Target dates: Opened 6 March 2024 • Evidence closes 20 March 2024 • Workshop closes 27 March 2024 • Proposed decision to be posted by 3 April 2024
Scope: The intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy, in the frame of the conduct of the named parties.
Public evidence is preferred whenever possible; private evidence is allowed (arbcom-en-bwikimedia.org).
Case clerks: Firefly ( Talk) & Amortias ( Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Aoidh ( Talk) & Barkeep49 ( Talk) & Maxim ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
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Track related changes |
Case opened on 17:42, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Case closed on 17:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
This case is closed. No edits should be made to this page except by clerks or arbitrators.
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Preliminary statements given in the case request stage may be found at /Preliminary statements.
Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)
What the hell FramI view that as interacting purely in an administrative role as part of the suppression. If it was Primefac's closure of the thread, that still, for me, falls in the administrative action exception thought a bit more weakly. As such I think it would have been wise if Primefac had merely suppressed Fram a second time, gone to the OS list, reported the suppression and said "someone needs to block Fram". Given that the feedback has been strongly in support of the block it seems like some other oversighter would have blocked Fram and we could have avoided part of this drama. But lack of wisdom means at most a trout, and in this situation maybe not even that. So if I understand the concerns about Primefac's INVOLVED correctly that's where I land.All of this means to me this is an excellent case request but, with the evidence I've analyzed above, that I am a decline. But I await to see if there is other evidence (or if I misunderstand one of the facts above) before formally making that vote. Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
do [our] jobs. Having looked more closely at the Aquaveo AfD after David Fuchs' comment (thank you, David, for highlighting that) I am unimpressed with Nihonjoe's comments there, and they do - for me at least - move this away from being purely a historic issue explainable by changing norms and guidelines around COI. That said, what would those telling us to take the case be looking to us to do that hasn't already happened via the AN thread? firefly ( t · c ) 19:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
All tallies are based the votes at /Proposed decision, where comments and discussion from the voting phase is also available.
1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Contributors whose actions are detrimental to that goal may be asked to refrain from them, even when these actions are undertaken in good faith; good-faith actions, where disruptive, may still be sanctioned.
2) An editor has a conflict of interest when their interests in editing Wikipedia conflict or potentially conflict with the interests of the Wikipedia project in producing a neutral, verifiable encyclopaedia. An editor will have a conflict of interest if, for example, they have a significant financial interest in the subject or they are involved with the subject in a significant capacity, or if the article is about them or about a business or organisation that they represent. Editors are expected to comply with both the purpose and intent of the applicable policies, as well as their literal wording.
3) Paid editing, which involves editing Wikipedia in exchange for money or inducements, requires proper disclosure of employer, client, and affiliation. Users who are paid by an entity for publicity are considered paid editors, regardless of whether the payment was specifically for editing Wikipedia. Not all conflict of interest editing falls under paid editing.
4) Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and editors are welcome to edit without disclosing their identity. Revealing private information about an editor that they have not disclosed on Wikipedia themselves is prohibited. Although editors are strongly encouraged to disclose any conflicts of interest they may have with topic areas in which they edit, and are required to disclose if they are being paid for their edits, knowledge or suspicion that an editor has a COI or is editing for pay does not excuse revealing that editor's personal information. If necessary, these concerns can be handled privately.
5) Administrators and bureaucrats are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Wikipedia policies. Their conduct is held to a high standard as a result of this trust. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with this and they are not expected to be perfect. However, consistently or egregiously poor judgement may result in the removal of adminship and/or bureaucratship.
6) Oversight, also known as suppression, provides a means to delete particularly sensitive revisions such that even ordinary administrators cannot see them. The ability to suppress, unsuppress, and view suppressed revisions is restricted to members of the oversight user group. Use of this tool is considered a first resort, in order to reduce the harm from such information. From time to time, it is necessary to oversight block editors who have repeatedly posted suppressible information. Oversighters are expected to consult with the oversight team for all oversight blocks of registered editors and for any other suppressions when acting under the principle of first resort.
7) As provided by the arbitration policy, the Arbitration Committee is empowered to handle requests for the removal of administrative tools. While such requests have usually been in relation to the administrator user rights, the Committee may hear requests for the removal of any advanced user right, which includes but is not limited to the bureaucrat, checkuser, and oversight user rights.
1) Since the vote to open this case, Nihonjoe ( talk · contribs) listed a number of conflicts of interest. The Arbitration Committee affirms this disclosure and also notes that Nihonjoe has a conflict of interest with Hemelein Publications (private evidence).
2) Nihonjoe edited multiple articles where he had an undisclosed conflict of interest (Jessintime and private evidence).
3.1) Nihonjoe engaged in undisclosed paid editing when making edits related to Hemelein Publications.
4) Nihonjoe used his administrative tools to apply full protection to two articles and later disclosed a conflict of interest with both articles (DanCherek evidence).
5) The evidence presented suggests that Nihonjoe's editing while having a conflict of interest did not, in general, violate other content policies or guidelines.
6a) Nihonjoe initially denied having several of these conflicts of interest that he later admitted to having.
7) Private reporting of conflict of interest and paid editing, especially when the accused editor is a long-time editor, has not consistently worked (David Fuchs evidence). There also is contradictory and confusing guidance for what editors are supposed to do with reports of conflict of interest editing or paid editing that involve private information (for example see COI noticeboard header, COI guideline, and harassment policy). A 2022 RfC found that the community prefers off-wiki information to be only handled by functionaries.
8) Kashmiri nominated Aquaveo for deletion. Included in the nomination report was a link in violation of the OUTING policy. About an hour later this link was removed and subsequently suppressed. During the following discussion Nihonjoe disclosed his conflict of interest in the company. Kashmiri subsequently made a report to the administrators' noticeboard detailing Nihonjoe's conflict of interest editing without further OUTING Nihonjoe ( archived thread).
9) Two edits by Fram that disclosed private information and were made two days apart were suppressed by Primefac. After each suppression, Primefac requested review by the Oversight team. The oversight policy provides for suppression as a tool of first resort for the disclosure of non-public personal information.
10a) Following a second suppression at AN, Fram was given an {{ OversightBlock}} by Primefac, which was later assumed by Dreamy Jazz, and which was sustained by the Oversight team as an appropriate block. Fram subsequently made a broad commitment to refrain from posting material in contravention of WP:OUTING. During this case, Fram has submitted private evidence and consulted with the Arbitration Committee before posting some evidence publicly.
11) Primefac first attempted to close the thread started by Kashmiri and then participated several times in the discussion. During this discussion Primefac made reference to acting as both an administrator and Arbitrator while weighing in with their opinion about the topic. During the case request, they stated I do not want to use the "any reasonable admin" clause of [the
administrator policy about involvement]
.
12a) Because Oversight is a tool of first resort and because of the exception to the INVOLVED policy allowing for action when any reasonable oversighter would reach the same conclusion, it was appropriate for Primefac to suppress the material posted by Fram. However, Primefac should not have been the oversighter to block Fram because neither provision applied in this situation.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) The Arbitration Committee requests that a new VRT queue be established to accept reports of undisclosed conflict-of-interest or paid editing, where reporting such editing on-wiki is in conflict with WP:OUTING. The queue membership is to be decided by the Arbitration Committee and is open to any functionary and to any administrator by request to the Committee and who passes a functionary-like appointment process (including signing the ANPDP). Following the creation of the queue, the existing checkuser-only paid-en-wp queue will be archived, and access will be restricted to checkusers indefinitely. Functionaries and administrators working this queue may, at their discretion, refer a ticket to the Arbitration Committee for review; an example of a situation where a ticket should be referred to the committee is when there is a credible report involving an administrator.
2.1) For posting non-public information about another editor—after a previous post by Fram in the same thread was removed and oversighted—Fram is admonished against posting previously undisclosed information about other editors on Wikipedia (" outing") which is a violation of the harassment policy. Concerns about policy violations based on private evidence must be sent to the appropriate off-wiki venue. Any further violations of this policy may result in an Arbitration Committee block or ban.
3) For his failure to meet the conduct standards expected of an administrator, specifically as pertains to conflict of interest editing and conflict of interest disclosure, Nihonjoe's administrator and bureaucrat user rights are removed. Nihonjoe may regain these user rights via a successful request for adminship and a successful request for bureaucratship, respectively.
0) Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year.
0) Appeals and modifications
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Appeals may be made only by the editor under sanction and only for a currently active sanction. Requests for modification of page restrictions may be made by any editor. The process has three possible stages (see "Important notes" below). The editor may:
No administrator may modify or remove a sanction placed by another administrator without:
Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped. Nothing in this section prevents an administrator from replacing an existing sanction issued by another administrator with a new sanction if fresh misconduct has taken place after the existing sanction was applied. Administrators are free to modify sanctions placed by former administrators – that is, editors who do not have the administrator permission enabled (due to a temporary or permanent relinquishment or desysop) – without regard to the requirements of this section. If an administrator modifies a sanction placed by a former administrator, the administrator who made the modification becomes the "enforcing administrator". If a former administrator regains the tools, the provisions of this section again apply to their unmodified enforcement actions. Important notes:
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Any block, restriction, ban, or sanction performed under the authorisation of a remedy for this case must be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log, not here.
Target dates: Opened 6 March 2024 • Evidence closes 20 March 2024 • Workshop closes 27 March 2024 • Proposed decision to be posted by 3 April 2024
Scope: The intersection of managing conflict of interest editing with the harassment (outing) policy, in the frame of the conduct of the named parties.
Public evidence is preferred whenever possible; private evidence is allowed (arbcom-en-bwikimedia.org).
Case clerks: Firefly ( Talk) & Amortias ( Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Aoidh ( Talk) & Barkeep49 ( Talk) & Maxim ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
---|
|
Track related changes |
Case opened on 17:42, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
Case closed on 17:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
This case is closed. No edits should be made to this page except by clerks or arbitrators.
|
Preliminary statements given in the case request stage may be found at /Preliminary statements.
Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse)
What the hell FramI view that as interacting purely in an administrative role as part of the suppression. If it was Primefac's closure of the thread, that still, for me, falls in the administrative action exception thought a bit more weakly. As such I think it would have been wise if Primefac had merely suppressed Fram a second time, gone to the OS list, reported the suppression and said "someone needs to block Fram". Given that the feedback has been strongly in support of the block it seems like some other oversighter would have blocked Fram and we could have avoided part of this drama. But lack of wisdom means at most a trout, and in this situation maybe not even that. So if I understand the concerns about Primefac's INVOLVED correctly that's where I land.All of this means to me this is an excellent case request but, with the evidence I've analyzed above, that I am a decline. But I await to see if there is other evidence (or if I misunderstand one of the facts above) before formally making that vote. Barkeep49 ( talk) 16:15, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
do [our] jobs. Having looked more closely at the Aquaveo AfD after David Fuchs' comment (thank you, David, for highlighting that) I am unimpressed with Nihonjoe's comments there, and they do - for me at least - move this away from being purely a historic issue explainable by changing norms and guidelines around COI. That said, what would those telling us to take the case be looking to us to do that hasn't already happened via the AN thread? firefly ( t · c ) 19:11, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
All tallies are based the votes at /Proposed decision, where comments and discussion from the voting phase is also available.
1) The purpose of Wikipedia is to create a high-quality, free-content encyclopedia in an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect among contributors. Contributors whose actions are detrimental to that goal may be asked to refrain from them, even when these actions are undertaken in good faith; good-faith actions, where disruptive, may still be sanctioned.
2) An editor has a conflict of interest when their interests in editing Wikipedia conflict or potentially conflict with the interests of the Wikipedia project in producing a neutral, verifiable encyclopaedia. An editor will have a conflict of interest if, for example, they have a significant financial interest in the subject or they are involved with the subject in a significant capacity, or if the article is about them or about a business or organisation that they represent. Editors are expected to comply with both the purpose and intent of the applicable policies, as well as their literal wording.
3) Paid editing, which involves editing Wikipedia in exchange for money or inducements, requires proper disclosure of employer, client, and affiliation. Users who are paid by an entity for publicity are considered paid editors, regardless of whether the payment was specifically for editing Wikipedia. Not all conflict of interest editing falls under paid editing.
4) Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and editors are welcome to edit without disclosing their identity. Revealing private information about an editor that they have not disclosed on Wikipedia themselves is prohibited. Although editors are strongly encouraged to disclose any conflicts of interest they may have with topic areas in which they edit, and are required to disclose if they are being paid for their edits, knowledge or suspicion that an editor has a COI or is editing for pay does not excuse revealing that editor's personal information. If necessary, these concerns can be handled privately.
5) Administrators and bureaucrats are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Wikipedia policies. Their conduct is held to a high standard as a result of this trust. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with this and they are not expected to be perfect. However, consistently or egregiously poor judgement may result in the removal of adminship and/or bureaucratship.
6) Oversight, also known as suppression, provides a means to delete particularly sensitive revisions such that even ordinary administrators cannot see them. The ability to suppress, unsuppress, and view suppressed revisions is restricted to members of the oversight user group. Use of this tool is considered a first resort, in order to reduce the harm from such information. From time to time, it is necessary to oversight block editors who have repeatedly posted suppressible information. Oversighters are expected to consult with the oversight team for all oversight blocks of registered editors and for any other suppressions when acting under the principle of first resort.
7) As provided by the arbitration policy, the Arbitration Committee is empowered to handle requests for the removal of administrative tools. While such requests have usually been in relation to the administrator user rights, the Committee may hear requests for the removal of any advanced user right, which includes but is not limited to the bureaucrat, checkuser, and oversight user rights.
1) Since the vote to open this case, Nihonjoe ( talk · contribs) listed a number of conflicts of interest. The Arbitration Committee affirms this disclosure and also notes that Nihonjoe has a conflict of interest with Hemelein Publications (private evidence).
2) Nihonjoe edited multiple articles where he had an undisclosed conflict of interest (Jessintime and private evidence).
3.1) Nihonjoe engaged in undisclosed paid editing when making edits related to Hemelein Publications.
4) Nihonjoe used his administrative tools to apply full protection to two articles and later disclosed a conflict of interest with both articles (DanCherek evidence).
5) The evidence presented suggests that Nihonjoe's editing while having a conflict of interest did not, in general, violate other content policies or guidelines.
6a) Nihonjoe initially denied having several of these conflicts of interest that he later admitted to having.
7) Private reporting of conflict of interest and paid editing, especially when the accused editor is a long-time editor, has not consistently worked (David Fuchs evidence). There also is contradictory and confusing guidance for what editors are supposed to do with reports of conflict of interest editing or paid editing that involve private information (for example see COI noticeboard header, COI guideline, and harassment policy). A 2022 RfC found that the community prefers off-wiki information to be only handled by functionaries.
8) Kashmiri nominated Aquaveo for deletion. Included in the nomination report was a link in violation of the OUTING policy. About an hour later this link was removed and subsequently suppressed. During the following discussion Nihonjoe disclosed his conflict of interest in the company. Kashmiri subsequently made a report to the administrators' noticeboard detailing Nihonjoe's conflict of interest editing without further OUTING Nihonjoe ( archived thread).
9) Two edits by Fram that disclosed private information and were made two days apart were suppressed by Primefac. After each suppression, Primefac requested review by the Oversight team. The oversight policy provides for suppression as a tool of first resort for the disclosure of non-public personal information.
10a) Following a second suppression at AN, Fram was given an {{ OversightBlock}} by Primefac, which was later assumed by Dreamy Jazz, and which was sustained by the Oversight team as an appropriate block. Fram subsequently made a broad commitment to refrain from posting material in contravention of WP:OUTING. During this case, Fram has submitted private evidence and consulted with the Arbitration Committee before posting some evidence publicly.
11) Primefac first attempted to close the thread started by Kashmiri and then participated several times in the discussion. During this discussion Primefac made reference to acting as both an administrator and Arbitrator while weighing in with their opinion about the topic. During the case request, they stated I do not want to use the "any reasonable admin" clause of [the
administrator policy about involvement]
.
12a) Because Oversight is a tool of first resort and because of the exception to the INVOLVED policy allowing for action when any reasonable oversighter would reach the same conclusion, it was appropriate for Primefac to suppress the material posted by Fram. However, Primefac should not have been the oversighter to block Fram because neither provision applied in this situation.
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.
1) The Arbitration Committee requests that a new VRT queue be established to accept reports of undisclosed conflict-of-interest or paid editing, where reporting such editing on-wiki is in conflict with WP:OUTING. The queue membership is to be decided by the Arbitration Committee and is open to any functionary and to any administrator by request to the Committee and who passes a functionary-like appointment process (including signing the ANPDP). Following the creation of the queue, the existing checkuser-only paid-en-wp queue will be archived, and access will be restricted to checkusers indefinitely. Functionaries and administrators working this queue may, at their discretion, refer a ticket to the Arbitration Committee for review; an example of a situation where a ticket should be referred to the committee is when there is a credible report involving an administrator.
2.1) For posting non-public information about another editor—after a previous post by Fram in the same thread was removed and oversighted—Fram is admonished against posting previously undisclosed information about other editors on Wikipedia (" outing") which is a violation of the harassment policy. Concerns about policy violations based on private evidence must be sent to the appropriate off-wiki venue. Any further violations of this policy may result in an Arbitration Committee block or ban.
3) For his failure to meet the conduct standards expected of an administrator, specifically as pertains to conflict of interest editing and conflict of interest disclosure, Nihonjoe's administrator and bureaucrat user rights are removed. Nihonjoe may regain these user rights via a successful request for adminship and a successful request for bureaucratship, respectively.
0) Should any user subject to a restriction in this case violate that restriction, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year.
0) Appeals and modifications
|
---|
Appeals may be made only by the editor under sanction and only for a currently active sanction. Requests for modification of page restrictions may be made by any editor. The process has three possible stages (see "Important notes" below). The editor may:
No administrator may modify or remove a sanction placed by another administrator without:
Administrators modifying sanctions out of process may at the discretion of the committee be desysopped. Nothing in this section prevents an administrator from replacing an existing sanction issued by another administrator with a new sanction if fresh misconduct has taken place after the existing sanction was applied. Administrators are free to modify sanctions placed by former administrators – that is, editors who do not have the administrator permission enabled (due to a temporary or permanent relinquishment or desysop) – without regard to the requirements of this section. If an administrator modifies a sanction placed by a former administrator, the administrator who made the modification becomes the "enforcing administrator". If a former administrator regains the tools, the provisions of this section again apply to their unmodified enforcement actions. Important notes:
|
Any block, restriction, ban, or sanction performed under the authorisation of a remedy for this case must be logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log, not here.