In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 12:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 01:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC).
Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.
The issue at hand is misuse of admin tools by protecting an article and editing it afterwards in a PoV manner, and blocking users the admin was in a content dispute twice, over the same article.
What I hope will come to pass is William will admit his actions were wrong, and hopefully apologize to Travb and the community for abusing his admin tools in this manner. I would further like the article put back to the state it previously was, so the people who edited the article before can do so again before William came in and removed half the content. Finally I would like William to be issued a community ban against editing this article.
The community ban is two fold, first to protect the editors who oppose Williams side from any further lashing out, or further penalties associated with editing against Williams point of view. This would also protect William as it seems he has taken this article as too personal as I do not know of him abusing tools in any other location, or related to anything other then this article, which is why all desired outcomes point only to this article.
I want to make something clear. I do not think William should lose his admin tools, though I have been informed that 4 instances of abuse of them warrants removal, I simply want the peace on this article to be formed by consensus and not fear off reprisal. I am sure William is a great editor, and great admin, or he would not have been around so long, and been given the privileges to be an admin in the first place. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 13:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
William has blocked two users he was in a content dispute with over a single article and has twice used admin tools, once to protect the article, which he then began editing it while it was protected, and the second time to remove an outside admins protection.
On April 9, 2008, William M Connolley appeared on the " Allegations of state terrorism by the United States" article, this article was under a previous title prior to that State terrorism and the United States. The page is often a hotbed of activity, adding and removing of content, so an admins protection was not unusual. William protected the page [1] which is normally not an issue, but he then proceeded to remove content: [2] In the course of 6 edits he removed 15k worth of text. Two days later William unprotected the article bringing it down to semi-protection [3]. This in itself is against the rules as I have understood them, an admin is not to protect an article and then edit it, unless the content being removed is requested and agreed upon on the talk page, or the content is a violation of the BLP policy, and finally unless the admin is taking an action requested by WP:OFFICE.
I have heard some arguments that I would like to address, the first is that the edits were not controversial, which removing all of the definitions of terrorism and state terrorism appear to be: [4] He then proceeded to remove an entire section in the article [5] Then chopping another section on what Low Intensity Conflict is [6] Once William was done with his chosen edits he then lowered the protection so others can edit the article.
To show this was not drive by editing, I would like note William continued to edit the article right after. In the following 5 sequential edits William removed over 50% of the article: [7] The size of the article dropped from 150K to 83K. The definitions were removed again, after another user readded them as not having been removed with consensus, removed a section where one author specifically defines an incident as "state terrorism", which is a prerequisite as laid out by some editors. You can examine the dif and see half of the article has vanished in between the 5 edits. These edits were obviously reverted as there was never a consensus to remove half the article: [8] The user in question was user:Supergreenred.
This leads to another issue. William then, against administrator blocking rules, blocked Supergreenred [9] for reverting him, and what he calls disruption, the full discussion is [10]. Eventually an admin unblocked Supergreenred since it was clear William was in violation of the blocking policy [11]. Supergreenred was eventually blocked for being a sockpuppet, however William blocking a user he was in a content dispute with over this article again repeated itself with Travb.
After numerous editors had reverted much of Williams article edits in protest: RedPenofDoom who is a frequent editor made a 1RR protest revert, as well as BernardL, both long term editors of the article. Travb also attempted to revert the article to its previous state: first revert, second revert, in Travb's third revert he makes it clear he has asked for page protection [12]. William however blocks Travb over the reverts, again a violation of administrators blocking policy [13], which can also be seen in Williams block log [14]. The page was protected per Travb's request [15], and William takes it upon himself to remove the protection [16].
Something I noticed only afterwards, Dance With The Devil who reverted Travb 3 times, was not blocked for disruptive editing. [17] [18] [19] -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 15:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}
(provide diffs and links to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute)
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}
This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.
It would be impolite not to respond. But there is too much to respond to it all.
If you care to strike out the ludicrous accusations, I'll reply to some of those remaining William M. Connolley ( talk) 15:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Three independent administrators: Chaser, [22] FeloniousMonk, [23] and Viridae [24] all found that William abused his administrative powers by blocking editors he was in an edit war with, violating Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes.
Here are William's violation of
Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes. All blocks can be found on
William's block page.
William M. Connolley's recent block of me was another violation of Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocking_may_not_be_used :
This policy is clear and unambiguous. That is why William and his supporters have ignored this policy violation, which is the center of the dispute.
William M. Connolley admitted that he broke Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes:
William M. Connolley blocked me but not any other users who supported his edits in the dispute.
Regarding Ultramarine's statement that Coren is an uninvolved admin, Coren is not an uninvolved editor he and I went back and forth on the September 11 Arbcom.
Ultramarine and Connolley have worked in tandem on the article.
At least 7 other admins have been desysopped partly for fewer Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes abuse, see User:Inclusionist/Bad.
Users who endorse this summary:
I've got the Sharks going to the stanley cup, winning in five games. Anybody want to lay ten bucks on it?
Oh, yeah, and William did exactly what was needed to help the project. The fact that several tenditious edit(ors/warriors) are attacking him should be worn with pride. Someone go write an article instead of bothering with this 'ZOMG admin abuse!' crap. There was no content dispute, and even if there was, the editors should still have been blocked. Blocking them improves the encyclopedia, and if the rules stand in the way of improving the encyclopedia, then the rules lose. Always have, always will, it's one of our five founding pillars.
Just pointing out that the issue has been discussed on WP:ANI here. An independent administrator reviewed and reblocked Travb/Inclusionist. Ultramarine ( talk) 11:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
The above speaks for itself. I had a good look at several of these when they came through AN/I and I cannot see anything which WMC did which was inappropriate or went against policy (although there are things I personally would have shied away from). However I can see a lot of pointless time wasting including in my view this RfC. -- BozMo talk 06:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
This article has been a trainwreck for years, an unreadable mass of text that kept growing longer and longer with everything anyone could throw at it, and attempts to trim it down were typically met with name-calling and puppetry. As with other notorious messes like Views of Lyndon LaRouche and List of events named massacres, sometimes it takes one or more admins to take harsh actions, for a period of time, to stabilize such articles. It's not like WMC had been editing this article for six months and just recently decided to use his admin powers.
TravB's technique of marching in, reverting three times, then running off to request page protection in the hopes that it will be applied before the other side reverts again is quite clever. I actually had done this myself on another article a long time ago when I was a less mature editor, and succeeded at it. TravB unfortunately (for him) didn't; the other side did revert before protection was applied, and he was blocked (as he should have been, and as I should have been but wasn't for that long-ago incident). Perhaps Devil should have been blocked also, but TravB's actions show willful calculation to get the article locked in his favored version. - Merzbow ( talk) 07:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It's clear that Travb is a timewaster. His block should be expanded to indefinite before he drags everyone into pointless RfC's and ArbCom's. His contributions to either establishing consensus or improving any article is essentially nil. His timewasting is notorious, perpetual and longwinded. The block was appropriate and we should simply move on. -- DHeyward ( talk) 18:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm on the fence about a few things. I find William's decision to edit the page under protection lacking in transparency. Could someone please link to when and how William was requested to edit the page, and precisely what discussion took place? If such a request had been made with sufficient community exposure, then I may be inclined to agree with Guy's assessment that William came in to fix a problem and did what he was asked to do. If, on the other hand, William decided to take sides in a content dispute without a wider community mandate, then he clearly abused his administrative tools during this affair, and I must agree with User:I Write Stuff. silly rabbit ( talk) 00:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I haven't read the article in question but, given the title, I can see that it must be a hotbed of edit warring so I won't even bother looking at it. From a 'just the facts' perspective it appears that an admin has protected a page primarily to edit it and has used blocks against users of one particular pov without opening up a discussion with the broader community. It is possible, even likely, that the admin's motives were pure but under No big deal admins have no special privileges and that includes not having a special privilege to use blocks and protects to control the direction of edits. Many a time I've thought "if only I could protect this page and edit in peace the article would be perfect", but I cannot because I'm not an admin. An admin should not use the tools to manage content in a way that an ordinary user cannot, and any admin doing so should, at the least, be censured. -- RegentsPark ( talk) 20:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not see any reasons why William should not edit Allegations of state terrorism by the United States. However blocking editors he is an edit war with sounds like a serious problem. Is that indeed supported by the evidence above? Biophys ( talk) 22:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
How about a nice warm cup...? Sceptre ( talk) 13:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.
In order to remain listed at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 12:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 01:04, 18 July 2024 (UTC).
Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.
The issue at hand is misuse of admin tools by protecting an article and editing it afterwards in a PoV manner, and blocking users the admin was in a content dispute twice, over the same article.
What I hope will come to pass is William will admit his actions were wrong, and hopefully apologize to Travb and the community for abusing his admin tools in this manner. I would further like the article put back to the state it previously was, so the people who edited the article before can do so again before William came in and removed half the content. Finally I would like William to be issued a community ban against editing this article.
The community ban is two fold, first to protect the editors who oppose Williams side from any further lashing out, or further penalties associated with editing against Williams point of view. This would also protect William as it seems he has taken this article as too personal as I do not know of him abusing tools in any other location, or related to anything other then this article, which is why all desired outcomes point only to this article.
I want to make something clear. I do not think William should lose his admin tools, though I have been informed that 4 instances of abuse of them warrants removal, I simply want the peace on this article to be formed by consensus and not fear off reprisal. I am sure William is a great editor, and great admin, or he would not have been around so long, and been given the privileges to be an admin in the first place. -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 13:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
William has blocked two users he was in a content dispute with over a single article and has twice used admin tools, once to protect the article, which he then began editing it while it was protected, and the second time to remove an outside admins protection.
On April 9, 2008, William M Connolley appeared on the " Allegations of state terrorism by the United States" article, this article was under a previous title prior to that State terrorism and the United States. The page is often a hotbed of activity, adding and removing of content, so an admins protection was not unusual. William protected the page [1] which is normally not an issue, but he then proceeded to remove content: [2] In the course of 6 edits he removed 15k worth of text. Two days later William unprotected the article bringing it down to semi-protection [3]. This in itself is against the rules as I have understood them, an admin is not to protect an article and then edit it, unless the content being removed is requested and agreed upon on the talk page, or the content is a violation of the BLP policy, and finally unless the admin is taking an action requested by WP:OFFICE.
I have heard some arguments that I would like to address, the first is that the edits were not controversial, which removing all of the definitions of terrorism and state terrorism appear to be: [4] He then proceeded to remove an entire section in the article [5] Then chopping another section on what Low Intensity Conflict is [6] Once William was done with his chosen edits he then lowered the protection so others can edit the article.
To show this was not drive by editing, I would like note William continued to edit the article right after. In the following 5 sequential edits William removed over 50% of the article: [7] The size of the article dropped from 150K to 83K. The definitions were removed again, after another user readded them as not having been removed with consensus, removed a section where one author specifically defines an incident as "state terrorism", which is a prerequisite as laid out by some editors. You can examine the dif and see half of the article has vanished in between the 5 edits. These edits were obviously reverted as there was never a consensus to remove half the article: [8] The user in question was user:Supergreenred.
This leads to another issue. William then, against administrator blocking rules, blocked Supergreenred [9] for reverting him, and what he calls disruption, the full discussion is [10]. Eventually an admin unblocked Supergreenred since it was clear William was in violation of the blocking policy [11]. Supergreenred was eventually blocked for being a sockpuppet, however William blocking a user he was in a content dispute with over this article again repeated itself with Travb.
After numerous editors had reverted much of Williams article edits in protest: RedPenofDoom who is a frequent editor made a 1RR protest revert, as well as BernardL, both long term editors of the article. Travb also attempted to revert the article to its previous state: first revert, second revert, in Travb's third revert he makes it clear he has asked for page protection [12]. William however blocks Travb over the reverts, again a violation of administrators blocking policy [13], which can also be seen in Williams block log [14]. The page was protected per Travb's request [15], and William takes it upon himself to remove the protection [16].
Something I noticed only afterwards, Dance With The Devil who reverted Travb 3 times, was not blocked for disruptive editing. [17] [18] [19] -- I Write Stuff ( talk) 15:23, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
{list the policies and guidelines that apply to the disputed conduct}
(provide diffs and links to demonstrate that the disputed behavior continued after trying to resolve the dispute)
{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}
This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.
It would be impolite not to respond. But there is too much to respond to it all.
If you care to strike out the ludicrous accusations, I'll reply to some of those remaining William M. Connolley ( talk) 15:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.
{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}
Three independent administrators: Chaser, [22] FeloniousMonk, [23] and Viridae [24] all found that William abused his administrative powers by blocking editors he was in an edit war with, violating Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes.
Here are William's violation of
Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes. All blocks can be found on
William's block page.
William M. Connolley's recent block of me was another violation of Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#When_blocking_may_not_be_used :
This policy is clear and unambiguous. That is why William and his supporters have ignored this policy violation, which is the center of the dispute.
William M. Connolley admitted that he broke Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes:
William M. Connolley blocked me but not any other users who supported his edits in the dispute.
Regarding Ultramarine's statement that Coren is an uninvolved admin, Coren is not an uninvolved editor he and I went back and forth on the September 11 Arbcom.
Ultramarine and Connolley have worked in tandem on the article.
At least 7 other admins have been desysopped partly for fewer Wikipedia:BLOCK#Disputes abuse, see User:Inclusionist/Bad.
Users who endorse this summary:
I've got the Sharks going to the stanley cup, winning in five games. Anybody want to lay ten bucks on it?
Oh, yeah, and William did exactly what was needed to help the project. The fact that several tenditious edit(ors/warriors) are attacking him should be worn with pride. Someone go write an article instead of bothering with this 'ZOMG admin abuse!' crap. There was no content dispute, and even if there was, the editors should still have been blocked. Blocking them improves the encyclopedia, and if the rules stand in the way of improving the encyclopedia, then the rules lose. Always have, always will, it's one of our five founding pillars.
Just pointing out that the issue has been discussed on WP:ANI here. An independent administrator reviewed and reblocked Travb/Inclusionist. Ultramarine ( talk) 11:51, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
The above speaks for itself. I had a good look at several of these when they came through AN/I and I cannot see anything which WMC did which was inappropriate or went against policy (although there are things I personally would have shied away from). However I can see a lot of pointless time wasting including in my view this RfC. -- BozMo talk 06:40, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
This article has been a trainwreck for years, an unreadable mass of text that kept growing longer and longer with everything anyone could throw at it, and attempts to trim it down were typically met with name-calling and puppetry. As with other notorious messes like Views of Lyndon LaRouche and List of events named massacres, sometimes it takes one or more admins to take harsh actions, for a period of time, to stabilize such articles. It's not like WMC had been editing this article for six months and just recently decided to use his admin powers.
TravB's technique of marching in, reverting three times, then running off to request page protection in the hopes that it will be applied before the other side reverts again is quite clever. I actually had done this myself on another article a long time ago when I was a less mature editor, and succeeded at it. TravB unfortunately (for him) didn't; the other side did revert before protection was applied, and he was blocked (as he should have been, and as I should have been but wasn't for that long-ago incident). Perhaps Devil should have been blocked also, but TravB's actions show willful calculation to get the article locked in his favored version. - Merzbow ( talk) 07:14, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
It's clear that Travb is a timewaster. His block should be expanded to indefinite before he drags everyone into pointless RfC's and ArbCom's. His contributions to either establishing consensus or improving any article is essentially nil. His timewasting is notorious, perpetual and longwinded. The block was appropriate and we should simply move on. -- DHeyward ( talk) 18:08, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm on the fence about a few things. I find William's decision to edit the page under protection lacking in transparency. Could someone please link to when and how William was requested to edit the page, and precisely what discussion took place? If such a request had been made with sufficient community exposure, then I may be inclined to agree with Guy's assessment that William came in to fix a problem and did what he was asked to do. If, on the other hand, William decided to take sides in a content dispute without a wider community mandate, then he clearly abused his administrative tools during this affair, and I must agree with User:I Write Stuff. silly rabbit ( talk) 00:14, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I haven't read the article in question but, given the title, I can see that it must be a hotbed of edit warring so I won't even bother looking at it. From a 'just the facts' perspective it appears that an admin has protected a page primarily to edit it and has used blocks against users of one particular pov without opening up a discussion with the broader community. It is possible, even likely, that the admin's motives were pure but under No big deal admins have no special privileges and that includes not having a special privilege to use blocks and protects to control the direction of edits. Many a time I've thought "if only I could protect this page and edit in peace the article would be perfect", but I cannot because I'm not an admin. An admin should not use the tools to manage content in a way that an ordinary user cannot, and any admin doing so should, at the least, be censured. -- RegentsPark ( talk) 20:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I do not see any reasons why William should not edit Allegations of state terrorism by the United States. However blocking editors he is an edit war with sounds like a serious problem. Is that indeed supported by the evidence above? Biophys ( talk) 22:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
How about a nice warm cup...? Sceptre ( talk) 13:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement should be directed to this page's discussion page. Discussion should not be added below. Discussion should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's vote, endorsement, evidence, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page.