Request name | Motions | Initiated | Votes |
---|---|---|---|
Consensus process, censorship, administrators' warnings and blocks in dispute, and responses to appeals | 28 March 2024 | 0/1/0 |
Request name | Motions | Case | Posted |
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Amendment request: Conduct in deletion-related editing | Motion | ( orig. case) | 27 February 2024 |
Amendment request: Gender and sexuality | none | ( orig. case) | 13 March 2024 |
Amendment request: India-Pakistan | none | ( orig. case) | 18 March 2024 |
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Initiated by TenPoundHammer at 21:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
9.1) TenPoundHammer ( talk · contribs) is topic banned from deletion discussions, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
— Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing § TenPoundHammer topic banned (1)
This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
Per Thryduulf, I have chosen not to pursue complex restrictions further, but instead demonstrate that I understand why my behavior led to an XFD topic ban in the first place. I would like to present my understanding of my ban and appeal it accordingly. Thryduulf suggested my conduct since the topic ban is conducive to lifting it, and I would also like to show an understanding, and attempt to resolve, my past tendentiousness, recklessness, stubbornness, and other negative effects on the deletion process as a whole. My past behaviors included massive queues of nominations which flooded the queues, caused sloppy errors in fact checking and other practices of WP:BEFORE, attacks on editors whose participation in said discussions I disagreed with, and so on. I would like to appeal to a partial or full reversal of this ban -- whichever is decided better for me -- to prove that I have learned what I did wrong since the topic ban was enacted.
(Comment: This template is severely borked and I don't know how to unfuck it. I've tried a million things. Can someone fix this please so it's readable?)
I was asked by ToBeFree ( talk · contribs) to provide a view on what led to the topic ban. It's my understanding that my behavior in XFD included mass nominations which flooded the queues; aggressive behavior toward those who voted "keep" (e.g., browbeating them into adding the sources they found themselves, aggressively confronting them on source quality, general WP:BLUDGEON tactics); poor application of WP:BEFORE (likely stemming from the frantic pace in which I was nominating); and misleading edit summaries (e.g., saying an article was "deprodded for no reason" when the deprodder did explain their reason and/or added a source). No doubt my actions negatively impacted the opinions of other participants in such discussions, which instilled in me a feeling of bias against me that only made my actions even worse. I can also see how informing editors of active deletion discussions on relevant topics constitutes WP:CANVASSing, such as the entire "List of people on the postage stamps of X" debacle. I also expressed great frustration in my inability to properly execute any WP:ATD such as redirection, not thinking that maybe my attempts to redirect or merge content were being undone in good faith and not as some sort of vendetta against me. In general, these show a track record of being sloppy, knee-jerk, and aggressive, and trying way too hard to get my way in spite of what others think. And again, I can see how such actions have caused others to view me unfavorably even before the topic ban was issued.
I know this isn't the first time I've been here, and my deletion tactics have been problematic in the past. Ever since I was topic banned, the thought of "how could I have done that better?" was on my mind, and I'd been formulating theories on how I could have approached XFD better. It didn't help that I spent much of 2022 unemployed and I was not in a good mental state because of that. I feel that I am overall in a better state as an editor right now, as to my knowledge I have not had any conflicts with editors in the months since the topic ban. I also feel that I have formulated solutions to keep the previously mentioned problems at bay and take a more measured, less stressful approach to XFD. This is why one such proposal should the topic ban be rescinded was for me to keep a list of articles I intend to nominate, with proof of WP:BEFORE being done. I had attempted such a list before the topic ban, but it never got very far and I'm sure I was already too deep in the throes of my angry hasty approach. But now I've had plenty of time in which I feel I have sufficiently cooled down and can tackle a more systematic approach.
I did take some time to try and find sources for some TV articles I had questioned the notability of in the past. In just the course of a few minutes I was able to give Stump the Schwab a source, but found it difficult to find others and tagged it with {{ notability}}. Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show I trimmed some plot summary out of and added a couple reliable sources which I feel are just enough to assert notability for the show. By comparison, Fast Food Mania did not seem to be a notable show, and I made a post here with my analysis of sourcing. This is the kind of behavior I wish to continue executing, so I can take a more measured approach with more time to present my findings or lack thereof before (if the topic ban is lifted) sending anything to XFD.
A complex list of things you can and can't do is unlikely to gain the favour of the committee - complex restrictions are hard for everybody to remember, complicated to work out whether specific behaviour is permitted or not, and generally easier to accidentally violate. Instead, something like narrowing the scope of the topic ban to allow participation in deletion discussions initiated by other editors but retaining the prohibition on you nominating pages for prod or XFD is more likely to gain favour. Any removal or relaxation though will only happen if you have demonstrated an understanding of why the topic ban was initially placed and your conduct since the ban makes it seem probable that your presence in deletion discussions will not be disruptive. I have not yet looked to see whether both are true. Thryduulf ( talk) 02:49, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
@
ToBeFree: wrote I'd say it clearly also prohibits complaining about someone's decision to nominate an article for deletion, challenging deletion discussion closures on the closer's talk page, starting noticeboard threads about deletion closures or participating in deletion reviews.
I don't think it's clear that the proposed wording does prohibit all of those. I would read topic banned from initiating or closing deletion discussions.
as:
Accordingly I would suggest the topic ban be worded more clearly, perhaps something like: TPH is topic banned from:
They explicitly may:
Thryduulf ( talk) 16:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
initiating or closing deletion discussionswhich is a lot narrower in my reading than it is in your apparent reading - e.g. PROD and CSD are not "discussions". The current restriction explicitly states "broadly construed" the proposed one does not, it is therefore reasonable to assume that its absence is intentional and significant. Certainly I cannot see any reasonable way to regard
participating in deletion review discussionsas prohibited by the proposal. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:30, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
initiating or closing deletion discussionsmakes no difference to what they are and are not permitted to do. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:55, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
It would be reasonable to restore TPH to participation in existing XfDs opened by others, and this will give the community time to see how that interaction goes. That is, a good few months of collegial comments, working towards consensus, finding sourcing or describing its absence, honoring ATDs, and the like would go a long way to demonstrating that TPH is moving past the binary battles of the old school AfDs we both remember. I'm most concerned that AfD participation is too low to sustain good discussions on more open AfDs at a time, and this would prevent that as a problem. I have seen TPH's desire to improve the encyclopedia, despite our being on the opposite sides of a lot of discussions over the years, and I would be pleased to find the dip in participation quality called out in the case was an anomaly in a long-term editor's carer. Jclemens ( talk) 05:32, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
I remain of the opinion that the ban from all XFD was overly broad. The FOF for TPH referenced article deletion exclusively. Another alternative stepping stone besides banning from nominations and lifting otherwise would be to retain the ban in these areas (AFD, CSD in main space, RFD in main space, CFD for main space categories?, PROD) while removing it from the other forums. Izno Public ( talk) 02:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
If you do decide to lift this restriction, I'd encourage you to leave a provision allowing an uninvolved administrator to reïmpose it should it become necessary down the road. The appeal is pretty good, but the appeal in 2019 was also pretty good, so while I hope it won't happen, I think it's important to have a failsafe in case things go south again. Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 02:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
I started a talk page discussion with TenPoundHammer a few days ago about TenPoundHammer's blanking and redirecting of Monkey-ed Movies ( link), Skating's Next Star ( link), Monkey Life ( link), 2 Minute Drill (game show) ( link), and Monsters We Met ( link) for lacking sources. I was able to find sources for these articles so reverted the redirects and added the sources. I asked TenPoundHammer not to blank and redirect articles as it was leading to notable topics no longer having articles.. Cunard ( talk) 18:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Between 20 March 2024 and 21 March 2024, TenPoundHammer redirected 33 articles. Almost all of those redirects are in the music topic area which I do not focus on. I am concerned about the large number of redirects of topics that could be notable. Wikipedia:Fait accompli is an applicable principle as it is very time-consuming to search for sources on so many articles. Cunard ( talk) 09:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Firefly ( talk · contribs), you are the first arbitrator to comment in this amendment request since I presented evidence of continued disruptive editing on 18 March 2024. Should I present the evidence and request for expansion of the topic ban in a separate amendment request or keep it here? Cunard ( talk) 10:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I am not aware of other recent negative interactions around these blankings. This could be because blank-and-redirects get significantly less attention than prods and AfDs. Television-related prods and AfDs are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Television and Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Article alerts. But blank-and-redirects are not listed anywhere so editors may not have noticed. I would have not become aware that TenPoundHammer had begun redirecting a large number of articles had he not redirected Monkey-ed Movies. He had previously nominated that article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monkey-ed Movies, where I supported retention.
It is unclear to me whether the existing topic ban includes proposing articles for deletion. I recommend that the topic ban be expanded to prohibit both proposing articles for deletion and blanking and redirecting pages since there is previous disruptive editing in both areas where he has prodded or redirected a large number of articles about notable topics.
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
TenPoundHammer's topic ban (
Remedy 9.1) is modified to read
TenPoundHammer (
talk ·
contribs) is
topic banned from initiating or closing deletion discussions. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter. An uninvolved administrator may reimpose a full topic ban on deletion discussions (broadly construed) within the first twelve months.
Initiated by Sideswipe9th at 02:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
The GENSEX content area currently contains some of the most contentious articles on enwiki. There is an anti-LGBT+ culture war occurring in large parts of the Anglosphere, and some of our articles document the people, organisations, and events involved. As of 7 March 2024 there are 34 indef-ECPed articles, and 1 indef-fully protected article. Of those 34 indef-ECPed articles, 8 were articles whose first protection log entry was indef-ECP.
In September 2021 ArbCom enacted ARBECR for use in the WP:APL and WP:CT/A-I content areas, as a content area wide restriction due to widespread disruption. While GENSEX as a whole does not see the same level of disruption, individual articles within it do. Articles like Gays Against Groomers, Libs of TikTok, and Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine often see spikes in talk page activity whenever those groups tweet about Wikipedia. Articles like 2023 Nashville school shooting document crimes committed by trans or non-binary people, which are subject to intense off-wiki disinformation campaigns ( NBC News, AP News). Occasionally we get articles that are subject to misinformation like Lakewood Church shooting, where groups like Libs of TikTok spread misinformation that the perpetrator was trans ( Vice, Advocate, The Independent (UK)).
One area we see frequent disruption in are biographies of trans and non-binary people. This typically takes the form of deadnaming and/or misgendering of the subject. Because of the overlap with WP:CT/BLP many of the articles that see this type of disruption are often protected under the BLP CTOP, and where these articles are protected the disruption typically spills over to the talk page. Often revdelling and/or oversight is needed, for both articles and talk pages. Currently it is typical for protection requests to be escalated both in the severity of the sanction (ie semi -> ECP) and the duration (ie 72 hours -> 1 month -> 6 months, etc). It is also typical for the disruption to resume once a time limited sanction expires, forcing patrolling editors to return to RfPP. Because of the frequency of disruption to GENSEX bios, having ARBECR as an option in the standard set of sanctions would make long term protection of these articles much more straightforward, as it would provide an avenue to long-term protection outside of an WP:IAR based indef protection as a first action. My sandbox evidence has 5 examples of bios in this content area where indef-semi or indef-ECP were the first protection action.
While drafting this request, an example of where this restriction would be helpful has occurred; Sweet Baby Inc. As evidenced in the recent GamerGate ARCA there are some sources describing this as GamerGate 2, and this has been reflected in the volume and quality of the talk page discussions about the article. There are currently several non-extended-confirmed editors who I would describe as POV pushing and advocating for content changes that go against multiple policies and guidelines. On 12 March 2024, several high follower Twitter accounts began tweeting their displeasure about the article's content, with one canvassing Twitter users to the article talk page (evidence can be emailed to the committee if required). ARBECR would be extremely helpful for this talk page and article, in the same way that it is helpful for combatting disruption on Talk:Israel–Hamas war.
The selective nature of this proposal could put a higher burden on new and patrolling editors than the content area wide version. However this is also something that already affects those editors, where ARBECR is applied to an article whose CT/A-I content is secondary to the primary topic of the article.
To sum up, I think we're pretty far from requiring ARBECR across the entire GENSEX content area. However I think it would be useful for ARBECR to be available as a per-article page restriction as part of the standard set of restrictions available to uninvolved admins in this content area. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 02:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
admin should ECR talk pages, are you meaning admins should ECP talk pages? WP:ECR as currently written doesn't have a provision for just talk page restriction, nor can admins apply it outside of content areas authorised by the committee. As Aquillion notes for ECP, anything other than short-term semi-protection for article talk pages is prohibited by WP:ATPROT. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 17:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
In the time that I've been reguarly reviewing the admin noticeboards, RFPP has seen regular requests to protect BLP articles about trans or non-binary people who prefer that standard pronouns not be used. Invariably these do not come out of disputes over the subject's birthplace or nationality—they are, as Sideswipe documents, deliberate misgenderings and deadnamings. Since these biographical issues are unique to this topic area, I have protected them (and tagged the article talk pages) under GENSEX rather than BLP. I have of late taken to RevDel'ing these edits as we would do with edits that use slurs or defamatory language to describe people, and I would also suggest to ArbCom that it encourage this as well.
Sometimes these have spilled over into articles only incidentally related to GENSEX issues, like Cheshire home invasion murders (one perpetrator, convicted of rape in the case, has subsequently transitioned in prison) and more recently Music of Minecraft (one of the two composers is trans) along with the aforementioned Sweet Baby article. I doubt these will be the only ones.
When I protect articles, I generally prefer to start with semi for the shortest duration possible. And that is how I have generally tried to protect these articles. It's good to assume good faith on the community's part, that once the little break is over, everyone will be grown up.
But with these articles, enough of them have worked their way up to indef semi or ECP, or been put there by admins less willing to give the community the benefit of the doubt than I am (and looking back at the AE logs, I too have reached the point of long-term and indefinite protection like I recently made to Hannah Gadsby and India Willoughby. Even I will admit that it seems like a mere formality with many of these articles to not start with longer-term protection, because almost every time we get there eventually anyway.
Look at 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships ... we thought last year that since the event was long over we could unprotect it. Instead we had to put two years worth of semi.
I would defy anyone, actually, to find an example of a relatively decent-length article about a trans or non-standard-pronoun person that we've had for some time which hasn't had to be protected like this. Looking at last year's log for this topic area, I see articles whose protections will expire sometime soon and will likely have to be reprotected (some of which, like Maia arson crimew and Bridget (Guilty Gear), already have been so far this year). Go back another year, and you'll see the pattern continuing.
I really believe it's time that we include at least misgendering and deadnaming as behavior covered by ARBECR. Maybe it doesn't have to be imposed as soon as the article's created like we have been doing with PIA (at least for articles in that area closely related to the current conflict), but we can definitely give admins the OK to impose it at the first sign of that disruption. It will definitely cut down on admin work down the line, and it seems like it already has been the default posture of some of the reviewing admins for some time now. Daniel Case ( talk) 06:20, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I have no objection to any of these proposals although I definitely agree with User:Sideswipe9th that it's better if we allow admins to apply ARBECR as needed rather than apply it to the entire topic area.
BTW, User:Daniel Case, perhaps this is WP:BEANS but I think the risk is low. Georgina Beyer passed away just over a year ago, but this was well after a lot of the craziness and unless I'm missing something apart from a 7 day semi protection [1] about 2 weeks after her death due to some misgendering, the article seems to have survived relatively without problem despite this lack of protection and being of decent size [2]. (I mean there early problem reoccured but was resolved via blocking. The problem AFAICT seems to be mostly from editors insisting on removing female and calling her male in edit summaries, although I think at least most of these have stayed away from inserting male into the article.) I think it helped that she was significantly out of the public eye in recent years although I also think her pioneering role is still fairly well recognised within NZ.
Nil Einne ( talk) 11:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
(There's another example I can't discuss here for various reasons but could email if anyone is interested which while it is ECP protected, which I don't object to, looking at the circumstances I don't think it really fits into the pattern either.) Nil Einne ( talk) 11:51, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Sideswipe9th: and arbs: think we need clarity how per-article ARBECR applies to other pages. For topic level, as I understand ARBECR, it applies everywhere. So editors cannot bring up such issues at BLP/N or other noticeboard nor can they participate in AFDs etc as they can only make edit requests. I feel when disruption moves to another article admins can deal with it as required so isn't an issue but trickier for noticeboards. IMO if article-level ARBECR is applied it should apply not just to the article talk page but to all pages when discussing changes or concerns over that article like with standard ARBECR. Importantly, as I understand it, this technically allows any EC editor to close or revert any discussion by non-EC editors. However it doesn't apply to other articles so ARBECR on Elliot Page would not apply to List of awards and nominations received by Elliot Page (but an admin can apply it to both). And it's fine for editors to mention something of relevance at Elliot Page in discussion about the list but suggestions for changing Elliot Page would generally be off-topic on the list talk page. Nil Einne ( talk) 10:15, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Regarding the advantages ARBECR offers traditional protection - it is of course extremely rare for a talk page to be protected, per WP:ATPROT, and indefinite semi-protection (let alone ECR protection) for talk pages is almost unheard of; but much of the disruption is currently on talk, as the redactions of BLP violations on Sweet Baby Inc. show. And more generally, prior to semi-protection the talk page was a mess of WP:FORUM stuff, WP:ASPERSIONS, general complaints about Wikipedia as a whole, and requests that were obviously not compatible with policy, repeated in every single section to the point of disrupting all other discussion there. ARBECR would let admins place slightly looser but more persistent restrictions on talk pages that would still allow new and unregistered users to make edit requests while limiting the scope of disruption; I don't think that extended-protecting a talk page, by comparison, is a viable long-term solution even if policy allowed it. -- Aquillion ( talk) 16:58, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
As has been discussed, WP:GENSEX is a massive topic area with plenty of fuzzy borders. There are plenty of good contributions from non-EC editors, and many of Wikipedia's efforts to reduce the gender gap intersect with this topic area and include encouraging new editors to work on articles. Applying WP:ARBECR as the default would have too much collateral damage. Applying 500/30 to individual articles and other pages is already available as part of the standard set, so I don't think there is any change that needs to be made here. If the current protection expires and disruption resumes, admins can impose more long-term protection. The Wordsmith Talk to me 17:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I am generally in favor of giving more tools to administrators trying to address disruption on contentious topics. So I'm aligned with the proposal. In terms of what the language looks like, personally, I agree with Sideswipe in that I'd like to see it as an expansion to the already-authorized list of standard restrictions. This has the benefit of 1) not requiring any change in process to implement, and 2) achieves the "as-needed basis" element without hindering any administrator's ability to escalate straight to it it, if they believe that's necessary. ⇒ SWATJester Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 18:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
RE: Primefac. Yes, there would be a negative impact by preemptively locking GENSEX articles under ECP. Small but helpful edits by non-extended confirmed users (and all IPs) at Death of Tyra Hunter would have been prevented from positive changes. This article also has never received protection in the two decades it has been there. But I don't know the extent of the negative implications that a preemptive protection would bring, and how to weigh that against the harm of the status quo. But I do know it would be some hinderance in the pursuit to collaborative encyclopedia building. I prefer having it be the norm that things can go straight to indef ECP if determined necessary. SWinxy ( talk) 00:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This is why we ArbCom can act in ways that are an exemption to consensus. For instance there is a consensus, codified through policy, that says when an editor may be blocked. Contentious topic overrules that consensus and provides other criteria. There is a consensus against protecting article talk pages. As shown with ECR, ArbCom can overrule that consensus and provide other criteria. So WP:ATPROT doesn't strike me as some special barrier. Barkeep49 ( talk) 18:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
Initiated by Robert McClenon at 23:56, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3ACossde&diff=1214440521&oldid=1212446773
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3APetextrodon&diff=1214440584&oldid=1212279589
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AOz346&diff=1214440640&oldid=1210896395
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AUtoD&diff=1214440697&oldid=1214316349
Sri Lanka has a common cultural history with India, and a common political history with India including British rule in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and resistance to British rule.
I have just failed a dispute at DRN over an atrocity that was a prelude to the Sri Lankan Civil War:
Declined Arbitration Cases
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1159486635#Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam (10 June 2023)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1158663393#Sri_Lanka_Armed_Forces (5 June 2023)
Archived Disputes at WP:ANI
Archived Disputes at WP:DRN
I thank User:Oz346 for submitting an RFC to resolve the question of language in the article about the 1977 pogrom. The RFC and this amendment request are independent of each other, to address a specific content issue and a general problem of disruptive editing about Sri Lanka, resulting in too many disputes. The purpose of this amendment request is to identify Sri Lanka as a contentious topic, which will authorize administrators at Arbitration Enforcement to deal proactively with disruptive editing with sanctions such as topic-bans. I have also initiated one RFC concerning the UN report on the Sri Lankan Civil War, and am about to initiate another RFC concerning the reported sexual abuse by Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti. The frequency of content disputes about Sri Lanka illustrates a need for a contentious topic designation. I could have submitted a Request for Arbitration, but it seems less difficult to expand the area of the existing designation. Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
This WikiProject has served its stated purpose and is now defunct.I think that any conclusion that the project has been successful is premature. I do not mean that the project has been a failure, but that declaring victory and going home was premature. I think that the contentious topic designation can be and should be used concurrently with other efforts at reconciliation. Any reconciliation project is voluntary. The contentious topic procedure is binding. The editors who do not participate in a reconciliation project are the editors who should be topic-banned. The admins at Arbitration Enforcement can and should make a distinction between editors who work for reconciliation, and those who do not. It will take longer for peacemaking editors to revive the reconciliation project than it will take for the arbitrators to expand the scope of a contentious topic by adding another South Asian country. As User:Vanamonde93 points out, the colonial histories of Sri Lanka and of India were separate, but the modern histories of the two countries are entangled. Robert McClenon ( talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I thank Robert McClenon for attempting to reach a resolution in the DRN. This is not a decision I take lightly and hence I took some time to think it over and I feel I agree with Robert, Sri Lanka needs to be designated as a contentious topic and the on-going disruptive editing about Sri Lanka needs to end. Cossde ( talk) 14:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Robert McClenon, the need to designate Sri Lanka as a contentious topic and include it in arbitration has been made evident in recent edits by editors mentioned here. Edit waring has taken place in Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka and List of attacks on civilians attributed to Sri Lankan government forces, where WP:NAT editing is taking place where editors are removing cited content and adding highly controversial content with sources that have not been established as RS and have refused to demonstrate verifiability of sources per WP:CHALLENGE. Funny enough government commissions that have had question on biasness by these editors in RfC have been cited as RS. This only emphasises the need to designate Sri Lanka as a contentious topic. Cossde ( talk) 13:02, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Due to the failure of this discussion: Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#1977_anti-Tamil_pogrom
I have opened up a RFC. I believe that RFC have a much higher chance of solving these disputes, due to the input of multiple voices, and will be probably be less time consuming for all involved. Oz346 ( talk) 01:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
The Sri Lankan Civil War directly involved India which initially supported the LTTE and later carried out a military intervention where Indian forces clashed with the LTTE resulting in the LTTE assassinating the Indian Prime Minister. The presence of the Indian forces within the country was also a major cause of the Marxist uprising in 1987 which happened alongside the Civil War. It is certainly related to India and Pakistan in the greater context. - UtoD 17:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
I thank Robert McClenon for trying to resolve disputes in this area and Oz346 for submitting a RFC to resolve a dispute. But having edited in this area for years.I do not see it at having raised at this point to the level of the need for Contentious_topic_designation. Wikipedia:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation has taken care of disputes in this area for years and think we can revive it. Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 09:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Further the issues with Sri Lanka are distinct from the issues for India/Pakistan.Sri Lanka was never part of India during British Rule even Burma Province or Myanmar was part of India, British separated from British India on 1st April 1937.But Sri Lanka has always been separate. Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 19:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I have not read the specific disputes linked above, but I want to note that as a consequence of Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War, and the subsequent Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a substantial portion of this conflict (though by no means the entirety) is already covered by the ARBIPA CT designation. Vanamonde93 ( talk) 19:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
There appears to be sufficient evidence of Sri Lanka being a (lowercase) contentious topic, as evidenced by Robert, that should warrant it officially becoming a Contentious Topic; whether that's as part of an existing India-Pakistan coverage or it's own independent CT, is rather immaterial given that the India/Pakistan CT doesn't have any additional topic-wide restrictions beyond the standard ones. 21:28, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
As stated by Vanamonde93, a substantial portion of this topic area overlaps with WP:ARBIPA already. I'd also like to note that parts of it are also covered by WP:GS/CASTE, which includes political parties and other social groups in Sri Lanka. It might be worth a review to see if these topic areas can be rolled into one umbrella case, similar to WP:GENSEX. If Sri Lanka is designated as a separate Contentious Topic, we could have articles covered under the new CTOP plus WP:ARBIPA, WP:GS/CASTE and WP:BLPSE at the same time. That may create more confusion than it would to just merge them. The Wordsmith Talk to me 22:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I would recommend against inclusion of Sri Lanka to ARBIPA. Sri Lanka is not as controversial compared to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Whenever disruption is happening in Sri Lanka-related topics, we can easily deal with them under our general guidelines like WP:DE. Abhishek0831996 ( talk) 17:06, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
Request name | Motions | Initiated | Votes |
---|---|---|---|
Consensus process, censorship, administrators' warnings and blocks in dispute, and responses to appeals | 28 March 2024 | 0/1/0 |
Request name | Motions | Case | Posted |
---|---|---|---|
Amendment request: Conduct in deletion-related editing | Motion | ( orig. case) | 27 February 2024 |
Amendment request: Gender and sexuality | none | ( orig. case) | 13 March 2024 |
Amendment request: India-Pakistan | none | ( orig. case) | 18 March 2024 |
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Initiated by TenPoundHammer at 21:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
9.1) TenPoundHammer ( talk · contribs) is topic banned from deletion discussions, broadly construed. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
— Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct in deletion-related editing § TenPoundHammer topic banned (1)
This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter.
Per Thryduulf, I have chosen not to pursue complex restrictions further, but instead demonstrate that I understand why my behavior led to an XFD topic ban in the first place. I would like to present my understanding of my ban and appeal it accordingly. Thryduulf suggested my conduct since the topic ban is conducive to lifting it, and I would also like to show an understanding, and attempt to resolve, my past tendentiousness, recklessness, stubbornness, and other negative effects on the deletion process as a whole. My past behaviors included massive queues of nominations which flooded the queues, caused sloppy errors in fact checking and other practices of WP:BEFORE, attacks on editors whose participation in said discussions I disagreed with, and so on. I would like to appeal to a partial or full reversal of this ban -- whichever is decided better for me -- to prove that I have learned what I did wrong since the topic ban was enacted.
(Comment: This template is severely borked and I don't know how to unfuck it. I've tried a million things. Can someone fix this please so it's readable?)
I was asked by ToBeFree ( talk · contribs) to provide a view on what led to the topic ban. It's my understanding that my behavior in XFD included mass nominations which flooded the queues; aggressive behavior toward those who voted "keep" (e.g., browbeating them into adding the sources they found themselves, aggressively confronting them on source quality, general WP:BLUDGEON tactics); poor application of WP:BEFORE (likely stemming from the frantic pace in which I was nominating); and misleading edit summaries (e.g., saying an article was "deprodded for no reason" when the deprodder did explain their reason and/or added a source). No doubt my actions negatively impacted the opinions of other participants in such discussions, which instilled in me a feeling of bias against me that only made my actions even worse. I can also see how informing editors of active deletion discussions on relevant topics constitutes WP:CANVASSing, such as the entire "List of people on the postage stamps of X" debacle. I also expressed great frustration in my inability to properly execute any WP:ATD such as redirection, not thinking that maybe my attempts to redirect or merge content were being undone in good faith and not as some sort of vendetta against me. In general, these show a track record of being sloppy, knee-jerk, and aggressive, and trying way too hard to get my way in spite of what others think. And again, I can see how such actions have caused others to view me unfavorably even before the topic ban was issued.
I know this isn't the first time I've been here, and my deletion tactics have been problematic in the past. Ever since I was topic banned, the thought of "how could I have done that better?" was on my mind, and I'd been formulating theories on how I could have approached XFD better. It didn't help that I spent much of 2022 unemployed and I was not in a good mental state because of that. I feel that I am overall in a better state as an editor right now, as to my knowledge I have not had any conflicts with editors in the months since the topic ban. I also feel that I have formulated solutions to keep the previously mentioned problems at bay and take a more measured, less stressful approach to XFD. This is why one such proposal should the topic ban be rescinded was for me to keep a list of articles I intend to nominate, with proof of WP:BEFORE being done. I had attempted such a list before the topic ban, but it never got very far and I'm sure I was already too deep in the throes of my angry hasty approach. But now I've had plenty of time in which I feel I have sufficiently cooled down and can tackle a more systematic approach.
I did take some time to try and find sources for some TV articles I had questioned the notability of in the past. In just the course of a few minutes I was able to give Stump the Schwab a source, but found it difficult to find others and tagged it with {{ notability}}. Ego Trip's The (White) Rapper Show I trimmed some plot summary out of and added a couple reliable sources which I feel are just enough to assert notability for the show. By comparison, Fast Food Mania did not seem to be a notable show, and I made a post here with my analysis of sourcing. This is the kind of behavior I wish to continue executing, so I can take a more measured approach with more time to present my findings or lack thereof before (if the topic ban is lifted) sending anything to XFD.
A complex list of things you can and can't do is unlikely to gain the favour of the committee - complex restrictions are hard for everybody to remember, complicated to work out whether specific behaviour is permitted or not, and generally easier to accidentally violate. Instead, something like narrowing the scope of the topic ban to allow participation in deletion discussions initiated by other editors but retaining the prohibition on you nominating pages for prod or XFD is more likely to gain favour. Any removal or relaxation though will only happen if you have demonstrated an understanding of why the topic ban was initially placed and your conduct since the ban makes it seem probable that your presence in deletion discussions will not be disruptive. I have not yet looked to see whether both are true. Thryduulf ( talk) 02:49, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
@
ToBeFree: wrote I'd say it clearly also prohibits complaining about someone's decision to nominate an article for deletion, challenging deletion discussion closures on the closer's talk page, starting noticeboard threads about deletion closures or participating in deletion reviews.
I don't think it's clear that the proposed wording does prohibit all of those. I would read topic banned from initiating or closing deletion discussions.
as:
Accordingly I would suggest the topic ban be worded more clearly, perhaps something like: TPH is topic banned from:
They explicitly may:
Thryduulf ( talk) 16:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
initiating or closing deletion discussionswhich is a lot narrower in my reading than it is in your apparent reading - e.g. PROD and CSD are not "discussions". The current restriction explicitly states "broadly construed" the proposed one does not, it is therefore reasonable to assume that its absence is intentional and significant. Certainly I cannot see any reasonable way to regard
participating in deletion review discussionsas prohibited by the proposal. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:30, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
initiating or closing deletion discussionsmakes no difference to what they are and are not permitted to do. Thryduulf ( talk) 18:55, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
It would be reasonable to restore TPH to participation in existing XfDs opened by others, and this will give the community time to see how that interaction goes. That is, a good few months of collegial comments, working towards consensus, finding sourcing or describing its absence, honoring ATDs, and the like would go a long way to demonstrating that TPH is moving past the binary battles of the old school AfDs we both remember. I'm most concerned that AfD participation is too low to sustain good discussions on more open AfDs at a time, and this would prevent that as a problem. I have seen TPH's desire to improve the encyclopedia, despite our being on the opposite sides of a lot of discussions over the years, and I would be pleased to find the dip in participation quality called out in the case was an anomaly in a long-term editor's carer. Jclemens ( talk) 05:32, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
I remain of the opinion that the ban from all XFD was overly broad. The FOF for TPH referenced article deletion exclusively. Another alternative stepping stone besides banning from nominations and lifting otherwise would be to retain the ban in these areas (AFD, CSD in main space, RFD in main space, CFD for main space categories?, PROD) while removing it from the other forums. Izno Public ( talk) 02:04, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
If you do decide to lift this restriction, I'd encourage you to leave a provision allowing an uninvolved administrator to reïmpose it should it become necessary down the road. The appeal is pretty good, but the appeal in 2019 was also pretty good, so while I hope it won't happen, I think it's important to have a failsafe in case things go south again. Extraordinary Writ ( talk) 02:36, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
I started a talk page discussion with TenPoundHammer a few days ago about TenPoundHammer's blanking and redirecting of Monkey-ed Movies ( link), Skating's Next Star ( link), Monkey Life ( link), 2 Minute Drill (game show) ( link), and Monsters We Met ( link) for lacking sources. I was able to find sources for these articles so reverted the redirects and added the sources. I asked TenPoundHammer not to blank and redirect articles as it was leading to notable topics no longer having articles.. Cunard ( talk) 18:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Between 20 March 2024 and 21 March 2024, TenPoundHammer redirected 33 articles. Almost all of those redirects are in the music topic area which I do not focus on. I am concerned about the large number of redirects of topics that could be notable. Wikipedia:Fait accompli is an applicable principle as it is very time-consuming to search for sources on so many articles. Cunard ( talk) 09:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
Firefly ( talk · contribs), you are the first arbitrator to comment in this amendment request since I presented evidence of continued disruptive editing on 18 March 2024. Should I present the evidence and request for expansion of the topic ban in a separate amendment request or keep it here? Cunard ( talk) 10:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
I am not aware of other recent negative interactions around these blankings. This could be because blank-and-redirects get significantly less attention than prods and AfDs. Television-related prods and AfDs are listed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Television and Wikipedia:WikiProject Television/Article alerts. But blank-and-redirects are not listed anywhere so editors may not have noticed. I would have not become aware that TenPoundHammer had begun redirecting a large number of articles had he not redirected Monkey-ed Movies. He had previously nominated that article for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Monkey-ed Movies, where I supported retention.
It is unclear to me whether the existing topic ban includes proposing articles for deletion. I recommend that the topic ban be expanded to prohibit both proposing articles for deletion and blanking and redirecting pages since there is previous disruptive editing in both areas where he has prodded or redirected a large number of articles about notable topics.
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
TenPoundHammer's topic ban (
Remedy 9.1) is modified to read
TenPoundHammer (
talk ·
contribs) is
topic banned from initiating or closing deletion discussions. This ban may be appealed twelve months after the enactment of this remedy, and every twelve months thereafter. An uninvolved administrator may reimpose a full topic ban on deletion discussions (broadly construed) within the first twelve months.
Initiated by Sideswipe9th at 02:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
The GENSEX content area currently contains some of the most contentious articles on enwiki. There is an anti-LGBT+ culture war occurring in large parts of the Anglosphere, and some of our articles document the people, organisations, and events involved. As of 7 March 2024 there are 34 indef-ECPed articles, and 1 indef-fully protected article. Of those 34 indef-ECPed articles, 8 were articles whose first protection log entry was indef-ECP.
In September 2021 ArbCom enacted ARBECR for use in the WP:APL and WP:CT/A-I content areas, as a content area wide restriction due to widespread disruption. While GENSEX as a whole does not see the same level of disruption, individual articles within it do. Articles like Gays Against Groomers, Libs of TikTok, and Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine often see spikes in talk page activity whenever those groups tweet about Wikipedia. Articles like 2023 Nashville school shooting document crimes committed by trans or non-binary people, which are subject to intense off-wiki disinformation campaigns ( NBC News, AP News). Occasionally we get articles that are subject to misinformation like Lakewood Church shooting, where groups like Libs of TikTok spread misinformation that the perpetrator was trans ( Vice, Advocate, The Independent (UK)).
One area we see frequent disruption in are biographies of trans and non-binary people. This typically takes the form of deadnaming and/or misgendering of the subject. Because of the overlap with WP:CT/BLP many of the articles that see this type of disruption are often protected under the BLP CTOP, and where these articles are protected the disruption typically spills over to the talk page. Often revdelling and/or oversight is needed, for both articles and talk pages. Currently it is typical for protection requests to be escalated both in the severity of the sanction (ie semi -> ECP) and the duration (ie 72 hours -> 1 month -> 6 months, etc). It is also typical for the disruption to resume once a time limited sanction expires, forcing patrolling editors to return to RfPP. Because of the frequency of disruption to GENSEX bios, having ARBECR as an option in the standard set of sanctions would make long term protection of these articles much more straightforward, as it would provide an avenue to long-term protection outside of an WP:IAR based indef protection as a first action. My sandbox evidence has 5 examples of bios in this content area where indef-semi or indef-ECP were the first protection action.
While drafting this request, an example of where this restriction would be helpful has occurred; Sweet Baby Inc. As evidenced in the recent GamerGate ARCA there are some sources describing this as GamerGate 2, and this has been reflected in the volume and quality of the talk page discussions about the article. There are currently several non-extended-confirmed editors who I would describe as POV pushing and advocating for content changes that go against multiple policies and guidelines. On 12 March 2024, several high follower Twitter accounts began tweeting their displeasure about the article's content, with one canvassing Twitter users to the article talk page (evidence can be emailed to the committee if required). ARBECR would be extremely helpful for this talk page and article, in the same way that it is helpful for combatting disruption on Talk:Israel–Hamas war.
The selective nature of this proposal could put a higher burden on new and patrolling editors than the content area wide version. However this is also something that already affects those editors, where ARBECR is applied to an article whose CT/A-I content is secondary to the primary topic of the article.
To sum up, I think we're pretty far from requiring ARBECR across the entire GENSEX content area. However I think it would be useful for ARBECR to be available as a per-article page restriction as part of the standard set of restrictions available to uninvolved admins in this content area. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 02:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
admin should ECR talk pages, are you meaning admins should ECP talk pages? WP:ECR as currently written doesn't have a provision for just talk page restriction, nor can admins apply it outside of content areas authorised by the committee. As Aquillion notes for ECP, anything other than short-term semi-protection for article talk pages is prohibited by WP:ATPROT. Sideswipe9th ( talk) 17:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
In the time that I've been reguarly reviewing the admin noticeboards, RFPP has seen regular requests to protect BLP articles about trans or non-binary people who prefer that standard pronouns not be used. Invariably these do not come out of disputes over the subject's birthplace or nationality—they are, as Sideswipe documents, deliberate misgenderings and deadnamings. Since these biographical issues are unique to this topic area, I have protected them (and tagged the article talk pages) under GENSEX rather than BLP. I have of late taken to RevDel'ing these edits as we would do with edits that use slurs or defamatory language to describe people, and I would also suggest to ArbCom that it encourage this as well.
Sometimes these have spilled over into articles only incidentally related to GENSEX issues, like Cheshire home invasion murders (one perpetrator, convicted of rape in the case, has subsequently transitioned in prison) and more recently Music of Minecraft (one of the two composers is trans) along with the aforementioned Sweet Baby article. I doubt these will be the only ones.
When I protect articles, I generally prefer to start with semi for the shortest duration possible. And that is how I have generally tried to protect these articles. It's good to assume good faith on the community's part, that once the little break is over, everyone will be grown up.
But with these articles, enough of them have worked their way up to indef semi or ECP, or been put there by admins less willing to give the community the benefit of the doubt than I am (and looking back at the AE logs, I too have reached the point of long-term and indefinite protection like I recently made to Hannah Gadsby and India Willoughby. Even I will admit that it seems like a mere formality with many of these articles to not start with longer-term protection, because almost every time we get there eventually anyway.
Look at 2022 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships ... we thought last year that since the event was long over we could unprotect it. Instead we had to put two years worth of semi.
I would defy anyone, actually, to find an example of a relatively decent-length article about a trans or non-standard-pronoun person that we've had for some time which hasn't had to be protected like this. Looking at last year's log for this topic area, I see articles whose protections will expire sometime soon and will likely have to be reprotected (some of which, like Maia arson crimew and Bridget (Guilty Gear), already have been so far this year). Go back another year, and you'll see the pattern continuing.
I really believe it's time that we include at least misgendering and deadnaming as behavior covered by ARBECR. Maybe it doesn't have to be imposed as soon as the article's created like we have been doing with PIA (at least for articles in that area closely related to the current conflict), but we can definitely give admins the OK to impose it at the first sign of that disruption. It will definitely cut down on admin work down the line, and it seems like it already has been the default posture of some of the reviewing admins for some time now. Daniel Case ( talk) 06:20, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I have no objection to any of these proposals although I definitely agree with User:Sideswipe9th that it's better if we allow admins to apply ARBECR as needed rather than apply it to the entire topic area.
BTW, User:Daniel Case, perhaps this is WP:BEANS but I think the risk is low. Georgina Beyer passed away just over a year ago, but this was well after a lot of the craziness and unless I'm missing something apart from a 7 day semi protection [1] about 2 weeks after her death due to some misgendering, the article seems to have survived relatively without problem despite this lack of protection and being of decent size [2]. (I mean there early problem reoccured but was resolved via blocking. The problem AFAICT seems to be mostly from editors insisting on removing female and calling her male in edit summaries, although I think at least most of these have stayed away from inserting male into the article.) I think it helped that she was significantly out of the public eye in recent years although I also think her pioneering role is still fairly well recognised within NZ.
Nil Einne ( talk) 11:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
(There's another example I can't discuss here for various reasons but could email if anyone is interested which while it is ECP protected, which I don't object to, looking at the circumstances I don't think it really fits into the pattern either.) Nil Einne ( talk) 11:51, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Sideswipe9th: and arbs: think we need clarity how per-article ARBECR applies to other pages. For topic level, as I understand ARBECR, it applies everywhere. So editors cannot bring up such issues at BLP/N or other noticeboard nor can they participate in AFDs etc as they can only make edit requests. I feel when disruption moves to another article admins can deal with it as required so isn't an issue but trickier for noticeboards. IMO if article-level ARBECR is applied it should apply not just to the article talk page but to all pages when discussing changes or concerns over that article like with standard ARBECR. Importantly, as I understand it, this technically allows any EC editor to close or revert any discussion by non-EC editors. However it doesn't apply to other articles so ARBECR on Elliot Page would not apply to List of awards and nominations received by Elliot Page (but an admin can apply it to both). And it's fine for editors to mention something of relevance at Elliot Page in discussion about the list but suggestions for changing Elliot Page would generally be off-topic on the list talk page. Nil Einne ( talk) 10:15, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Regarding the advantages ARBECR offers traditional protection - it is of course extremely rare for a talk page to be protected, per WP:ATPROT, and indefinite semi-protection (let alone ECR protection) for talk pages is almost unheard of; but much of the disruption is currently on talk, as the redactions of BLP violations on Sweet Baby Inc. show. And more generally, prior to semi-protection the talk page was a mess of WP:FORUM stuff, WP:ASPERSIONS, general complaints about Wikipedia as a whole, and requests that were obviously not compatible with policy, repeated in every single section to the point of disrupting all other discussion there. ARBECR would let admins place slightly looser but more persistent restrictions on talk pages that would still allow new and unregistered users to make edit requests while limiting the scope of disruption; I don't think that extended-protecting a talk page, by comparison, is a viable long-term solution even if policy allowed it. -- Aquillion ( talk) 16:58, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
As has been discussed, WP:GENSEX is a massive topic area with plenty of fuzzy borders. There are plenty of good contributions from non-EC editors, and many of Wikipedia's efforts to reduce the gender gap intersect with this topic area and include encouraging new editors to work on articles. Applying WP:ARBECR as the default would have too much collateral damage. Applying 500/30 to individual articles and other pages is already available as part of the standard set, so I don't think there is any change that needs to be made here. If the current protection expires and disruption resumes, admins can impose more long-term protection. The Wordsmith Talk to me 17:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
I am generally in favor of giving more tools to administrators trying to address disruption on contentious topics. So I'm aligned with the proposal. In terms of what the language looks like, personally, I agree with Sideswipe in that I'd like to see it as an expansion to the already-authorized list of standard restrictions. This has the benefit of 1) not requiring any change in process to implement, and 2) achieves the "as-needed basis" element without hindering any administrator's ability to escalate straight to it it, if they believe that's necessary. ⇒ SWATJester Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat! 18:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
RE: Primefac. Yes, there would be a negative impact by preemptively locking GENSEX articles under ECP. Small but helpful edits by non-extended confirmed users (and all IPs) at Death of Tyra Hunter would have been prevented from positive changes. This article also has never received protection in the two decades it has been there. But I don't know the extent of the negative implications that a preemptive protection would bring, and how to weigh that against the harm of the status quo. But I do know it would be some hinderance in the pursuit to collaborative encyclopedia building. I prefer having it be the norm that things can go straight to indef ECP if determined necessary. SWinxy ( talk) 00:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
To act as a final binding decision-maker primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This is why we ArbCom can act in ways that are an exemption to consensus. For instance there is a consensus, codified through policy, that says when an editor may be blocked. Contentious topic overrules that consensus and provides other criteria. There is a consensus against protecting article talk pages. As shown with ECR, ArbCom can overrule that consensus and provide other criteria. So WP:ATPROT doesn't strike me as some special barrier. Barkeep49 ( talk) 18:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
Initiated by Robert McClenon at 23:56, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3ACossde&diff=1214440521&oldid=1212446773
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3APetextrodon&diff=1214440584&oldid=1212279589
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AOz346&diff=1214440640&oldid=1210896395
https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk%3AUtoD&diff=1214440697&oldid=1214316349
Sri Lanka has a common cultural history with India, and a common political history with India including British rule in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century and resistance to British rule.
I have just failed a dispute at DRN over an atrocity that was a prelude to the Sri Lankan Civil War:
Declined Arbitration Cases
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1159486635#Liberation_Tigers_of_Tamil_Eelam (10 June 2023)
https://en.wikipedia.org/?oldid=1158663393#Sri_Lanka_Armed_Forces (5 June 2023)
Archived Disputes at WP:ANI
Archived Disputes at WP:DRN
I thank User:Oz346 for submitting an RFC to resolve the question of language in the article about the 1977 pogrom. The RFC and this amendment request are independent of each other, to address a specific content issue and a general problem of disruptive editing about Sri Lanka, resulting in too many disputes. The purpose of this amendment request is to identify Sri Lanka as a contentious topic, which will authorize administrators at Arbitration Enforcement to deal proactively with disruptive editing with sanctions such as topic-bans. I have also initiated one RFC concerning the UN report on the Sri Lankan Civil War, and am about to initiate another RFC concerning the reported sexual abuse by Sri Lankan peacekeepers in Haiti. The frequency of content disputes about Sri Lanka illustrates a need for a contentious topic designation. I could have submitted a Request for Arbitration, but it seems less difficult to expand the area of the existing designation. Robert McClenon ( talk) 01:53, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
This WikiProject has served its stated purpose and is now defunct.I think that any conclusion that the project has been successful is premature. I do not mean that the project has been a failure, but that declaring victory and going home was premature. I think that the contentious topic designation can be and should be used concurrently with other efforts at reconciliation. Any reconciliation project is voluntary. The contentious topic procedure is binding. The editors who do not participate in a reconciliation project are the editors who should be topic-banned. The admins at Arbitration Enforcement can and should make a distinction between editors who work for reconciliation, and those who do not. It will take longer for peacemaking editors to revive the reconciliation project than it will take for the arbitrators to expand the scope of a contentious topic by adding another South Asian country. As User:Vanamonde93 points out, the colonial histories of Sri Lanka and of India were separate, but the modern histories of the two countries are entangled. Robert McClenon ( talk) 21:22, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I thank Robert McClenon for attempting to reach a resolution in the DRN. This is not a decision I take lightly and hence I took some time to think it over and I feel I agree with Robert, Sri Lanka needs to be designated as a contentious topic and the on-going disruptive editing about Sri Lanka needs to end. Cossde ( talk) 14:38, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
@ Robert McClenon, the need to designate Sri Lanka as a contentious topic and include it in arbitration has been made evident in recent edits by editors mentioned here. Edit waring has taken place in Sexual violence against Tamils in Sri Lanka and List of attacks on civilians attributed to Sri Lankan government forces, where WP:NAT editing is taking place where editors are removing cited content and adding highly controversial content with sources that have not been established as RS and have refused to demonstrate verifiability of sources per WP:CHALLENGE. Funny enough government commissions that have had question on biasness by these editors in RfC have been cited as RS. This only emphasises the need to designate Sri Lanka as a contentious topic. Cossde ( talk) 13:02, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
Due to the failure of this discussion: Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#1977_anti-Tamil_pogrom
I have opened up a RFC. I believe that RFC have a much higher chance of solving these disputes, due to the input of multiple voices, and will be probably be less time consuming for all involved. Oz346 ( talk) 01:11, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
The Sri Lankan Civil War directly involved India which initially supported the LTTE and later carried out a military intervention where Indian forces clashed with the LTTE resulting in the LTTE assassinating the Indian Prime Minister. The presence of the Indian forces within the country was also a major cause of the Marxist uprising in 1987 which happened alongside the Civil War. It is certainly related to India and Pakistan in the greater context. - UtoD 17:20, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
I thank Robert McClenon for trying to resolve disputes in this area and Oz346 for submitting a RFC to resolve a dispute. But having edited in this area for years.I do not see it at having raised at this point to the level of the need for Contentious_topic_designation. Wikipedia:WikiProject Sri Lanka Reconciliation has taken care of disputes in this area for years and think we can revive it. Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 09:20, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
Further the issues with Sri Lanka are distinct from the issues for India/Pakistan.Sri Lanka was never part of India during British Rule even Burma Province or Myanmar was part of India, British separated from British India on 1st April 1937.But Sri Lanka has always been separate. Pharaoh of the Wizards ( talk) 19:12, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I have not read the specific disputes linked above, but I want to note that as a consequence of Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War, and the subsequent Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, a substantial portion of this conflict (though by no means the entirety) is already covered by the ARBIPA CT designation. Vanamonde93 ( talk) 19:03, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
There appears to be sufficient evidence of Sri Lanka being a (lowercase) contentious topic, as evidenced by Robert, that should warrant it officially becoming a Contentious Topic; whether that's as part of an existing India-Pakistan coverage or it's own independent CT, is rather immaterial given that the India/Pakistan CT doesn't have any additional topic-wide restrictions beyond the standard ones. 21:28, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
As stated by Vanamonde93, a substantial portion of this topic area overlaps with WP:ARBIPA already. I'd also like to note that parts of it are also covered by WP:GS/CASTE, which includes political parties and other social groups in Sri Lanka. It might be worth a review to see if these topic areas can be rolled into one umbrella case, similar to WP:GENSEX. If Sri Lanka is designated as a separate Contentious Topic, we could have articles covered under the new CTOP plus WP:ARBIPA, WP:GS/CASTE and WP:BLPSE at the same time. That may create more confusion than it would to just merge them. The Wordsmith Talk to me 22:00, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
I would recommend against inclusion of Sri Lanka to ARBIPA. Sri Lanka is not as controversial compared to Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. Whenever disruption is happening in Sri Lanka-related topics, we can easily deal with them under our general guidelines like WP:DE. Abhishek0831996 ( talk) 17:06, 20 March 2024 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.