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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 20:23, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Whilst I still have some time I figured I'd leave this with you for clarification. Over past couple months I've spoken to several admins re. DS procedures, mostly relating to my work on simplifying/cleaning up community sanction templates (speaking of, gentle query on if you've come to a decision re. my July email yet?), as I didn't want to file a dozen clarification requests. This ARCA stems from a discussion I had with El C, here. Would ask if you could read that section (& possibly see the diffs of change on the linked templates) as it provides relevant context for this question. I understand that the 2020 ARCA asked a very similar question to what I ask now, but given the confusion (ref discussion & incorrect template wording for years) I think it's appropriate to ask for a clear judgement.
In the 2018 ARCA, the Committee passed a motion stating that additional page restrictions apply to enforce 1RR. Namely, this meant that enforcing 1RR would require awareness procedures (incl alerting) to be met. The reasoning by the arbs was a strong feeling of it being inherently unfair to enforce 1RR on articles when the editor may not have been aware of this. Thus, a talk and editnotice alone are no longer sufficient.
In the 2020 ARCA, the Committee was going towards the idea of: the 1RR restriction [does not] require a formal alert in order to be enforced
. After close reading of both, I can only interpret this as 1RR by case remedy doesn't require any awareness, but 1RR by DS does?
Is that a correct understanding? If yes, doesn't it also logically follow that 1RR DS enforcement may use the full, broad range of discretionary sanctions enforcement mechanisms, whilst 1RR case remedy can only use increasing-duration blocks, per ArbCom standard procedures?
My next question is, is this two-tier approach to 1RR even logical? In practice, I don't think many admins see 1RR DS as different from 1RR Case Remedy. Both types of 1RR have the same basic awareness (a large talk notice and editnotice), so it's not really accurate to think editors will be more aware of one than the other. I'd also note that it is purely admin discretion on whether an article is "within the conflict area", so 1RR case remedy is also subject to the same level of "discretion", especially for sanctions like ARBPIA and Abortion which have very broad and discretionary scopes. Thus, it seems quite illogical to treat these two 'types' of 1RR as separate. I'd imagine this two-tier approach is also likely confusing & inaccessible to many editors.
DS...🤯 - also see above. Atsme Talk 📧 23:17, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
I was not anticipating commenting here, as the topic is somewhat outside my wheelhouse, but I'm honestly dumbfounded by DGG's assertion that dealing with disruptive editors from our contentious areas will be less work than managing the DS system that allows uninvolved admins to deal with them. DGG, have you looked at the AELOG lately? Most AE reports are comparable in their length to an ARCA request, and there's far more of them; not to mention the hundreds of yearly actions that individual administrators take outside of AE. ARBCOM has taken upwards of three weeks to handle one clarification request, above. How would it fare if everything currently handled under DS was thrown in its lap? Vanamonde ( Talk) 15:20, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The bottom line is that an editor should never be blocked for making an edit that would normally be acceptable but violates a discretionary sanctions restriction, if there's a reasonable doubt as to whether the editor was aware of the restriction.GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:23, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by RexxS at 21:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I apologise for making what appears to be a content-related request, but the behaviour of editors at Ayurveda and Talk:Ayurveda needs to be restrained, and a simple confirmation should be all that's needed to clarify the underlying issues.
Following a contentious edit war at Ayurveda and a WP:AE discussion, El C created an RfC at resolve the question of whether the phrase "pseudoscience" should be in the lead. The debate involved over 60 editors, was closed as no-consensus, reviewed, and re-opened for closure by an admin.
Many proponents of Ayurveda have taken the opportunity in that debate to argue that Ayurveda is not pseudoscientific and are attempting to have the phrase removed entirely. I believe that the position on Wikipedia is that Ayurveda is a pseudoscience as a matter of fact. I am therefore seeking a clear confirmation from ArbCom that the article is subject to discretionary sanctions as a pseudoscience (as even that fact has been contested). Having a clear statement of the position will enable a closer to accurately weigh the strengths of the arguments and to reject entirely arguments that clearly contradict Wikipedia policy on pseudoscience.
In the decision at WP:ARBPS#Generally considered pseudoscience, ArbCom asserted the principleI would like a clarification that the principle includes Ayurveda in the same way as astrology, and consequently that Ayurveda can be considered in the same light.Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.
Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
If the 2020 committee feels unable to affirm that Ayurveda is included in the principle "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience." that the 2006 committee passed 8-0, then so be it: I won't take up any more of your time. -- RexxS ( talk) 17:16, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
The actions of Petrarchan47 in starting yet another RfC at Talk:Ayurveda on an issue that was settled two weeks ago are a shining example of the sort of disruption that is being caused in this area following Opindia's campaign to distort Wikipedia's decision-making processes. Regular editors are becoming weary of the time-sink involved in dealing with questions that have been repeatedly asked and answered. As I've been assured that discretionary sanctions are sufficient to deal with the problem, I'll give advance notice that I intend to sanction Petrarchan47 as an AE action if that disruptive RfC is not withdrawn within 24 hours. Let's see whether ds really does do its job. -- RexxS ( talk) 18:39, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
If the arbitrators feel that explicitly declaring this (or any) topic as pseudoscience would be a content decision, an alternative option would be to allow the discretionary sanctions to be applied to topics that are described as pseudoscience in independent reliable sources even if that status is disputed. In other words saying that the DS applies to subject areas that are or are called pseudoscience so that the application of DS itself does not require a determination of whether it is or is not pseudoscience and the application of DS does not mean that Wikipedia is necessarily calling something pseudoscience. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Arbcom created Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Acupuncture for subjects like this, to avoid the conflict between "pseudoscience" and "alternative medicines". Shashank5988 ( talk) 11:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree that clarification is needed, inasmuch as a principle from a nearly 14 year old Arbcom case has been leveraged to assert that various subjects are pseudoscience based on ipse dixit declarations by involved editors. If my recollection serves me, previous Arbcoms have opined about this before (someone could perhaps check so that this Arbcom doesn't have to reinvent the wheel). Perhaps it's addressed in this FOF: WP:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Pseudoscience_2.
RexxS has expressed an understanding that, by my interpretation, would cast a broad net over a range of subjects making them automatically classified as pseudoscience based on (I guess) it being "pointed out in a discussion". [1] [2] I think it's self-evident why such an approach to dispute resolution would be problematic. If not, please let me know and I will explain further.
There are proponents with strong views on both side of the dispute at Ayurveda (note: I'm uninvolved). I would aver that simply because members of one side declare that "the position on Wikipedia is that Ayurveda is a pseudoscience as a matter of fact" does not make it so. Nor does it obviate the question in dispute: should the subject be described as pseudoscience in the first sentence of the article? Arbcom either needs to distance themselves from this reasoning or embrace it, because the ambiguity left by a nearly 14 year old Arbcom case has to potential to be weaponized in these disputes. This is not the first article where such a dispute has broken out. - MrX 🖋 19:51, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
"Standard discretionary sanctions are authorised for all articles pages relating to pseudoscience and fringe science, broadly interpreted.". Does anyone disagree that Aruyveda is at least related to pseudoscience and fringe science?
Subjects like Ayurveda are clearly covered by the decision on Complementary and Alternative Medicine [3]. As about pseudoscience, it was another decision [4], with good wording: "Theories which have a following, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community".
In my view, no action is required here because the specific area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine is already covered by your decision. However, what qualify as pseudoscience in general is a good question. I think it is not enough just to say "if there is any plausible dispute over whether DS applies in a specific case". One must have at least one solid RS saying that subject X belongs to pseudoscience. Yes, there are such sources in the case of Ayurveda, although the consensus of RS seems to be this is just a traditional medicine. Should we label all projects in the field of traditional medicine funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (a part of National Institutes of Health) as pseudoscience? I doubt. My very best wishes ( talk) 15:49, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, the answer is that the pseudoscience DS apply regardless, but the scope of DS cannot itself affect how the topic is described in an article. This is because the scope follows the concept of
broadly construed - the DS will apply because the question "does this qualify as X?" is itself an X-related topic (otherwise topic-banned editors could wikilawyer endlessly around the edges of their sanction). However, for the same reason, simply being within the scope of X-related DS doesn't actually tell us whether or not the topic is or is not an X. Quoting from
WP:BROADLY (I'm the original author of this text, but it's never been challenged in the more than two years since it was written): "Broadly construed" is also used when defining the topic areas affected by
discretionary sanctions. In particular, if there is any plausible dispute over whether DS applies in a specific case (for example, definitional disputes: whether a particular issue counts as a type of American political issue, whether a particular practice counts as a type of alternative medicine, etc), that is normally taken to mean that it does.
For this particular case, while the article does indeed state that Ayurveda or parts thereof are pseudoscience as a matter of fact (and has done so for a long time), that is because of the strength of the sourcing as determined by previous consensus, rather than being directly determined by ArbCom. The specific statement at
WP:ARBPS#Generally considered pseudoscience does apply, but I think of it as mostly being a confirmation that using the term "pseudoscience" is in fact permissible under these circumstances.
Sunrise (
talk) 10:48, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I I think the only answer is that all discussions of whether a topic is pseudoscience fall under the pseudoscience DS (that is the entire point of the restrictions, since that is the whole debate that requires DS in that topic area), and that, once the issue has been raised, the entire topic falls under the pseudoscience DS restrictions until there is an affirmative consensus that it is not pseudoscience. As long as there is reasonable doubt that it might be pseudoscience, basically, there is going to be debate of the sort that the DS were specifically created to govern. Obviously the applicability of the DS restrictions in that situation should not itself be taken as an absolute statement that the topic is pseudoscience, merely that it is at least under dispute. -- Aquillion ( talk) 19:01, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
The determination of whether or not something is pseudoscience is a content decision that needs to be made by the community, but the determination of whether or not something falls under the scope of an AC/DS is very much a decision that is ultimately ARBCOM's responsibility. Making that decision does not require a ruling on content as such; it just requires ARBCOM to determine whether the problematic behavior that led to the authorization of DS is present in the topic under consideration. As such, this is a decision ARBCOM needs to be willing to make, regardless of whether another DS regime applies. By refusing to decide whether the pseudoscience DS regime covers Ayurveda, ARBCOM creates the possibility of endless wikilawyering with respect to the scope of such regimes, specifically, the argument that because there is not consensus among reliable sources that a topic is related to the name of a DS regime, that the relevant sanctions do not apply. Vanamonde ( Talk) 16:21, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I am not sure that this is a problem that Arbcom should try to fix, but I am sure that we have a problem, most of which is the direct result of OpIndia declaring war on Wikipedia and sending an army of twitter followers to the Ayurveda ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) page.
An incomplete history of Wikipedia's previous attempts to solve this problem:
Question I occasionally see comments like "X says he scrambled his password, but we can't verify this". In such cases, is it technically possible to ask the users "are you sure" and then reset the password without telling them what the new password is? Or does the software not allow that? If the answer is yes, should we? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 14:49, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
If the community has determined that Ayurveda is pseudoscience, then ArbCom - which does not make content determinations -- must treat it as pseudoscience and enforce against it any sanctions which are routinely used against pseudoscience. ArbCom has absolutely no remit to overturn a community determination about content. ArbCom's personal or collective opinions on the matter are completely irrelevant, since its hands are tied by the community decision.
That being said, ArbCom could exclude Ayurveda from any specific DS simply by changing the wording of the text and excluding Ayurveda from the definition of "pseudoscience" for the purposes of that sanction.
Beyond My Ken ( talk) 23:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
This strikes me as a tempest in a teapot. I am certain that Pseudoscience DS apply. I also think that that job of arbcom is not to adjudicate content. I asked you all some years ago to vacate the nonsense demarcation that a now-disgraced arbitrator penned oh-these-many years ago. The time is now to vacate that. An arbitration decision that says what is or is not pseudoscience is just not a good idea.
If there is a reasonable conflict/discussion about whether arguments about pseudoscience is relevant to a page, the pseudoscience DS are relevant. Obviously, it is relevant to ayurveda. That is as far as arbcom should be moving. I recommend vacating all the attempted demarcation and letting the community get back to business. Yes, that means that DS could be applied to pages relating to psychoanalysis (this is eminently reasonable). After all, WP:FRINGE works pretty well now in comparison to when this case (to which I was a party) was decided.
Love, etc.
jps ( talk) 00:50, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
It is troubling that discretionary sanctions are still in force for a case that is 14 years old. Shouldn't these sanctions have an automatic sunset? The point of sanctions is to solve a problem. Once the problem is solved we should default to our usual rules, which should be sufficient. If a set of sanctions is in force for (to pick an arbitrary term) three years, and the problem still isn't solved, then it's probably time to have a another case to figure out why the problem hasn't been solved, and maybe change the sanctions to something stronger. If an area like American politics is a source of perpetual problems, then we should write that into our community rules and make whatever measures are needed permanent. Jehochman Talk 10:24, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
My views align closer to KrakatoaKatie relative to not knowing what vitamins I should take, if any. As for the content and conduct issues, there appears to be some agreement that ArbCom does not exist to adjudicate article content; count me as a +1. On the other hand, my perspective about DS is that, in practice for the most part, they are neither resolutions nor binding solutions to resolve conduct issues because you cannot bind what is malleable or what was left unresolved. Isn't that why we're here now? DS obliquely, if not directly in some instances, regulate content because they create unintentional hurdles in an environment that is ripe for WP:POV creep, perceived or otherwise. AE grants admins super-authority by allowing them to impose irreversible sanctions against editors in a unilateral action at their sole discretion. In essence, ArbCom is throwing the ball back into the court of irreconcilable differences allowing a single admin to grab the ball and run to the goalpost of their choice (which creates an in the eyes of the beholder decision-making process) and they can do so with no concern of an interception or penalty flag. Most of us try to AGF but as a realist, I'm not quite convinced that decisions based on sole discretion are completely void of prejudice or bias - especially when it involves issues that already failed other DR processes. Give me a choice between sole discretion vs a panel of independent thinkers, and I'll choose the latter. Bottomline, my perception of ArbCom's responsibility is to impose binding solutions to Wikipedia conduct disputes that neither community discussion nor administrators have successfully resolved.. Editors who are elected to serve on ArbCom possess certain qualities that have garnered the community's trust, in part because they have demonstrated sound judgment, fairness and neutrality. There is also the thought that several heads are better than one because it adds an element of diversity. Some of the issues that are perceived to be disruption in highly controversial topic areas are "ended" (not always resolved) by a single admin making a judgment call, and in those cases, the potential for such decisions to be unknowingly influenced by POV or prejudice against an editor is highly plausible. The latter is why the community elected a panel - ArbCom - to handle the difficult cases. Somewhere beyond that is the reason we have so many essays. Atsme Talk 📧 22:36, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
It's not a content decision to decide whether something fits the scope. Ayurveda obviously fits the scope, we all know that here, so that part isn't exceptional. What is exceptional is that nobody wants to say it.
Thus, I think the real lesson here is to create non-inflammatory scopes for a DS. Calling something a "psuedoscience", even under the language of WP:BROADLY, is perceived as inflammatory I guess, which is probably why Arbs don't want to say it. But nobody would hesitate clarifying NRA falls under "organizations associated with [gun control]". PSDS is probably the only active DS with a perceived inflammatory scope. But, as above, AC ultimately still has to decide if an article fits within the scope of a DS, because it's the only body that can, and it has to make this decision (even implicitly) every time it reviews an ARCA for scope overreach. Shying away from that for PSDS doesn't seem like a good idea. Easy way out seems to be a comment along the lines of NYB. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 02:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Is aurveda unambiguously pseudoscience? Is the study of ayurveda permeated by pseudoscience? Are these the same thing? That would be an ecumenical matter, but that is not the question here. ArbCom would not mandate that a thing is or is not pseudoscience, they would mandate whether it falls into the pseudoscience DS. Which IMO it does, per WP:BROADLY, because there is, at the very least, solid support in RS for the idea that it is.
There appears to be consensus that the term pseudoscience can be included in the lead, as it is well sourced and in line with our approach to other pseudomedical modalities (as shorthand, Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine or SCAM). The main problem is an endless succession of new single-purpose accounts following a thread on Twitter, a side effect of blowback from recent statements by the Indian medical Association characterising people practising medicine based solely on study of folkways as quacks. This is complicated by the prevalence of ayurveda in India, whose pluralistic and multitheistic culture leads to an acceptance of quasi-religious beliefs as inherently valid. This lack of judgmentalism - a core Indian value - means that quasi-religions alternatives-to-medicine are accorded parity of respect with reality-based medicine, including by the government via its Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH).
Per DGG's points below, when the original DS were passed on homeopathy in 2006, it was considered thoroughly refuted by informed scientists but it was still actively promoted by national health systems. Since then, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, France, Spain and Russia have been through high level reviews and have recommended withdrawal of funding. In 2006 there were several homeopathic hospitals in the UK funded by the NHS. Now, there are none. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Homeopathy would not happen today, we would simply topic ban Dana Ullman.
The status of aurveda today is not dissimilar from that of homeopathy in 2006. Because it uses pharmacologically active doses it is more resistant to trivial refutation than homeopathy, but the trajectory is similar: it is a pseudomedical system with a growing base of evidence that its fundamental approach is incorrect, and, crucially, it cannot self-correct because any honest test of whether substance A or substance B is better for condition X gives an ideologically unacceptable answer: neither. The reality-based study of herbal preparations - "does this herb contain molecules that may have a curative property" - is called pharmacognosy, ayurveda starts from the incorrect premise that some herb is always a cure and that nothing else is necessary.
The DS are there to manage behavioural issues brought on by asymmetric motivation and the collision of quasi-religious belief with Wikipedia's NPOV policy. That is present here. It needs the provisions of DS now for exactly the same reasons that homeopathy did historically, and in 10-15 years' time these too will probably have become superfluous save for rapidly separating the occasional True Believer from the article. Guy ( help! - typo?) 07:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC) [edited for brevity]
There is justification for a case here, but not because some Indians are pestering editors at Ayurveda with spurious complaints. A potential case should look at the behaviour of editors who have been misrepresenting sources, rejecting needed corrections, and defending the unsupported "Ayurveda (AY) is pseudoscience (PS)" claim as sacrosanct. Editors and Admins have violated WP:V and WP:NPOV to create the article that is causing so much distress.
The Hindu Post has an article calling out the bias on this page, it's worth a look. The laughable idea being floated is that some unidentified tweet is responsible for the flood of criticism, as if to say critiques have no merit.
Today in
this edit,
Guy removed recent corrections to the page, referring to them as "bowing to the Twitter mob", and restored false claims, including a wildly inaccurate claim to first paragraph of the Lede, reinserting: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) characterises the practice of modern medicine by Ayurvedic practitioners as quackery.
In no way does the IMA refer to all practitioners of AY in their statement. The
IMA clearly states that some practitioners of alternative therapies in India are representing themselves as qualified to practice modern medicine, but aren't properly licensed, and they are (rightly) categorized as "quacks".
Google revealed no consensus for "Ayurveda is pseudoscience", but rather justified removing the label. There is no mention of PS in: Merriam Webster, Brittanica, online dictionary, WebMD, John's Hopkins, NIH, or Cancer.gov
Wikipedia is the only major source calling AY PS in unqualified terms. The WP community cannot override the scientific community using shoddy, outdated sources, misrepresenting sources, and WP:SYNTH:
A look at the article
LEDE:
The theory and practice of Ayurveda is pseudoscientific
Sources:
BODY
1) Today, ayurvedic medicine is considered pseudoscientific on account of its confusion between reality and metaphysical concepts.
Source:
2) Ayurvedic practitioner Ram P Manohar writes that Ayurveda has been alternatively characterized as pseudoscientific, protoscientific, and unscientific, and proposes himself that it should be termed "trans-scientific".
Source:
3) Research into ayurveda has been characterized as pseudoscience. Both the lack of scientific soundness in the theoretical foundations of ayurveda and the quality of research have been criticized.
Sources:
petrarchan47 คุ ก 23:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that arbitrations are a means to support that admins in highly contentious situations, that is, in situations which they cannot deal with on their own. So we have arbitration, and then perhaps a discretionary sanction so that the admins have something behind her or him when things get rough. Arbitration has declared some subject areas pseudoscience, those "which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience." If arbitration was out of step with the "don't involve themselves in content disputes" well it's too late. Whether Ayurveda is a pseudoscience, "characteristically fail[s] to adhere to scientific standards and methods" or is fringe to the mainstream science is not disputed by numerous sources. Arbs don't have to agree to anything here except to support something they in the past have already agreed on. I don't see the difficulty.
And we don't have to compare Ayurveda to anything. As an alternative medicine system it is thousands of years old so we can expect there to be a huge divide between those who practice or support Ayurveda and modern medicine. I would disagree that the trajectory of Ayurveda is similar to homeopathy. Ayurveda has been around for a very long time, predates organized religion, and physicians are still being trained; my suspicion is that it will be around for a lot longer. None of that matters, though. As long as Wikipedia has both taken the mainstream scientific view and Ayurveda fits that view, then, that's what we deal with in articles. If an admin needs a clarification in a situation that is beyond one person to handle what's the sticking point. (And as aside. I think at times we use pseudoscience and fringe as weapons. Fringe simply means something is not in the mainstream. Yet (possibly). Most if not all research begins as fringe and as non-compliant with our MEDRS articles.) Littleolive oil ( talk) 22:37, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
I've known for years that the Indian medicine articles were hopelessly biased and I've also known for years to not even bother to make any attempt to remove what I see as the blatant bias. India does have doctors and nurses well-trained in western medicine but many of them leave the country because they can earn more money elsewhere and those that don't leave almost invariably choose to practice in the large cities. So that leaves most Indians with Indian medicine as their only choice. So what that comes down to is that we have our encyclopedia saying that most of the people in India are being treated by quacks using pseudoscience. The Indian parliament is not calling their practitioners of Indian medicine quacks. So either they are so ill-informed that they can't understand that only western medicine is real medicine or they just don't care about their own people. I believe that it is racist to call a good number of the Indian people either stupid or uncaring or both. Knowing what I was getting into, but never the less I tried awhile ago to change some wording that I felt was racist in one of the Indian medicine articles and eventually had to give up with many wasted words and a fair amount of wasted time. Quoting Petrarchan above, I was met with the same argument: "The Indian Medical Association (IMA) characterises the practice of modern medicine by Ayurvedic practitioners as quackery. In no way does the IMA refer to all practitioners of AY in their statement. The IMA clearly states that some practitioners of alternative therapies in India are representing themselves as qualified to practice modern medicine, but aren't properly licensed, and they are (rightly) categorized as 'quacks'." IMO both Petrarchan's and Littleolve oil's posts are both spot on. Gandydancer ( talk) 03:16, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by BD2412 at 18:33, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I write to request the removal or limitation of restrictions currently imposed on User:BrownHairedGirl. Per the decision in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals#Remedies issues on 29 January 2020, BrownHairedGirl is prohibited from "engaging in discussions about portals anywhere on Wikipedia", and from "interacting with or commenting about Northamerica1000 anywhere on Wikipedia", both subject to appeal "in six months". BrownHairedGirl has studiously observed these restrictions for over eight months now, and has continued to contribute excellent work to the encyclopedia since then. Another editor and I are therefore preparing to renominate her for adminship, and it is possible that either of the aforementioned issues will be raised by participants in the discussion. I therefore request that the specified restrictions be lifted, either in their entirety, or at least to the extent needed for the purpose of fully engaging any issues that may arise during the course of the RfA.
Additional comment: I don't understand the point of allowing these prohibitions to be appealed in six months if they are going to remain in place after perfect behavior with respect to these areas for eight months. What, exactly, would BHG need to have done to merit the removal of these prohibitions after six months? BD2412 T 15:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to BD2412 for making this request. I have absolutely no desire or intention to get involved in portals again, or to resume interaction with NA1K. However, I would like the restrictions to be lifted because:
For my own peace-of-mind, I intend to continue to observe the self-denying ordinance which I posted on 24 January, and also to avoid contact with NA1K. However, it would be helpful to at least be able to reply to comments at RFA, and preferably to also at least have the option of making a brief factual reply to NA1K if our paths cross at a discussion venue such as CFD, where I am a regular participant. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:47, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
intensely unpleasant wiki-personal experiences with BHG. The last encounter I recall with SMcCandlish was at ANI in March 2019: I had banned SMcC from my talk in response to their aggression, then found SMcC editing other pages of mine from which they were clearly excluded. SMcCandlish then made a wholly bogus allegation that I had harassed him by email. The unpleasantness was indeed intense, but it was entirely from SMC. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
reiteratemy views; I simply stated that a) my views have not changed, and b) I will not comment further. The claim that my remarks were
designed to be hurtfulis the polar opposite of my intent. Yet that very self-denial is being weaponised against me.
In the interest of fairness relative to an RfA, I find myself in general agreement with Beeblebrox's statement below in the "Portals: Arbitrator views and discussion" section, "I would also be ok with a temporary lifting of the restriction, so long as it is made clear that it is only lifted at the RFa page, during BHG's RFA. I do not feel like a compelling case has been made to entirely lift the restriction at this time".
I sure hope an RfA does not become all about me, for some reason or another. If the temporary restrictions are permitted, rather than stating my user name repeatedly throughout an RfA, the phrase "the user" could be used instead. Otherwise, it could come across to casual readers and page skimmers as a regurgitation of more ranting against NA1K (me), preserved in the RfA archives for all time. North America 1000 22:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
BrownHairedGirl is indefinitely restricted from interacting with or commenting about Northamerica1000 anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the ordinary exceptions. This restriction may be appealed in six months.
"The pair of you have engaged in a series of mischievous attempts at specious argument"
"Your utterly dishonest attempts to claim that WP:NCM guides the use of "compositions" rather than "musical compositions". It says no such thing. That is pure fabrication on your part."
"Your blatantly false assertions that..."
"Now get the hell off my talk page, and clean up your act while there is still time."
"(And for clarity, this is my talk page, so I get the last word here. Do NOT reply to this here)."
"The substantive position of the pair of them is a series of specious arguments thrown out in a blatant FUD exercise to support their WP:IDONTLIKEIT stance
"To top it all, Francis has been using his barrage of falsehoods as a tool in his attempts to bully me into withdrawing the nomination"
"The only time sink here is Francis's strategy of disrupting consensus formation by barrages of FUD and falsehood. Creating a shitstorm and then claiming that the said self-started shitstorm is a time-sink is a WP:GAMEing strategy, and Francis's contempt for truth extends even to claiming in his post...
"This pair of truth-averse, tag-teaming bullies...
The verdict of the ArbCom case back in January was that BHG is allowed to run at RfA at any time. That implies she should get a clear and unobstructed run at it. Since she's almost certainly going to be asked questions about portals and NA1K, preventing her from answering those questions would hobble the RfA attempt and make a cruel joke of ArbCom's determination that she's allowed to run. I think all bans should be lifted completely- failing that, they should be lifted temporarily for the RfA. Reyk YO! 19:22, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
As noted below, I have recused from clerking as I am one of the nominators. I think that, personally, the restrictions should at least be suspended for the RfA. I also think any RfA for a user with active restrictions will have questions from voters about said restrictions. If the RfA candidate was not able to answer such questions, it would be unfair for the candidate as good faith questions left unanswered for a long while are often frowned upon at RfA (I understand that if the restrictions are properly and clearly noted in the RfA, voters should see why the question could not be answered, but it cannot be taken for granted that voters will see such a note). By suspending the restrictions for the RfA, it gives the nominee a chance to answer questions about the issues behind the restrictions. This also gives them a chance for them to show that they understand why those restrictions are in place, and show that they have / will continue to comply with the restrictions once they are back in force. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 21:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I'd be interested in the stats for people who have been desysopped with the "May regain via RfA" provision. I can't think of anyone offhand who has passed RfA after that. But that's not an issue of desysopping or ArbCom, it's the ridiculous standards applied at RfA these days. It's closer to "Requests for Sainthood". There are a dozen really solid people I can think of who would have been a shoo-in ten years ago but would probably fail today: you have to have created FAs, engaged in dispute resolution processes, engaged in some (but not too many) debates, voted Delete enough and Keep enough at AfD, all without pissing off agenda editors. Guy ( help! - typo?) 22:40, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
When an editor is sanctioned, edits productively without violating the sanction, and appeals after the minimum appeal time expires, the sanction is usually lifted because it's no longer needed and lifting it is better for everyone. This case seems to fit that mold. BHG has "done her time" as it were, there's no reason to extend it. The "portal wars" are over. Given her commitments above it's unlikely that the restrictions are actually needed to prevent any problems going forward. We're not going to learn anything relevant in the future that we haven't already learned after eight months. Why take up ArbCom's and other editors' time with another appeal down the road instead of lifting the restrictions now? Le v!v ich 03:20, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
If BHG is to participate in an RfA, these sanctions would necessarily have to be lifted, as this is surely an issue that someone is going to raise. Since she has preemptively agreed to continue to abide by the spirit and general letter of those sanctions outside the scope of the nominating process, and isn’t going to directly interact with NA, the committee should absolutely accept the amendment as proposed. Symmachus Auxiliarus ( talk) 03:33, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
"May regain via RfA" is pretty much a death sentence for regaining the tools which an otherwise competent and respected long-time user who knows how to put them to frequent, good, and indispensable use - and the ArbCom is fully aware of its consequences. In face of the character assassination that is unavoidably imparted by a desysoping of this kind for which no appeal is permitted, in order to avoid compromising an intended new run for adminshipship, the only solution is to completely vacate any existing restrictions.
I strongly recommend all commenting here to read both BGH's statement following her desysoping and her Shermanesque comment to Xaosflux and to grant BrownHairedGirl even more respect for having the courage to nevertheless remain active despite her statement. That's what I call 'true dedication' to a worthy cause despite the inadequacies and iniquities of its Arbitration Committee. This statement by Swarm puts it best. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 04:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Reply to Guy: I totally agree that the modern expectations at RfA are far too high and the new breed of voters caused by the reforms, many of whom are very inexperienced and only vote 'as per', can cause an unexpected sway in the result. OTOH, most serious candidatures do appear to pass with a healthy majority. That said, unfortunately, some candidates, and admins - including me - have been unable to turn the other cheek in the long term, to some nasty individuals who harass and gaslight us, and avoid pissing them off. You can see where it got us. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 04:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Reply to
Worm That Turned: I'm not sure: 'the desysop was a close thing in Arbcom decisions'
- we don't know what discussions take place off-stage. Naturally some desyopings and/or sanctions are without question absolutely the only possible outcome. Willing to nominate
BrownHairedGirl is indeed a truly equitable gesture. However, it does seem to clash somewhat with your not wanting to permanently lift the restrictions entirely.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (
talk) 05:04, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Setting aside the merits of this particular case, it does occur to me that having an un-recused arbitrator telling a party that they would nominate them for adminship isn't ... ideal. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Remedy 1, “prohibited ... engaging in discussions about portals anywhere on Wikipedia” should be wound back. There’s no good reason why she shouldn’t be able to comment on her past involvement with ongoing things such as portal categorisation. I would advise BHG to not mass nominate portals for deletion.
Remedy 2 I would not touch. At RfA, BHG may very well be tempted by questioners to engage on the topic of past behaviours involving herself and User:Northamerica1000. However, every sensible question should be well answered by a statement that does not include “commenting about Northamerica1000”. BHG’s RfA2 should be about BHG, not about another editor. BHG should not comment on Northamerica1000.
— SmokeyJoe ( talk) 06:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Regarding Kudpung's statement (about Worm That Turned's initial response as an Arb): "Willing to nominate BrownHairedGirl is indeed a truly equitable gesture. However, it does seem to clash somewhat with your not wanting to permanently lift the restrictions entirely." WTT basically offering to be a BHG nominator for AfD (but simply getting beaten to it) is also an obvious reason to recuse. The optics are terrible, even if WTT's rede so far on the request is skeptical beyond the "may answer at RfA" point.
As for the heart of the matter, I agree that being able to answer questions at RfA about this should be permitted, on the same basis that someone under a T-ban is allowed to discuss it, as a T-ban and series of issues that led up to it, in an administrative or community proceeding (like this ARCA) that pertains to their conduct. It's the same sort of "the community examining one's behavior and judgment" meta-discussion.
I also tend to agree that the portal-war stuff is old news, and a continuing topic-ban about it doesn't serve a preventative purpose in this case. However, the interaction-ban stuff might not be no longer needed, and we have yet to hear from the other party. I've had some intensely unpleasant wiki-personal experiences with BHG of my own, so I'm skeptical that everything is just kosher between those two editors now, even though I also find most of BHG's work and actions constructive and of value to the project. (This kind of "intelligence and good faith != suitable temperament" distinction is why we have RfA to begin with, and is also a major part of WP:CIR.)
There's not a close connection between T-bans and disruptive behavior that is topical, on the one hand, and I-bans and unreasonably hostile inter-personal behavior, on the other. They're entirely severable, both as remedies and as behavior patterns that lead to remedies. Next, "it'll be hard to pass RfA again" isn't a rationale to remove any ban, anyway. Bans should be lifted when they no longer serve their project-protecting purpose. Not for other "reasons". (But they definitely should be lifted under that condition, whether they impede the editor's constructive editing or not.)
PS: I can think of at least two desysopped admins who regained the bit, so I don't buy this "the 'May regain adminship via RfA' clause is an admin death sentence" nonsense. Trust once lost is hard to regain, in every aspect of life, but usually not impossible.
PPS: I also do not buy the argument that appeals filed by third-parties are invalid. They're uncommon, but I myself benefited from one, years ago, so I know for absolute fact that they're permissible.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 07:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I hadn't looked into it until just now, but on CIVIL stuff, BHG's pattern of dismissiveness toward, mischaracterization of the concerns of, and eagerness to battleground against editors who disagree with her seems to have actually worsened since the RFARB, e.g.
[7]. In the next example, someone else was being a bit heavy-handed (after repeat attempts to get traction with BHG on the matter), but BHG's response would probably doom most RfA candidates:
[8]. And it got much worse from there. The wording gave me a hunch, which turned out correct: BHG has a habit of hyperbolically accusing other editors of "
weaponizing" [insert something here] against her, and it's often combined with strings of other accusations, e.g.: "Your cynical, bullying, abusive, edit-warring attempts to weaponise ...
"
[9]. Those last two diffs are best examined in their entire multi-page context (
here, too). The short version is that the other editor, RexxS, availed of REFACTOR to do list-formatting repair on the discussion, for ACCESS reasons, and BHG engaged in an extended editwar to stop him, selectively quoting TPG and pretending that REFACTOR wasn't an exception and that ACCESS didn't matter, not because she disagreed on the merits of any of that, or didn't really understand the
WP:P&G pages that applied, but just to stick it to someone she was having a real-content dispute with in the same discussion. This is a total "WtF?!" She even tried to ANI him
[10], where she ASCII-screamed "STOP YOUR LYING
" in bolded allcaps at him over and over and over. While RexxS had erred in reverting a whole post of hers during that fiasco, I really don't think
this was called for: "After RexxS's repeated lies and vile smears [....] I really thought that I had already seen the very worst of Wikipedia, but RexxS's despicable conduct today has plumbed depths an order of magnitude worse than I have seen before.
" That was just block-worthy on its own. This "weaponization" stuff is usually also in close proximity to declarations that people are "banned" from her talk page (see several diffs above, and unrelated one
here). While USERPAGE encourages us to respect requests to avoid non-required user-talk interaction, it's a quasi-privilege admins basically don't have, due to ADMINACCT requiring them to be responsive to editors raising concerns about their decisions (though BHG attempted to subject me to such a "ban" while she was still an admin, now that I think of it).
I was looking for something else in BHG's user-talk history (any post-RFARB issues between the two of us in her user-talk that I might have forgotten). Instead, in just a couple of minutes I ran into more (and quite recent) evidence for opposition than what I'd already considered maybe presenting at a re-RfA. This does not bode well. What will one find with a search for an intersection of "BrownHairedGirl" and "lies/liar"? Or "despicable", "vile", "abuse/abusive", "bully[ing]"? I don't want to look. I was originally critical of the desysop decision (for procedural/policy reasons)
[11], but everything I'm seeing now suggests it was the correct move from an ADMINCOND perspective.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 16:51, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Lets be clear about this, this request is entirely about making the re-RFA process for BHG easier and avoiding the consequences of their restrictions. BHG's ownership issues, editing behaviours as well as their conduct towards others, and the resulting lack of any admin willing to do anything about their fellow admin's behaviour and blatant refusal to abide by community-mandated policies are what led to the desysopping and restrictions with NA1000 in the first place. Either consider lifting the various restrictions on their merit, or do not. But unless BHG has had a radical change of personality in the intervening time period (rather than the situation being that the restrictions are doing their job), lifting them would be a mistake. Leaving the topic ban in place so they cant answer questions (if you are not going to lift it completely) is exactly what you should do. As anyone unfamiliar who shows up at the RFA will then have an accurate grasp of the circumstances. Claiming its 'unfair' they cannot answer questions about their restrictions is misleading. That is the result of BHG's behaviour, no one else's. It is not unfair to have to deal with a situation you created. What is 'unfair' is that a former admin should get preferential treatment. They recieved preferential treatment before the arbcom case, and now they are getting it after. It is extremely telling that WTT below says "The desysop was a close thing in Arbcom decisions" - anyone who has read the actual voting and the comments made by the arbiters there would have to be a blithering idiot to believe that gross mis-charactization of the comments there. That was not 'a close thing'. Arbcom's duty is towards the community as a whole, and this sort of blatant favoritism is a slap in the face to that end. The partisanship is not even superficially obscured here. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 13:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm ambivalent as to whether the restrictions should be suspended for the duration of the RfA. At first glance, it seems reasonable for BHG to be able to answer questions about the issue. On the other hand, this does very much seem like special treatment and it is not ArbCom's responsibility to make this process easier for BHG. I might be more inclined have some sympathy for BHG were it not for my familiarity with the circumstances that led to her desysop, but I'll save those thoughts for when the RfA opens. Moreover, I am deeply troubled by WTT's unwillingness to recuse even after they have openly indicated their desire to serve as a nominator in BHG's re-RfA. LEPRICAVARK ( talk) 20:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
This would look like a double standard; having even the mildest of restrictions erased just for having complied with them for 6 months whereas for commonfolk that might require a couple years of sainthood. But I don't think that the intent was to prevent answering questions at an RFA and IMO it would be a good idea to waive them for responding at the RFA. Sincerely, North8000 ( talk) 12:21, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
A ban on working with portals and an interaction ban with NA1K were given to BHG 8 months ago. The terms of both of these bans explicitly allowed BHG to appeal them after 6 months. This request is that appeal. In my opinion, the question shouldn't be "has BHG done enough and behaved well enough to deserve overturning the ban?" Instead, the question should be, "has BHG specifically done anything to show that she is undeserving of being granted this appeal?" That would be my challenge to everyone here: can anyone point to anything that BHG has done in the last 8 months that is evidence that she's not ready for either of these bans to be permanently overturned? If the answer is no, then I think it's clear that we should grant the appeal. Because if we allow someone to appeal a ban after 6 months, and they've done nothing during that 6 months to be undeserving of that appeal, but we deny the appeal anyway, then what's the point of even allowing a user to make an appeal in the first place?
Is anyone truly worried that if these bans are overturned, BHG would dive right back into contentious actions with portals, and strike up a heated argument with NA1K? As far as I can tell, BHG has accepted her bans and diligently worked to ensure that she wasn't violating them. Above, she has stated that she would voluntarily continue to avoid NA1K as much as possible if the ban was lifted. Especially if her RfA succeeds, she would have to know that another blow-up with NA1K would land her right back at Arbcom for a swift desysop.
If we're willing to overturn the bans for the duration of the RfA, then we should just overturn them permanently. There is no need to treat editors like children who can't control their own behavior, especially after they've demonstrated that they've learned their lesson and accepted the consequences for the better part of a year. Besides, in this very discussion I see clear signs that NA1K is attempting to milk these bans for all they're worth: flailing around as if he's been shot in the heart because BHG pinged his username in this discussion (gasp!), making absurd requests that everyone refer to him as "the user" at the upcoming RfA instead of by his username, etc. It's getting ridiculous, and it's time to end it so that productive editors can dispense with childish, punitive punishments and get back to the business of writing an encyclopedia. ‑Scottywong | [comment] || 07:47, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Lifting the restriction is the best solution here, It's unfair to lift it for BHG but then keep it for NA1K (NA1K would have no reason to need it lifted but that's not the point - we cannot have one rule for one and one for another.), Generally speaking I would've preferred this to be lifted in s year or 2 not 6 months but looking at various options lifting it seems the best option. –
Davey2010
Talk 10:54, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever interacted with BrownHairedGirl (I don't get involved in categories much), however I've worked with NorthAmerica1000 and found him to be perfectly reasonable. Since BHG has not had any cause for objections to the topic ban to be lifted, I think it should just be lifted full stop. More specifically, I think any editor has the right to tell another editor to stay off their talk page if they have sufficient justification to do so. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
This is a comment about User:Beeblebrox's Motion below, feel free to move this to the other section if more appropriate. I don't think it is logical to tie a 24-hour countdown clock to an event that has not yet occurred - would we need to assume good faith that the second this occurs it is ok and a clock starts - and if the transclusion doesn't actually occur within 24 hours it is retroactively in violation? If you want to exempt that page, just exempt it for a fixed period (e.g. for one month) - if the RfA never starts it would expire, and if it does start RfA pages are already not expected to be edited after RfA closure. — xaosflux Talk 15:02, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Whether it's blocks or Arbcom action, we should not be punitive. If there's a track record without trouble, Arbcom should agree to lift the measures. 8 months is plenty. Just lift them. Temporarily lifting them is no solution in my opinion, because it shows !voters in the RfA that Arbcom does not trust her. Let the community have an unencumbered view of the candidate. But mostly because there is evidence there's no longer a need for the sanctions. -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 16:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I support lifting at least for the RFA (which is being discussed as a general exception at Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#RFC: BANEX exception for permissions requests anyway). While I am aware of BHG unfortunately having some civility issues, generally BHG is civil and has a good understanding of WP policy and I think BHG's view that many portals were unsuitable was correct and BHG was getting rid of junk from our encyclopedia (and I speak as someone who used to favour keeping almost anything). Crouch, Swale ( talk) 17:36, 13 October 2020 (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.
Remedies 1 & 2 of the Portals case are temporarily lifted, only at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BrownHairedGirl 2 and related pages, and only until the conclusion of the RfA process.
@
Beeblebrox: I've copyedited by adding the words "for 24 hours before the RfA is transcluded and
". This will allow BrownHairedGirl to mention the arbitration case if she wishes in her candidate statement and/or her answers to the standard questions, which are typically completed before the RfA is transcluded. If you disagree with this addition, please revert it and I'll propose it as a separate motion.
Am I correct to assume that "active RFA" encompasses the time until the RFA is closed one way or another, including time it is on hold if there is a crat chat? Regards So Why 07:07, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
@ Xaosflux: I'm the one who added the reference to 24 hours (the original motion just covered the period of the RfA itself, which would have created a logistical problem, as I noted above). I didn't mean it as a rigid time limit, just in the sense of "shortly before the RfA is transcluded." If BHG said she needed 48 or 72 hours, I would have no objection (though I don't think a month would be necessary). But I see from a discussion on User talk:BrownHairedGirl that she and her nominator are planning to draft the nomination statement and responses to the standard questions off-wiki and post them when they are ready to proceed, which I think resolves this concern. Regards, Newyorkbrad ( talk) 15:59, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by The C of E at 07:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I would like to request removal of my Troubles restrictions because I do feel that the lesson has been learned. I feel I have shown in the past I am able to edit in these areas evenhandedly with John Brady (Sinn Féin politician) and Gerry Mullan (politician) being some examples. The crux of the ban was based on me allegedly trying to get Londonderry on DYK on a politically sensitive day which was not desirable to consensus. While I have been under the ban, 1831 Londonderry City by-election ran on DYK on Ulster Day so I feel its not been done consistently. As for the judicial review article, I already explained that was an unfortunate coincidence and I had not been thinking about it at the time I wrote the article.
If removal is not acceptable, can I request then that it be amended to permit editing of sporting articles. The reason I ask is because I asked @ Barkeep49: if I could edit GAA articles and he said no because of the sport's political culture. But most players and clubs are not political and I have done work in there previously without concern ( Seán Quigley, Killian Clarke, Ian Burke, Gerry Culliton, Cillian O'Connor, PSNI GAA and Irish Guards GAA). So, if full removal is not desired, I would like it amended for clarity and so I am able to continue working on sporting articles please. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 07:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The
WP:AE request mentioned a parallel discussion which is now at
WP:AN archive. That WP:AN discussion was closed with the restrictions at
WP:Editing restrictions#The C of E. Those restrictions handle my greatest concern as they seem to prevent further problems regarding DYK. Accordingly I am relaxed about whatever the Committee wants to do regarding the WP:AE topic ban. Nevertheless, I have to record that "allegedly trying to get Londonderry on DYK on a politically sensitive day
" is an own-goal in an appeal.
Johnuniq (
talk) 09:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I participated in the AE discussion, and gave my reasons for why I supported imposing a topic ban there. I don't have anything in particular to add to that. I will say that the fact that a community discussion at AN also came to the conclusion that there was disruptive behavior which merited sanctions shows that outcome to be a reasonable one. I think best at this time if the editor does productive editing in other topic areas, and then revisits this in six months or a year. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:13, 30 November 2020 (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.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 14:56, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Does the standard DS 1RRs excludeinclude all of the exemptions listed at
WP:3RRNO? The DS 1RR notices, eg
Template:American politics AE, states solely:
However, the WP policy WP:1RR makes reference to ArbCom's 1RRs and states:With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:
- Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
- Edits made which remove or otherwise change any material placed by clearly established consensus, without first obtaining consensus to do so, may be treated in the same manner as clear vandalism.
- Clear vandalism of any origin may be reverted without restriction.
(emphasis mine). But none of ArbCom's procedures or templates make reference to WP:3RRNO, and the "clear vandalism" exemption that the templates does provide does not encapsulate everything on that list (indeed, it is only bullet #4). Extra exemptions from 3RRNO include copyright violations, material illegal in the US like "child pornography and links to pirated software" & BLP violations.Additional restrictions on reverting may be imposed by the Arbitration Committee, under arbitration enforcement [...]. These restrictions are generally called 1RR. The one-revert rule is analogous to the three-revert rule as described above, with the words "more than three reverts" replaced by "more than one revert".
To add: There is a practical impact here. My query stems from Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Full_protection_and_certain_politicians_(you_know_the_ones), where there was a mention of Special:Diff/987532889. An admin suggested that reverting this would burn an editor's 1 revert of the day, even though it's clearly an unsourced BLP violation, and thus should be exempt under WP:3RRNO. But it's not in the DS 1RR exemptions.
Does the standard DS 1RRs exclude all of the exemptions listed at WP:3RRNO?"
No. Those exemptions apply to all reverts everywhere, even if it's not explicitly stated in this particular 1RR template. The net effect of the wording in that template is to add "enforcing clearly established consensus" to the list of other exemptions like reverting vandalism and child pornography. To that effect it's worded poorly. It might be better to just say something along the lines of: In addition to the exemptions listed at WP:3RRNO, edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from the edit-warring restriction. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
That's my opinion at least. ~
Awilley (
talk) 15:24, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Any restriction based on revert counting offers a first-mover advantage. It seems to me that the default should be to enforce BRD, rather than arguing how many angels are dancing on the head of a particular revert. BRD is a long-standing consensus view of how Wikipedia should work, and it puts the onus on the editor seeking to make the change, to achieve consensus.
The exception should be removal of controversial or negative material, where we should err on the side of exclusion unless the sourcing is robust.
I feel that there is too much emphasis on counting reverts and not enough on taking these disputes to Talk and working them out through methodical discussion and analysis. That's the behaviour we're trying to drive, right? Guy ( help! - typo?) 13:01, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Volunteer Marek at 07:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
This is an appeal of my topic ban “from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland” as enacted on September 22, 2019, per the portion of the decision which states This topic ban may be appealed after one year has elapsed. [15]
Both myself and User:Icewhiz were topic-banned as a result of the case and we were both subject to an interaction ban. Subsequently for reasons which the committee should be familiar with, and which I mention below, Icewhiz was indefinitely banned from English Wikipedia, and then by the office, from all WikiMedia projects. Also relevant is the fact that WikiMedia’s Trust and Safety team assisted me in addressing the off-wiki harassment that Icewhiz was pursuing against me. [16] [17]
At the outset I would like to bring to the committee’s attention the fact that my topic ban which resulted from the case was NOT based on any issue with the contents of my edit to article space. There were no findings of facts relating to POV or abuse of sources or any other similar issues. Instead, the topic ban was the result of the nature of my interactions with User:Icewhiz, on talk pages and various discussions. In particular I received the TB because the committee found that both of us displayed a battleground attitude, that I was incivil to Icewhiz, that I accused him of “making stuff up” (incidentally, Icewhiz’s own topic ban was based at least partly on the committee having similar issues with Icewhiz’s edits, particularly on BLPs [18]). At same time the committee acknowledged that Icewhiz had made false accusations against me, [19] made ethnically derogatory remarks, used inflammatory rhetoric and attempted to make extremely insulting insinuations against me. [20]
Essentially, the committee did not find anything wrong with my edits but did issue the topic ban for my incivil attitude towards him. This is understandable as I acknowledge that I did not always react well to Icewhiz’s provocations, especially given their extremely serious nature. I want to stress that Icewhiz was the only person that has managed to provoke such a reaction in me, and that even committee members acknowledged that there were no such problems with my editing outside of this narrow dispute (Arbitrator PreMeditatedChaos wrote in one of the relevant Findings of Fact: even Icewhiz has pointed out that VM's behavior is not an issue except in this topic area [21])
As such, in addition to more than a full year having elapsed, with Icewhiz being indefinitely banned from all WikiMedia project the reason for the topic ban has ceased to exist. In fact, given the subsequent events – the campaign of harassment that Icewhiz launched against me and numerous other Wikipedia editors (including several admins) – I had considered appealing the topic ban even before the one year deadline elapsed. In the end, because I was (and still am) very busy in real life with work and family issue, I decided that I might as well wait out the full year.
Even though Icewhiz is no longer on Wikipedia (although there was extensive socking in early 2020, however, the arbitration motion you guys passed in May [22] which implemented the 500/30 restriction seems to have been quite successful in curbing it) I do want to note that I have had quite a bit of time to rethink and reflect upon the events leading up to the arbitration case and the topic ban. I fully admit that I overreacted at the time and should have worked harder at keeping my cool. Lack of subsequent issues (*) in the year following should show that.
At the same time I also want to mention that my overall engagement with Wikipedia has been substantially reduced. This is mostly due to being much busier in real life for reasons related to the covid pandemic.
Thanks for the consideration and take care of yourselves
(*) In the interest of full disclosure I should note that early on, about a week or two after the enactment of the topic ban, I did violate it and was given a short block as a result of an AE report, enacted by Bradv. The topic ban went into effect on September 22, 2019. The block was on October 10, 2019. I have not been sanctioned for any violations of the topic ban since then (more than a year) and that instance happened in part due to my misunderstanding of the scope of the ban (the edit concerned an author’s work about World War I, although the same author was also known for writing about World War II)
@ Beeblebrox: Honestly, since this was in April/May of last year, which is eons in Wikipedia time I don't even remember off the top off my head what this was about (apparently, Levivich couldn't remember it either since he had to go do digging for it only after your prompted them to follow up their vague accusations). Checking back through history, it seems that with regards to his diff 2 and diff 3 (same thing) there was an allegation that an edit of my violated the topic ban. I thought at the time they didn't since my edit concerned POST WAR Polish history, which would be outside the scope ban. There was some discussion on the issue, with finally User:El C saying that "the topic ban violation is not clear cut" [23]. Basically, while my edit was NOT about the topic there was a chunk of (newly added!) material in the relevant article that was (which I didn't touch, as El C explicitly noted "Volunteer Marek limits himself just to a discussion of the post-war time period (which he has been doing)"). However, he also pointed out that the fact that a different portion of the article dealt with WW2 would make it difficult for me to discuss some of the relevant issues on talk w/o violating the TB. That was a fair point. As a result I said ok, just to be sure, I won't edit the article anymore [24].
Sometimes it's very difficult to know what is covered and what is not covered by a given topic ban, especially since, as I noted elsewhere, World War 2 casts such a huge shadow over Polish history and culture that editing almost anything related to Poland will sooner or later bring you close to that topic. If this here was a topic ban violation (and it's not clear it was) then it was inadvertent one and I think I proceeded correctly - after it was brought to an admin's attention and they said it was "borderline", I disengaged from the article. I haven't edited it since. The matter was resolved and it hasn't come up again.
Levivich was NOT involved in this dispute in any capacity. I'm not sure why he feels that he in particular has to bring it here or what his motivation for doing so is. Volunteer Marek 01:20, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I am not able to support this appeal, because I do not think it would be a net positive for the project or the topic area. Just over a week ago, they inserted this unhelpful comment on a dispute that they are not involved in. [25] Note, no evidence that I was edit warring was presented, nor did VM file a complaint against edit warring at another page, to be decided by an administrator. (I believe this is a spill-over from a content dispute on List of genocides by death toll, where VM is arguing for the inclusion of Polish Operation as a genocide. Arguably this skirts their topic ban because of the proximity to World War II.) ( t · c) buidhe 19:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
I was going to stay out of this, but it's just not true (as arbs state below) that VM hasn't violated his topic ban since Bradv's block in October 2019. He's been warned for tban violations since then (for example, see his UTP history). There are also AE/AN/ANI threads in the last year; I don't remember offhand if they were for problems in or outside the topic area, or if they had any merit. But neither I nor any other member of the community should have to go digging to present this history to Arbcom. VM ought to list all of these things for the arbs to review. Levivich harass/ hound 16:45, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
The topic ban is one of the few remaining vestiges of the Icewhiz-era. It made mild sense as a way to prevent BATTLEGROUND that Icewhiz was creating and too often goading VM into engaging him (IIRC it came as a set combo with the interaction ban and Ice received the mirror equivalents of both of these as well). Now that Icewhiz is gone (the main account, as he still continues socking and real-life harassment and manipulation, for which he was site banned - Trust&Safety can provide further details if any ArbCom member requires them, I am sure) it makes no sense to keep VM restricted; all it does is that it still empowers Icewhiz behind the scenes and as such it is one of his 'victories' we can and should undo to move on.
Regarding preceding comments by Buidhe and Levivich, they are either disappointing petty attempts to keep people one disagreed with under the heel and out of one's hair, or worse, evidence of proxying for Icewhiz. Levivich has not been much active in the topic areas VM frequents/ed, and I think neither had interacted much with VM, yet now we see some obscure diffs from articles they never edited or discussions they did not participate in (!) concerning editor they should not care about. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:35, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
I commend members of the Committee for expressing views in favour of, as well as an immediate motion, to rescind the ban. That is the right call. Not least because I don't think there's any indication that Volunteer Marek is likely to edit disruptively in the topic area. I'd like to also add the following emphasis to the record: the level of harassment that Volunteer Marek has endured (that I know of) is so beyond the pale, it's truly sickening. So needless to say, wide latitude should be extended to him for any past misconduct or near-misconduct which were directly impacted by this sinister and nefarious abuse. Anyway, looks like all is going well as far as this amendment is concerned — apologies in advance to VM in case I just jinxed it! El_C 05:17, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
It seems obvious to me that removing this topic ban, imposed when the editor was under extreme harassment by the banned Icewhiz, is a good thing for the encyclopedia, and I hope that the arbs will come to the same conclusion. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:44, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
The now-banned Icewhiz's misbehaviors on Wikipedia, prior to his ban and since, have been truly egregious and should be counted as an extenuating circumstance to some of VM's responses to Icewhiz's provocative actions. I believe it is time to welcome VM back to a subject area to which he can make substantial contributions.
Thank you.
Nihil novi ( talk) 22:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
I am a great fan of TBANs, which usually work well to protect controversial areas of the project subject to Arbitration cases from egregious disruption by POV-pushers. However, I don't think this description applies to VM's behaviour that led to the TBAN. Considering Icewhiz has been ejected, and VM doesn't appear to have clearly breached the TBAN, I think Arbs should accept VM's request in good faith. Of course, in the tradition of supplying people with enough rope, VM should be under no illusions that any future disruption in the TBAN space will likely result in an indefinite TBAN. Peacemaker67 ( click to talk to me) 01:40, 14 December 2020 (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.
Remedy 4b of Antisemitism in Poland ("Volunteer Marek topic-banned") is rescinded.
This is an archive of past Clarification and Amendment requests. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to file a new clarification or amendment request, you should follow the instructions at the top of this page. |
Archive 110 | ← | Archive 114 | Archive 115 | Archive 116 | Archive 117 | Archive 118 | → | Archive 120 |
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 20:23, 2 September 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Whilst I still have some time I figured I'd leave this with you for clarification. Over past couple months I've spoken to several admins re. DS procedures, mostly relating to my work on simplifying/cleaning up community sanction templates (speaking of, gentle query on if you've come to a decision re. my July email yet?), as I didn't want to file a dozen clarification requests. This ARCA stems from a discussion I had with El C, here. Would ask if you could read that section (& possibly see the diffs of change on the linked templates) as it provides relevant context for this question. I understand that the 2020 ARCA asked a very similar question to what I ask now, but given the confusion (ref discussion & incorrect template wording for years) I think it's appropriate to ask for a clear judgement.
In the 2018 ARCA, the Committee passed a motion stating that additional page restrictions apply to enforce 1RR. Namely, this meant that enforcing 1RR would require awareness procedures (incl alerting) to be met. The reasoning by the arbs was a strong feeling of it being inherently unfair to enforce 1RR on articles when the editor may not have been aware of this. Thus, a talk and editnotice alone are no longer sufficient.
In the 2020 ARCA, the Committee was going towards the idea of: the 1RR restriction [does not] require a formal alert in order to be enforced
. After close reading of both, I can only interpret this as 1RR by case remedy doesn't require any awareness, but 1RR by DS does?
Is that a correct understanding? If yes, doesn't it also logically follow that 1RR DS enforcement may use the full, broad range of discretionary sanctions enforcement mechanisms, whilst 1RR case remedy can only use increasing-duration blocks, per ArbCom standard procedures?
My next question is, is this two-tier approach to 1RR even logical? In practice, I don't think many admins see 1RR DS as different from 1RR Case Remedy. Both types of 1RR have the same basic awareness (a large talk notice and editnotice), so it's not really accurate to think editors will be more aware of one than the other. I'd also note that it is purely admin discretion on whether an article is "within the conflict area", so 1RR case remedy is also subject to the same level of "discretion", especially for sanctions like ARBPIA and Abortion which have very broad and discretionary scopes. Thus, it seems quite illogical to treat these two 'types' of 1RR as separate. I'd imagine this two-tier approach is also likely confusing & inaccessible to many editors.
DS...🤯 - also see above. Atsme Talk 📧 23:17, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
I was not anticipating commenting here, as the topic is somewhat outside my wheelhouse, but I'm honestly dumbfounded by DGG's assertion that dealing with disruptive editors from our contentious areas will be less work than managing the DS system that allows uninvolved admins to deal with them. DGG, have you looked at the AELOG lately? Most AE reports are comparable in their length to an ARCA request, and there's far more of them; not to mention the hundreds of yearly actions that individual administrators take outside of AE. ARBCOM has taken upwards of three weeks to handle one clarification request, above. How would it fare if everything currently handled under DS was thrown in its lap? Vanamonde ( Talk) 15:20, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The bottom line is that an editor should never be blocked for making an edit that would normally be acceptable but violates a discretionary sanctions restriction, if there's a reasonable doubt as to whether the editor was aware of the restriction.GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:23, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by RexxS at 21:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I apologise for making what appears to be a content-related request, but the behaviour of editors at Ayurveda and Talk:Ayurveda needs to be restrained, and a simple confirmation should be all that's needed to clarify the underlying issues.
Following a contentious edit war at Ayurveda and a WP:AE discussion, El C created an RfC at resolve the question of whether the phrase "pseudoscience" should be in the lead. The debate involved over 60 editors, was closed as no-consensus, reviewed, and re-opened for closure by an admin.
Many proponents of Ayurveda have taken the opportunity in that debate to argue that Ayurveda is not pseudoscientific and are attempting to have the phrase removed entirely. I believe that the position on Wikipedia is that Ayurveda is a pseudoscience as a matter of fact. I am therefore seeking a clear confirmation from ArbCom that the article is subject to discretionary sanctions as a pseudoscience (as even that fact has been contested). Having a clear statement of the position will enable a closer to accurately weigh the strengths of the arguments and to reject entirely arguments that clearly contradict Wikipedia policy on pseudoscience.
In the decision at WP:ARBPS#Generally considered pseudoscience, ArbCom asserted the principleI would like a clarification that the principle includes Ayurveda in the same way as astrology, and consequently that Ayurveda can be considered in the same light.Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience.
Thank you in advance for your assistance in this matter. -- RexxS ( talk) 21:47, 19 August 2020 (UTC)
If the 2020 committee feels unable to affirm that Ayurveda is included in the principle "Theories which have a following, such as astrology, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience." that the 2006 committee passed 8-0, then so be it: I won't take up any more of your time. -- RexxS ( talk) 17:16, 27 August 2020 (UTC)
The actions of Petrarchan47 in starting yet another RfC at Talk:Ayurveda on an issue that was settled two weeks ago are a shining example of the sort of disruption that is being caused in this area following Opindia's campaign to distort Wikipedia's decision-making processes. Regular editors are becoming weary of the time-sink involved in dealing with questions that have been repeatedly asked and answered. As I've been assured that discretionary sanctions are sufficient to deal with the problem, I'll give advance notice that I intend to sanction Petrarchan47 as an AE action if that disruptive RfC is not withdrawn within 24 hours. Let's see whether ds really does do its job. -- RexxS ( talk) 18:39, 15 September 2020 (UTC)
If the arbitrators feel that explicitly declaring this (or any) topic as pseudoscience would be a content decision, an alternative option would be to allow the discretionary sanctions to be applied to topics that are described as pseudoscience in independent reliable sources even if that status is disputed. In other words saying that the DS applies to subject areas that are or are called pseudoscience so that the application of DS itself does not require a determination of whether it is or is not pseudoscience and the application of DS does not mean that Wikipedia is necessarily calling something pseudoscience. Thryduulf ( talk) 11:14, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Arbcom created Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Acupuncture for subjects like this, to avoid the conflict between "pseudoscience" and "alternative medicines". Shashank5988 ( talk) 11:46, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
I agree that clarification is needed, inasmuch as a principle from a nearly 14 year old Arbcom case has been leveraged to assert that various subjects are pseudoscience based on ipse dixit declarations by involved editors. If my recollection serves me, previous Arbcoms have opined about this before (someone could perhaps check so that this Arbcom doesn't have to reinvent the wheel). Perhaps it's addressed in this FOF: WP:Requests for arbitration/Pseudoscience#Pseudoscience_2.
RexxS has expressed an understanding that, by my interpretation, would cast a broad net over a range of subjects making them automatically classified as pseudoscience based on (I guess) it being "pointed out in a discussion". [1] [2] I think it's self-evident why such an approach to dispute resolution would be problematic. If not, please let me know and I will explain further.
There are proponents with strong views on both side of the dispute at Ayurveda (note: I'm uninvolved). I would aver that simply because members of one side declare that "the position on Wikipedia is that Ayurveda is a pseudoscience as a matter of fact" does not make it so. Nor does it obviate the question in dispute: should the subject be described as pseudoscience in the first sentence of the article? Arbcom either needs to distance themselves from this reasoning or embrace it, because the ambiguity left by a nearly 14 year old Arbcom case has to potential to be weaponized in these disputes. This is not the first article where such a dispute has broken out. - MrX 🖋 19:51, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
"Standard discretionary sanctions are authorised for all articles pages relating to pseudoscience and fringe science, broadly interpreted.". Does anyone disagree that Aruyveda is at least related to pseudoscience and fringe science?
Subjects like Ayurveda are clearly covered by the decision on Complementary and Alternative Medicine [3]. As about pseudoscience, it was another decision [4], with good wording: "Theories which have a following, but which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community".
In my view, no action is required here because the specific area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine is already covered by your decision. However, what qualify as pseudoscience in general is a good question. I think it is not enough just to say "if there is any plausible dispute over whether DS applies in a specific case". One must have at least one solid RS saying that subject X belongs to pseudoscience. Yes, there are such sources in the case of Ayurveda, although the consensus of RS seems to be this is just a traditional medicine. Should we label all projects in the field of traditional medicine funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (a part of National Institutes of Health) as pseudoscience? I doubt. My very best wishes ( talk) 15:49, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, the answer is that the pseudoscience DS apply regardless, but the scope of DS cannot itself affect how the topic is described in an article. This is because the scope follows the concept of
broadly construed - the DS will apply because the question "does this qualify as X?" is itself an X-related topic (otherwise topic-banned editors could wikilawyer endlessly around the edges of their sanction). However, for the same reason, simply being within the scope of X-related DS doesn't actually tell us whether or not the topic is or is not an X. Quoting from
WP:BROADLY (I'm the original author of this text, but it's never been challenged in the more than two years since it was written): "Broadly construed" is also used when defining the topic areas affected by
discretionary sanctions. In particular, if there is any plausible dispute over whether DS applies in a specific case (for example, definitional disputes: whether a particular issue counts as a type of American political issue, whether a particular practice counts as a type of alternative medicine, etc), that is normally taken to mean that it does.
For this particular case, while the article does indeed state that Ayurveda or parts thereof are pseudoscience as a matter of fact (and has done so for a long time), that is because of the strength of the sourcing as determined by previous consensus, rather than being directly determined by ArbCom. The specific statement at
WP:ARBPS#Generally considered pseudoscience does apply, but I think of it as mostly being a confirmation that using the term "pseudoscience" is in fact permissible under these circumstances.
Sunrise (
talk) 10:48, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
I I think the only answer is that all discussions of whether a topic is pseudoscience fall under the pseudoscience DS (that is the entire point of the restrictions, since that is the whole debate that requires DS in that topic area), and that, once the issue has been raised, the entire topic falls under the pseudoscience DS restrictions until there is an affirmative consensus that it is not pseudoscience. As long as there is reasonable doubt that it might be pseudoscience, basically, there is going to be debate of the sort that the DS were specifically created to govern. Obviously the applicability of the DS restrictions in that situation should not itself be taken as an absolute statement that the topic is pseudoscience, merely that it is at least under dispute. -- Aquillion ( talk) 19:01, 25 August 2020 (UTC)
The determination of whether or not something is pseudoscience is a content decision that needs to be made by the community, but the determination of whether or not something falls under the scope of an AC/DS is very much a decision that is ultimately ARBCOM's responsibility. Making that decision does not require a ruling on content as such; it just requires ARBCOM to determine whether the problematic behavior that led to the authorization of DS is present in the topic under consideration. As such, this is a decision ARBCOM needs to be willing to make, regardless of whether another DS regime applies. By refusing to decide whether the pseudoscience DS regime covers Ayurveda, ARBCOM creates the possibility of endless wikilawyering with respect to the scope of such regimes, specifically, the argument that because there is not consensus among reliable sources that a topic is related to the name of a DS regime, that the relevant sanctions do not apply. Vanamonde ( Talk) 16:21, 26 August 2020 (UTC)
I am not sure that this is a problem that Arbcom should try to fix, but I am sure that we have a problem, most of which is the direct result of OpIndia declaring war on Wikipedia and sending an army of twitter followers to the Ayurveda ( | talk | history | links | watch | logs) page.
An incomplete history of Wikipedia's previous attempts to solve this problem:
Question I occasionally see comments like "X says he scrambled his password, but we can't verify this". In such cases, is it technically possible to ask the users "are you sure" and then reset the password without telling them what the new password is? Or does the software not allow that? If the answer is yes, should we? -- Guy Macon ( talk) 14:49, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
If the community has determined that Ayurveda is pseudoscience, then ArbCom - which does not make content determinations -- must treat it as pseudoscience and enforce against it any sanctions which are routinely used against pseudoscience. ArbCom has absolutely no remit to overturn a community determination about content. ArbCom's personal or collective opinions on the matter are completely irrelevant, since its hands are tied by the community decision.
That being said, ArbCom could exclude Ayurveda from any specific DS simply by changing the wording of the text and excluding Ayurveda from the definition of "pseudoscience" for the purposes of that sanction.
Beyond My Ken ( talk) 23:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)
This strikes me as a tempest in a teapot. I am certain that Pseudoscience DS apply. I also think that that job of arbcom is not to adjudicate content. I asked you all some years ago to vacate the nonsense demarcation that a now-disgraced arbitrator penned oh-these-many years ago. The time is now to vacate that. An arbitration decision that says what is or is not pseudoscience is just not a good idea.
If there is a reasonable conflict/discussion about whether arguments about pseudoscience is relevant to a page, the pseudoscience DS are relevant. Obviously, it is relevant to ayurveda. That is as far as arbcom should be moving. I recommend vacating all the attempted demarcation and letting the community get back to business. Yes, that means that DS could be applied to pages relating to psychoanalysis (this is eminently reasonable). After all, WP:FRINGE works pretty well now in comparison to when this case (to which I was a party) was decided.
Love, etc.
jps ( talk) 00:50, 1 September 2020 (UTC)
It is troubling that discretionary sanctions are still in force for a case that is 14 years old. Shouldn't these sanctions have an automatic sunset? The point of sanctions is to solve a problem. Once the problem is solved we should default to our usual rules, which should be sufficient. If a set of sanctions is in force for (to pick an arbitrary term) three years, and the problem still isn't solved, then it's probably time to have a another case to figure out why the problem hasn't been solved, and maybe change the sanctions to something stronger. If an area like American politics is a source of perpetual problems, then we should write that into our community rules and make whatever measures are needed permanent. Jehochman Talk 10:24, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
My views align closer to KrakatoaKatie relative to not knowing what vitamins I should take, if any. As for the content and conduct issues, there appears to be some agreement that ArbCom does not exist to adjudicate article content; count me as a +1. On the other hand, my perspective about DS is that, in practice for the most part, they are neither resolutions nor binding solutions to resolve conduct issues because you cannot bind what is malleable or what was left unresolved. Isn't that why we're here now? DS obliquely, if not directly in some instances, regulate content because they create unintentional hurdles in an environment that is ripe for WP:POV creep, perceived or otherwise. AE grants admins super-authority by allowing them to impose irreversible sanctions against editors in a unilateral action at their sole discretion. In essence, ArbCom is throwing the ball back into the court of irreconcilable differences allowing a single admin to grab the ball and run to the goalpost of their choice (which creates an in the eyes of the beholder decision-making process) and they can do so with no concern of an interception or penalty flag. Most of us try to AGF but as a realist, I'm not quite convinced that decisions based on sole discretion are completely void of prejudice or bias - especially when it involves issues that already failed other DR processes. Give me a choice between sole discretion vs a panel of independent thinkers, and I'll choose the latter. Bottomline, my perception of ArbCom's responsibility is to impose binding solutions to Wikipedia conduct disputes that neither community discussion nor administrators have successfully resolved.. Editors who are elected to serve on ArbCom possess certain qualities that have garnered the community's trust, in part because they have demonstrated sound judgment, fairness and neutrality. There is also the thought that several heads are better than one because it adds an element of diversity. Some of the issues that are perceived to be disruption in highly controversial topic areas are "ended" (not always resolved) by a single admin making a judgment call, and in those cases, the potential for such decisions to be unknowingly influenced by POV or prejudice against an editor is highly plausible. The latter is why the community elected a panel - ArbCom - to handle the difficult cases. Somewhere beyond that is the reason we have so many essays. Atsme Talk 📧 22:36, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
It's not a content decision to decide whether something fits the scope. Ayurveda obviously fits the scope, we all know that here, so that part isn't exceptional. What is exceptional is that nobody wants to say it.
Thus, I think the real lesson here is to create non-inflammatory scopes for a DS. Calling something a "psuedoscience", even under the language of WP:BROADLY, is perceived as inflammatory I guess, which is probably why Arbs don't want to say it. But nobody would hesitate clarifying NRA falls under "organizations associated with [gun control]". PSDS is probably the only active DS with a perceived inflammatory scope. But, as above, AC ultimately still has to decide if an article fits within the scope of a DS, because it's the only body that can, and it has to make this decision (even implicitly) every time it reviews an ARCA for scope overreach. Shying away from that for PSDS doesn't seem like a good idea. Easy way out seems to be a comment along the lines of NYB. ProcrastinatingReader ( talk) 02:55, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
Is aurveda unambiguously pseudoscience? Is the study of ayurveda permeated by pseudoscience? Are these the same thing? That would be an ecumenical matter, but that is not the question here. ArbCom would not mandate that a thing is or is not pseudoscience, they would mandate whether it falls into the pseudoscience DS. Which IMO it does, per WP:BROADLY, because there is, at the very least, solid support in RS for the idea that it is.
There appears to be consensus that the term pseudoscience can be included in the lead, as it is well sourced and in line with our approach to other pseudomedical modalities (as shorthand, Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine or SCAM). The main problem is an endless succession of new single-purpose accounts following a thread on Twitter, a side effect of blowback from recent statements by the Indian medical Association characterising people practising medicine based solely on study of folkways as quacks. This is complicated by the prevalence of ayurveda in India, whose pluralistic and multitheistic culture leads to an acceptance of quasi-religious beliefs as inherently valid. This lack of judgmentalism - a core Indian value - means that quasi-religions alternatives-to-medicine are accorded parity of respect with reality-based medicine, including by the government via its Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy (AYUSH).
Per DGG's points below, when the original DS were passed on homeopathy in 2006, it was considered thoroughly refuted by informed scientists but it was still actively promoted by national health systems. Since then, Switzerland, the UK, Australia, France, Spain and Russia have been through high level reviews and have recommended withdrawal of funding. In 2006 there were several homeopathic hospitals in the UK funded by the NHS. Now, there are none. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Homeopathy would not happen today, we would simply topic ban Dana Ullman.
The status of aurveda today is not dissimilar from that of homeopathy in 2006. Because it uses pharmacologically active doses it is more resistant to trivial refutation than homeopathy, but the trajectory is similar: it is a pseudomedical system with a growing base of evidence that its fundamental approach is incorrect, and, crucially, it cannot self-correct because any honest test of whether substance A or substance B is better for condition X gives an ideologically unacceptable answer: neither. The reality-based study of herbal preparations - "does this herb contain molecules that may have a curative property" - is called pharmacognosy, ayurveda starts from the incorrect premise that some herb is always a cure and that nothing else is necessary.
The DS are there to manage behavioural issues brought on by asymmetric motivation and the collision of quasi-religious belief with Wikipedia's NPOV policy. That is present here. It needs the provisions of DS now for exactly the same reasons that homeopathy did historically, and in 10-15 years' time these too will probably have become superfluous save for rapidly separating the occasional True Believer from the article. Guy ( help! - typo?) 07:58, 10 September 2020 (UTC) [edited for brevity]
There is justification for a case here, but not because some Indians are pestering editors at Ayurveda with spurious complaints. A potential case should look at the behaviour of editors who have been misrepresenting sources, rejecting needed corrections, and defending the unsupported "Ayurveda (AY) is pseudoscience (PS)" claim as sacrosanct. Editors and Admins have violated WP:V and WP:NPOV to create the article that is causing so much distress.
The Hindu Post has an article calling out the bias on this page, it's worth a look. The laughable idea being floated is that some unidentified tweet is responsible for the flood of criticism, as if to say critiques have no merit.
Today in
this edit,
Guy removed recent corrections to the page, referring to them as "bowing to the Twitter mob", and restored false claims, including a wildly inaccurate claim to first paragraph of the Lede, reinserting: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) characterises the practice of modern medicine by Ayurvedic practitioners as quackery.
In no way does the IMA refer to all practitioners of AY in their statement. The
IMA clearly states that some practitioners of alternative therapies in India are representing themselves as qualified to practice modern medicine, but aren't properly licensed, and they are (rightly) categorized as "quacks".
Google revealed no consensus for "Ayurveda is pseudoscience", but rather justified removing the label. There is no mention of PS in: Merriam Webster, Brittanica, online dictionary, WebMD, John's Hopkins, NIH, or Cancer.gov
Wikipedia is the only major source calling AY PS in unqualified terms. The WP community cannot override the scientific community using shoddy, outdated sources, misrepresenting sources, and WP:SYNTH:
A look at the article
LEDE:
The theory and practice of Ayurveda is pseudoscientific
Sources:
BODY
1) Today, ayurvedic medicine is considered pseudoscientific on account of its confusion between reality and metaphysical concepts.
Source:
2) Ayurvedic practitioner Ram P Manohar writes that Ayurveda has been alternatively characterized as pseudoscientific, protoscientific, and unscientific, and proposes himself that it should be termed "trans-scientific".
Source:
3) Research into ayurveda has been characterized as pseudoscience. Both the lack of scientific soundness in the theoretical foundations of ayurveda and the quality of research have been criticized.
Sources:
petrarchan47 คุ ก 23:55, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
It seems to me that arbitrations are a means to support that admins in highly contentious situations, that is, in situations which they cannot deal with on their own. So we have arbitration, and then perhaps a discretionary sanction so that the admins have something behind her or him when things get rough. Arbitration has declared some subject areas pseudoscience, those "which are generally considered pseudoscience by the scientific community may properly contain that information and may be categorized as pseudoscience." If arbitration was out of step with the "don't involve themselves in content disputes" well it's too late. Whether Ayurveda is a pseudoscience, "characteristically fail[s] to adhere to scientific standards and methods" or is fringe to the mainstream science is not disputed by numerous sources. Arbs don't have to agree to anything here except to support something they in the past have already agreed on. I don't see the difficulty.
And we don't have to compare Ayurveda to anything. As an alternative medicine system it is thousands of years old so we can expect there to be a huge divide between those who practice or support Ayurveda and modern medicine. I would disagree that the trajectory of Ayurveda is similar to homeopathy. Ayurveda has been around for a very long time, predates organized religion, and physicians are still being trained; my suspicion is that it will be around for a lot longer. None of that matters, though. As long as Wikipedia has both taken the mainstream scientific view and Ayurveda fits that view, then, that's what we deal with in articles. If an admin needs a clarification in a situation that is beyond one person to handle what's the sticking point. (And as aside. I think at times we use pseudoscience and fringe as weapons. Fringe simply means something is not in the mainstream. Yet (possibly). Most if not all research begins as fringe and as non-compliant with our MEDRS articles.) Littleolive oil ( talk) 22:37, 11 September 2020 (UTC)
I've known for years that the Indian medicine articles were hopelessly biased and I've also known for years to not even bother to make any attempt to remove what I see as the blatant bias. India does have doctors and nurses well-trained in western medicine but many of them leave the country because they can earn more money elsewhere and those that don't leave almost invariably choose to practice in the large cities. So that leaves most Indians with Indian medicine as their only choice. So what that comes down to is that we have our encyclopedia saying that most of the people in India are being treated by quacks using pseudoscience. The Indian parliament is not calling their practitioners of Indian medicine quacks. So either they are so ill-informed that they can't understand that only western medicine is real medicine or they just don't care about their own people. I believe that it is racist to call a good number of the Indian people either stupid or uncaring or both. Knowing what I was getting into, but never the less I tried awhile ago to change some wording that I felt was racist in one of the Indian medicine articles and eventually had to give up with many wasted words and a fair amount of wasted time. Quoting Petrarchan above, I was met with the same argument: "The Indian Medical Association (IMA) characterises the practice of modern medicine by Ayurvedic practitioners as quackery. In no way does the IMA refer to all practitioners of AY in their statement. The IMA clearly states that some practitioners of alternative therapies in India are representing themselves as qualified to practice modern medicine, but aren't properly licensed, and they are (rightly) categorized as 'quacks'." IMO both Petrarchan's and Littleolve oil's posts are both spot on. Gandydancer ( talk) 03:16, 13 September 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by BD2412 at 18:33, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I write to request the removal or limitation of restrictions currently imposed on User:BrownHairedGirl. Per the decision in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Portals#Remedies issues on 29 January 2020, BrownHairedGirl is prohibited from "engaging in discussions about portals anywhere on Wikipedia", and from "interacting with or commenting about Northamerica1000 anywhere on Wikipedia", both subject to appeal "in six months". BrownHairedGirl has studiously observed these restrictions for over eight months now, and has continued to contribute excellent work to the encyclopedia since then. Another editor and I are therefore preparing to renominate her for adminship, and it is possible that either of the aforementioned issues will be raised by participants in the discussion. I therefore request that the specified restrictions be lifted, either in their entirety, or at least to the extent needed for the purpose of fully engaging any issues that may arise during the course of the RfA.
Additional comment: I don't understand the point of allowing these prohibitions to be appealed in six months if they are going to remain in place after perfect behavior with respect to these areas for eight months. What, exactly, would BHG need to have done to merit the removal of these prohibitions after six months? BD2412 T 15:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Thanks to BD2412 for making this request. I have absolutely no desire or intention to get involved in portals again, or to resume interaction with NA1K. However, I would like the restrictions to be lifted because:
For my own peace-of-mind, I intend to continue to observe the self-denying ordinance which I posted on 24 January, and also to avoid contact with NA1K. However, it would be helpful to at least be able to reply to comments at RFA, and preferably to also at least have the option of making a brief factual reply to NA1K if our paths cross at a discussion venue such as CFD, where I am a regular participant. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 18:47, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
intensely unpleasant wiki-personal experiences with BHG. The last encounter I recall with SMcCandlish was at ANI in March 2019: I had banned SMcC from my talk in response to their aggression, then found SMcC editing other pages of mine from which they were clearly excluded. SMcCandlish then made a wholly bogus allegation that I had harassed him by email. The unpleasantness was indeed intense, but it was entirely from SMC. -- BrownHairedGirl (talk) • ( contribs) 19:49, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
reiteratemy views; I simply stated that a) my views have not changed, and b) I will not comment further. The claim that my remarks were
designed to be hurtfulis the polar opposite of my intent. Yet that very self-denial is being weaponised against me.
In the interest of fairness relative to an RfA, I find myself in general agreement with Beeblebrox's statement below in the "Portals: Arbitrator views and discussion" section, "I would also be ok with a temporary lifting of the restriction, so long as it is made clear that it is only lifted at the RFa page, during BHG's RFA. I do not feel like a compelling case has been made to entirely lift the restriction at this time".
I sure hope an RfA does not become all about me, for some reason or another. If the temporary restrictions are permitted, rather than stating my user name repeatedly throughout an RfA, the phrase "the user" could be used instead. Otherwise, it could come across to casual readers and page skimmers as a regurgitation of more ranting against NA1K (me), preserved in the RfA archives for all time. North America 1000 22:30, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
BrownHairedGirl is indefinitely restricted from interacting with or commenting about Northamerica1000 anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the ordinary exceptions. This restriction may be appealed in six months.
"The pair of you have engaged in a series of mischievous attempts at specious argument"
"Your utterly dishonest attempts to claim that WP:NCM guides the use of "compositions" rather than "musical compositions". It says no such thing. That is pure fabrication on your part."
"Your blatantly false assertions that..."
"Now get the hell off my talk page, and clean up your act while there is still time."
"(And for clarity, this is my talk page, so I get the last word here. Do NOT reply to this here)."
"The substantive position of the pair of them is a series of specious arguments thrown out in a blatant FUD exercise to support their WP:IDONTLIKEIT stance
"To top it all, Francis has been using his barrage of falsehoods as a tool in his attempts to bully me into withdrawing the nomination"
"The only time sink here is Francis's strategy of disrupting consensus formation by barrages of FUD and falsehood. Creating a shitstorm and then claiming that the said self-started shitstorm is a time-sink is a WP:GAMEing strategy, and Francis's contempt for truth extends even to claiming in his post...
"This pair of truth-averse, tag-teaming bullies...
The verdict of the ArbCom case back in January was that BHG is allowed to run at RfA at any time. That implies she should get a clear and unobstructed run at it. Since she's almost certainly going to be asked questions about portals and NA1K, preventing her from answering those questions would hobble the RfA attempt and make a cruel joke of ArbCom's determination that she's allowed to run. I think all bans should be lifted completely- failing that, they should be lifted temporarily for the RfA. Reyk YO! 19:22, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
As noted below, I have recused from clerking as I am one of the nominators. I think that, personally, the restrictions should at least be suspended for the RfA. I also think any RfA for a user with active restrictions will have questions from voters about said restrictions. If the RfA candidate was not able to answer such questions, it would be unfair for the candidate as good faith questions left unanswered for a long while are often frowned upon at RfA (I understand that if the restrictions are properly and clearly noted in the RfA, voters should see why the question could not be answered, but it cannot be taken for granted that voters will see such a note). By suspending the restrictions for the RfA, it gives the nominee a chance to answer questions about the issues behind the restrictions. This also gives them a chance for them to show that they understand why those restrictions are in place, and show that they have / will continue to comply with the restrictions once they are back in force. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 21:30, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
I'd be interested in the stats for people who have been desysopped with the "May regain via RfA" provision. I can't think of anyone offhand who has passed RfA after that. But that's not an issue of desysopping or ArbCom, it's the ridiculous standards applied at RfA these days. It's closer to "Requests for Sainthood". There are a dozen really solid people I can think of who would have been a shoo-in ten years ago but would probably fail today: you have to have created FAs, engaged in dispute resolution processes, engaged in some (but not too many) debates, voted Delete enough and Keep enough at AfD, all without pissing off agenda editors. Guy ( help! - typo?) 22:40, 10 October 2020 (UTC)
When an editor is sanctioned, edits productively without violating the sanction, and appeals after the minimum appeal time expires, the sanction is usually lifted because it's no longer needed and lifting it is better for everyone. This case seems to fit that mold. BHG has "done her time" as it were, there's no reason to extend it. The "portal wars" are over. Given her commitments above it's unlikely that the restrictions are actually needed to prevent any problems going forward. We're not going to learn anything relevant in the future that we haven't already learned after eight months. Why take up ArbCom's and other editors' time with another appeal down the road instead of lifting the restrictions now? Le v!v ich 03:20, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
If BHG is to participate in an RfA, these sanctions would necessarily have to be lifted, as this is surely an issue that someone is going to raise. Since she has preemptively agreed to continue to abide by the spirit and general letter of those sanctions outside the scope of the nominating process, and isn’t going to directly interact with NA, the committee should absolutely accept the amendment as proposed. Symmachus Auxiliarus ( talk) 03:33, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
"May regain via RfA" is pretty much a death sentence for regaining the tools which an otherwise competent and respected long-time user who knows how to put them to frequent, good, and indispensable use - and the ArbCom is fully aware of its consequences. In face of the character assassination that is unavoidably imparted by a desysoping of this kind for which no appeal is permitted, in order to avoid compromising an intended new run for adminshipship, the only solution is to completely vacate any existing restrictions.
I strongly recommend all commenting here to read both BGH's statement following her desysoping and her Shermanesque comment to Xaosflux and to grant BrownHairedGirl even more respect for having the courage to nevertheless remain active despite her statement. That's what I call 'true dedication' to a worthy cause despite the inadequacies and iniquities of its Arbitration Committee. This statement by Swarm puts it best. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 04:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Reply to Guy: I totally agree that the modern expectations at RfA are far too high and the new breed of voters caused by the reforms, many of whom are very inexperienced and only vote 'as per', can cause an unexpected sway in the result. OTOH, most serious candidatures do appear to pass with a healthy majority. That said, unfortunately, some candidates, and admins - including me - have been unable to turn the other cheek in the long term, to some nasty individuals who harass and gaslight us, and avoid pissing them off. You can see where it got us. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 04:25, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Reply to
Worm That Turned: I'm not sure: 'the desysop was a close thing in Arbcom decisions'
- we don't know what discussions take place off-stage. Naturally some desyopings and/or sanctions are without question absolutely the only possible outcome. Willing to nominate
BrownHairedGirl is indeed a truly equitable gesture. However, it does seem to clash somewhat with your not wanting to permanently lift the restrictions entirely.
Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (
talk) 05:04, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Setting aside the merits of this particular case, it does occur to me that having an un-recused arbitrator telling a party that they would nominate them for adminship isn't ... ideal. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 04:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Remedy 1, “prohibited ... engaging in discussions about portals anywhere on Wikipedia” should be wound back. There’s no good reason why she shouldn’t be able to comment on her past involvement with ongoing things such as portal categorisation. I would advise BHG to not mass nominate portals for deletion.
Remedy 2 I would not touch. At RfA, BHG may very well be tempted by questioners to engage on the topic of past behaviours involving herself and User:Northamerica1000. However, every sensible question should be well answered by a statement that does not include “commenting about Northamerica1000”. BHG’s RfA2 should be about BHG, not about another editor. BHG should not comment on Northamerica1000.
— SmokeyJoe ( talk) 06:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
Regarding Kudpung's statement (about Worm That Turned's initial response as an Arb): "Willing to nominate BrownHairedGirl is indeed a truly equitable gesture. However, it does seem to clash somewhat with your not wanting to permanently lift the restrictions entirely." WTT basically offering to be a BHG nominator for AfD (but simply getting beaten to it) is also an obvious reason to recuse. The optics are terrible, even if WTT's rede so far on the request is skeptical beyond the "may answer at RfA" point.
As for the heart of the matter, I agree that being able to answer questions at RfA about this should be permitted, on the same basis that someone under a T-ban is allowed to discuss it, as a T-ban and series of issues that led up to it, in an administrative or community proceeding (like this ARCA) that pertains to their conduct. It's the same sort of "the community examining one's behavior and judgment" meta-discussion.
I also tend to agree that the portal-war stuff is old news, and a continuing topic-ban about it doesn't serve a preventative purpose in this case. However, the interaction-ban stuff might not be no longer needed, and we have yet to hear from the other party. I've had some intensely unpleasant wiki-personal experiences with BHG of my own, so I'm skeptical that everything is just kosher between those two editors now, even though I also find most of BHG's work and actions constructive and of value to the project. (This kind of "intelligence and good faith != suitable temperament" distinction is why we have RfA to begin with, and is also a major part of WP:CIR.)
There's not a close connection between T-bans and disruptive behavior that is topical, on the one hand, and I-bans and unreasonably hostile inter-personal behavior, on the other. They're entirely severable, both as remedies and as behavior patterns that lead to remedies. Next, "it'll be hard to pass RfA again" isn't a rationale to remove any ban, anyway. Bans should be lifted when they no longer serve their project-protecting purpose. Not for other "reasons". (But they definitely should be lifted under that condition, whether they impede the editor's constructive editing or not.)
PS: I can think of at least two desysopped admins who regained the bit, so I don't buy this "the 'May regain adminship via RfA' clause is an admin death sentence" nonsense. Trust once lost is hard to regain, in every aspect of life, but usually not impossible.
PPS: I also do not buy the argument that appeals filed by third-parties are invalid. They're uncommon, but I myself benefited from one, years ago, so I know for absolute fact that they're permissible.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 07:17, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I hadn't looked into it until just now, but on CIVIL stuff, BHG's pattern of dismissiveness toward, mischaracterization of the concerns of, and eagerness to battleground against editors who disagree with her seems to have actually worsened since the RFARB, e.g.
[7]. In the next example, someone else was being a bit heavy-handed (after repeat attempts to get traction with BHG on the matter), but BHG's response would probably doom most RfA candidates:
[8]. And it got much worse from there. The wording gave me a hunch, which turned out correct: BHG has a habit of hyperbolically accusing other editors of "
weaponizing" [insert something here] against her, and it's often combined with strings of other accusations, e.g.: "Your cynical, bullying, abusive, edit-warring attempts to weaponise ...
"
[9]. Those last two diffs are best examined in their entire multi-page context (
here, too). The short version is that the other editor, RexxS, availed of REFACTOR to do list-formatting repair on the discussion, for ACCESS reasons, and BHG engaged in an extended editwar to stop him, selectively quoting TPG and pretending that REFACTOR wasn't an exception and that ACCESS didn't matter, not because she disagreed on the merits of any of that, or didn't really understand the
WP:P&G pages that applied, but just to stick it to someone she was having a real-content dispute with in the same discussion. This is a total "WtF?!" She even tried to ANI him
[10], where she ASCII-screamed "STOP YOUR LYING
" in bolded allcaps at him over and over and over. While RexxS had erred in reverting a whole post of hers during that fiasco, I really don't think
this was called for: "After RexxS's repeated lies and vile smears [....] I really thought that I had already seen the very worst of Wikipedia, but RexxS's despicable conduct today has plumbed depths an order of magnitude worse than I have seen before.
" That was just block-worthy on its own. This "weaponization" stuff is usually also in close proximity to declarations that people are "banned" from her talk page (see several diffs above, and unrelated one
here). While USERPAGE encourages us to respect requests to avoid non-required user-talk interaction, it's a quasi-privilege admins basically don't have, due to ADMINACCT requiring them to be responsive to editors raising concerns about their decisions (though BHG attempted to subject me to such a "ban" while she was still an admin, now that I think of it).
I was looking for something else in BHG's user-talk history (any post-RFARB issues between the two of us in her user-talk that I might have forgotten). Instead, in just a couple of minutes I ran into more (and quite recent) evidence for opposition than what I'd already considered maybe presenting at a re-RfA. This does not bode well. What will one find with a search for an intersection of "BrownHairedGirl" and "lies/liar"? Or "despicable", "vile", "abuse/abusive", "bully[ing]"? I don't want to look. I was originally critical of the desysop decision (for procedural/policy reasons)
[11], but everything I'm seeing now suggests it was the correct move from an ADMINCOND perspective.
—
SMcCandlish
☏
¢ 😼 16:51, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
Lets be clear about this, this request is entirely about making the re-RFA process for BHG easier and avoiding the consequences of their restrictions. BHG's ownership issues, editing behaviours as well as their conduct towards others, and the resulting lack of any admin willing to do anything about their fellow admin's behaviour and blatant refusal to abide by community-mandated policies are what led to the desysopping and restrictions with NA1000 in the first place. Either consider lifting the various restrictions on their merit, or do not. But unless BHG has had a radical change of personality in the intervening time period (rather than the situation being that the restrictions are doing their job), lifting them would be a mistake. Leaving the topic ban in place so they cant answer questions (if you are not going to lift it completely) is exactly what you should do. As anyone unfamiliar who shows up at the RFA will then have an accurate grasp of the circumstances. Claiming its 'unfair' they cannot answer questions about their restrictions is misleading. That is the result of BHG's behaviour, no one else's. It is not unfair to have to deal with a situation you created. What is 'unfair' is that a former admin should get preferential treatment. They recieved preferential treatment before the arbcom case, and now they are getting it after. It is extremely telling that WTT below says "The desysop was a close thing in Arbcom decisions" - anyone who has read the actual voting and the comments made by the arbiters there would have to be a blithering idiot to believe that gross mis-charactization of the comments there. That was not 'a close thing'. Arbcom's duty is towards the community as a whole, and this sort of blatant favoritism is a slap in the face to that end. The partisanship is not even superficially obscured here. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 13:36, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
I'm ambivalent as to whether the restrictions should be suspended for the duration of the RfA. At first glance, it seems reasonable for BHG to be able to answer questions about the issue. On the other hand, this does very much seem like special treatment and it is not ArbCom's responsibility to make this process easier for BHG. I might be more inclined have some sympathy for BHG were it not for my familiarity with the circumstances that led to her desysop, but I'll save those thoughts for when the RfA opens. Moreover, I am deeply troubled by WTT's unwillingness to recuse even after they have openly indicated their desire to serve as a nominator in BHG's re-RfA. LEPRICAVARK ( talk) 20:47, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
This would look like a double standard; having even the mildest of restrictions erased just for having complied with them for 6 months whereas for commonfolk that might require a couple years of sainthood. But I don't think that the intent was to prevent answering questions at an RFA and IMO it would be a good idea to waive them for responding at the RFA. Sincerely, North8000 ( talk) 12:21, 12 October 2020 (UTC)
A ban on working with portals and an interaction ban with NA1K were given to BHG 8 months ago. The terms of both of these bans explicitly allowed BHG to appeal them after 6 months. This request is that appeal. In my opinion, the question shouldn't be "has BHG done enough and behaved well enough to deserve overturning the ban?" Instead, the question should be, "has BHG specifically done anything to show that she is undeserving of being granted this appeal?" That would be my challenge to everyone here: can anyone point to anything that BHG has done in the last 8 months that is evidence that she's not ready for either of these bans to be permanently overturned? If the answer is no, then I think it's clear that we should grant the appeal. Because if we allow someone to appeal a ban after 6 months, and they've done nothing during that 6 months to be undeserving of that appeal, but we deny the appeal anyway, then what's the point of even allowing a user to make an appeal in the first place?
Is anyone truly worried that if these bans are overturned, BHG would dive right back into contentious actions with portals, and strike up a heated argument with NA1K? As far as I can tell, BHG has accepted her bans and diligently worked to ensure that she wasn't violating them. Above, she has stated that she would voluntarily continue to avoid NA1K as much as possible if the ban was lifted. Especially if her RfA succeeds, she would have to know that another blow-up with NA1K would land her right back at Arbcom for a swift desysop.
If we're willing to overturn the bans for the duration of the RfA, then we should just overturn them permanently. There is no need to treat editors like children who can't control their own behavior, especially after they've demonstrated that they've learned their lesson and accepted the consequences for the better part of a year. Besides, in this very discussion I see clear signs that NA1K is attempting to milk these bans for all they're worth: flailing around as if he's been shot in the heart because BHG pinged his username in this discussion (gasp!), making absurd requests that everyone refer to him as "the user" at the upcoming RfA instead of by his username, etc. It's getting ridiculous, and it's time to end it so that productive editors can dispense with childish, punitive punishments and get back to the business of writing an encyclopedia. ‑Scottywong | [comment] || 07:47, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Lifting the restriction is the best solution here, It's unfair to lift it for BHG but then keep it for NA1K (NA1K would have no reason to need it lifted but that's not the point - we cannot have one rule for one and one for another.), Generally speaking I would've preferred this to be lifted in s year or 2 not 6 months but looking at various options lifting it seems the best option. –
Davey2010
Talk 10:54, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever interacted with BrownHairedGirl (I don't get involved in categories much), however I've worked with NorthAmerica1000 and found him to be perfectly reasonable. Since BHG has not had any cause for objections to the topic ban to be lifted, I think it should just be lifted full stop. More specifically, I think any editor has the right to tell another editor to stay off their talk page if they have sufficient justification to do so. Ritchie333 (talk) (cont) 11:01, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
This is a comment about User:Beeblebrox's Motion below, feel free to move this to the other section if more appropriate. I don't think it is logical to tie a 24-hour countdown clock to an event that has not yet occurred - would we need to assume good faith that the second this occurs it is ok and a clock starts - and if the transclusion doesn't actually occur within 24 hours it is retroactively in violation? If you want to exempt that page, just exempt it for a fixed period (e.g. for one month) - if the RfA never starts it would expire, and if it does start RfA pages are already not expected to be edited after RfA closure. — xaosflux Talk 15:02, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
Whether it's blocks or Arbcom action, we should not be punitive. If there's a track record without trouble, Arbcom should agree to lift the measures. 8 months is plenty. Just lift them. Temporarily lifting them is no solution in my opinion, because it shows !voters in the RfA that Arbcom does not trust her. Let the community have an unencumbered view of the candidate. But mostly because there is evidence there's no longer a need for the sanctions. -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 16:05, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
I support lifting at least for the RFA (which is being discussed as a general exception at Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#RFC: BANEX exception for permissions requests anyway). While I am aware of BHG unfortunately having some civility issues, generally BHG is civil and has a good understanding of WP policy and I think BHG's view that many portals were unsuitable was correct and BHG was getting rid of junk from our encyclopedia (and I speak as someone who used to favour keeping almost anything). Crouch, Swale ( talk) 17:36, 13 October 2020 (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.
Remedies 1 & 2 of the Portals case are temporarily lifted, only at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/BrownHairedGirl 2 and related pages, and only until the conclusion of the RfA process.
@
Beeblebrox: I've copyedited by adding the words "for 24 hours before the RfA is transcluded and
". This will allow BrownHairedGirl to mention the arbitration case if she wishes in her candidate statement and/or her answers to the standard questions, which are typically completed before the RfA is transcluded. If you disagree with this addition, please revert it and I'll propose it as a separate motion.
Am I correct to assume that "active RFA" encompasses the time until the RFA is closed one way or another, including time it is on hold if there is a crat chat? Regards So Why 07:07, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
@ Xaosflux: I'm the one who added the reference to 24 hours (the original motion just covered the period of the RfA itself, which would have created a logistical problem, as I noted above). I didn't mean it as a rigid time limit, just in the sense of "shortly before the RfA is transcluded." If BHG said she needed 48 or 72 hours, I would have no objection (though I don't think a month would be necessary). But I see from a discussion on User talk:BrownHairedGirl that she and her nominator are planning to draft the nomination statement and responses to the standard questions off-wiki and post them when they are ready to proceed, which I think resolves this concern. Regards, Newyorkbrad ( talk) 15:59, 13 October 2020 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by The C of E at 07:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I would like to request removal of my Troubles restrictions because I do feel that the lesson has been learned. I feel I have shown in the past I am able to edit in these areas evenhandedly with John Brady (Sinn Féin politician) and Gerry Mullan (politician) being some examples. The crux of the ban was based on me allegedly trying to get Londonderry on DYK on a politically sensitive day which was not desirable to consensus. While I have been under the ban, 1831 Londonderry City by-election ran on DYK on Ulster Day so I feel its not been done consistently. As for the judicial review article, I already explained that was an unfortunate coincidence and I had not been thinking about it at the time I wrote the article.
If removal is not acceptable, can I request then that it be amended to permit editing of sporting articles. The reason I ask is because I asked @ Barkeep49: if I could edit GAA articles and he said no because of the sport's political culture. But most players and clubs are not political and I have done work in there previously without concern ( Seán Quigley, Killian Clarke, Ian Burke, Gerry Culliton, Cillian O'Connor, PSNI GAA and Irish Guards GAA). So, if full removal is not desired, I would like it amended for clarity and so I am able to continue working on sporting articles please. The C of E God Save the Queen! ( talk) 07:36, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
The
WP:AE request mentioned a parallel discussion which is now at
WP:AN archive. That WP:AN discussion was closed with the restrictions at
WP:Editing restrictions#The C of E. Those restrictions handle my greatest concern as they seem to prevent further problems regarding DYK. Accordingly I am relaxed about whatever the Committee wants to do regarding the WP:AE topic ban. Nevertheless, I have to record that "allegedly trying to get Londonderry on DYK on a politically sensitive day
" is an own-goal in an appeal.
Johnuniq (
talk) 09:14, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
I participated in the AE discussion, and gave my reasons for why I supported imposing a topic ban there. I don't have anything in particular to add to that. I will say that the fact that a community discussion at AN also came to the conclusion that there was disruptive behavior which merited sanctions shows that outcome to be a reasonable one. I think best at this time if the editor does productive editing in other topic areas, and then revisits this in six months or a year. Seraphimblade Talk to me 06:13, 30 November 2020 (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.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 14:56, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Does the standard DS 1RRs excludeinclude all of the exemptions listed at
WP:3RRNO? The DS 1RR notices, eg
Template:American politics AE, states solely:
However, the WP policy WP:1RR makes reference to ArbCom's 1RRs and states:With respect to the WP:1RR restriction:
- Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
- Edits made which remove or otherwise change any material placed by clearly established consensus, without first obtaining consensus to do so, may be treated in the same manner as clear vandalism.
- Clear vandalism of any origin may be reverted without restriction.
(emphasis mine). But none of ArbCom's procedures or templates make reference to WP:3RRNO, and the "clear vandalism" exemption that the templates does provide does not encapsulate everything on that list (indeed, it is only bullet #4). Extra exemptions from 3RRNO include copyright violations, material illegal in the US like "child pornography and links to pirated software" & BLP violations.Additional restrictions on reverting may be imposed by the Arbitration Committee, under arbitration enforcement [...]. These restrictions are generally called 1RR. The one-revert rule is analogous to the three-revert rule as described above, with the words "more than three reverts" replaced by "more than one revert".
To add: There is a practical impact here. My query stems from Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Full_protection_and_certain_politicians_(you_know_the_ones), where there was a mention of Special:Diff/987532889. An admin suggested that reverting this would burn an editor's 1 revert of the day, even though it's clearly an unsourced BLP violation, and thus should be exempt under WP:3RRNO. But it's not in the DS 1RR exemptions.
Does the standard DS 1RRs exclude all of the exemptions listed at WP:3RRNO?"
No. Those exemptions apply to all reverts everywhere, even if it's not explicitly stated in this particular 1RR template. The net effect of the wording in that template is to add "enforcing clearly established consensus" to the list of other exemptions like reverting vandalism and child pornography. To that effect it's worded poorly. It might be better to just say something along the lines of: In addition to the exemptions listed at WP:3RRNO, edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from the edit-warring restriction. In order to be considered "clearly established" the consensus must be proven by prior talk-page discussion.
That's my opinion at least. ~
Awilley (
talk) 15:24, 9 November 2020 (UTC)
Any restriction based on revert counting offers a first-mover advantage. It seems to me that the default should be to enforce BRD, rather than arguing how many angels are dancing on the head of a particular revert. BRD is a long-standing consensus view of how Wikipedia should work, and it puts the onus on the editor seeking to make the change, to achieve consensus.
The exception should be removal of controversial or negative material, where we should err on the side of exclusion unless the sourcing is robust.
I feel that there is too much emphasis on counting reverts and not enough on taking these disputes to Talk and working them out through methodical discussion and analysis. That's the behaviour we're trying to drive, right? Guy ( help! - typo?) 13:01, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Volunteer Marek at 07:57, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
This is an appeal of my topic ban “from the history of Poland during World War II, including the Holocaust in Poland” as enacted on September 22, 2019, per the portion of the decision which states This topic ban may be appealed after one year has elapsed. [15]
Both myself and User:Icewhiz were topic-banned as a result of the case and we were both subject to an interaction ban. Subsequently for reasons which the committee should be familiar with, and which I mention below, Icewhiz was indefinitely banned from English Wikipedia, and then by the office, from all WikiMedia projects. Also relevant is the fact that WikiMedia’s Trust and Safety team assisted me in addressing the off-wiki harassment that Icewhiz was pursuing against me. [16] [17]
At the outset I would like to bring to the committee’s attention the fact that my topic ban which resulted from the case was NOT based on any issue with the contents of my edit to article space. There were no findings of facts relating to POV or abuse of sources or any other similar issues. Instead, the topic ban was the result of the nature of my interactions with User:Icewhiz, on talk pages and various discussions. In particular I received the TB because the committee found that both of us displayed a battleground attitude, that I was incivil to Icewhiz, that I accused him of “making stuff up” (incidentally, Icewhiz’s own topic ban was based at least partly on the committee having similar issues with Icewhiz’s edits, particularly on BLPs [18]). At same time the committee acknowledged that Icewhiz had made false accusations against me, [19] made ethnically derogatory remarks, used inflammatory rhetoric and attempted to make extremely insulting insinuations against me. [20]
Essentially, the committee did not find anything wrong with my edits but did issue the topic ban for my incivil attitude towards him. This is understandable as I acknowledge that I did not always react well to Icewhiz’s provocations, especially given their extremely serious nature. I want to stress that Icewhiz was the only person that has managed to provoke such a reaction in me, and that even committee members acknowledged that there were no such problems with my editing outside of this narrow dispute (Arbitrator PreMeditatedChaos wrote in one of the relevant Findings of Fact: even Icewhiz has pointed out that VM's behavior is not an issue except in this topic area [21])
As such, in addition to more than a full year having elapsed, with Icewhiz being indefinitely banned from all WikiMedia project the reason for the topic ban has ceased to exist. In fact, given the subsequent events – the campaign of harassment that Icewhiz launched against me and numerous other Wikipedia editors (including several admins) – I had considered appealing the topic ban even before the one year deadline elapsed. In the end, because I was (and still am) very busy in real life with work and family issue, I decided that I might as well wait out the full year.
Even though Icewhiz is no longer on Wikipedia (although there was extensive socking in early 2020, however, the arbitration motion you guys passed in May [22] which implemented the 500/30 restriction seems to have been quite successful in curbing it) I do want to note that I have had quite a bit of time to rethink and reflect upon the events leading up to the arbitration case and the topic ban. I fully admit that I overreacted at the time and should have worked harder at keeping my cool. Lack of subsequent issues (*) in the year following should show that.
At the same time I also want to mention that my overall engagement with Wikipedia has been substantially reduced. This is mostly due to being much busier in real life for reasons related to the covid pandemic.
Thanks for the consideration and take care of yourselves
(*) In the interest of full disclosure I should note that early on, about a week or two after the enactment of the topic ban, I did violate it and was given a short block as a result of an AE report, enacted by Bradv. The topic ban went into effect on September 22, 2019. The block was on October 10, 2019. I have not been sanctioned for any violations of the topic ban since then (more than a year) and that instance happened in part due to my misunderstanding of the scope of the ban (the edit concerned an author’s work about World War I, although the same author was also known for writing about World War II)
@ Beeblebrox: Honestly, since this was in April/May of last year, which is eons in Wikipedia time I don't even remember off the top off my head what this was about (apparently, Levivich couldn't remember it either since he had to go do digging for it only after your prompted them to follow up their vague accusations). Checking back through history, it seems that with regards to his diff 2 and diff 3 (same thing) there was an allegation that an edit of my violated the topic ban. I thought at the time they didn't since my edit concerned POST WAR Polish history, which would be outside the scope ban. There was some discussion on the issue, with finally User:El C saying that "the topic ban violation is not clear cut" [23]. Basically, while my edit was NOT about the topic there was a chunk of (newly added!) material in the relevant article that was (which I didn't touch, as El C explicitly noted "Volunteer Marek limits himself just to a discussion of the post-war time period (which he has been doing)"). However, he also pointed out that the fact that a different portion of the article dealt with WW2 would make it difficult for me to discuss some of the relevant issues on talk w/o violating the TB. That was a fair point. As a result I said ok, just to be sure, I won't edit the article anymore [24].
Sometimes it's very difficult to know what is covered and what is not covered by a given topic ban, especially since, as I noted elsewhere, World War 2 casts such a huge shadow over Polish history and culture that editing almost anything related to Poland will sooner or later bring you close to that topic. If this here was a topic ban violation (and it's not clear it was) then it was inadvertent one and I think I proceeded correctly - after it was brought to an admin's attention and they said it was "borderline", I disengaged from the article. I haven't edited it since. The matter was resolved and it hasn't come up again.
Levivich was NOT involved in this dispute in any capacity. I'm not sure why he feels that he in particular has to bring it here or what his motivation for doing so is. Volunteer Marek 01:20, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
Unfortunately, I am not able to support this appeal, because I do not think it would be a net positive for the project or the topic area. Just over a week ago, they inserted this unhelpful comment on a dispute that they are not involved in. [25] Note, no evidence that I was edit warring was presented, nor did VM file a complaint against edit warring at another page, to be decided by an administrator. (I believe this is a spill-over from a content dispute on List of genocides by death toll, where VM is arguing for the inclusion of Polish Operation as a genocide. Arguably this skirts their topic ban because of the proximity to World War II.) ( t · c) buidhe 19:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
I was going to stay out of this, but it's just not true (as arbs state below) that VM hasn't violated his topic ban since Bradv's block in October 2019. He's been warned for tban violations since then (for example, see his UTP history). There are also AE/AN/ANI threads in the last year; I don't remember offhand if they were for problems in or outside the topic area, or if they had any merit. But neither I nor any other member of the community should have to go digging to present this history to Arbcom. VM ought to list all of these things for the arbs to review. Levivich harass/ hound 16:45, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
The topic ban is one of the few remaining vestiges of the Icewhiz-era. It made mild sense as a way to prevent BATTLEGROUND that Icewhiz was creating and too often goading VM into engaging him (IIRC it came as a set combo with the interaction ban and Ice received the mirror equivalents of both of these as well). Now that Icewhiz is gone (the main account, as he still continues socking and real-life harassment and manipulation, for which he was site banned - Trust&Safety can provide further details if any ArbCom member requires them, I am sure) it makes no sense to keep VM restricted; all it does is that it still empowers Icewhiz behind the scenes and as such it is one of his 'victories' we can and should undo to move on.
Regarding preceding comments by Buidhe and Levivich, they are either disappointing petty attempts to keep people one disagreed with under the heel and out of one's hair, or worse, evidence of proxying for Icewhiz. Levivich has not been much active in the topic areas VM frequents/ed, and I think neither had interacted much with VM, yet now we see some obscure diffs from articles they never edited or discussions they did not participate in (!) concerning editor they should not care about. -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:35, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
I commend members of the Committee for expressing views in favour of, as well as an immediate motion, to rescind the ban. That is the right call. Not least because I don't think there's any indication that Volunteer Marek is likely to edit disruptively in the topic area. I'd like to also add the following emphasis to the record: the level of harassment that Volunteer Marek has endured (that I know of) is so beyond the pale, it's truly sickening. So needless to say, wide latitude should be extended to him for any past misconduct or near-misconduct which were directly impacted by this sinister and nefarious abuse. Anyway, looks like all is going well as far as this amendment is concerned — apologies in advance to VM in case I just jinxed it! El_C 05:17, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
It seems obvious to me that removing this topic ban, imposed when the editor was under extreme harassment by the banned Icewhiz, is a good thing for the encyclopedia, and I hope that the arbs will come to the same conclusion. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:44, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
The now-banned Icewhiz's misbehaviors on Wikipedia, prior to his ban and since, have been truly egregious and should be counted as an extenuating circumstance to some of VM's responses to Icewhiz's provocative actions. I believe it is time to welcome VM back to a subject area to which he can make substantial contributions.
Thank you.
Nihil novi ( talk) 22:29, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
I am a great fan of TBANs, which usually work well to protect controversial areas of the project subject to Arbitration cases from egregious disruption by POV-pushers. However, I don't think this description applies to VM's behaviour that led to the TBAN. Considering Icewhiz has been ejected, and VM doesn't appear to have clearly breached the TBAN, I think Arbs should accept VM's request in good faith. Of course, in the tradition of supplying people with enough rope, VM should be under no illusions that any future disruption in the TBAN space will likely result in an indefinite TBAN. Peacemaker67 ( click to talk to me) 01:40, 14 December 2020 (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.
Remedy 4b of Antisemitism in Poland ("Volunteer Marek topic-banned") is rescinded.