.Who is he to decide what is necessary here? Unfortunately(for Mar4d) the MfD was closed as keep with no delete !vote other than Mar4d's.perhaps his friends were off-wiki that time .It is clear that Mar4d accuses other users for POV pushing while he himself does it all the time.Hope this clears the accusation. Regards TheStrike Σagle 13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
I don't know why my name was added here as none of the statements given up till now state my name. As I edit in this topic area so I will like to share my observation: that whenever an editor persistently pushes his/her POV in a topic area giving an impression that he/she is working on some agenda here at Wikipedia, the editors contributing to the same topic area how much neutral they may be but a time will come that they will be forced to push the opposite POV instead of coming to neutral ground. The problems in this topic area are so difficult to handle that most of the admins avoid using their tools in this area or even try to understand what the actual problem is and what is its cause? I have been viewing Darkness Shines’s (DS) edits in the Pakistan topic area, for the last 7 months. Per my observation he is continuously pushing his POV and disrupting any good effort put by most of the other editors working in this topic. I have raised this issue previously many times (some other editors also did this). Some of his edits that don’t need much explanation describing his POV: [75], [76], [77], [78],
Not to mention his uncivil behavior, creation of article to piss other editors, hounding other editors, as they are separate and lengthy chapters.
On calling an admin involved I will just say that DS calls anyone involved/not neutral admin whoever supported Bwilkins idea of blocking him for six months,in the last discussion at ANI so that includes: Bwilkins, The Bushranger, Dennis Brown, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Magog. Though till now he has called only Bwilkins, Magog and Future Perfect as involved, with this argument but I don’t see it far that all the other admins who supported his block will be accused of being involved whenever they take some action against him. So I think an editor should not be given the right to call an admin being biased/involved just because he/she blocked or supported/upheld a block of that editor previously. It will set a bad precedence leading to problems for the administrators dealing with disruptive editors.
There is much more happening in this topic area that most of the outside editors are possibly not aware of, like creation of retaliatory articles, hounding, teaming up, defending an editor or his/her actions whenever an action is (or going to be) taken by an admin, accusing any admin who takes action of being involved/biased, accusing editors (including admins) of being friend of the other editor, giving barnstars to each other with inflammatory comments against other editors soon after a discussion is concluded, etc. All this is now increasing with more editors following the path of others who did this successfully and have become a role model. Also the frequency of these kind of disruptive activities is increasing. Actually this is one of the reasons that my contributions are declining too as I avoid these disputes as much as I can. That is why I think Arbitration Committee should take a thorough look into this (that unfortunately most of the admins avoid), that I guess is possible if a full arbitration case is taken. Apparently it looks like that discretionary sanctions will solve the problems in this topic area but it will not be plugging (only) the right hole, instead it is like plugging all the holes, that will have collateral damage to some extent as issues which arise in this topic area are so complex sometimes that it is difficult for an admin to act without thoroughly checking the lengthy history of the events, so sometimes they avoid using the (sysop) tools. So my only concern about giving admins the powers of discretionary sanctions is why ArbCom is leaving this case once again for the admins, majority of whom are probably reluctant to act in this topic. Besides I would like to mention about the more visible display of Battleground mentality .i.e. the addition of my name to the involved/affectee list that apparently looks like an "us vs them" approach. -- SMS Talk 22:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
In addition to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I suggest including Bangladesh in the list of countries covered by the motion. There has been extensive battling by the same editors over articles related to it. -- Stfg ( talk) 09:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Just ran across this by accident while looking for more context on the change-of-username motion; I'm not at all involved with Indo-Pakistani disputes. If this motion pass, does that mean that this arbitration decision would be binding on random people who dispute sports stats for Vijay Singh or who disagree on the US political aspects of business process outsourcing in India? Nyttend ( talk) 02:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Although I haven't been particularly involved in the situations leading up to this, I do have a lot of experience dealing in the closely related topic specifically covered already. I'm fine with adding discretionary sanctions, but I'm not sure how effective they'll be. Setting aside the problems that Salvio giuliano says above about experienced editors, anyone who's done any NPP or editing in the topic area will recognize the substantial problem created by new users as well. Many seem to treat Wikipedia articles as a place to practice their English, which wouldn't be a bad thing were it not for the fact that most of their English skills are atrocious and create another layer of communication problems; looking at Talk:Nair and its archives is fairly demonstrative of the problem. Discretionary sanctions can only do so much to solve those sorts of problems; what's needed is more admin attention, which from what I can see isn't forthcoming. So while I think discretionary sanctions will help, the underlying problem to me seems more like the lack of admins willing to head this off at the pass. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 21:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Arbitrators ought to be aware that there is an existing community sanction of general discretionary sanctions regarding caste and sub-groups. This community sanction will of course keep running regardless of your decision—some day you may reverse yourselves, correspondingly the community must reverse itself on its sanction that overlaps with this one to some extent. Fifelfoo ( talk) 02:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Ugh. Usually I do an excellent job of avoiding controversy, contentious topics, disputes, and anything that remotely smells of "trouble" but it seems I have somehow stumbled into this, mostly because I began editing some articles related to Bangladesh out of a personal interest.
So.
First, whatever is done, you should add Bangladesh to the "India, Pakistan, Afghanistan" list since this stuff has already began spilling over there.
Second, I'm torn between, on the one hand, my established disdain for "discretionary sanctions" and the sincere belief that these often do nothing but pour gasoline on the fire - in many cases instituting "discretionary sanctions" is like exporting arms to war torn countries, it just provides another weapon for people to fight with - and, on the other hand, the obviousness that there's plenty of trouble going on here. So it's a sort of 60% Salvio Guiliano 40% Future Perfect kind of thing going on here.
What really would work at this point is involvement in the topic area of some knowledgeable, respected and diplomatic uninvolved editors. If you know of any, you should hire them. Or just record their existence, before that species goes extinct (again). In absence of that, discretionary sanctions *could* work as long as it's not just a "we'll put in the discretionary sanctions and then abandon the issue and pretend it's solved" ... kind of thing. If you do put in discretionary sanctions, be prepared to deal with follow up complaints, with a whole new slew of WP:AE reports (most of which, but not all, will be petty and stupid, and further proof that Wikipedia IS in fact a battleground) and more work for yourselves (which you can always evade by pointing out that the ArbCom is not concerned with content disputes).
Honestly, to deal with these perennial consanguineous areas you're going to have to start appointing "Tsars" (like the "Education Tsar" or "Drug Tsar") or at least "Surgeons Generals". Or maybe Consuls. And with the consuls, there was always two of them. So I nominate Salvio Guiliano and Future Perfect as the first two Consuls of the "India-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Bangladesh" topic area. With Fifelfoo as the tribune, just to watch over them. VolunteerMarek 03:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Were the relevant Wikiprojects notified (eg via noticeboards for related topics) - that you intend on putting this DS regime on anything related to these countries? Next, should we expect you to also put the entire project on DS without properly consulting community first? Ncmvocalist ( talk) 15:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
Like Ncm above, I'm a little disappointed that we have arbs voting on sanctions without seeking wider input from the community that will be affected by those sanctions. However, if that's the way things are then that's the way they are.
I think discretionary sanctions are unnecessary. To the contrary, I think the problem in this area has been an excess of admin involvement and admin action. Punitive blocks applied at will, restrictions imposed on the various participants that are really not warranted, gratuitous lectures about behavior that are better suited to parent child interactions than to admin/editor interactions, stuff like that. This has lead to a poisonous atmosphere marked mainly by block shopping and a constant low grade complaining about other editors. My suggestions, perhaps too late since arbs seem to have already made up their minds, are the following:
Now that I've had the time to look at this further, I think Magog is overstating the "disruptive" nature of what is going on here. A look at the block log of both DarknessShines as well as TopGun shows that most of l the blocks were for violating one restriction or another. The restrictions were the problem and the predictably unfortunate effect of discretionary sanctions is going to be more blocks not less. The ANI cases were largely initiated by two of the editors, DarknessShines and TopGun, probably because block shopping on technical violations of the restrictions was, partly anyway, turning out to be an effective weapon against each other. I believe this is better handled on a case by case basis using the normal way of dealing with edit warring or tendentious editing rather than through adding to the bureaucratic overhead by placing more restrictions on both these editors (and, incidentally, on any other editor who may happen to be editing these pages). -- regentspark ( comment) 18:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
This very bizarre. Discretionary sanctions are being considered for India and Pakistan related pages, yet, none of the significant contributors to these pages (see, for example, here) know about this. No announcement had been made on WikiProject India, until NCMvocalist just made his. Most editors making statements above (who edit South Asia-related pages), on the other hand, seem to be relatively new users; all are seasoned at edit-warring and POV pushing; all know enough wikilawyering to template me for writing this sentence. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
1) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed.
For this motion, there are 12 active non-recused arbitrators, so 7 votes are a majority.
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 Seraphimblade Talk to me at 18:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
This request would also indirectly affect anyone who has been involved in an arbitration case with ongoing sanctions and has publicly changed usernames.
The two editors involved in the immediate discussion have been notified: [79].
Clarification is requested on the following two questions:
This objection [80] led me to make this request, as it seems this is not as uncontroversial a housekeeping measure as it would seem, and I could not find any existing policy or discussion on the matter. A clarification would hence be much appreciated.
For the record, the thread at arbitration enforcement suggested such annotations to the case page, and had I evaluated consensus for such at the close, I would have found that they did have consensus among the uninvolved admins commenting. I did not make such a determination as to my knowledge it was not required. I think the clarification would still be useful in a broader sense, however. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I do not see why not. My renaming was already annotated [81]. The only question is this: should you only annotate users who were sanctioned, or all users indicated as parties. For example, speaking about WP:EEML, should renaming of User:Offliner be annotated? My very best wishes ( talk) 19:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, information about past conflicts (or alliances) between the users editing contentious and scrutinized topics should be easily available to everyone, and the linkage should be traceable not only between an old and a new names, but in the opposite direction also. -- Paul Siebert ( talk) 20:20, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I could, in some extreme cases, such as perhaps controversial OUTing of an editor in a previous identity, see some basis for not indicating changed names there. But, honestly, only in such cases, and I imagine that there are probably already procedures in place to deal with such circumstances. If that is the case, this seems a good way to ensure that people do not try to change their names to avoid dealing with the realities of their own previous objectionable activity. John Carter ( talk) 20:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I've been thinking about asking for something similar for awhile, but for different reasons. The major reason IMO (it certainly applies to myself, I'm guessing it applies to others) why people changed their usernames after the case was not to escape any kind of scrutiny but rather because of ongoing off-wiki harassment (I know that that kind of thing doesn't stop the dedicated harassers, but it might make it a bit harder for them or any new potential ones). This is particularly true for those users, like myself and I believe Nug, whose previous usernames were tied to their real life names.
So why not kill two birds with one stone? That is, why not go through and change all the old user names in the case pages to their current names: i.e. Radeksz-->Volunteer Marek, Miacek-->Estlandia, etc. That way people can always refer back to the case, while at the same time the old-names-tied-to-real-life-names will be gone. Everyone will be happy. Win win. VolunteerMarek 01:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
@JClemens - What the hey are you talking about? What "extraordinary efforts"? ??? VolunteerMarek 20:09, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Btw, if time and effort are a concern then... well, this is a collaborative project, so I can go through myself and change all the old names to all the new names, at least for myself. Just like working on articles. VolunteerMarek 16:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
As long as it applies to all users. VєсrumЬа ► TALK 18:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
Depending on the size of involved case, you could have a really large list to track or very little.
I would like to suggest that the log/action section be accessible to anyone that can currently utilize that section, and information about renamed users be listed under a separate heading. However, as for the actual findings/Remedies/etc, let ArbCom/AC Clerk handle changing/notarizing those parts. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 05:01, 14 July 2012 (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 Nug ( talk) at 21:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Notified [82]
The remedy of the Eastern European mailing list case is amended to lift the interaction ban between User:Russavia and User:Nug.
EdJohnston had previously requested that the mutual topic bans between Russavia and I be lifted [83] Unfortunately after some editors objected due to their apocalyptic fear of our possible collaboration might turn the world up side down, it was declined. Given that Russavia has since been site banned for a year and indef topic banned and the chance of now interacting reduced to zero, can this restriction be now lifted? I'd like to edit articles like 90th anniversary of the Latvian Republic, but I cannot remove those tags placed by Russavia almost a year ago without breaching my interaction ban. -- Nug ( talk) 21:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
@Clerks, I fail to see how Paul Seibert's comments have any relevance what so ever to a request to amend a redundant interaction ban, and I ask that they be removed. If Paul has issues he can air them in a more appropriate forum (along with linked evidence) where they can be discussed in full without derailing this specific amendment request. Thanks. --
Nug (
talk) 05:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Courcelles, Russavia is indefinitely topic banned from EE, see this, in addition to the one year site ban [84]. -- Nug ( talk) 02:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, me too. It's sort of pointless now. VolunteerMarek 23:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
@Ed Johnson - I'm pretty sure that there are no remaining sanctions from the EEML case and there haven't been for awhile (btw, as an update, EE topic area is actually doing pretty well). And even the sanctions themselves were pretty mild to begin with. Some people keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic of poisoning the well but honestly, that stuff's old news, there's nothing left, nobody, including AE admins, is paying much attention. The interaction bans are the last remnants of the case (well, actually, more from the R-B case) and even those, obviously, are no longer much relevant. VolunteerMarek 01:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Paul - Paul, when I wrote ""keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic"" I actually did NOT have you in mind. Rather just some more peripheral users. Keep in mind that lots of folks from what can be described as the "anti-EEML" side managed to get themselves banned/blocked/topic banned just fine without any help from anyone on the list in the months following the case, thank you very much. I was thinking more of these guys who sometimes keep coming back as IP addresses or fresh starts or sock puppets, who pretend to be new to Wikipedia but somehow have this magical knowledge of the EEML case which they try to use win arguments and battles in which they got blocked for in the first place.
Anyway, more general point is that aside from this interaction ban there are no outstanding sanctions from the EEML case. This is a good opportunity to put it all to rest. VolunteerMarek 04:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Ed Johnson & Volunteer Marek. First of all, I always supported the idea to lift all remaining individual sanctions against ex-EEML members. However, this my post is mainly a responce to the Volunteer Marek's post where he mentioned some people who "keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic". In connection to that, I would like to remind VM that I was among the users who had conflicts with the EEML cabal, and, I recall, someone (probably
user:Viriditas) strongly advised me to read the EEML archive and present the evidences against them when the case was open, because the cabal had been contemplating some actions against me. I refused to do that, however.
I believe, the fact that I had been silent when the EEML case was open, and that I decided to return to this issue now is per se an indication that something happened during last year that forced me to express my concern now. The major EEML violation, their coordinated edits is the fact that is extremely hard to establish. As far as I understand, the community became aware of the existence of the EEML cabal purely by accident, and there is absolutely no guaranty that no similar cabals currently exist. By writing that, I do not imply that the EEML member continue to coordinate, however, it would be equally incorrect to claim that their one year long topic bans may guarantee that no coordination can exist between them. In connection to that, I believe the behaviour of EEML members must be absolutely transparent to dispel any suspicions. Concretely, I am not sure ex-EEML members have a moral right to simultaleously participate in votes or RfCs when no fresh arguments are brought by each of them (i.e., the posts such as "Support a user X", without detailed explanation of one's own position should not be allowed for them). Similarly, joining the chain of reverts where other EEML members already participate should not be allowed also. We all remember that these users massively coordinate their edits in past, we all (including the admins) have absolutely no tools to make sure such coordination does not occur currently, so we have a right at least to express our concern in a situation when such coordination cannot be ruled out. The fact that they cannot be considered as uninvolved parties when they join the action of their peers should also be clear for everyone.
In contrast, we currently have a directly opposite tendency: any mention of the EEML is treated as a "battleground tactics", many EEML members changed their usernames to protect their privacy and, simultaneously, to disassociate themselves from their past violations, and many of them continue to concurrently edit the same articles. In my opinion, the EEML pendulum is moving in the opposite direction, and now it has already passed its lowest point...--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 03:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@ VolunteerMarek. Thank you, Marek. In actuality, I also didn't mean all EEML members in this my post. Behaviour of majority of them is almost impeccable, and they do their best to dispel any doubts about any possibility of coordinated edits. The problem is, however, that some mechanism is, nevertheless, needed to eliminate any possibility of resurrection of this story (with the same or different participants, no matter). In connection to that, I proposed some modifications to the EW policy. To my great satisfaction, one of the EEML members, whom I sincerely respect, Piotrus, supported this proposal (which, in my opinion, would eliminate any possibility of tag teaming). However, some other EEML members opposed to that, and my proposal went into oblivion. Maybe, it makes sense to return to this issue?--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 05:09, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I have to say that this proposal makes sense to me. Russavia probably can't remove any tags himself under his own restrictions, and it makes no sense to have possibly now irrelevant tags remain in place because the person who placed them can't do so himself. I might request Nug start a discussion on the talk page before removing tags or maybe making substantial changes to an article not necessarily directly related to recent developments, under the circumstances, but I can't see how it makes any sense to allow people who have been banned from the site and a given topic to in effect continue to have a degree of control over them, through such things as dubiously placed or now irrelevant tags. John Carter ( talk) 22:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
There would be a benefit to making EEML obsolete, and the Committee could pass a motion to lift all remaining bans and restrictions from the original WP:EEML case. The understanding would be that any bans that turn out still to be necessary can be reimposed via discretionary sanctions under the existing authority of WP:ARBEE. The only nuance might be that some of Russavia's restrictions come from WP:ARBRB which is thought of as including all of the former Soviet Union. So the Committee might clarify that WP:ARBEE will allow discretionary sanctions relating to any countries of the former Soviet Union. In actuality, the only provision of EEML that hasn't expired is Remedy 11A, the one that prevents the EEML editors sanctioned by name from interacting with Russavia.
To the point at hand, I support lifting of the ban. In particular, any evaluation of editor behavior needs to be from here forward, not, as as has been implied, saddle particular editors with a permanent stench. VєсrumЬа ► TALK 19:02, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
It should be noted that the ban/block on Russavia was a strange reaction to a harmless cartoon, and therefore could be overturned at any time.
Rich
Farmbrough, 01:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC).
1) The interaction ban placed upon Nug ( talk · contribs) and Russavia ( talk · contribs) in the Eastern European mailing list case is lifted, effective immediately. The users are reminded of the discretionary sanctions authorized for their area of mutual interest.
Enacted - Alexandr Dmitri ( talk) 19:41, 18 August 2012 (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 Cailil talk at 14:55, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
Per the closure of
this WP:ARE thread I'm seeking clarification regarding whether enforcing sysops can impose
Mandated External Review (MER) under the currect provisions for
discretionary sanctions?
The above thread saw significant disruption both from long term and newer editors and it was felt by the admins at AE that MER would significantly help the topic area under the WP:TROUBLES probation.
AGK already commented on this
[90] but felt this request for clarification appropriate--
Cailil
talk 14:55, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
I actually hold the belief that MER should not be randomly given out as a part of discretionary sanctions.
Putting an editor on MER requires other non-involved editors to look into those proposed edits. It takes much more time and effort for MER to work, and I believe that such declarations should not be left under discretionary sanctions.
I would like to propose an alternative that MER can be sanctioned either by ArbCom approval, or as a community opinion at the appropriate locations because this way more people will know that said user is under MER (and thus require more scrutiny regarding edits).
Also, I would like to propose that the list of users under MER should have its own subpage (instead of being grouped with other editing restrictions), because the editors in question is not under a topic ban (and a different page/section/etc would make it easier to track). - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 15:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Brad that any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project surely includes MER. I'm not sure, however, that formalizing MER right now with a motion is needed. Of the three editors placed on MER in ARBFLG2, two are currently topic-banned, and the remaining one (Colipon) hasn't edited much since the case closed. If we limit MER to the Falun Gong area only, it is unlikely that we'll have enough data to make an informed decision for a long, long time. I believe that it is best to allow AE admins to employ MER in other areas under the catchall provision for now, and reconsider whether to formalize MER as a discretionary sanction once we have enough data. T. Canens ( talk) 18:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Motion failed |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
1) Mandated External Review is formally adopted as an independent form of sanction which must be explicitly authorized for use by the Arbitration Committee within a given area of conflict. A page shall be created at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Mandated external review with the contents of this page, (Note: update the permalink as needed when changes are made to that page) excepting those portions highlighted in green, in order to provide further information and guidance on the use of this sanction.
|
2) Mandated External Review is formally adopted as a form of discretionary sanction. A page shall be created at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Mandated external review with the contents of this page, (Note: update the permalink as needed when changes are made to that page) excepting those portions highlighted in blue, in order to provide further information and guidance on the use of this sanction.
Setting this specific case aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the idea of MER, and if I were a sysop staffing AE I would probably topic-ban a user instead of subjecting them to MER. Nevertheless, I am content for us to give it a shot: discretionary sanctions were probably once thought of as a novel and dangerous. AGK [•] 14:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
3) Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2 is amended as follows:
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 Seraphimblade Talk to me at 21:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
N/A
Following a recent appeal to arbitration enforcement [91] from a user who had been sanctioned under the Troubles discretionary sanctions, and objected to the portion of this which forbade editing of British baronets, a closer look was taken at this. Arbitrator Newyorkbrad confirmed that the Committee had not seen any issues arise from this area for at least a year and a half [92], and taking a check through the AE archives and case enforcement logs, I also can't find any trouble there recently. The administrators involved in the discussion regarding the appeal, including the one who closed the original request and placed the sanctions, agreed there was little purpose in the baronet portion of the ban and it ultimately was lifted for that editor. It's nice to see an area where sanctions have done their job and calmed things down, so I think it's time to give it a go without them. Accordingly, I'd propose something to this effect:
@Newyorkbrad: I realize the sanctions can be tailored on a case by case basis, based upon the type and area of misconduct they're being applied in response to. That is overhead to remember and/or process AE appeals if someone forgets when originally applying them though, and I think in general it's a good idea to have as few areas as possible have sanctions applied to them. There are some areas where it's likely that won't happen for many years, but if there are others where the problem that led to them is no longer a problem, I think we ought to scale them back, remove the "big scary notices" on the article edit pages and talk pages, etc. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:32, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
This question arose because some of the editors involved in the Troubles case were people who largely edited articles on baronets, but who had made controversial edits to Troubles-related articles and AfDs, sometimes with inflammatory edit summaries, and there was some "revenge" editing of baronet articles. See in particular Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles#Statement by User:Vintagekits and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles#Statement by User:Kittybrewster. As far as I am aware, since the case concluded in October 2007, no editor in either area has strayed into the others' territory. There is no apparent need to continue to link them. Scolaire ( talk) 08:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
I endorse Scolaire's summary, except that there a further incident after 2007.
There was a further flare-up of the Troubles-Baronets link in May 2009, involving me (BrownHairedGirl), Vintagekits and Kittybrewster. A request for abitration was opened, and dealt with by summary motion: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=289861526#Baronets_naming_dispute
So far as I am aware, there has been no further Troubles-related disputes wrt Baronets since then.
All of the troubles-related disputes wrt baronets involved Vintagekits ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who is currently indef-blocked (and I think also perma-banned) after a very long series of conflicts. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:46, 20 August 2012 (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 2 lines of K 303 at 12:41, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I wish to appeal against a frankly bizarre decision where a "consensus of uninvolved administrators" in this discussion has topic banned me while providing virtually no evidence to support the decision.
The 3 month topic ban was proposed here detailing a series of edits to Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997. See User:One Night In Hackney/Appeal for analysis of that series:
The ban was proposed at the end of that series. So FergusM1970 made some bold changes, was reverted, then Portugalpete and SonofSetanta edit war to try and force those changes through without any attempt at discussion. And that's my fault how exactly? If I make one revert and other editors edit war after that, is that somehow my fault? Can I be held responsible for the actions of other editors? I asked for an explanation as to how making one edit to an article is somehow worthy of a 3 month topic ban, I never got a direct reply to that question. Make one revert to enforce content policy and get topic banned, makes no sense to me.
The history of 7 July 2005 London bombings is mentioned as evidence here. I'll be the first to admit my behaviour can be seen as less than stellar on that article, but there's others who are far worse. See User:One Night In Hackney/Appeal for analysis of that article.
Somewhat bizarrely, Flexdream's attempts to edit war OR into an article with unproductive talk page discussion get him just a final warning yet I get a topic ban. I can't really understand the logic of banning the person attempting to enforce content policy while giving the person attempting to violate it a slap on the wrist, anyone?
There's various comments falsely alleging I refused to take part in dispute resolution. The case was filed at 22:24, 3 August 2012 (that's a Friday night for the record). It was archived at 22:44, 4 August 2012, just over 24 hours later. My removal of the notice from my talk page has been falsely interpreted as a refusal to take part. I know where the page is without a link since I've posted there before (and I don't remove noticeboards from my watchlist), and me removing all comments from my talk page is something done repeatedly prior to that. It was a Saturday. During the Olympics. I was too busy to respond straight away since it required a bit of thought. Maybe I should have posted something to that effect, but the DRN volunteer could easily have asked if I was planning to respond, but he chose not to and just closed it assuming bad faith.
Rather than actually deal with the editors persistently violating policy, the admins have decided "sod it, we'll just ban everyone" without taking into account that some editors are simply trying to enforce content policy in the face of disruptive editors adding transparent violations of policy, and that removing the disruptive editors from the situation is all that's needed. I can't see how this topic ban is remotely justified by the "evidence" unless attempting to enforce content policy is now topic ban worthy? 2 lines of K 303 12:41, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
@Newyorkbrad. As can be seen from the discussion, the 3 month topic ban was suggested to apply to everyone supposedly involved, regardless of previous history. For example SonofSetanta ( talk · contribs) has two previous Troubles sanctions on his current account, as well as 5 previous blocks on Troubles related articles on his previous account The Thunderer ( talk · contribs) (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/The Thunderer/Archive for details). So to give me the same length topic ban as SonofSetanta is perverse, when I have never even been blocked on Troubles related articles, save one erroneous block quickly overturned. I find myself in a bizarre situation where I have been topic banned for reasons that have not been explained based on "evidence" that hasn't even been fully divulged to me. How am I supposed to edit again under those circumstances? I'll only get topic banned again based on the whim of some admin who refuses to answer questions, as has happened here. 2 lines of K 303 11:08, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@AGK, I'm really struggling to understand this now. SonofSetanta twice tries to force through incorrect or policy violating changes made by FergusM1970. I revert the changes a full 7 days after Domer48 had edited them out, and that's somehow worthy of a 3 (or even 6!!) month topic ban? Seriously, can I have an explanation as to this thinking please? The message is still clear to me, don't bother trying to stop people forcing through disputed changes or you'll get topic banned. So what's the alternative? Let their disruptive, incorrect and/or policy violating changes stand while we go through dispute resolution and they refuse to compromise and insist their edits stand? Does the reader benefit from allowing those changes to stand while all this goes on? 2 lines of K 303 11:11, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Various people. If the decision is "harsh", then why is a harsh decision being allowed to stand? I'm not simply asking for the ban to be overturned, reducing the length is a second option. 2 lines of K 303 11:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Flexdream. I don't have the time or energy to pick apart your latest attempts to revise history, like when you claimed at editors previously blocked and topic banned "didn't realise at the time they were in breach of a rule" [1RR]. However your claim regarding RTÉ is incorrect, as you are well aware. At the time of the dispute there was no podcast copy of the show on the RTÉ website at all, that is an addition made since the edits in question. This is obvious to anyone reading the discussions about it. 2 lines of K 303 11:34, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Slp1. Totally irrelevant in my opinion, unless you're of the opinion that topic bans should be handed out at a minimum of three months regardless of the supposed level of misconduct? 2 lines of K 303 11:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
On a personal note I have limited time for this particular thread after brining a request for clarification and making input on a RFAR and responding to 2 other declined AE appeals of the same ruling. I have no problem with ONiH appealing it, it's just I've answered for a group decision of 4 sysops 3 times now already - just as a suggestion there needs to be a better way of dealing with AE closers than singling them out when a group decision has been made.
ONiH was one of a series of editors topic banned for misconduct both in the WP:Troubles topic area (specifically tag teaming editwarring at
Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997, but also issues relating to
7 July 2005 London bombings and at AE itself). The ruling took into account the apparent use of AE to "win" content disputes (by multiple parties ONiH being only one).
Initially I was of a mind that FergusM1970 was the only problematic user, other sysops disagreed and wanted to see where DRN discussion would go - they explicitly cautioned all articles to engage in a constructive fashion. After the DRN discussion failed Steven Zhang sent the case back to AE. At that point on examination I came round to other sysops POV that stonewalling and/or process gaming was occurring on both sides of the content issues. No constructive attempts at reaching/building consensus were being made by either side and the dispute originating at
Corporals killings spilled over. Instead of following dispute resolution policies (ie disengaging for a start) multiple involved editors tried various brute force mechanisms: tag teaming edit warring; reversion without discussion; immediate reporting to AE; 'tit for tat' AE reports; 'tit for tat' reverts.
The crux of the sanction was due to the tag teaming at
Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997 while the case was open. It is not acceptable for a party to bring a case to AE for stated misconduct and then engage in such misconduct themselves - that is the definition of
unclean hands. Parties as well as previously uninvolved editors (e.g DagosNavy) jumped into an editwar in breach of WP:Editwar and circumventing the
single revert restriction by tag teaming -this was noted at the AE thread, perhaps ONiH doesn't see his edit was tag teaming 4 sysops disagreed (if Arbs see it otherwise I'd appreciate a note on it so we don't make the same decision again elsewhere). At that point and in this context those involved in the worst of the issue were considered for topic bans.
FergusM1970 & SonofSetanta were given longer bans for recidivism and abuse of AE respectively. I did argue for Flexdream to be banned (after he had been formally notified of discretionary sanctions days previously) but other sysops disagreed. There was no 'lumping together of editors'.
I'll also note that contrary to
policy ONiH has blanked the topic ban notification. I understand his wish not to have this on his talk page but how he treated it is against policy--
Cailil
talk 14:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
Note: I think its good for ONiH to use this process to review this AE decision and for the official ability to appeal to ArbCom to be used and I have no problem at all with him doing so. I'd appreciate your eyes on this as frankly it was the worst case I've seen at AE for a long while-- Cailil talk 14:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I do not have time to analyse this case, but would like to note that User:One Night In Hackney is a long-term editor of articles relating to The Troubles, and one of the most scholarly content-creators in that field. His prolific contributions include the 1981 Irish hunger strike, which he massively expanded in 2007 and brought to featured article status.
It is a serious loss to Wikipedia that a contributor of this calibre should be banned from the topic where they have made such a significant contribution. I would ask all concerned to examine whether this can be avoided. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if I can post to this discussion? I hadn't been told about it, but I have just noticed it because I am named and misrepresented several times. Do the admins want my account here? I wont be able to supply it till Thursday. If one of the admins can let me know either way please by a comment here in my statement section, or a posting on my talk page. If it's not necessary then I wont needlessly add to what is already a very lengthy piece. However, if the decision on Hackney is to be revised, partly in response to these inaccurate accounts of my activity I think I have to respond. Thanks.-- Flexdream ( talk) 21:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
@Newyorkbrad - sorry this couldn't be shorter. I have tried to restrict it. For clarity I have grouped comments under article headings.
I change 'summarily executed' to 'killed' with the edit summary 'A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is accused of a crime' [ [161]]. That summary was lifted verbatim from wikipedia. Less than 15 minutes later Hackney reverts it [ [162]] with summary '..and that's what happened'. I then open a section on the talk page [ [163]]. On the talk page Talk:Corporals_killings#Summary_Execution I ask what crime they were charged with. Hackney replies "Please don't ask irrelevant questions. Reference for summary execution added, good day to you." I tell Hackney I quoted the wikipedia definition and say " If they weren't charged with a crime they couldn't be summarily executed". Hackney replies "They couldn't?". Judge for yourself which of us is trying to have a discussion.
Hackney cites "Peter Taylor Brits pages 294-295 "In a statement that evening, the IRA claimed responsibility for the 'execution' of 'two SAS members who launched an attack on the funeral cortège of our comrade"." I have pointed out before - this sources puts 'execution' in quotes and that is deliberate. I could describe the AE as a 'court case'. You would know what I meant, but you wouldn't think I meant it was a court case. In addition, the source doesn't use the word 'summarily'. Hackney also added a source to the article which which uses the term 'summarily executed'[ [164]]. It is a book on Yugolslavia, and is taken from the introduction. The source also described the funeral as being for three IRA gunmen, when it was actually for one. So the source seems flimsy support. Contrast that with [ [165]] who as well as identifying that 'killed' was used for years in the article, shows that there are relatively few sources for 'summarily executed'. Hinckley's response is here [ [166]]
Hackney states "However Flexdream then asks a totally different question on the talk page, "And the crime they were charged with was what?". There's a substantial difference between "accused" and "charged", thus making the question irrelevant. You don't need to be *charged* with a crime to be summarily executed" Totally different question from what? My summary states "A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is accused of a crime". My question is "And the crime they were charged with was what?" This he calls this a 'totally different question'? This is pedantry. Hackney still will not answer what crime they were accused of or charged with. And he maintains that 'executed' in quotes in a source equates to summarily executed?
Hackney states "summarily executed" was the consensus wording For years the word was 'killed'. It was changed to 'summarily executed' in March [ [167]]. It was changed to 'murdered' in April [ [168]] then changed back to 'summarily executed'. Then changed to 'killed' by me in August. I don't think 'summarily executed' has ever been the consensus wording.
Hackney states "There's various comments falsely alleging I refused to take part in dispute resolution." There's also comments like mine asking for you and others to be given more time [ [169]]
Hackney states "Yes the caveat was needed due to the number of inaccuracies in the request, and I wished to make it clear I had objections to those inaccuracies. Bear in mind there was nowhere for me to write my version of events unlike in say a request for arbitration, I simply added a caveat to make sure I disputed the accuracy of the request. What's the problem with that exactly?" I think the problem is that it's the only contribution and it seems unnecessary.
Hackney states "removing the disruptive editors from the situation is all that's needed" I agree. the article now uses the term 'shot' [ [170]]. I've no problem with that as it's accurate and straightforward. Since several editors were banned, no one seems to be wanting to change it to 'summarily executed'.
Hackney states " Flexdream attempted to remove an unsourced comparison with IRA bombings during the Troubles, Nick Cooper reverted his edit, then rather than attempt to discuss the inclusion of what he deemed to be irrelevant content, Flexdream added a bizarre comparison that you won't be able to find made by a reliable source. That's where I entered the picture. You appear to be suggesting that if I want to remove the content Flexdream added, I also have to join in an edit war on his behalf" I made clear in my first edit here that it was because I thought it irrelevant [171], it had nothing to do with sourcing. Nick Cooper reverted it as relevant [ [172]]. Accepting Nick's argument I added material [ [173]]. I don't see any edit war there for Hackney to join in and I never undid Nick's reversion. Hackney then chooses to remove just my addition [ [174]] as being unsourced even though I have a link to the wikipedia article. I then open a section on the talk page to discuss it [ [175]](do you see a pattern here, I edit, Hackney reverts, I create a section on the talk page to discuss). Judge again how the discussion goes and how collegiate it is.
Hackney states "Somewhat bizarrely, Flexdream's attempts to edit war OR into an article with unproductive talk page discussion" I still don't see how it's OR when I link to a wikipedia article for reference. Is it really better I go to the wikipedia article, find a source that's used there, come back and put that as a link. How does it help the reader to have a link that takes them out of wikipedia to a single source, instead of taking them to a wikipedia article that has multiple sources? Which makes wikipedia a better encyclopedia?
Hackney quotes ""if ONIH had applied the same verifibiality and NOR criteria to both parts of the sentence, and had supported Flexdream's concerns about and deletion of problematic material by removing it himself, the edit war that followed might easily have been avoided" - I did the former, as the talk page proves. As already stated, I was not willing to edit war on his behalf to make an edit he'd already attempted to make which had been reverted." There was no edit war before Hackney intervened as I've shown. It would have been better if Hackney had concerns about sourcing for him to be clear on that from the start, and explain why he was removing one edit but not the other. Instead he goes straight in and removes one edit saying it's unsourced, and says nothing about the other edit. I think it was reasonable for me to see this as selective.
Hackney states "Flexdream was bold in his removal, reverted, then didn't attempt to discuss but made a totally different bold edit. He was then reverted by me, and rather than discuss he started an edit war" What was 'bold' about it? I didn't discuss Nick's reversion because I accepted the argument given for the reversion. My next edit was consistent with that, and wasn't reverted by Nick. It was reverted by Hackney. I then started the discussion.
"Flexdream reverts twice to restore unverifiable material while not contributing to ongoing talk page discussion for another 4 hours." I still think that a broadcast BBC programme is a reliable source. I know from previous that Hackney will try to remove even direct links to a copy of a broadcast program where he doesn't want them in the article.[ [176]]. Again, judge for yourself how the discussion I started that time went[ [177]] and the dispute resolution [ [178]] .
Hackney states "FergusM1970 is nothing but a disruptive POV warrior in my opinion". I think there is a big contrast in Hackney's present action and Fergus' response to a ban [
[179]]. Fergus acknowledges "my behaviour fell below the acceptable standard", whereas Hackney states "my behaviour can be seen as less than stellar".
I think I was harshly treated, but I think the admins have a thankless task. I had probably got used to a level of behaviour among editors that is not typical, and I am encouraged that admins see it as appalling where tag-teaming is used to avoid the 1RR rule and edit-war. Where there is little effort to engage in discussion, which sometimes descends to little more than insult. My concern is that when blocks expire or are lifted some editors might revert to 'business as usual'. In meantime from what little I can see the Troubles articles are doing fine.--
Flexdream (
talk) 20:15, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
The following report was filed by ONIH on 2 August and was considered at the time by two Admin’s EdJohnston and Cailil on 3 August to be fairly cut and dry with Cailil noting that “…content is not relevant to ArbCom enforcement.” It was Heimstern here who suggested they “hold off on sanctions, let's find a way to resolve the content dispute via actual consensus first." NuclearWarfare asked did Admin’s “see anything by any party that looks like it would be called poor editing (POV writing, misrepresenting sources, etc.) by any objective observer?” and Seraphimblade asked “if there's clear POV editing, baiting, nastiness during discussions...” Heimstern said “no, nothing is blatantly obvious.”
While Slp1 makes the point that ONIH had filed two reports in 9hrs which becomes irrelevant as Slp1 noted that Flexdream "acknowledged that they had broken 1RR" and "the report closed as a warning" however, with two Admins having already seen a clear cut violation, and accepting that "FergusM1970 has broken 1RR" Slp1 makes the bizarre statement that "the 1RR rule as written and applied rewards editors who have a big gang to revert and who use battleground approaches to get their way in a topic area." Apart from the massive assumption of bad faith both these editors had violated 1RR and have been found by AE to have done so. Simple rule, don't edit war on a 1RR article, "they made me do it" is not a defense. Even Cailil noted what Slp1 was saying vis-a-vis gaming but don't see it here, and correctly pointing out that "FergusM1970 has already been topic-banned a breach of WP:TROUBLES is recidivism." and that the " openning of a DRN thread may have had the aim of forestalling this thread - if that were the case that would be a gaming issue."
It was EdJohnston at 16:35, 4 August who suggested holding off on closing while the DRN thread was open. With a number of Admin's agreeing Seraphimblade at 16:39, 4 August Heimstern at 20:40, 4 August The Blade of the Northern Lights at 20:46, 4 August Slp1 at 22:01, 4 August. The times and dates are important because at 22:35, 4 August, Steven Zhang actually closed the DNR. This makes these comments by Cailil all the more bizarre along with the agreement of John Carter. The DNR was over before it began and the claims of "stonewalling" are without foundation. You cannot find a "source based consensus" if the editor will not provide the required sources.
It is now that the editing history of editors is called into question. We still have a group of editors who insist on violating the 1RR even with threads already open on them [194] [195] [196] [197], and continuing to add un-sourced POV laden text and nothing is done. I do agree with the comments by AGK, "Topics subject to AE are demonstrably problematic areas of the encyclopedia, so misconduct reported here needs to be dealt with swiftly and effectively." In this case it was not! Admin's failed to act on this, and exasperated the situation by sitting on their hands failing in the one task they were assigned to do and have shifted this mess onto editors who have to deal with these editors. ONIH has ably demonstrated this with diff's and I've attempted to do the same. The more one looks at this, the more I question the fact that I have, along with ONIH been topic banned? I'll put up some diff's on my edits and request that Admins point to the ones that justify such a decision. -- Domer48 'fenian' 10:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
I was not intending to post in this discussion, however due to the fact One Night In Hackney was topic-banned for behavioural issues I feel that it needs to be mentioned that I have recently had to file a complaint in regards to uncivil comments by ONIH on a non-Troubles article. Mabuska (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2012 (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 55 | ← | Archive 60 | Archive 61 | Archive 62 | Archive 63 | Archive 64 | Archive 65 |
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 Magog the Ogre ( talk) at 20:09, 7 July 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
ArbCom previously denied [7] a request to hear a new case . At the time, I opined that I thought this issue would remain unresolved, and it has. Since that time, numerous discussions, blocks, and threads on ANI have occurred, and yet the only difference between now and then is that both TopGun and Darkness Shines have received a 1RR probation.
It is my opinion the editor Darkness Shines is an unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them", an opinion echoed by other editors at ANI threads and other editors not involved in this dispute (cf. Talk:British Pakistanis). JCAla has been just as bad, but has not edited as much in the past several months. TopGun faces POV-pushing issues himself, as does Mar4d.
As you can see from the links below, this has been a huge drain on community time, and I respectfully ask Arbcom to amend the remedy of the case to allow the sanctions. All previous attempts at fixing the issue have failed, and the only reason RFC's have not been tried is that everyone knows they would fail. To not allow an amendment would leave the community once again to try to implement a fix, something which it has failed at before (cf. with the interaction ban, which was eventually lifted as ineffective).
The following has a link to the discussions that have occurred just revolving around a few different users, all attempts to get the parties in line with proper conduct (the noticeboard links are just the ones that have occurred since ArbCom's rejection of the case 6 months ago; there are more in the archive, if an arbcom member wishes to look at the link I provided above of the previous decline):
PS. I am willing to remove myself from any action related to any one or more of the above parties regarding enforcement if ArbCom, the community, or any non-involved party whatsoever thinks this is important. Magog the Ogre ( talk) 00:00, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
PPS. FPaS is entirely correct about filibustering: the common tactic I've seen in use is textbook WP:SOUP, and it has been marvelously successful at confusing ANI and pushing blocks ever further away. Also, I forgot to mention there is rampant sockpuppetry in the area ( User:Nangparbat and User:Lagoo sab). Finally, you will note below the traveling circus of POV-pushers that FPaS speaks of which all find no fault in editors on their own side. But you decide for yourselves if this editor (DS), which everyone below maintains if a bastion of neutrality, is a POV-pusher: his requests for unblock are mostly denied, he's been blocked by other admins on several occasions, he would have been blocked by other admins at some points if I hadn't stepped in, ( Personal attack removed), and he makes wildly POV-pushy edits like this one (which I'll note he still maintains was a completely legitimate and neutral edit). His and JCAla's tactic of claiming that I am biased (which is ludicrous, seeing as I give not a single fuck about the parties in this dispute; JCAla in his diffs below cherry picked the two admins who didn't support my block versus the ~9 who did.) and trying to leverage that into claiming I'm too involved to block has been employed against other admins (e.g., User:TParis), in an attempt to chase off anyone who looks closely enough into the area to recognize their WP:BATTLEGROUND agenda. Magog the Ogre ( talk) 20:15, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Yes, please, do something. The situation is out of control [8] [9] [10]. Last time I suggested imposing discretionary sanctions on a community basis, the ANI folks couldn't agree on anything. Admins have been curiously reluctant to use their tools in a decisive fashion – people in this field can collect seven or eight blocks in a row for disruptive editing within a few months, but admins will still not escalate the block lengths beyond a week or two, when it's pretty obvious that indef would be the only rational response [11] [12]. The topic area is poisoned by the presence of a small number of determined, incorrigible agenda editors, whose constants fights with each other have led a larger number of associates/allies/enablers into joining the "travelling circus", conforming their own editing to that same "us-versus-them" mold defined by their ringleaders' obsessions. The ringleaders need to be taken out. Don't ask us to take them to RFC/U first – an RFC/U works only on the optimistic assumption that a person might be prepared to listen. These guys have known their editing is offensive for ages; if they haven't begun listening yet, what reasons have we for hoping they ever will? Don't ask us to wait for mediation between them – that's a colossal waste of time, serving only to pamper their egos and train them to become even better filibusterers. We are dealing with a number of people here who are deeply, fundamentally unwilling to accept or even to conceive of "neutrality" as a desirable goal to strive for.
Do something. No matter what: take a full case, or decide per amendment motion. Ban the central figures yourselves, or just impose disc-sancs. But do something. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:47, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
I have to disagree with Magog the Ogre's statement. I don't think that DarknessShines is a "unrepentant POV-pusher". Magog has blocked him many times, and this one specially raises concerns. So does this. As of TopGun, he shows serious neutrality concerns. Along with attacking editors on the basis of their nationality, he has a history of making highly controversial and questionable edits and reverts, citing WP:BRD; and when someone reverts him, he harasses him crying hounding. The sad point is that he also gets support for his false accusations. The main purpose of TopGun, while editing Wikipedia, is evidently to push Pakistani POV, and he is also supported by other editors. This, and even this, shows some signs of blockshopping. Another point which I noticed, is that this case case came when DS was all set to open a case against MTO. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 14:28, 8 July 2012 (UTC)
Now I hope that no one other will put such allegations, and still if he/she wants, then I will be more happy to solve out those too. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 14:18, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
A user puts tons of sources in the favour of keeping an article, despite the fact that they have no mention of the topic, and when a user does nothing rather than blindly accusing me of hounding, I think I am supposed to term those comments as baseless. Also watching someone' talk page is completely allowed, and its not my headache if you are involved in every dispute of this topic's articles. TopGun’s accusation that I am following his DYK noms is another baseless one. Please note that I have around 20 DYK credits and various DYK reviews, I am an active contributor to the DYK page, and I have reviewed various dyk noms. 1, 2 and 3 to name a few. Most, or I should say all DYK noms by TopGun have highly non-neutral hooks, and the article also aren't different. ♛♚★Vaibhav Jain★♚♛ Talk Email 10:45, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
Regarding blocks
As I pointed out to Magog I began to look into TG's edits after the fiasco at the Taliban article per WP:HOUND Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing unambiguous errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles. Magog ignored all the above infractions of policy by TG and focused on my actions for reasons known only to himself. Darkness Shines ( talk) 14:05, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
Well, to tell the truth, I'm not sure discretionary sanctions will be particularly helpful in this case due to the peculiarities of the topic area. First of all, it has been plagued by constant blockshopping, with users complaining about their opponents' edits on the talk pages of many different admins — disclosure: I have received several requests to examine somebody else's edits —. This is the area where an interaction ban between two editors had to be lifted because it was creating more drama than it was preventing, after all. Furthermore, only very few sysops have acted in an administrative capacity and, on top of that, some, though not all, have not always appeared neutral when brandishing their mops — disclosure: and in a couple of circumstances, I have commented to that effect on the blockee's talk page —. This does not mean they were not neutral, merely that they did not appear to be. Besides, owing to the incredible litigiousness of all editors involved, the sanctions imposed have not always received the appropriate level of review by the community. Actually, the reaction on ANI has been either aww, jeez, not this **** again or a chorus of let's ban them all and be done with them. Moreover, the editors involved in this topic area are very few (fewer than ten). I realise that the ongoing disruption needs to be stopped; however, as I have already said, I'm not sure the imposition of discretionary sanctions is the best way forward. That said, if the Committee were to consider them unavoidable, I'd like to urge you to consider not imposing the standard set of discretionary sanctions, but to shape them in a way that takes into account the peculiarities of the topic area (particularly the litigiousness, lack of appearance of neutrality and blockshopping). Salvio Let's talk about it! 22:11, 10 July 2012 (UTC)
As it is evident by the diffs provided by the many editors here, this is more of a user conduct issue which could have been handled in a better way by uninvolved admins. The block shopping and subsequent blocks by involved admins have brought this here. It will not be appropriate to put up Discretionary sanctions to block any of the editors in this topic area, just by the wrong doings of individual users above. The action by Arbcom if any should be taken on the erring users and not the topic area as a whole.-- DBig Xray 17:34, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
AS evident by the comments of admins User:Magog the Ogre and User:Future Perfect at Sunrise above, I will also request the arbcom to prevent these two admins from taking administrative actions against the editors in this topic area, as they are clearly involved and their admin actions are biased while dealing with few specific editors in this topic area. -- DBig Xray 19:59, 23 July 2012 (UTC)
I completely disagree when MTO calls DS an "unrepentant POV-pusher who sees the world through the lens of "us" vs. "them"". DS's edits may look controversial but none of them are disputing neutrality or using unreliable sources. As far as his reverts for TGs edits are concerned, TG's edits were controversial and subject to eventual talks or RFCs at talk pages or user talk pages. MTO being an admin has made few uncivil kind of personal attacks to DS ( [68]). Especially this didn't look appropriate at all as the editor wasn't even warned or asked for clarification prior to the block. This isn't my main point at this statement. I will have to say that it is actually TopGun and at times Mar4d who have pushed POV and they seem to remove addition of any content that sheds a poor light on Pakistan. They have also been adding data which is not so in favor of Indian authorities at Jammu & Kashmir or related issues negatively. The best example of this "biased behavior" can be found at [69] where TG and M4 introduced links ( I Protest, Rape in Jammu and Kashmir, Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir and Media curbs and usage of social networking sites in Kashmir) which have no connection whatsoever to separatist movement. These links don't even have any content related to the movement and still get a place in the template. Another example is Pakistan Zindabad where TG removes data which is completely sourced with WP:RS and the incident is notable enough to have a mention but still it was removed just because it was proving a bad point for his country, I was totally shocked by such biased behavior (Pakistan Zindabad incident lead to a Talk:Pakistan_Zindabad#Controversial_Usage RFC where editors are in clear support of inclusion). This is nothing but clear POV pushing. He also accused Vibhijain of HOUNDING which was not a case there. HOUNDING says that edits that are intended to dispute or badger the editor in a wrong way is HOUNDING but addition of material and other fixes in good faith are not HOUNDING. Since long TG has accused people of HOUNDING and still does as he doesn't seem to understand what WP:HOUND is. Since long TopGun has followed such behavior and has faced many blocks due to incivility or personal attacks (hostile editing against Darkness Shines, improper calling of "sock") or breaking IBAN or Disruptive editing. He has since long continued to make this site WP:BATTLEGROUND and one of the instances can be found here. This dispute doesn't look like it is going to end. I believe that a ban from Indo-Pak related articles will be the best possible solution to this continued conflict. — TheSpecialUser ( TSU) 05:23, 12 July 2012 (UTC)
I have been an active Wikipedia editor for the past 6 months. I edit many articles, and that includes articles about my country, India. I have observed the process of edits, reverts and ANI proceedings from the sidelines for some time. I am here as an editor whose willingness to edit, add content and removed vandalism/violations from these articles has been diminished. This is because of two reasons:
I would urge the ArbCom to ponder over these issues.
Thanking you all,
Anir1uph ( talk) 21:37, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
I completely disagree with Magog the Ogre's description of Darkness Shines as a unrepentant POV-pusher.Darkness Shines has been doing great service to neutralize the POV pushing that plagues many(most) of the Indo-Pakistani articles.Magog the Ogre was always involved in the dispute when he repeatedly blocked Darkness Shines.There was obviously some kind of blockshopping due to which Darkness Shines was indiscriminately blocked many times.MTO ridiculously accuses DS of Anti-Pakistani editing while he supports TG and Mar4d who openly push anti-india propoganda.
Mar4d's follows a different pattern of POV pushing where he pushes his point silently so that no one notices his edits.He doesn't appear on other user talk pages as frequently as TG but his effect on articles is quite high too.
I hereby request the ArbCom to take necessary action against TopGun and Mar4d-Discrete Sanctions or Ban.Darkness Shines and JCAla, who have been working for NPOV in the conflicted articles must be freed of the charges.Vibhijain and DBigXray who were dragged into the dispute by TG have no major role in it and hence I think must be removed from the list. Sincerely, TheStrike Σagle 13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
The only major POV dispute I have ever been involved was a userbox I created.Mar4d nominated it for deletion saying that it was not in use and unnecessary.Who is he to decide what is necessary here? Unfortunately(for Mar4d) the MfD was closed as keep with no delete !vote other than Mar4d's.perhaps his friends were off-wiki that time .It is clear that Mar4d accuses other users for POV pushing while he himself does it all the time.Hope this clears the accusation. Regards TheStrike Σagle 13:06, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
I don't know why my name was added here as none of the statements given up till now state my name. As I edit in this topic area so I will like to share my observation: that whenever an editor persistently pushes his/her POV in a topic area giving an impression that he/she is working on some agenda here at Wikipedia, the editors contributing to the same topic area how much neutral they may be but a time will come that they will be forced to push the opposite POV instead of coming to neutral ground. The problems in this topic area are so difficult to handle that most of the admins avoid using their tools in this area or even try to understand what the actual problem is and what is its cause? I have been viewing Darkness Shines’s (DS) edits in the Pakistan topic area, for the last 7 months. Per my observation he is continuously pushing his POV and disrupting any good effort put by most of the other editors working in this topic. I have raised this issue previously many times (some other editors also did this). Some of his edits that don’t need much explanation describing his POV: [75], [76], [77], [78],
Not to mention his uncivil behavior, creation of article to piss other editors, hounding other editors, as they are separate and lengthy chapters.
On calling an admin involved I will just say that DS calls anyone involved/not neutral admin whoever supported Bwilkins idea of blocking him for six months,in the last discussion at ANI so that includes: Bwilkins, The Bushranger, Dennis Brown, Future Perfect at Sunrise, Magog. Though till now he has called only Bwilkins, Magog and Future Perfect as involved, with this argument but I don’t see it far that all the other admins who supported his block will be accused of being involved whenever they take some action against him. So I think an editor should not be given the right to call an admin being biased/involved just because he/she blocked or supported/upheld a block of that editor previously. It will set a bad precedence leading to problems for the administrators dealing with disruptive editors.
There is much more happening in this topic area that most of the outside editors are possibly not aware of, like creation of retaliatory articles, hounding, teaming up, defending an editor or his/her actions whenever an action is (or going to be) taken by an admin, accusing any admin who takes action of being involved/biased, accusing editors (including admins) of being friend of the other editor, giving barnstars to each other with inflammatory comments against other editors soon after a discussion is concluded, etc. All this is now increasing with more editors following the path of others who did this successfully and have become a role model. Also the frequency of these kind of disruptive activities is increasing. Actually this is one of the reasons that my contributions are declining too as I avoid these disputes as much as I can. That is why I think Arbitration Committee should take a thorough look into this (that unfortunately most of the admins avoid), that I guess is possible if a full arbitration case is taken. Apparently it looks like that discretionary sanctions will solve the problems in this topic area but it will not be plugging (only) the right hole, instead it is like plugging all the holes, that will have collateral damage to some extent as issues which arise in this topic area are so complex sometimes that it is difficult for an admin to act without thoroughly checking the lengthy history of the events, so sometimes they avoid using the (sysop) tools. So my only concern about giving admins the powers of discretionary sanctions is why ArbCom is leaving this case once again for the admins, majority of whom are probably reluctant to act in this topic. Besides I would like to mention about the more visible display of Battleground mentality .i.e. the addition of my name to the involved/affectee list that apparently looks like an "us vs them" approach. -- SMS Talk 22:14, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
In addition to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, I suggest including Bangladesh in the list of countries covered by the motion. There has been extensive battling by the same editors over articles related to it. -- Stfg ( talk) 09:52, 19 July 2012 (UTC)
Just ran across this by accident while looking for more context on the change-of-username motion; I'm not at all involved with Indo-Pakistani disputes. If this motion pass, does that mean that this arbitration decision would be binding on random people who dispute sports stats for Vijay Singh or who disagree on the US political aspects of business process outsourcing in India? Nyttend ( talk) 02:37, 20 July 2012 (UTC)
Although I haven't been particularly involved in the situations leading up to this, I do have a lot of experience dealing in the closely related topic specifically covered already. I'm fine with adding discretionary sanctions, but I'm not sure how effective they'll be. Setting aside the problems that Salvio giuliano says above about experienced editors, anyone who's done any NPP or editing in the topic area will recognize the substantial problem created by new users as well. Many seem to treat Wikipedia articles as a place to practice their English, which wouldn't be a bad thing were it not for the fact that most of their English skills are atrocious and create another layer of communication problems; looking at Talk:Nair and its archives is fairly demonstrative of the problem. Discretionary sanctions can only do so much to solve those sorts of problems; what's needed is more admin attention, which from what I can see isn't forthcoming. So while I think discretionary sanctions will help, the underlying problem to me seems more like the lack of admins willing to head this off at the pass. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 21:37, 24 July 2012 (UTC)
Arbitrators ought to be aware that there is an existing community sanction of general discretionary sanctions regarding caste and sub-groups. This community sanction will of course keep running regardless of your decision—some day you may reverse yourselves, correspondingly the community must reverse itself on its sanction that overlaps with this one to some extent. Fifelfoo ( talk) 02:15, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Ugh. Usually I do an excellent job of avoiding controversy, contentious topics, disputes, and anything that remotely smells of "trouble" but it seems I have somehow stumbled into this, mostly because I began editing some articles related to Bangladesh out of a personal interest.
So.
First, whatever is done, you should add Bangladesh to the "India, Pakistan, Afghanistan" list since this stuff has already began spilling over there.
Second, I'm torn between, on the one hand, my established disdain for "discretionary sanctions" and the sincere belief that these often do nothing but pour gasoline on the fire - in many cases instituting "discretionary sanctions" is like exporting arms to war torn countries, it just provides another weapon for people to fight with - and, on the other hand, the obviousness that there's plenty of trouble going on here. So it's a sort of 60% Salvio Guiliano 40% Future Perfect kind of thing going on here.
What really would work at this point is involvement in the topic area of some knowledgeable, respected and diplomatic uninvolved editors. If you know of any, you should hire them. Or just record their existence, before that species goes extinct (again). In absence of that, discretionary sanctions *could* work as long as it's not just a "we'll put in the discretionary sanctions and then abandon the issue and pretend it's solved" ... kind of thing. If you do put in discretionary sanctions, be prepared to deal with follow up complaints, with a whole new slew of WP:AE reports (most of which, but not all, will be petty and stupid, and further proof that Wikipedia IS in fact a battleground) and more work for yourselves (which you can always evade by pointing out that the ArbCom is not concerned with content disputes).
Honestly, to deal with these perennial consanguineous areas you're going to have to start appointing "Tsars" (like the "Education Tsar" or "Drug Tsar") or at least "Surgeons Generals". Or maybe Consuls. And with the consuls, there was always two of them. So I nominate Salvio Guiliano and Future Perfect as the first two Consuls of the "India-Pakistan-Afghanistan-Bangladesh" topic area. With Fifelfoo as the tribune, just to watch over them. VolunteerMarek 03:30, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Were the relevant Wikiprojects notified (eg via noticeboards for related topics) - that you intend on putting this DS regime on anything related to these countries? Next, should we expect you to also put the entire project on DS without properly consulting community first? Ncmvocalist ( talk) 15:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
Like Ncm above, I'm a little disappointed that we have arbs voting on sanctions without seeking wider input from the community that will be affected by those sanctions. However, if that's the way things are then that's the way they are.
I think discretionary sanctions are unnecessary. To the contrary, I think the problem in this area has been an excess of admin involvement and admin action. Punitive blocks applied at will, restrictions imposed on the various participants that are really not warranted, gratuitous lectures about behavior that are better suited to parent child interactions than to admin/editor interactions, stuff like that. This has lead to a poisonous atmosphere marked mainly by block shopping and a constant low grade complaining about other editors. My suggestions, perhaps too late since arbs seem to have already made up their minds, are the following:
Now that I've had the time to look at this further, I think Magog is overstating the "disruptive" nature of what is going on here. A look at the block log of both DarknessShines as well as TopGun shows that most of l the blocks were for violating one restriction or another. The restrictions were the problem and the predictably unfortunate effect of discretionary sanctions is going to be more blocks not less. The ANI cases were largely initiated by two of the editors, DarknessShines and TopGun, probably because block shopping on technical violations of the restrictions was, partly anyway, turning out to be an effective weapon against each other. I believe this is better handled on a case by case basis using the normal way of dealing with edit warring or tendentious editing rather than through adding to the bureaucratic overhead by placing more restrictions on both these editors (and, incidentally, on any other editor who may happen to be editing these pages). -- regentspark ( comment) 18:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
This very bizarre. Discretionary sanctions are being considered for India and Pakistan related pages, yet, none of the significant contributors to these pages (see, for example, here) know about this. No announcement had been made on WikiProject India, until NCMvocalist just made his. Most editors making statements above (who edit South Asia-related pages), on the other hand, seem to be relatively new users; all are seasoned at edit-warring and POV pushing; all know enough wikilawyering to template me for writing this sentence. Fowler&fowler «Talk» 16:43, 27 July 2012 (UTC)
1) Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed.
For this motion, there are 12 active non-recused arbitrators, so 7 votes are a majority.
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 Seraphimblade Talk to me at 18:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
This request would also indirectly affect anyone who has been involved in an arbitration case with ongoing sanctions and has publicly changed usernames.
The two editors involved in the immediate discussion have been notified: [79].
Clarification is requested on the following two questions:
This objection [80] led me to make this request, as it seems this is not as uncontroversial a housekeeping measure as it would seem, and I could not find any existing policy or discussion on the matter. A clarification would hence be much appreciated.
For the record, the thread at arbitration enforcement suggested such annotations to the case page, and had I evaluated consensus for such at the close, I would have found that they did have consensus among the uninvolved admins commenting. I did not make such a determination as to my knowledge it was not required. I think the clarification would still be useful in a broader sense, however. Seraphimblade Talk to me 18:09, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I do not see why not. My renaming was already annotated [81]. The only question is this: should you only annotate users who were sanctioned, or all users indicated as parties. For example, speaking about WP:EEML, should renaming of User:Offliner be annotated? My very best wishes ( talk) 19:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion, information about past conflicts (or alliances) between the users editing contentious and scrutinized topics should be easily available to everyone, and the linkage should be traceable not only between an old and a new names, but in the opposite direction also. -- Paul Siebert ( talk) 20:20, 23 June 2012 (UTC)
I could, in some extreme cases, such as perhaps controversial OUTing of an editor in a previous identity, see some basis for not indicating changed names there. But, honestly, only in such cases, and I imagine that there are probably already procedures in place to deal with such circumstances. If that is the case, this seems a good way to ensure that people do not try to change their names to avoid dealing with the realities of their own previous objectionable activity. John Carter ( talk) 20:23, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
I've been thinking about asking for something similar for awhile, but for different reasons. The major reason IMO (it certainly applies to myself, I'm guessing it applies to others) why people changed their usernames after the case was not to escape any kind of scrutiny but rather because of ongoing off-wiki harassment (I know that that kind of thing doesn't stop the dedicated harassers, but it might make it a bit harder for them or any new potential ones). This is particularly true for those users, like myself and I believe Nug, whose previous usernames were tied to their real life names.
So why not kill two birds with one stone? That is, why not go through and change all the old user names in the case pages to their current names: i.e. Radeksz-->Volunteer Marek, Miacek-->Estlandia, etc. That way people can always refer back to the case, while at the same time the old-names-tied-to-real-life-names will be gone. Everyone will be happy. Win win. VolunteerMarek 01:27, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
@JClemens - What the hey are you talking about? What "extraordinary efforts"? ??? VolunteerMarek 20:09, 26 June 2012 (UTC)
Btw, if time and effort are a concern then... well, this is a collaborative project, so I can go through myself and change all the old names to all the new names, at least for myself. Just like working on articles. VolunteerMarek 16:01, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
As long as it applies to all users. VєсrumЬа ► TALK 18:54, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
Depending on the size of involved case, you could have a really large list to track or very little.
I would like to suggest that the log/action section be accessible to anyone that can currently utilize that section, and information about renamed users be listed under a separate heading. However, as for the actual findings/Remedies/etc, let ArbCom/AC Clerk handle changing/notarizing those parts. - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 05:01, 14 July 2012 (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 Nug ( talk) at 21:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
Notified [82]
The remedy of the Eastern European mailing list case is amended to lift the interaction ban between User:Russavia and User:Nug.
EdJohnston had previously requested that the mutual topic bans between Russavia and I be lifted [83] Unfortunately after some editors objected due to their apocalyptic fear of our possible collaboration might turn the world up side down, it was declined. Given that Russavia has since been site banned for a year and indef topic banned and the chance of now interacting reduced to zero, can this restriction be now lifted? I'd like to edit articles like 90th anniversary of the Latvian Republic, but I cannot remove those tags placed by Russavia almost a year ago without breaching my interaction ban. -- Nug ( talk) 21:06, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
@Clerks, I fail to see how Paul Seibert's comments have any relevance what so ever to a request to amend a redundant interaction ban, and I ask that they be removed. If Paul has issues he can air them in a more appropriate forum (along with linked evidence) where they can be discussed in full without derailing this specific amendment request. Thanks. --
Nug (
talk) 05:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Courcelles, Russavia is indefinitely topic banned from EE, see this, in addition to the one year site ban [84]. -- Nug ( talk) 02:13, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, me too. It's sort of pointless now. VolunteerMarek 23:10, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
@Ed Johnson - I'm pretty sure that there are no remaining sanctions from the EEML case and there haven't been for awhile (btw, as an update, EE topic area is actually doing pretty well). And even the sanctions themselves were pretty mild to begin with. Some people keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic of poisoning the well but honestly, that stuff's old news, there's nothing left, nobody, including AE admins, is paying much attention. The interaction bans are the last remnants of the case (well, actually, more from the R-B case) and even those, obviously, are no longer much relevant. VolunteerMarek 01:58, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Paul - Paul, when I wrote ""keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic"" I actually did NOT have you in mind. Rather just some more peripheral users. Keep in mind that lots of folks from what can be described as the "anti-EEML" side managed to get themselves banned/blocked/topic banned just fine without any help from anyone on the list in the months following the case, thank you very much. I was thinking more of these guys who sometimes keep coming back as IP addresses or fresh starts or sock puppets, who pretend to be new to Wikipedia but somehow have this magical knowledge of the EEML case which they try to use win arguments and battles in which they got blocked for in the first place.
Anyway, more general point is that aside from this interaction ban there are no outstanding sanctions from the EEML case. This is a good opportunity to put it all to rest. VolunteerMarek 04:26, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@Ed Johnson & Volunteer Marek. First of all, I always supported the idea to lift all remaining individual sanctions against ex-EEML members. However, this my post is mainly a responce to the Volunteer Marek's post where he mentioned some people who "keep dredging the case up in the standard battleground tactic". In connection to that, I would like to remind VM that I was among the users who had conflicts with the EEML cabal, and, I recall, someone (probably
user:Viriditas) strongly advised me to read the EEML archive and present the evidences against them when the case was open, because the cabal had been contemplating some actions against me. I refused to do that, however.
I believe, the fact that I had been silent when the EEML case was open, and that I decided to return to this issue now is per se an indication that something happened during last year that forced me to express my concern now. The major EEML violation, their coordinated edits is the fact that is extremely hard to establish. As far as I understand, the community became aware of the existence of the EEML cabal purely by accident, and there is absolutely no guaranty that no similar cabals currently exist. By writing that, I do not imply that the EEML member continue to coordinate, however, it would be equally incorrect to claim that their one year long topic bans may guarantee that no coordination can exist between them. In connection to that, I believe the behaviour of EEML members must be absolutely transparent to dispel any suspicions. Concretely, I am not sure ex-EEML members have a moral right to simultaleously participate in votes or RfCs when no fresh arguments are brought by each of them (i.e., the posts such as "Support a user X", without detailed explanation of one's own position should not be allowed for them). Similarly, joining the chain of reverts where other EEML members already participate should not be allowed also. We all remember that these users massively coordinate their edits in past, we all (including the admins) have absolutely no tools to make sure such coordination does not occur currently, so we have a right at least to express our concern in a situation when such coordination cannot be ruled out. The fact that they cannot be considered as uninvolved parties when they join the action of their peers should also be clear for everyone.
In contrast, we currently have a directly opposite tendency: any mention of the EEML is treated as a "battleground tactics", many EEML members changed their usernames to protect their privacy and, simultaneously, to disassociate themselves from their past violations, and many of them continue to concurrently edit the same articles. In my opinion, the EEML pendulum is moving in the opposite direction, and now it has already passed its lowest point...--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 03:23, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
@ VolunteerMarek. Thank you, Marek. In actuality, I also didn't mean all EEML members in this my post. Behaviour of majority of them is almost impeccable, and they do their best to dispel any doubts about any possibility of coordinated edits. The problem is, however, that some mechanism is, nevertheless, needed to eliminate any possibility of resurrection of this story (with the same or different participants, no matter). In connection to that, I proposed some modifications to the EW policy. To my great satisfaction, one of the EEML members, whom I sincerely respect, Piotrus, supported this proposal (which, in my opinion, would eliminate any possibility of tag teaming). However, some other EEML members opposed to that, and my proposal went into oblivion. Maybe, it makes sense to return to this issue?--
Paul Siebert (
talk) 05:09, 28 June 2012 (UTC)
I have to say that this proposal makes sense to me. Russavia probably can't remove any tags himself under his own restrictions, and it makes no sense to have possibly now irrelevant tags remain in place because the person who placed them can't do so himself. I might request Nug start a discussion on the talk page before removing tags or maybe making substantial changes to an article not necessarily directly related to recent developments, under the circumstances, but I can't see how it makes any sense to allow people who have been banned from the site and a given topic to in effect continue to have a degree of control over them, through such things as dubiously placed or now irrelevant tags. John Carter ( talk) 22:12, 27 June 2012 (UTC)
There would be a benefit to making EEML obsolete, and the Committee could pass a motion to lift all remaining bans and restrictions from the original WP:EEML case. The understanding would be that any bans that turn out still to be necessary can be reimposed via discretionary sanctions under the existing authority of WP:ARBEE. The only nuance might be that some of Russavia's restrictions come from WP:ARBRB which is thought of as including all of the former Soviet Union. So the Committee might clarify that WP:ARBEE will allow discretionary sanctions relating to any countries of the former Soviet Union. In actuality, the only provision of EEML that hasn't expired is Remedy 11A, the one that prevents the EEML editors sanctioned by name from interacting with Russavia.
To the point at hand, I support lifting of the ban. In particular, any evaluation of editor behavior needs to be from here forward, not, as as has been implied, saddle particular editors with a permanent stench. VєсrumЬа ► TALK 19:02, 29 June 2012 (UTC)
It should be noted that the ban/block on Russavia was a strange reaction to a harmless cartoon, and therefore could be overturned at any time.
Rich
Farmbrough, 01:00, 9 July 2012 (UTC).
1) The interaction ban placed upon Nug ( talk · contribs) and Russavia ( talk · contribs) in the Eastern European mailing list case is lifted, effective immediately. The users are reminded of the discretionary sanctions authorized for their area of mutual interest.
Enacted - Alexandr Dmitri ( talk) 19:41, 18 August 2012 (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 Cailil talk at 14:55, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
Per the closure of
this WP:ARE thread I'm seeking clarification regarding whether enforcing sysops can impose
Mandated External Review (MER) under the currect provisions for
discretionary sanctions?
The above thread saw significant disruption both from long term and newer editors and it was felt by the admins at AE that MER would significantly help the topic area under the WP:TROUBLES probation.
AGK already commented on this
[90] but felt this request for clarification appropriate--
Cailil
talk 14:55, 17 August 2012 (UTC)
I actually hold the belief that MER should not be randomly given out as a part of discretionary sanctions.
Putting an editor on MER requires other non-involved editors to look into those proposed edits. It takes much more time and effort for MER to work, and I believe that such declarations should not be left under discretionary sanctions.
I would like to propose an alternative that MER can be sanctioned either by ArbCom approval, or as a community opinion at the appropriate locations because this way more people will know that said user is under MER (and thus require more scrutiny regarding edits).
Also, I would like to propose that the list of users under MER should have its own subpage (instead of being grouped with other editing restrictions), because the editors in question is not under a topic ban (and a different page/section/etc would make it easier to track). - Penwhale | dance in the air and follow his steps 15:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
I agree with Brad that any other measures which the imposing administrator believes are reasonably necessary to ensure the smooth functioning of the project surely includes MER. I'm not sure, however, that formalizing MER right now with a motion is needed. Of the three editors placed on MER in ARBFLG2, two are currently topic-banned, and the remaining one (Colipon) hasn't edited much since the case closed. If we limit MER to the Falun Gong area only, it is unlikely that we'll have enough data to make an informed decision for a long, long time. I believe that it is best to allow AE admins to employ MER in other areas under the catchall provision for now, and reconsider whether to formalize MER as a discretionary sanction once we have enough data. T. Canens ( talk) 18:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Motion failed |
---|
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
1) Mandated External Review is formally adopted as an independent form of sanction which must be explicitly authorized for use by the Arbitration Committee within a given area of conflict. A page shall be created at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Mandated external review with the contents of this page, (Note: update the permalink as needed when changes are made to that page) excepting those portions highlighted in green, in order to provide further information and guidance on the use of this sanction.
|
2) Mandated External Review is formally adopted as a form of discretionary sanction. A page shall be created at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Mandated external review with the contents of this page, (Note: update the permalink as needed when changes are made to that page) excepting those portions highlighted in blue, in order to provide further information and guidance on the use of this sanction.
Setting this specific case aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the idea of MER, and if I were a sysop staffing AE I would probably topic-ban a user instead of subjecting them to MER. Nevertheless, I am content for us to give it a shot: discretionary sanctions were probably once thought of as a novel and dangerous. AGK [•] 14:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
3) Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2 is amended as follows:
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 Seraphimblade Talk to me at 21:27, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
N/A
Following a recent appeal to arbitration enforcement [91] from a user who had been sanctioned under the Troubles discretionary sanctions, and objected to the portion of this which forbade editing of British baronets, a closer look was taken at this. Arbitrator Newyorkbrad confirmed that the Committee had not seen any issues arise from this area for at least a year and a half [92], and taking a check through the AE archives and case enforcement logs, I also can't find any trouble there recently. The administrators involved in the discussion regarding the appeal, including the one who closed the original request and placed the sanctions, agreed there was little purpose in the baronet portion of the ban and it ultimately was lifted for that editor. It's nice to see an area where sanctions have done their job and calmed things down, so I think it's time to give it a go without them. Accordingly, I'd propose something to this effect:
@Newyorkbrad: I realize the sanctions can be tailored on a case by case basis, based upon the type and area of misconduct they're being applied in response to. That is overhead to remember and/or process AE appeals if someone forgets when originally applying them though, and I think in general it's a good idea to have as few areas as possible have sanctions applied to them. There are some areas where it's likely that won't happen for many years, but if there are others where the problem that led to them is no longer a problem, I think we ought to scale them back, remove the "big scary notices" on the article edit pages and talk pages, etc. Seraphimblade Talk to me 14:32, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
This question arose because some of the editors involved in the Troubles case were people who largely edited articles on baronets, but who had made controversial edits to Troubles-related articles and AfDs, sometimes with inflammatory edit summaries, and there was some "revenge" editing of baronet articles. See in particular Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles#Statement by User:Vintagekits and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles#Statement by User:Kittybrewster. As far as I am aware, since the case concluded in October 2007, no editor in either area has strayed into the others' territory. There is no apparent need to continue to link them. Scolaire ( talk) 08:21, 19 August 2012 (UTC)
I endorse Scolaire's summary, except that there a further incident after 2007.
There was a further flare-up of the Troubles-Baronets link in May 2009, involving me (BrownHairedGirl), Vintagekits and Kittybrewster. A request for abitration was opened, and dealt with by summary motion: http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case&oldid=289861526#Baronets_naming_dispute
So far as I am aware, there has been no further Troubles-related disputes wrt Baronets since then.
All of the troubles-related disputes wrt baronets involved Vintagekits ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), who is currently indef-blocked (and I think also perma-banned) after a very long series of conflicts. - BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 11:46, 20 August 2012 (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 2 lines of K 303 at 12:41, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I wish to appeal against a frankly bizarre decision where a "consensus of uninvolved administrators" in this discussion has topic banned me while providing virtually no evidence to support the decision.
The 3 month topic ban was proposed here detailing a series of edits to Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997. See User:One Night In Hackney/Appeal for analysis of that series:
The ban was proposed at the end of that series. So FergusM1970 made some bold changes, was reverted, then Portugalpete and SonofSetanta edit war to try and force those changes through without any attempt at discussion. And that's my fault how exactly? If I make one revert and other editors edit war after that, is that somehow my fault? Can I be held responsible for the actions of other editors? I asked for an explanation as to how making one edit to an article is somehow worthy of a 3 month topic ban, I never got a direct reply to that question. Make one revert to enforce content policy and get topic banned, makes no sense to me.
The history of 7 July 2005 London bombings is mentioned as evidence here. I'll be the first to admit my behaviour can be seen as less than stellar on that article, but there's others who are far worse. See User:One Night In Hackney/Appeal for analysis of that article.
Somewhat bizarrely, Flexdream's attempts to edit war OR into an article with unproductive talk page discussion get him just a final warning yet I get a topic ban. I can't really understand the logic of banning the person attempting to enforce content policy while giving the person attempting to violate it a slap on the wrist, anyone?
There's various comments falsely alleging I refused to take part in dispute resolution. The case was filed at 22:24, 3 August 2012 (that's a Friday night for the record). It was archived at 22:44, 4 August 2012, just over 24 hours later. My removal of the notice from my talk page has been falsely interpreted as a refusal to take part. I know where the page is without a link since I've posted there before (and I don't remove noticeboards from my watchlist), and me removing all comments from my talk page is something done repeatedly prior to that. It was a Saturday. During the Olympics. I was too busy to respond straight away since it required a bit of thought. Maybe I should have posted something to that effect, but the DRN volunteer could easily have asked if I was planning to respond, but he chose not to and just closed it assuming bad faith.
Rather than actually deal with the editors persistently violating policy, the admins have decided "sod it, we'll just ban everyone" without taking into account that some editors are simply trying to enforce content policy in the face of disruptive editors adding transparent violations of policy, and that removing the disruptive editors from the situation is all that's needed. I can't see how this topic ban is remotely justified by the "evidence" unless attempting to enforce content policy is now topic ban worthy? 2 lines of K 303 12:41, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
@Newyorkbrad. As can be seen from the discussion, the 3 month topic ban was suggested to apply to everyone supposedly involved, regardless of previous history. For example SonofSetanta ( talk · contribs) has two previous Troubles sanctions on his current account, as well as 5 previous blocks on Troubles related articles on his previous account The Thunderer ( talk · contribs) (see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/The Thunderer/Archive for details). So to give me the same length topic ban as SonofSetanta is perverse, when I have never even been blocked on Troubles related articles, save one erroneous block quickly overturned. I find myself in a bizarre situation where I have been topic banned for reasons that have not been explained based on "evidence" that hasn't even been fully divulged to me. How am I supposed to edit again under those circumstances? I'll only get topic banned again based on the whim of some admin who refuses to answer questions, as has happened here. 2 lines of K 303 11:08, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@AGK, I'm really struggling to understand this now. SonofSetanta twice tries to force through incorrect or policy violating changes made by FergusM1970. I revert the changes a full 7 days after Domer48 had edited them out, and that's somehow worthy of a 3 (or even 6!!) month topic ban? Seriously, can I have an explanation as to this thinking please? The message is still clear to me, don't bother trying to stop people forcing through disputed changes or you'll get topic banned. So what's the alternative? Let their disruptive, incorrect and/or policy violating changes stand while we go through dispute resolution and they refuse to compromise and insist their edits stand? Does the reader benefit from allowing those changes to stand while all this goes on? 2 lines of K 303 11:11, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Various people. If the decision is "harsh", then why is a harsh decision being allowed to stand? I'm not simply asking for the ban to be overturned, reducing the length is a second option. 2 lines of K 303 11:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Flexdream. I don't have the time or energy to pick apart your latest attempts to revise history, like when you claimed at editors previously blocked and topic banned "didn't realise at the time they were in breach of a rule" [1RR]. However your claim regarding RTÉ is incorrect, as you are well aware. At the time of the dispute there was no podcast copy of the show on the RTÉ website at all, that is an addition made since the edits in question. This is obvious to anyone reading the discussions about it. 2 lines of K 303 11:34, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
@Slp1. Totally irrelevant in my opinion, unless you're of the opinion that topic bans should be handed out at a minimum of three months regardless of the supposed level of misconduct? 2 lines of K 303 11:40, 1 September 2012 (UTC)
On a personal note I have limited time for this particular thread after brining a request for clarification and making input on a RFAR and responding to 2 other declined AE appeals of the same ruling. I have no problem with ONiH appealing it, it's just I've answered for a group decision of 4 sysops 3 times now already - just as a suggestion there needs to be a better way of dealing with AE closers than singling them out when a group decision has been made.
ONiH was one of a series of editors topic banned for misconduct both in the WP:Troubles topic area (specifically tag teaming editwarring at
Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997, but also issues relating to
7 July 2005 London bombings and at AE itself). The ruling took into account the apparent use of AE to "win" content disputes (by multiple parties ONiH being only one).
Initially I was of a mind that FergusM1970 was the only problematic user, other sysops disagreed and wanted to see where DRN discussion would go - they explicitly cautioned all articles to engage in a constructive fashion. After the DRN discussion failed Steven Zhang sent the case back to AE. At that point on examination I came round to other sysops POV that stonewalling and/or process gaming was occurring on both sides of the content issues. No constructive attempts at reaching/building consensus were being made by either side and the dispute originating at
Corporals killings spilled over. Instead of following dispute resolution policies (ie disengaging for a start) multiple involved editors tried various brute force mechanisms: tag teaming edit warring; reversion without discussion; immediate reporting to AE; 'tit for tat' AE reports; 'tit for tat' reverts.
The crux of the sanction was due to the tag teaming at
Provisional Irish Republican Army campaign 1969–1997 while the case was open. It is not acceptable for a party to bring a case to AE for stated misconduct and then engage in such misconduct themselves - that is the definition of
unclean hands. Parties as well as previously uninvolved editors (e.g DagosNavy) jumped into an editwar in breach of WP:Editwar and circumventing the
single revert restriction by tag teaming -this was noted at the AE thread, perhaps ONiH doesn't see his edit was tag teaming 4 sysops disagreed (if Arbs see it otherwise I'd appreciate a note on it so we don't make the same decision again elsewhere). At that point and in this context those involved in the worst of the issue were considered for topic bans.
FergusM1970 & SonofSetanta were given longer bans for recidivism and abuse of AE respectively. I did argue for Flexdream to be banned (after he had been formally notified of discretionary sanctions days previously) but other sysops disagreed. There was no 'lumping together of editors'.
I'll also note that contrary to
policy ONiH has blanked the topic ban notification. I understand his wish not to have this on his talk page but how he treated it is against policy--
Cailil
talk 14:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
Note: I think its good for ONiH to use this process to review this AE decision and for the official ability to appeal to ArbCom to be used and I have no problem at all with him doing so. I'd appreciate your eyes on this as frankly it was the worst case I've seen at AE for a long while-- Cailil talk 14:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I do not have time to analyse this case, but would like to note that User:One Night In Hackney is a long-term editor of articles relating to The Troubles, and one of the most scholarly content-creators in that field. His prolific contributions include the 1981 Irish hunger strike, which he massively expanded in 2007 and brought to featured article status.
It is a serious loss to Wikipedia that a contributor of this calibre should be banned from the topic where they have made such a significant contribution. I would ask all concerned to examine whether this can be avoided. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 14:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)
I don't know if I can post to this discussion? I hadn't been told about it, but I have just noticed it because I am named and misrepresented several times. Do the admins want my account here? I wont be able to supply it till Thursday. If one of the admins can let me know either way please by a comment here in my statement section, or a posting on my talk page. If it's not necessary then I wont needlessly add to what is already a very lengthy piece. However, if the decision on Hackney is to be revised, partly in response to these inaccurate accounts of my activity I think I have to respond. Thanks.-- Flexdream ( talk) 21:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)
@Newyorkbrad - sorry this couldn't be shorter. I have tried to restrict it. For clarity I have grouped comments under article headings.
I change 'summarily executed' to 'killed' with the edit summary 'A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is accused of a crime' [ [161]]. That summary was lifted verbatim from wikipedia. Less than 15 minutes later Hackney reverts it [ [162]] with summary '..and that's what happened'. I then open a section on the talk page [ [163]]. On the talk page Talk:Corporals_killings#Summary_Execution I ask what crime they were charged with. Hackney replies "Please don't ask irrelevant questions. Reference for summary execution added, good day to you." I tell Hackney I quoted the wikipedia definition and say " If they weren't charged with a crime they couldn't be summarily executed". Hackney replies "They couldn't?". Judge for yourself which of us is trying to have a discussion.
Hackney cites "Peter Taylor Brits pages 294-295 "In a statement that evening, the IRA claimed responsibility for the 'execution' of 'two SAS members who launched an attack on the funeral cortège of our comrade"." I have pointed out before - this sources puts 'execution' in quotes and that is deliberate. I could describe the AE as a 'court case'. You would know what I meant, but you wouldn't think I meant it was a court case. In addition, the source doesn't use the word 'summarily'. Hackney also added a source to the article which which uses the term 'summarily executed'[ [164]]. It is a book on Yugolslavia, and is taken from the introduction. The source also described the funeral as being for three IRA gunmen, when it was actually for one. So the source seems flimsy support. Contrast that with [ [165]] who as well as identifying that 'killed' was used for years in the article, shows that there are relatively few sources for 'summarily executed'. Hinckley's response is here [ [166]]
Hackney states "However Flexdream then asks a totally different question on the talk page, "And the crime they were charged with was what?". There's a substantial difference between "accused" and "charged", thus making the question irrelevant. You don't need to be *charged* with a crime to be summarily executed" Totally different question from what? My summary states "A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is accused of a crime". My question is "And the crime they were charged with was what?" This he calls this a 'totally different question'? This is pedantry. Hackney still will not answer what crime they were accused of or charged with. And he maintains that 'executed' in quotes in a source equates to summarily executed?
Hackney states "summarily executed" was the consensus wording For years the word was 'killed'. It was changed to 'summarily executed' in March [ [167]]. It was changed to 'murdered' in April [ [168]] then changed back to 'summarily executed'. Then changed to 'killed' by me in August. I don't think 'summarily executed' has ever been the consensus wording.
Hackney states "There's various comments falsely alleging I refused to take part in dispute resolution." There's also comments like mine asking for you and others to be given more time [ [169]]
Hackney states "Yes the caveat was needed due to the number of inaccuracies in the request, and I wished to make it clear I had objections to those inaccuracies. Bear in mind there was nowhere for me to write my version of events unlike in say a request for arbitration, I simply added a caveat to make sure I disputed the accuracy of the request. What's the problem with that exactly?" I think the problem is that it's the only contribution and it seems unnecessary.
Hackney states "removing the disruptive editors from the situation is all that's needed" I agree. the article now uses the term 'shot' [ [170]]. I've no problem with that as it's accurate and straightforward. Since several editors were banned, no one seems to be wanting to change it to 'summarily executed'.
Hackney states " Flexdream attempted to remove an unsourced comparison with IRA bombings during the Troubles, Nick Cooper reverted his edit, then rather than attempt to discuss the inclusion of what he deemed to be irrelevant content, Flexdream added a bizarre comparison that you won't be able to find made by a reliable source. That's where I entered the picture. You appear to be suggesting that if I want to remove the content Flexdream added, I also have to join in an edit war on his behalf" I made clear in my first edit here that it was because I thought it irrelevant [171], it had nothing to do with sourcing. Nick Cooper reverted it as relevant [ [172]]. Accepting Nick's argument I added material [ [173]]. I don't see any edit war there for Hackney to join in and I never undid Nick's reversion. Hackney then chooses to remove just my addition [ [174]] as being unsourced even though I have a link to the wikipedia article. I then open a section on the talk page to discuss it [ [175]](do you see a pattern here, I edit, Hackney reverts, I create a section on the talk page to discuss). Judge again how the discussion goes and how collegiate it is.
Hackney states "Somewhat bizarrely, Flexdream's attempts to edit war OR into an article with unproductive talk page discussion" I still don't see how it's OR when I link to a wikipedia article for reference. Is it really better I go to the wikipedia article, find a source that's used there, come back and put that as a link. How does it help the reader to have a link that takes them out of wikipedia to a single source, instead of taking them to a wikipedia article that has multiple sources? Which makes wikipedia a better encyclopedia?
Hackney quotes ""if ONIH had applied the same verifibiality and NOR criteria to both parts of the sentence, and had supported Flexdream's concerns about and deletion of problematic material by removing it himself, the edit war that followed might easily have been avoided" - I did the former, as the talk page proves. As already stated, I was not willing to edit war on his behalf to make an edit he'd already attempted to make which had been reverted." There was no edit war before Hackney intervened as I've shown. It would have been better if Hackney had concerns about sourcing for him to be clear on that from the start, and explain why he was removing one edit but not the other. Instead he goes straight in and removes one edit saying it's unsourced, and says nothing about the other edit. I think it was reasonable for me to see this as selective.
Hackney states "Flexdream was bold in his removal, reverted, then didn't attempt to discuss but made a totally different bold edit. He was then reverted by me, and rather than discuss he started an edit war" What was 'bold' about it? I didn't discuss Nick's reversion because I accepted the argument given for the reversion. My next edit was consistent with that, and wasn't reverted by Nick. It was reverted by Hackney. I then started the discussion.
"Flexdream reverts twice to restore unverifiable material while not contributing to ongoing talk page discussion for another 4 hours." I still think that a broadcast BBC programme is a reliable source. I know from previous that Hackney will try to remove even direct links to a copy of a broadcast program where he doesn't want them in the article.[ [176]]. Again, judge for yourself how the discussion I started that time went[ [177]] and the dispute resolution [ [178]] .
Hackney states "FergusM1970 is nothing but a disruptive POV warrior in my opinion". I think there is a big contrast in Hackney's present action and Fergus' response to a ban [
[179]]. Fergus acknowledges "my behaviour fell below the acceptable standard", whereas Hackney states "my behaviour can be seen as less than stellar".
I think I was harshly treated, but I think the admins have a thankless task. I had probably got used to a level of behaviour among editors that is not typical, and I am encouraged that admins see it as appalling where tag-teaming is used to avoid the 1RR rule and edit-war. Where there is little effort to engage in discussion, which sometimes descends to little more than insult. My concern is that when blocks expire or are lifted some editors might revert to 'business as usual'. In meantime from what little I can see the Troubles articles are doing fine.--
Flexdream (
talk) 20:15, 24 August 2012 (UTC)
The following report was filed by ONIH on 2 August and was considered at the time by two Admin’s EdJohnston and Cailil on 3 August to be fairly cut and dry with Cailil noting that “…content is not relevant to ArbCom enforcement.” It was Heimstern here who suggested they “hold off on sanctions, let's find a way to resolve the content dispute via actual consensus first." NuclearWarfare asked did Admin’s “see anything by any party that looks like it would be called poor editing (POV writing, misrepresenting sources, etc.) by any objective observer?” and Seraphimblade asked “if there's clear POV editing, baiting, nastiness during discussions...” Heimstern said “no, nothing is blatantly obvious.”
While Slp1 makes the point that ONIH had filed two reports in 9hrs which becomes irrelevant as Slp1 noted that Flexdream "acknowledged that they had broken 1RR" and "the report closed as a warning" however, with two Admins having already seen a clear cut violation, and accepting that "FergusM1970 has broken 1RR" Slp1 makes the bizarre statement that "the 1RR rule as written and applied rewards editors who have a big gang to revert and who use battleground approaches to get their way in a topic area." Apart from the massive assumption of bad faith both these editors had violated 1RR and have been found by AE to have done so. Simple rule, don't edit war on a 1RR article, "they made me do it" is not a defense. Even Cailil noted what Slp1 was saying vis-a-vis gaming but don't see it here, and correctly pointing out that "FergusM1970 has already been topic-banned a breach of WP:TROUBLES is recidivism." and that the " openning of a DRN thread may have had the aim of forestalling this thread - if that were the case that would be a gaming issue."
It was EdJohnston at 16:35, 4 August who suggested holding off on closing while the DRN thread was open. With a number of Admin's agreeing Seraphimblade at 16:39, 4 August Heimstern at 20:40, 4 August The Blade of the Northern Lights at 20:46, 4 August Slp1 at 22:01, 4 August. The times and dates are important because at 22:35, 4 August, Steven Zhang actually closed the DNR. This makes these comments by Cailil all the more bizarre along with the agreement of John Carter. The DNR was over before it began and the claims of "stonewalling" are without foundation. You cannot find a "source based consensus" if the editor will not provide the required sources.
It is now that the editing history of editors is called into question. We still have a group of editors who insist on violating the 1RR even with threads already open on them [194] [195] [196] [197], and continuing to add un-sourced POV laden text and nothing is done. I do agree with the comments by AGK, "Topics subject to AE are demonstrably problematic areas of the encyclopedia, so misconduct reported here needs to be dealt with swiftly and effectively." In this case it was not! Admin's failed to act on this, and exasperated the situation by sitting on their hands failing in the one task they were assigned to do and have shifted this mess onto editors who have to deal with these editors. ONIH has ably demonstrated this with diff's and I've attempted to do the same. The more one looks at this, the more I question the fact that I have, along with ONIH been topic banned? I'll put up some diff's on my edits and request that Admins point to the ones that justify such a decision. -- Domer48 'fenian' 10:22, 25 August 2012 (UTC)
I was not intending to post in this discussion, however due to the fact One Night In Hackney was topic-banned for behavioural issues I feel that it needs to be mentioned that I have recently had to file a complaint in regards to uncivil comments by ONIH on a non-Troubles article. Mabuska (talk) 10:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)