WIKIPEDIA:ARBITRATION REQUESTS ENFORCEMENT ARCHIVE236

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Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Factchecker_atyourservice

Procedural closure. Not an appeal of an AE action, therefore out of scope of this board. Factchecker_atyourservice blocked for topic ban violation. Sandstein 15:18, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.

To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).

Appealing user: Factchecker_atyourservice ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – Factchecker_atyourservice 14:53, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Sanction being appealed: Text of false and unsubstantiated aspersions by User:Jytdog in the evidence section of this AE case which resulted in the sanction against me logged at the AP2 sanctions list.

Administrator imposing the sanction: NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Notification of that administrator: Done here.

Statement by Factchecker_atyourservice

Request for the comments by Jytdog to be struck out (struck out ~~like this~~, not removed) in the record of my AE case

In a recent Arbitration proceeding successfully seeking an AP topic ban against me, a number of statements were made by Jytdog which grossly mischaracterized my editing history, without evidence, while giving a misleading impression of being accompanied by evidence. I seek the striking of these comments, either in whole or in part, from the record of the proceeding. I feel this is appropriate because of the persuasive force of posting a long, convincing-looking takedown with a bunch of links in a top-level administrative proceeding.

Jytdog does not appear to have looked closely or at all at the subject matters he refers to, and thus the compilation of diffs and statistics is misleading. It's one thing for someone to make an off-the-cuff remark without diffs simply claiming someone has a pattern of abuse, but it's another when a deeply established user shows up to comment on a topic ban case, posts something that looks like a comprehensive overview of an editor's conduct, purporting to offer "review with a solid foundation of context", and then claims he can't find any edits upholding a left-wing POV. This puts me in the position of having to prove a negative by coming up with a long post with a big pile of diffs contradicting the claim of right-wing POV push.

Outline of complaint

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

The general premise of the claim is that I joined Wikipedia to combat left wing bias and have never done anything else. He cites as evidence for this that my very first edit was this additing of a FACT tag to a statement in Wiki voice reading that "The government fabricated evidence documented in the January 16, 2002 search warrant and affidavit issued by the FBI."

This was indeed my first article-space edit, but I didn't arrive at this point because I said, I want to combat left wing bias on Wikipedia, let's go find some, here it is. Rather it was because I was reading a Wikipedia article and it told me that the FBI had fabricated evidence in referring an American citizen for prosecution on terrorism-related charges, which I found shocking and outlandish.

Indeed, although Jytdog presents my original username of "Factcheck_4uwingnuts" as further evidence of an ab initio purpose of combating left-wing bias, he doesn't seem to realize that "wingnut" is usually interpreted as a reference to right-wing nuts, not left-wing nuts. Rather, the left-wing counterpart is moonbat.

This is further explained by another reason I was motivated to edit WP, which was the second article I edited, Copwatch. While Jytdog correctly notes that my edits changed prose saying the guy being arrested was "apparently restrained" to prose that indicated he was "struggl[ing] to prevent the police from handcuffing him" and that the cops were "trying to force his hands together". This was simply replacing one WP editor's editorializing with another's. Neither was sourced. (Watch the video for yourself to see if you think the guy was "apparently restrained" or whether the cops were struggling to restrain him.) But going back to the tie-in to the "wingnuts" in my original name, I had seen the WP article but also an external website called copwatch.org (NSFW), which seemed to be an extreme militant right-wing anti-authority website, with a lot of virulent anti-police rhetoric that sounded like Waco type stuff, including, for whatever reason, a lot of stuff about the guy from the other article, Sherman Austin. I edited both these articles on Day 1. That was why I had "wingnuts" in my name.

In any event, Jytdog then goes on to talk about my time at Sarah Palin and, while presenting diffs that look like they are supposed to be supporting evidence—but without explaining why he thinks my editing was indicative of a right-wing bias—he goes on to conclude "They seem to have come here specifically to address what they perceive as left-wing bias, from what i have seen. There may be diffs of them tamping down POV editing from the right, but I haven't seen that...."

When another editor replied that the diffs he cited were mostly " exculpatory evidence", Jytdog made no effort to validate his accusations, but instead demanded evidence invalidating them(!), saying "If you have significant diffs of this person serving as a 'Factcheck 4uwingnuts' with respect to anything ring-wingish that would be somewhat exculpatory. It is hard for me to see past the glare coming from the very shiny ax that this person has carried into WP and the sparks that are flying from grinding it."

Indeed, he seems to have been blinded, because if he had looked past his analysis-free tables and edit counts, or his 90-second "deep dive" of my first couple-hundred edits, he would have noticed that my next 1000 edits were spent being the most ardent anti-Sarah Palin content hawk that ever existed on WP. Indeed, I am present in about 30 talk-page archives and while I have only combed through the first 7 of those for diffs here, I'm confident they're representative of the rest:

"Moratorium on article material about Palin controversies until after the election?" OH HAIL NO

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I complained about a biography being used as a uniformly promotional text (perhaps even ghostwritten) and it's hard to see how it could have any reliability at all. Could anybody help me understand this?" To his credit, Jytdog actually gave credit for this being a "good question", but then this turns to ashes when he persists in claiming he didn't see any sign of me combating right-wing bias.

Indeed, in the below debates I did virtually nothing but ensure that well-sourced criticisms of Palin made it into the article:

I complained about the removal of details about some sundry Palin controversies

I began (or continued) an endless series of arguments in favor of including "Bridge to Nowhere" controversy material. Palin is being held out to the nation as a "reformer" who "opposed pork". The conceivably biased view of her as a reformer is handily balanced by the massive amount of Federal pork funding she sought for such a tiny town and tiny number of people. I think the Federal-dollars-per-person tally comes to about $17,000. If such an extravagant level of spending were insisted upon for all US citizens, we'd have $5 trillion worth of Bridges to Nowhere each year. To put that in perspective, the Federal budget submitted by Pres. Bush for 2009 totals just over $3 trillion and includes all expenditures by the government, including paying down interest on the national debt. Another way to put it in perspective? Obama has pursued similar amounts of Federal pork funding ... but his state contains 18 times as many people as Alaska does.

It's often celebrated how much I talk(!) so here's an even lengthier disposition and rebuttal of one of the endless arguments why the "Bridge" controversy was supposedly not worth mentioning.

Arguing strongly for inclusion of quotes by other Republicans calling for Palin to withdraw from the nomination ("...the choice of Palin remains deeply problematic... Palin is not ready")

I argued and edited for inclusion of commentary on Palin's support for banning abortion. Nobody has included a claim that she "would ban abortion", "has tried to ban abortion", or "as VPOTUS/POTUS, would have the power to ban abortion." However, her statements on the record clearly confirm that she opposes abortion, supports banning it, and thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned, thus allowing it to be banned. This is all perfectly accurate; you are arguing what the meaning of the word "is" is. The language used in the article is that she "believes abortion should be banned in nearly all cases" and this is substantiated both by direct quotations and analysis by reporters working for reliable sources. And it's quite relevant to her VPOTUS candidacy as that inherently carries the possibility of appointing Federal judges... and possibly SC justices... both of whom hold power over the issue. The likely inference is simple: she opposes abortion in nearly all cases, thinks Roe v. Wade should be overturned, supports the rights of states to ban abortion, and, if elected, may be put in a position to influence the judicial handling of the issue all the way up to the Supreme Court level. Hence the serious and direct relevance to the campaign.

I argued extensively in support of saying Biden had made himself available to the press adequately and Palin hadn't. Biden has given 90 interviews. Palin has given 3, and they were tightly controlled. Without suggesting any specific guideline for how much press access is "adequate", I still feel pretty comfortable saying Biden's level of press access has been adequate and Palin's has definitely not. I don't really think it's relevant, though, except insofar as it may be the subject of on-the-record commentary by reliable sources. In Palin's case, her unwillingness to be interviewed has sparked protests by some of the most established and reputable news organizations in existence. Given the current scope of this article it should definitely be included in my opinion. I also called for a repeat of a failed RFC.

I complained about a Palin campaign staffer who was editing her WP article, I accused users of being pro-Palin sockpuppets, I talked about NYT article which "details the way this article, in the 24 hours BEFORE Palin's candidacy was announced, was plastered with bubbly, glowing commentary of Palin sourced from her published-just-in-time-for-the-election biography". Later in a debate about AGF'ing: I mentioned the issue of good faith only the highlight that editors who appear sympathetic to Palin have repeatedly questioned the good faith of editors who appear unsympathetic to Palin. This is merely to remind everyone of the context in which these claims are being made. Speck in neighbor's eye, boulder in own, and all that.

I argued at length for inclusion of mockery of Palin in "Jesus Ponies and Dinogate" controversy, defending the use of an op-ed in LA Times ("No matter how much of a liar you think that guy is, he's a critic, this is on reputable record by a publication with a factchecking department and the ability to be sued for libel, and that is the whole basis for Wikipedia's reliance on mainstream news publications.")

I argued further against removal of "Bridge to Nowhere" controversy details.

I went on what I called a "large scale weasel hunt regarding a bureaucratic investigation of Palin because I felt that the wording of this section is carefully chosen to distort its cited references and undermine the apparent credibility of the investigative probe while upholding Palin's actions.

I argued at extreme length about source material regarding Palin's apparent blurring of the line between church and state. Why this is all troubling is not because of Palin's faith or beliefs; it's to do with the apparently special status she places on religious beliefs, religious people, and religious organizations.

I further argued about source material about Palin's attempt to ban books due for religious reasons. Again, at very great length. According to Time, according to Stein, the attempt to ban books was an example of her injecting religious beliefs into her policy. Perfectly legitimate, primary-sourced, analysis/synthesis which has been published by a reliable source and is therefore fit for inclusion in appropriate format.

I argued further for mentioning the above bureaucratic report which accused Palin of ethical violations. When somebody proposed a "moratorium" on any further controversies about Palin until after the election day, I strongly pushed back: Actually, it would do a lot of harm. If there's a moratorium on including material about controversies until after the election, anybody reading this article before the election (which will probably be the majority of people that ever look at this article) will be wrongly getting the impression that there are no controversies. Meanwhile, all manner of positive and supportive material would be fair game, and the article would take on a promotional tone. [emphasis added in 2018]

I argued for inclusion of source material discussing Palin's husband's past association with a political party advocating Alaskan secession from the US.

When somebody asked why something had been removed, I explained: Probably deleted because somebody felt it made Palin look bad.

I argued for inclusion of a controversy about making rape victims pay for their own rape kits. While doing so I complained: The constant effort to turn this article into promotional campaign literature is equally annoying.

I pushed back against complaints that mentioning various criticisms and accusations violated NPOV. I'm not sure anyone here is intent on including any scurrilous or merit-free allegations.

I argued against someone removing RS-published criticisms of Palin simply because they quoted a political opponent of Palin.

I argued at even greater length against removal of the controversy on victims paying for their own rape kits. I'm nearly positive that there was no consensus for the wholesale deletion of any mention of the rape kit controversy. Threeafterthree deleted the section all by his lonesome after not participating in (and ignoring) the ongoing discussion. I restored the deleted material and added additional material reflecting both criticism and defense of Palin with respect to the issue. This also involved a very salty complaint about how much of a shameless, POV-pushing, original-research-laden, blatantly promotional article it was thanks to a flurry of effort by at least one McCain staffer in the hours leading up to the announcement of her selection as McCain's running mate

Here is another lengthy complaint about what I regarded as POV-pushing in favor of Palin.

I also at some point wrote an eye-popping-angry breakdown of an argument I had had with a pro-Palin editor. Looking back on this I'm not especially proud of it, but it is evident that I was arguing at exhaustive length for inclusion of a piece of anti-Palin commentary despite arguments that the source itself was "conjectural" and supposedly thus prohibited by BLP.

Again, these are just from the first 7 talk page archives in which I appear (28, 29, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36). There are something like 23 more. On the eve of the presidential election I was hashing out disputes and putting to bed any last doubts that the controversy on billing rape kits to rape victims' insurance instead of having the police department pay for them (as was previously done) was RS-documented extensively enough for detailed discussion.

If there is a criticism here, it's that I was too hard on Palin.

Other topics

The Sarah Palin article wasn't the only one where Jytdog's superficial presentation is misleading.

For example, he lists the fact that I edited the article on Fascism as evidence of trying to oppose left-wing bias, but my time at Fascism was spent arguing against editors who disputed Fascism being described as a right-wing ideology.

Jytdog also cites this diff at the article on Michael Brown removing a comment claiming NOTFORUM, and racks this up with the "right wing troll" evidence because I was removing a statement complaining of "certain media outlets" attempting to "criminalize" Michael Brown. But he neglects other edits such as this similar NOTFORUM removal of some trollish comment calling Michael Brown a "drug dealer". Of course there are other edits that you might describe as "right wing", but which were emphatically legitimate, such as opposing the use of a WP-editor supplied Commons photo caption saying a police sniper had his "weapon trained in the direction of the camera at protests"—a very inflammatory phrasing not used by any RS—with the adding editor arguing on the talk page that the police sniper was "aiming at the crowd", when in reality he is sitting on a rooftop aiming up in the air and comparable RS descriptions said things like "A police sniper looks over the crowds"

Jytdog cites my editing at OWS, but this was not a cleanly left/right issue. If anything it had to do with many of the same competing visions for the Democratic party, i.e. Classical Secular Liberal vs. Progressive, that are tearing it apart today. Moreover, I spent a very great deal of my time trying to compartmentalize material about a splinter group 99 Percent Declaration that grew out of a content fork arising out of the efforts of a later-indeffed sock, User:Dualus—and as interesting side note, this series of events led to my very first block.

Jydog cites my POV tagging of the then-revision of "Mattress Performance (carry that weight)" as a "shameful advocacy tract rife with innuendo and unsubstantiated criminal accusations", again as part of a list of supposed efforts to "oppose left-wing bias". But this whole incident, wherein a girl essentially accused a guy of rape via an art project and attempted to hound him off campus instead of cooperating with a police investigation, was hugely controversial and generated a great deal of mainstream news commentary. Again, not a cleanly left/right issue.

These seem to be the bulk of the subject areas he raises, besides the issues I addressed during the case itself, but since he doesn't present a clearly diff'd claim of POV pushing, I'm reluctant to go digging around further in my edit history looking for evidence of not being a right wing troll.

In any event these comments are deeply misleading, and since they were posted with such apparent authority at a top level administrative proceeding, I think it is a reasonable request to ask they be stricken.

Thank you. Factchecker_atyourservice 14:53, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by NeilN

Statement by (involved editor 1)

Statement by (involved editor 2)

Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Factchecker_atyourservice

Two things, one: there is almost no chance of getting an evidence statement from a closed discussion removed. The closed discussion is a record of comments that may/may not have influenced the discussion. As such removing one section would be falsifying the record. Two: when you are topic banned, the exceptions for discussion the topic are for appealing the ban itself. Not for discussing your past editing. So a good portion of your comments are technically a violation. I suggest you withdraw this. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 15:08, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I am asking the comments to be struck out, not removed.

Moreover, the idea of a hypertechnical "violation" that heaps additional punishment on me for disputing false statements in a permanent record of a case lodged against me seems extremely unreasonable, and I respectfully decline to withdraw the request. Factchecker_atyourservice 15:12, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Result of the appeal by Factchecker_atyourservice

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I'm closing this because it is not an appeal of an AE action, and therefore out of scope of this board. Continued discussion will yield nothing but drama. Factchecker_atyourservice violates their topic ban by making this request because it concerns a dispute that bears on US politics. It is not covered by the WP:BANEX exception because this is not an appeal or request for clarification of the ban, as NeilN noted here. I am blocking Factchecker_atyourservice for a week. Sandstein 15:18, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

François Robere

More editing restrictions on the article applied. Editors need to adhere to all of them CLOSELY as the next step will be topic bans or blocks. Future reports need not delve into past history. Diffs and a clear statement for admins on how the edits violated a restriction will suffice. Essentially, editors should be very hesitant to make unilateral edits to the article if they suspect their edits will be opposed. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 17:08, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning François Robere

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: E-960 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 17:16, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: François Robere ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Article under "consensus-required" sanctions for any changes: Talk:Collaboration in German-occupied Poland#Change in editing restrictions - please read

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

[2] 14:53, 2 June 2018 — changes made without gaining consensus first
[3] 14:55, 2 June 2018 — changes made without gaining consensus first
[4] 15:47, 2 June 2018 — changes made without gaining consensus first

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

[5]—12:03, April 22, 2018, previous attempt at making same changes
[6]— 12:21, April 22, 2018, previous attempt at making same changes
[7]—17:58, April 23, 2018, previous attempt at making same changes
[8]— 09:38, May 13, 2018, previous attempt at making same changes

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Article discretionary sanction in for conduct in the area of conflict placed here [9] and [10] by NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

User François Robere has made these three changes, even though the article is under strict consensus-required prior to any changes sanctions. This follows a pattern of editing by François Robere, where he continues to BLANK-OUT entire sections of text even though many of the statements have been agreed to on the talk page, such as this example here: Talk:Collaboration in German-occupied Poland#Academic book about the GG, yet user François Robere goes in and blanks the text as in this edit listed above [11], or REMOVES text, which was restored after he removed it previously, several days back. In short, these three edits were made without gaining a CONSENSUS on the talk page first, as required by the discretionary sanctions, and follow an pattern of disruptive editing.

Extended content

One quick note in response to user Icewhiz's comments below regarding me — the talk page comments Icewhiz listed in his statement below, have NOTHING to do with the edits made by François Robere on 2 June 2018, and are simply a red herring. They do not pertain to the same text and are UNRELATED, so I'm a bit perplexed as to why user Icewhiz is bringing them up. Also, it is not breaking the rule to revert edit which was made without consensus, pls see here: Edits made solely to enforce any clearly established consensus are exempt from all edit-warring restrictions. and Clear vandalism of any origin may be reverted without restriction. -- E-960 ( talk) 23:20, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply
A second note regarding Ealdgyth statement, it is NOT TRUE that the article statement in question contains "self-published and non-mainstream" references as she states, and most certainly not the text that user François Robere REMOVED in the three edits above, as a matter of fact here (below) are the two sources which backed up the statement that François Robere REMOVED [12], this statement was also agreed on in a discussion Talk:Collaboration in German-occupied Poland#Academic book about the GG:

Winstone, Martin (2014). The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe: Nazi rule in Poland under the General Government. London: Tauris. pp. 181–186. ISBN 978-1-78076-477-1 and Winson, Chu (24 July 2015). "Review of M. Winstone: The Dark Heart of Hitler's Europe". H-Soz-Kult. Retrieved 2 June 2018

So, if this statement had RELIABLE SOURCES, why did François Robere just REMOVE it, without initiating a discussion on the talk page first, and without gaining a consensus. The comment by Ealdgyth, is a red herring, because it distracts from the fact that user François Robere just BLANKS-OUT text without initiating a DISCUSSION and gaining CONSENSUS as the article discretionary sanctions now require. -- E-960 ( talk) 12:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Note to Slatersteven, there is only ONE editor who BLANKS-OUT text and it is François Robere, the discretionary sanctions are clear you DO NOT remove text unless you initiate a discussion and get CONSENSUS. So, to argue that this AE is only singling out one editor is an unfair statement, because it is François Robere, who continues to remove text without getting consensus.-- E-960 ( talk) 13:49, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

NeilN, all sounds reasonable and no objections on my part. -- E-960 ( talk) 17:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:53, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

User François Robere was notified of the AE here: [13]

Discussion concerning François Robere

Statement by François Robere

Few points:

Several days ago User:E-960 reverted a series of edits of mine en masse [14]. The edit summary made a false claim about removed material, which leads me to believe that, once more, the user reverted someone's changes without actually reading them.
I started a discussion about the reversal [15]. The user made no policy-backed claims, and at some point stopped replying. Now, eleven days later, they file this AE request.
Change #1 was never out of consensus. It looks like someone's linguistic mistake, and a petty, petty thing to bring here.
Change #3 isn't something I changed before, as I just today finished reading the relevant material. Again a false claim, which suggests the user is more preoccupied with making a claim than with its accuracy - WP:BATTLEGROUND.
Change #2 isn't a new edit, it's a reversal to an old revision that was not challenged, as much as "cheated away" by a third user [16] (This goes all the way back to March, where the same user changed quotes of sources to suit their POV [17] [18]. Note the edit summaries).
I'm not sure what the user is citing under "relevant sanctions". It's not "sanctions", and it's all from before the page policy was changed.
We're left with one edit that supposedly violates the policy. If it does - my apology. I would RFC more of these changes, but there are already 2 RFCs open on the page.
An important question on the application of this policy is whether an editor is allowed to refuse consensus by performing a mass reversal, or whether they must reverse specific revisions? If an editor reverses multiple changes in one go, then there's no way to tell which change/s they object and which just got "caught up" with the others; the policy seems to require the reversals to be self-explanatory.

@ GizzyCatBella: First of all, drop the lingo. This isn't a trial. Second, since May 13th the page went through 150~ revisions. Am I supposed to keep up with a minor linguistic change? François Robere ( talk) 21:08, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Apparently Bella thinks restoring an RS to an article and correcting a source quote she changed is a "massive assault" [19] mandating a retaliation [20] [21] [22] [23]. WP:BATTLEGROUND, anyone? François Robere ( talk) 22:03, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Ealdgyth, @ Beyond My Ken: I would very much appreciate more administerial involvement on that topic, and I said and asked as much in several ANI/AE cases. That topic is toxic, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to have a solution. And no - a global block that will indiscriminately punish editors, and leave dozens of articles damaged, is not the way to do it. We have over 500 active admins - surely there's one who's willing to take that up? François Robere ( talk) 14:52, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

On sourcing (I'm not collecting {{ diff}}s, so these should suffice):

The Winstone book User:E-960 is referring to above seems to have been included based on a reading of a review [24]. The reasons I removed are explained in this thread, where the user twice accuses me of "forum shopping" because I opened the thread.
Point #5 above refers to a blatant distortion of a source, performed by User:GizzyCatBella several times [25] [26] [27].
Here's a list of sources brought to one discussion, where I marked the sentences that were quoted by the editor along with their surrounding text, to demonstrate "cherry-picking" (in some cases in blatant contradiction to what the source actually says). It's followed by some short notes on misattribution and unreliability of sources follow.
Here's a discussion on whether Facebook posts by the Polish ambassador to Switzerland are RS on WWII history.
Here's a discussion on a source that's so bad, it has only two reviews on Google Books: from the subject's children, urging readers not to believe it.

Just a few recent examples (plus one not so recent, but major). How many hours have we spent on these discussions? François Robere ( talk) 17:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:47, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: Two questions:

What's considered "consensus" for the purpose of this restriction? I would usually think a discussion is enough, but you previously expressed the position that a formal procedure like an RfC is required. If that's the case, then we'll be seeing a lot of RfCs - which can itself result in a "disruptive editing" complaint.
Would massive reverts count for this purpose? In other words - if I make a series of small changes and someone reverts all of them at once, do I have to assume they object all of them? I suggest requiring editors who perform a mass reversal to explain their reasoning on the TP in addition to the edit summary.

One final note: This is not a common restriction on Wikipedia, so I suggest making clear that editors new to the page are to be warned before having sanctions imposed on them. François Robere ( talk) 15:40, 6 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by GizzyCatBella

I would like to clarify - “3 Change #1" FR is using as an excuse. In that past I did dispute the word “fighters" replacing it with word "soldiers" [28] that had been reverted today by FR. here [29] It is not a “linguistic mistake,” but a fundamental change and accused is well aware of that. GizzyCatBella ( talk) 20:52, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

In response to Icewhiz comment below --->

This:

“Consensus required: All editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits that have been challenged (via reversion) If in doubt, don’t make the edit."

Does NOT say:

“Consensus required: all editors must obtain consensus on the talk page of this article before reinstating any edits made after May 26 that have been challenged (via reversion) If in doubt, don’t make the edit."

So no, your line of defending FR is wrong. GizzyCatBella ( talk) 21:21, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ François Robere We have to stick to the new rule, so what makes you unique? And also, it just "happened" that you used the exact word "fighters" again? Having the alternatives such as combatants for example or partisans or even belligerents/warriors? No, it seems to me that you knew precisely what you are doing. GizzyCatBella ( talk) 21:52, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN:,@ Ealdgyth,@ Sandstein: please take your time to read this, it may help you correctly assess the situation and help to understand what VM meant by saying "blatant misrepresentation and manipulation". I'll stick to very latest interactions with Icewhiz but comparable circumstances go back 2-3 months.

A quick background first: In occupied Poland, the Nazis imposed a death penalty for every Pole helping Jews, including the family of the helper. This information is universally acknowledged by anyone familiar with Polish WW2 history and easily referenced. Data about the death penalty imposed on Poles in the article about Nobel peace prize nominee Irena Sendler was there for years [30] and read like this:

"This work was done at huge risk (helping Jews), —since October 1941—giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household"

On June 3rd, I noticed a tag requesting reference for that statement so I went ahead and inserted the citations trying to match the exact wording. [31], [32], (I have read one of these books) So what happened next? Icewhiz removed not only the sources I supplied but also the entire information [33] with edit this summary:

"POV pushing. SYNTH - coverage not on Sendler. First source is cited twice (duplicate) and doesn't mention Sendler in this context. The second source is about the death penalty for printing newspapers, not helping Jews."

Icewhiz then commented on talk page [34]:

"Misuse of sources - In what appears as a POVish hagiography, the following was entered into the article, the google-books search term rather betraying the intent. The first source, cited twice for some reason, is not about Sendler - so it is WP:SYNTH. The second source mentions the death penalty for printing newspapers, not for helping Jews, and is thus not connected to the sentence at all."

Well, so I restored the information and attached 5 further references [35], [36], [37], [38], [39] plus an image of an actual German poster from 1941 [40] announcing such policy. All in English, all published books by historians, clearly backing the information.

Give me some hours @ NeilN: to think about it please, I'm not as swift as you are fellows. Thanks. GizzyCatBella ( talk) 00:39, 7 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I think it’s clear to me. GizzyCatBella ( talk) 02:30, 7 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:49, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Icewhiz

As presented, not a violation, as the prior diffs presented (some over a month ago) were prior to the "consensus required" provision being added. FR's edits were not challenged by reversion since the consensus required provision was enacted on 26 May following an edit warring report filed against E-960. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:07, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Further note, following being challenged by reversion, FR took it to talk. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:12, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I will also note, that E-960 has -

Supported content ( Revision as of 15:18, 25 May 2018) about Jewish actions against Poles sourced to a blog by Jan Bodakowski - a fellow who has "interesting" views on feminism and who has received some coverage in research literature in regards to a blog post on "Jewish Nazism" Uprzedzenia w Polsce (Prejudice in Poland).
Revision as of 09:48, 2 June 2018 - suggests inserting content based on a WP:QS WP:SPS (described as propagating a myth and anti-Jewish tract in RSes who mentioned this briefly) - of an example of " Jewish agent provocateurs, and simple snitches" - based on the words of a Polish policeman, who collaborated with the Nazis, who was convicted for murder - and who attempted to justify his act murder with this claim regarding the victim prior to being convicted.

Repeatedly suggesting/promoting such sources raises serious NPOV/CIR questions. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:22, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

In regards to GCB stmt above - if FR broke the consensus required provision on material that was apparently disputed between the two of them over a month ago (prior to this provision being enacted) - then E-960 broke the consensus required provision when he reverted FR today - Revision as of 16:12, 2 June 2018 and Latest revision as of 16:16, 2 June 2018 - as the content was challenged by reversion by FR. Icewhiz ( talk) 21:42, 2 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Some examples of the use of WP:SPS / blogs / questionable sources by GizzyCatBella:

[41] - opinion piece or blog on defunct web site (but is available on personal website of author) - connecting a BLP to Russian agents, and communist secret police collaborators. No engagement on Talk:Peter Vogel (banker). Icewhiz ( talk) 16:00, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply
[42] - letter published on Glaukopis website after History refused to publish it. Challenged as BLPSOURCES, and reverted. See subsequent BLP/n discussion.
[43] - Use of self-published documents by Mark Paul. See RSN on Kurek and Paul, and subsequent RfC opened on this matter.
[44] - iUniverse book by Ewa Kurek. See RSN on Kurek and Paul. The statement (Poland being the only country with...), incidentally, is false and has been demonstrated (refutation by examples from other sources) as such in discussions with GCB going back to April at least - discussion in Talk:Collaboration_in_German-occupied_Poland, in the RSN discussion linked, in Talk:The_Holocaust_in_Poland, following attempts to insert this on Revision as of 05:57, 11 May 2018, Revision as of 16:15, 11 May 2018 - the same content (more or less), the same false claim - was inserted into three different articles ( The Holocaust in Poland, Collaboration in German-occupied Poland‎, and Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust). over a space of a month - each time necessitating a new discussion on why the sources weren't appropriate (self published, or other reasons) and a refutation of the content itself.
[45] [46] - restoring references to personal website of Anna Poray. See BLP/n discussion (for Zegota), and Fringe noticeboard discussion for the article on Poray herself that was up for AfD.
revdelled 22 May 08:10 (so no link) - restored copy-pasted content from Mark Paul's WP:SPS.
[47] - use of "Haf Books" - a young company founded in 2017 that doesn't seem to have done much else. The book itself is very heavy on graphics and illustrations.

Icewhiz ( talk) 16:00, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:49, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: the page level restriction is mostly clear to me - though it is unclear to me (having avoided for the most part any editing on AP2 consensus required pages) - just how far back challenged (via reversion) goes (Obviously if I made the edit, it gets reverted, then I can't put it back in.... Does this apply to edits made over a month ago, possibly by someone else (that I might not be aware of - this page had a lot of back and forth I was not involved with))? I haven't edited the article itself since the restriction, I did open an RfC on the issue that was disputed late May. Icewhiz ( talk) 14:52, 6 June 2018 (UTC) reply
RE comments below by VM on 12 June - WP:NOENG applies when there are better or equal quality sources in English for a particular topic - this is Wikipedia policy - I have not advocated for wholesale removal of Polish sources (though there have been issues with such sources being misrepresented) - merely for their replacement when English sources are available.
An AfD of a scholar that doesn't meet NPROF is not an "attack". VM calling Ewa Kurek a "mainstream scholar" is quite out of line of the reception of Kurek in RS,( How Ewa Kurek, the Favorite Historian of the Polish Far Right, Promotes Her Distorted Account of the Holocaust Poland cancels award for author accused of anti-Semitism) and as for Jewish partisans - I will refer to VM referring to content sourced to Psychology Press (Taylor and Francis) edited by David Cesarani with the chapter authored by Antony Polonsky as "dubious" or calling a work by Christopher Browning "garbage" - "and any source which describes AK as "conservative nationalist" is garbage. Yes, that applies to Christopher Browning" - all works by well established academics specializing in the Holocaust in Poland - is displaying a clear NPOV problem in regards to the Poland and the Holocaust. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:42, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Beyond My Ken

Is anyone keeping count of the AE actions brought related to Germany and Poland in WWII, generally with the same cast of characters? And this is despite the fact that there are already discretionary sanctions in place which cover this subject area (i.e. ARBEE). Is it possible that the number of AE complaints would be lessened if administrators started to take advantage of the additional powers they have under discretionary sanctions to help quell disruption? I am in general a supporter of the work done by our admins, but I think that they need to step up their games in this area, and do so quickly. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 05:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Ealdgyth

Unfortunately, I'm too involved in the area to take admin action (even though my editing has been very minor), but I'd like to note that there is a lot of usage of self-published and non-mainstream sources that definitely needs looking into. There is also quite a lot of personalizing of disputes and casting aspersions against other editors. While it probably isn't yet to the point of "ban them all" ... it's rapidly approaching that point. Certainly, there is little incentive for non-involved editors or admins to wade into this to give opinions, because the tone of editing by those most heavily involved is so poor. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:16, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

E-960 - my statement was in general across the entire editing area, in response to Beyond My Ken's statement above. And, as an aside, I'm a she. I'll just note that this sort of instant-accusation/jump on the other editor is an excellent illustration of why third party uninvolved editors and admins are likely avoiding the area of German, Polish, and Jewish interactions in World War II. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:40, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: - I'd prefer not to say "sides", but rather there are some users definitely using too many SPSs and they do tend to edit from one viewpoint at times. But, not all of the editors from that viewpoint necessarily are trying to use SPSs, but all sides tend to be doing entirely too much "editing by google search", if you know what I mean. There's also a lot of WP:OR and WP:SYNTH happening, where one incident in history is being used to generalize about an entire aspect of history, without actually having sources that make that generalization. There's a lot of hyperbole, a lot of aspersions, and, yes, it's toxic. The whole topic is complex and subject to a lot of real world angst, so it behooves us to be especially careful and discuss from the best sources, rather than internet web sites, self-published sources, and sources that are generally not in the mainstream of academic thought. Ealdgyth - Talk 15:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I'll point out I don't read Polish so I've stayed out of evaluating Polish language web sources - no matter who has brought them to the table. Yeah, I can use Google Translate, but too much nuance is lost so I've stayed away from those sources ... which all editors seem to use a bit too much instead of academic sources. We really should be avoiding news reports in any language as a source in this area - there is so much academic writing on the topic that it's hard enough to master that. And I'll reiterate - the ideal method of editing should be to ... read the foundational academic sources. Even a Google Scholar search is no substitute for reading entire sources, so that the background isn't lost. I'm afraid that too many folks editing in this area do not appear to be even trying to do that background reading. (And I'll freely admit I'm still working on it... just got in several more books on the subject area ... am trying to get through them in my copious free time.) Ealdgyth - Talk 17:50, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:50, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by slatersteven

As an involved ed I agree with the above. It is becoming very toxic over there. It is not just one ed or one side, and I feel at this state that any action that singles out one ed it what is a content dispute will be unfair. I think therefore (I cannot remember where it was said to be take last time AE I thunk) this needs to be looked as a general issue now. It is getting to the stage where it is hard to tell what is being argued over, and DS have not really solved the problem. Slatersteven ( talk) 13:37, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Volunteer Marek

To answer NeilN's question: the issue is not the use of questionable sources, as it is blatant misrepresentation and manipulation of sources. The source may be reliable. But Icewhiz in particular, just keeps claiming that they say what they don't say.

Here's one example, which is straight up, serious BLP violation. This is on Marek Jan Chodakiewicz:

In this edit March 21, 2018, Icewhiz added the text:

In 2018, Chodakiewicz warned that the 50 year anniversary of March 1968 events would be used by American Jews to "launch another anti-Polish campaign of hatred".

He provided four sources: [48], [49], [50] and [51].

Two of these sources are right/far-right publications (fronda.pl and prawy.pl). I don't know what the other two are. This is strange, since Icewhiz keeps insisting that he only wants to remove "fringe" and "far right" and "nationalist" sources. Yet here he is ADDING exactly these kinds of sources. To a BLP. Why? Because he wants to make the BLP subject look bad, so he's got no qualms about using obviously non-RS, ideologically suspect sources that he claims to abhor.

Two of these sources (fronda.pl and tysol.pl) are really the same text, an article written by Chodakiewicz. The third (pch24.pl) is mostly also a reprint of this article.

NONE of these sources say ANYTHING about "American Jews". I expect AE admis don't read Polish, but this can be verified by searching the articles for "Ameri" or "USA". It doesn't appear. What Chodakiewicz says is that "western media run by neo-Stalinists" and Polish "post-communists" will launch this campaign. Yeah, Chodakiewicz is right wing, and thinks western and Polish leftists unfairly attack Poland. But that's a far cry from saying that "American Jews will attack Poland", which is what Icewhiz put into the article.

This claim does appear in the fourth source, prawy.pl in the headline. But this is a far-right, anti-semitic, publication which misuses Chodakiewicz's article for its own ends. Why is Icewhiz using a far-right, anti-semitic, clearly unreliable source - while at the same time claiming hypocritically in other places that his goal is only to remove such sources - in a BLP?????? Because it helps him push his POV and attack this particular living person.

So we have a combination of the use of blatantly unreliable sources by Icewhiz, with a misrepresentation of sources. To be perfectly clear, I have no love for Chodakiewicz, he's a right wing Trump supporter and ideologically very far from myself. But just the sheer obnoxiousness, dishonesty and hypocrisy, not to mention the violation of Wikipedia policies, with which Icewhiz approaches this subject pisses me off and gets my Wikipedia panties in a twist. Nobody who thinks that these kinds of tricks and stunts are ok should be editing Wikipedia, and certainly not a controversial topic such as this one.

This is an obnoxious BLP violation and the fact that Icewhiz calls it a "mild form of OR" (cuz you know, falsely accusing someone of anti-semitism is just "mild OR"!) aggravates the violation of policies.

500 words, I know I know. But this has been sitting here for week+ and hasn't been addressed. In particular I really want admins to look at Icewhiz's behavior that I describe above. It's a gross BLP violation on an article under discretionary sanctions. Icewhiz misrepresented sources to falsely accuse a subject of a BLP of anti-semitism, (by changing "western neostalinists and Polish post-communists" to "American Jews"). He also tried to use a blatantly anti-semitic, far-right source to bolster that claim, despite his claims elsewhere that his purpose is to remove such sources. When he was called out on it here, he described it as "a mild form of OR". Because apparently lying with sources to smear a living person as an anti-semitism is just "mild form of OR". This shows he does not see his actions as problematic and has no intention to act differently in the future.

He's also going around now and claiming Polish sources should be removed per WP:NOENG but he had no qualms using Polish sources as a way of attacking a BLP [52]. It's pure hypocrisy and cynicism. After I posted this here, he chilled out for a couple of days, but once it started to look like the admins here were not going to do anything he resumed his attacks on BLPs of historians that disagree with his extremist views. Gunnar S. Paulsson (and [53]), Norman Davies, and also Ewa Kurek. Now some of his edits on these articles may be justifiable. But there are plenty that aren't and taken as a whole it's one obvious attack by Icewhiz on multiple mainstream scholars (Polish, Swedish, British) whom he decided should be attacked because what they wrote doesn't let him push his POV.

At the very least we need a topic ban from BLPs related to this topic for Icewhiz, or this is just going to get worse. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 15:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement in excess of 500 words removed (admin action). Sandstein 11:51, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by K.e.coffman

I've been involved in these disputes, specifically around the use of works by Mark Paul, whose academic credentials are unknown. He seems to be exclusively published by "KPK - Toronto", which is the Polish Educational Foundation in Canada, an advocacy group. There was an RSN discussion about Paul ( RSN:Paul & Kurek), but certain editors, such as GizzyCatBella and Tatzref were not convinced. To the point that

I inquired with Tatzref about his affiliation with KPK, to which he did not respond: KPK Toronto.
I asked GCB to elaborate on the credentials and views of Mark Paul. The response to the first question was not convincing ("Some think he is a monk") & there was no answer to the second question.

My conclusion is that Paul's views are borderline fringe, yet his works are aggressively promoted throughout Wikipedia. I support the suggestion by NeilN here. For example, some of the disputes have been around Zegota, the Polish underground organisation to aid Jews. There's an English-language source available, by Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945, which mentions Zegota 30+ times. And that's just from a cursory search.

In addition, the works of many Polish scholars have been translated into English by this point, such as The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, Yale University Press, 2009 by Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak (800 pages). The bottom line is that many high-quality sources on these topics are available. Why not use them, instead of arguing about questionable, self-published and / or fringe sources? K.e.coffman ( talk) 20:02, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: there's an essay that may be helpful: Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history), specifically the section: What is historical scholarship? If this guidance were implemented in this area, it would cut down on much of the conflict and time-consuming discussions / RfCs. K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:04, 5 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Tatzref

Since Tatzref's name has been invoked, one must look carefully at and assess the activities of the invokers. There appears to be concerted, in tandem, ideologically driven enforcement activity going on involving the issue of Polish-Jewish relations. For example, the “Bielski partisans” article, where Icewhiz, K.e.coffman and Pinkbeast keep removing an acclaimed book by Bogdan Musial, a professional historian with academic credentials, yet retain books by journalists (Duffy) and freelance historians (Levine). Why? According to Icewhiz Musial's book is a “fringe work”. According to Pinkbeast, "it's part of the same POV-pushing exercise”. The impugned book is Sowjetische Partisanen 1941–1941: Mythos und Wirklichkeit published by Ferdinand Schöningh (2009), a highly regarded German publishing house. According to Yehuda Bauer, Musial's book is “a most important contribution” to the history of the war, the Soviet partisans, and Polish-Jewish partisan relations in Belorussia. (Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 38, no. 2). Dutch historian Karel Berkhoff stated that the book will likely remain a comprehensive description of partisan warfare in Belarus due to its large source base. This is “fringe”? Similar deletions of references to information found in Marek Chodakiewicz's The Massacre in Jedwabne, of primary sources, and of an authorized statement by prosecutor Radoslaw Ignatiew occurred in the Jedwabne pogrom article. Chodakiewicz's book is one of a very few (of very many publications on the topic) that was mentioned by Peter Longerich, a leading German Holocaust historian, in his 2010 book Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford University Press). In the article Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946, text referring to the findings of a pioneering recent study property reclaiming under the 1945 law on abandoned property, Klucze i Kasa: O mieniu żydowskim w Polsce pod okupacją niemiecką i we wczesnych latach powojennych 1939–1950, published by the Polish Center for Holocaust Research and edited by Jan Grabowski and Dariusz Libionka, was also removed. Do such comments and activities have any validity or credibility? Are they supposed to dictate the content of Wikipedia? What is the affiliation of these users? How are they connected? They appear to be pushing the same agenda. As Wikipedia points out: "Citing WP:FRINGE in discussions and edit summaries is often done by POV pushers in an attempt to demonize viewpoints which contradict their own." Tatzref ( talk) 16:12, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Result concerning François Robere

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Pinging NeilN as the admin who decided on these restrictions. Sandstein 07:28, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Icewhiz: Please comment about Volunteer Marek's allegations of you using unreliable sources and misrepresenting sources. Sandstein 18:31, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Just noting that I am not reading the "Additional comments" by the filer because the combination of an aggressive tone with ALL-CAPS SCREAMING and a wall of text gives me a headache. The request is borderline disruptive. Sandstein 18:35, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Taking into considerations recent submissions I am of the view that the whole complex of issues involving POV and sourcing in Poland-related articles is too complicated to address at the editor level here. This seems to be a mixture of good-faith content disputes and possible conduct problems on the part of several editors. I'd support a page-level restriction as outlined by NeilN below. Sandstein 07:48, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Ealdgyth: With respect to article content, is it your opinion that both sides are using questionable sourcing or is it mainly limited to one side? -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Before I read Ealdgyth's latest post on the subject I was mulling over adding restrictions analagous to WP:MEDRS. That is, requiring the use of higher quality sources. This and related articles document decades-old past history. There's no reason why editors need to go to glorified blog posts or questionable partisan publications. I'm aware of François Robere's sometimes problematic editing in this area but as seen from past AE reports, they're not alone. So, two proposed restrictions:

Only the highest quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals and academically focused books by reputable publishers.

Independent of this:

Anyone found to be misrepresenting a source, either in the article or on the talk page, will be subject to escalating topic bans.

-- NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I agree and would consider limiting this to English-language academic sources. A recurring problem in this topic area seems to be a reliance on fringe sources. Sandstein 18:33, 3 June 2018 (UTC) – To be clear, I don't think that Polish-language sources are inherently unreliable, but they can't be evaluated by most admins here, including me. That impedes arbitration enforcement insofar as source reliability is concerned. Sandstein 18:48, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Sandstein: I am sympathetic to your sentiments and share them, along with the concern that source misrepresentations will try to be passed off as "differences in translations". However I won't personally impose a restriction that supersedes a policy, guideline, or BRD (as opposed the strengthening them) without prior evidence that it's needed and I don't think we're there yet. I think we should just reiterate WP:NOENG ("English-language sources are preferred over non-English ones when available and of equal quality and relevance") and stipulate that we will go to Google Translate if we really have to if source misrepresentation is alleged. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:12, 3 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I've cut down all the statements to the allowed maximum of 500 words because this is not the forum in which to address all the possible sourcing and conduct problems in this topic area. That would probably need a full ArbCom case. Limited to the specific conduct at issue, I myself would take no action but leave it to NeilN whether he considers his restriction violated and wants to take action, and whether he wants to impose an additional sourcing restriction such as the one proposed above. Sandstein 12:05, 4 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ François Robere, E-960, GizzyCatBella, and Icewhiz: and other editors: Is there anything about this you find unclear? That is, an edit (new addition, removal of long-standing material, change to existing material) can be done once and if it's challenged, no one can make the same or similar edit without gaining consensus? Also, you understand the more extensive your edit, the greater the likelihood someone will take issue with part of it and revert the whole thing? -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:32, 6 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Icewhiz Per my note, if anyone adds something then anyone else can challenge it before four to six weeks are up and require consensus for the addition. After that time period, if anyone removes it then anyone else can challenge it and require consensus for the deletion. Yes, this places an extra burden on editors but it also prevents tag team edit wars and promotes article stability and discussion.
François Robere 1) A formal RFC is not always required but two editors agreeing and one editor disagreeing in a conversation spanning two hours isn't going to be accepted as consensus either. Listen to each other and I suggest you find an editor most of you trust to be neutral ( MelanieN seems to play that part on Trump articles) that can help guide you as to how consensus can be found (not what consensus is, but what level of discussion is needed to find it). 2) If someone has done a "massive" revert then you've done a "massive" change. In this case, you can open discussion with, "X, you've reverted all my changes. Do you object to all of them or only specific ones?" and go from there.
As to warnings, the standard discretionary sanctions notifications should suffice. I hope editors will be kind to each other and give an editor who has a good or empty record a chance to self-revert before reporting them. The American Politics editors, while disagreeing vehemently on many, many things, usually extend this courtesy to each other if the editor hasn't abused this courtesy in the past. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Calton

General agreement that the block was controversial in that the BLP issues were unclear enough to be sanctionable, and has been reversed. Black Kite (talk) 22:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Calton

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: DrFleischman ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 19:08, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Calton ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American_politics_2#Discretionary_sanctions_(1932_cutoff) :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

diff showing content Calton reverted: [54]

23:20, 10 June 2018 1st revert
00:41, 11 June 2018 2nd revert

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

I don't know if Calton has been subject to previous sanctions. I'm not interested in litigating past disputes.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, see the system log linked to above.
Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on 10:04, 29 June 2017

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

These reverts were not only in violation the 1RR restriction but also BLP violations. I had stated my good faith belief and in talk page discussion that this content violated BLP because the sources did not expressly support the content. Calton called this "Bullshit" and repeatedly restored content calling the subject a neo-Nazi based in part on an opinion piece in a student newspaper. Calton has never exactly been a scion of civil discourse. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 19:08, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I'm a little shocked that admins are criticizing my conduct when this was a clear-cut 1RR violation and everyone is in agreement on that. I am more than willing to explain my behavior. This is a 100% clear-cut BLP violation despite the averments to the contrary. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 05:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Would it help if I laid out the BLP vios here, or is this report already too stale for that? -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 20:10, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
GoldenRing, what diffs aren't working? They're working for me. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 20:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Oh sorry GoldenRing, that question was meant for Sandstein. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 20:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Sandstein, when derogatory content is added that isn't supported by reliable sources, that's a textbook BLP vio. How did my reverts not fall squarely into WP:3RRBLP? -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 22:00, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Examples of how Calton's edits were BLP violations

Multiple admins have suggested that I explain the BLP problems with Calton's edits, and how I was enforcing BLP by reverting. As NeilN notes there have been some tweaks and changes during the course of this multi-editor dispute so for the sake of clarity I'll focus solely on Calton's two identical edits, diffs above.

Content: "In 2014 he was banned from Hungary and mocked by the Hungarian press for his call to supplant a distinct Hungarian racial identity with a Pan-European white identity." Cited source: [55] (English translation: [56]) The source doesn't say anything about Spencer being mocked, it doesn't say anything about the Hungarian press, and it doesn't say anything about Hungarian racial identity. It does say, "Spencer erre felvázolja álmát, aminek lényege a Római Birodalom egyfajta felélesztése, az európai egység lenne," which translates to, "Spencer outlines his dream, the essence of which is the revival of the Roman Empire, a European unity." It was explained later on the talk page (after my reverts) that the added content was based on this sentence. But the added content wasn't even close to a fair paraphrase.
Content: "Spencer ... has publicly engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric on multiple occasions. Cited sources: [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] First off, this content was redundant as it already said that Spencer is a neo-Nazi, so why do we need to say that he's also engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric on multiple occasions as well? That aside, the sources don't bear out the "on multiple occasions" bit which seems like the reason this content was added. The SFGate and Independent sources say Spencer is a neo-Nazi but don't say anything about his rhetoric. The Daily Beast source says Spencer gave a neo-Nazi speech in Florida. The University of Michigan source (a student newspaper of questionable reliability) says he engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric during a campus visit. Finally, the San Diego State University source is an opinion piece in a student newspaper defending people who punch Nazis--a funny piece I actually kind of agree with, but so blatantly unreliable I don't think any longstanding editor should can reasonably support using it as a secondary source. So we have one reliable source saying he engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric on one occasion and a second, questionable source saying he engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric on another occasion. This isn't the exceptional sourcing needed to justify a blanket statement about "neo-Nazi rhetoric on multiple occasions." As I asked in the talk page discussion, why not just say the guy has engaged in neo-Nazi rhetoric (citing the Daily Beast source) and leave out the unnecessary and synthy "on multiple occasions"? I got no substantive response, but I was accused of "obvious whitewashing." Huh?
Content: "Spencer has been banned from entering most countries in Europe, including countries whose governments are described as nationalist or ethno-nationalist." Cited source: none. This was the least egregious BLP vio, but a vio nonetheless. The sentence was probably meant as a rough introductory summary of the remainder of the paragraph, but like the above, the sourcing was lacking for its key parts. The paragraph didn't bear out the most important bit about "most countries." This part was a relatively minor a text-source integrity problem as I believe sources cited further down in the paragraph did bear out the "most countries" bit, but the sourcing was opaque. The "including countries whose governments are described as nationalist or ethno-nationalist" part traced to a statement further into the paragraph that Poland banned Spencer and is "often labeled a nationalist or ethnic nationalist state," citing this source. The source said that "Poland has been a surge in nationalist activity" but didn't describe the Poland's government as nationalist or ethno-nationalist. The sentence that Calton added also referred to countries plural whose governments were described as nationalist or ethno-nationalist, and that was unsourced.

There you have it. A whole lot of derogatory content that didn't reflect the cited sources. That's not to say that this content was false, just that it wasn't adequately sourced. And just to be clear I'm no defender of Spencer, despite the ridiculous accusations. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 21:21, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Discussion concerning Calton

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Calton

Thank you for the unblock. First, I'd like to apologize for breaking 1RR. No, I didn't realize I was doing so when I did it, but it's not a good excuse. I'll be more careful -- and patient -- next time, even in the face of what I thought was a straight Sun-rises-in-the-East no-brainer edit. -- Calton | Talk 04:44, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ DrFleischman: This is a 100% clear-cut BLP violation despite the averments to the contrary. Perhaps you could point to all the editors -- here or at Talk:Richard B. Spencer -- who agree with that characterization. -- Calton | Talk 05:42, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

[T]his was a clear-cut 1RR violation. So were your multiple reverts. Care to own those? -- Calton | Talk 05:47, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Calton

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Clear violation of the 1RR restriction on that article. Blocked for 72 hours. clpo13_(
talk) 19:22, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- clpo13, just to make one thing clear: DrFleischman wasn't blocked because of a BLP exemption? Thanks, Drmies ( talk) 01:39, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
  - @ Drmies: That was my original reasoning, yes. However, discussion on Talk:Richard B. Spencer since the block has me second-guessing that. clpo13_(
    talk) 01:59, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
    - Hmm, yes, clpo13--Dr. Fleischman is not doing himself any favors there. Actually nothing in that discussion, regardless of which side one believes, points to serious BLP violations that would exempt one from 1R. I think Calton made a mistake, and I am not going to argue against the block, but I also think that Fleischman's revert seems more like CRYBLP to me than a justified overruling of 1R; Steeletrap makes a decent argument and Fleischman is remaining vague and general. Thanks, Drmies ( talk) 02:05, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I'm not happy about Dr. Fleischman's conduct in this, nor about the block of only one of the combatants. clpo13, not only discussion on talk but also the editing of the article since the block tends to vindicate Calton with regard to the BLP issues. Yes, Calton made a mistake, and should have read the edit notice. But a block of both would have been fairer. In lieu of that, considering that both editors surely acted in good faith as far as editing the article, please consider unblocking Calton. The reason I say good faith "as far as editing the article" is because I don't like Dr. Fleischman's action in immediately bringing the issue here. Surely the normal principle, and best practice, is to warn a user who violates the 1RR restriction and give them a chance to self-revert, before running to AE? Bishonen | talk 03:14, 12 June 2018 (UTC). reply
I tend to agree with Bishonen here. Calton did violate 1RR, and shouldn't have done that, but if you're going to claim a BLP exemption for reverting, it better indeed be rock-solid. That's not the case here. So we can block both or neither. I would agree that we should just unblock Calton, and caution all parties to use more care in their conduct going forward. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 04:03, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I've unblocked Calton per the discussion above and issued an apology for not taking enough care in looking at this case. clpo13_(
talk) 04:17, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I've not looked at all the sourcing in detail, but I agree that in any case this is not the sort of BLP violation the edit-warring exemption is designed for. If the choice is between calling someone a Nazi or not, then the sources had better be solid or the exemption can be claimed; if the difference is between someone engaging in neo-Nazi rhetoric and engaging in neo-Nazi rhetoric on numerous occasions then sort it out on the talk page or BLPN. The other BLP problems identified are on a similar level or even more minor. To my mind, the question about European governments doesn't come close to the "contentious material that is libelous, biased, unsourced, or poorly sourced" language of 3RRNO; nobody disputes that the governments in question are nationalist or that they have banned him and the only question is whether there is a source that expressly connects these facts. I propose closing this with a warning to Dr Fleischman to use the edit warring exemption for clear-cut cases. GoldenRing ( talk) 09:52, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I would take no action. DrFleischman alleges that the diffs violate WP:1RR, but they do not establish in their complaint why an 1RR restriction is supposed to apply to the article at issue. DrFleischman also alleges a WP:BLP violation, but the diffs they provide do not work and therefore I cannot evaluate them. A very poorly made report and a waste of our time. Sandstein 12:53, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Sandstein: The page does have a 1RR editnotice placed by User:NeilN, though the sanction was not logged in the DSLOG. GoldenRing ( talk) 14:24, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ GoldenRing: Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/2017. Search on "Spencer". -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:32, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I stand corrected. GoldenRing ( talk) 14:48, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The diffs now work after NeilN fixed them. I leave the 1RR issue to NeilN as the admin imposing the sanction, although it seems to me that DrFleischman also made multiple reverts if one counts the initial removal of the contested content. As to the BLP issues, I agree with NeilN that any BLP violation by Calton is not clear enough to warrant either multiple reverts or sanctions. Although I understand the argument DrFleischman makes, this is in my view primarily a content dispute, which AE does not address. Sandstein 21:49, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

There's something to the BLP claims, but I don't see enough meat to claim a BLP exemption. What should have happened was talk page discussion resulting in agreed-upon wording, instead of making wording tweaks in the article itself. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:05, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

My Lord

No action. Sandstein 13:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning My Lord

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Farhan Khurram ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 19:36, 9 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: My Lord ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan#Standard_discretionary_sanctions :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

I am finding his editing style to be too aggressive. His reverts are accompanied with attack terminology on other users' edits, words in the edit summaries include "useless", "irrelevant", "pov", "pseudo".

He is also too ready to assume bad faith of others. He makes unsubstantiated accusation of socking on another user and accuses another of edit war.

But what I find most concerning is the misrepresentation of talkpage discussions and false claims of consensus for their preferred page versions.

My Lord (previously called Anmolbhat) added this content [62] on Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus but was reverted and told by administrators to get consensus for it [63] because it was contested by other users. [64] He has now restored that content [65] without consensus and has even cited this talkpage discussion [66] in his edit summary as a justification for his mass revert even though the talkpage discussion shows no consensus in favour of his content. This is a deliberate misrepresentation, which I think is disruption.
This is by no means the only article where he has behaved disruptively like this. On Violence against women during the partition of India he made a contentious edit [67] with an edit summary saying "see talkpage for consensus" even though there was no consensus on the talkpage in favour of that edit. [68]
There are other examples too of this disruption which in my view amount to tendentious editing. On Kashmiris he removes content with a similarly fictious edit summary [69], citing a talkpage discussion which does not actually support his version.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

[70] User was blocked for violating the copyright policies.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts): [71]

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

I am finding that this user's editing behaviour in relation to other users is just too confrontational. This "you lose buddy" [72] edit summary is just symptomatic of their battleground mentality. They also recently filed two [73] [74] groundless enforcement requests against two users.

This user has already received multiple warnings for unconstructive editing [75], disruption [76], and for pov deletions [77].

I would like the administrators to stop this user's disruption on Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus, Violence against women during the partition of India, Kashmiris and Cow vigilante violence in India since 2014. In the last one he unilaterally removed a section [78] which was originally merged into the article per a community discussion at AfD. [79] Farhan Khurram ( talk) 19:36, 9 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:My_Lord&diff=prev&oldid=845151250

Discussion concerning My Lord

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by My Lord

Statement by Danish.mehraj26

Sandstein may be right that the first batch of diffs is not actionable but the third batch is very concerning. He has been falsifying consensus and misrepresenting talkpage discussions to do reverts. He has also removed content from Cow vilgilante article even though it was added there after a community discussion.

For someone who has already been warned not to do POV deletions [80] and disruption, [81] the kind of disruptive behaviour Farhan Khurram has reported of My Lord doing reverts and falsification of talkpage consensus to support those reverts is disconcerting.

Here is additional evidence of this user's battleground attitude, [82] in addition to this edit summary [83]. Danish Mehraj 03:01, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Discussion by uninvolved editors

Statement by WBG

As Sandstein notes, the first seven diffs are non-actionable.If anything, Anmol shall be commended for some of the edits.Also, see WP:BURDEN and WP:RS.Period.
As to unsubstantiated accusation of socking, I'm curious as to whether the OP has missed Anmol's dummy-edit-summary, just 15 minutes after the aspersion.
As to the case of edit warring at List of wars involving India, Anmol was acting against the established consensus and I've reverted him.But, I fail to see any shred of evidence where either of the editor(s) has raised the issue at either's t/p or the article t/p and that does not speak good, for either of them.
His restoration of content at Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus is problematic.And, it's a sad state of affairs (overall), where wild accusations occupy a majority of any t/p discourse. I tried to mediate but both the sides seemingly dropped the issue, before Anmol came back, out of nowhere, with an illusion of a consensus.(It might be noted that the recently imposed mass-T-bans don't vacate the absence of consensus......)
No idea as to the happenings at Violence against women during the partition of India.No comments.
I'm curious as to how a copyvio block is a tangentially-relevant sanction but I'll let it go.......
It may be noted that the warnings for un-constructive editing, POV edits are way too old, (when he was a newbie) and I've not even looked at the merits of the issuing of the warnings.
Danish's diffs for battleground mentality aren't much actionable either, esp. given that the parties at the other end have earned a much deserved T-Ban from the Indo-Pak arena.
The last two enforcement request(s), filed by him, though partially frivolous, had aspects of faults from the other parties.
As to the case at Cow vigilante violence in India since 2014, Anmol was perfect to trim the sections (per the general style of the article) and it's a content dispute, which predictably will snow in his favor, if RFC-ed.
- Overall, I don't see anything sanction-able, in this report, based on point(s):- 3 and 4 alone.At best, a warning to Anmol to be more careful and a warning to the OP to not use AE as a tool against fellow opposing editors.
- And, going by the substance of this filing, I would echo Sitush who stated of a tendency to:--run to the drama boards at any opportunity, however tenuous, that might result in an "opponent" being sanctioned. ~ Winged Blades^Godric 07:47, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by DarSahab

I have just checked Winged Blades of Godric's statement. His statement says that the first two batch of diffs showen are non-actionable. Agreed.

But the meat of the problem is in the third batch of diffs. Winged Blades of Godric accepts that the behaviour on Exodus of Kashmiri Hindus is problematic. But WBG is silent on the fact that this is a part of My Lord's general trend of disruption on pages such as Kashmiris and Violence against women during the partition of India where he reverts with false claims of consensus and talkpage support in his edit summaries.

The removal of content on Cow vigilante violence in Indian since 2014 is also a problematic because that content was merged into the aticle per a community discussion on AfD. [84] That in my view is disruptive.

The warnings cited of POV edits and unconstructive editing are still relevant because they give an idea of the kind of disruption this user has done before and its even more relevant now because he is still doing similar disruption.

These diffs [85] [86] for battleground mentality are actionable because it shows that he has the same, even worse, behavioural issues as the T-Banned parties.

I wonder why does WBG on one hand think that its okay for My Lord to say stuff like "You lose buddy" and "That's clear WP:IDHT from you. I had explained it in edit summary as well as here, but you have no concerns about using a weak source for your POV pushing. And when you are telling that others are "censoring" removing content cause they " WP:IDONTLIKEIT" as defense for clear POV content, it is just not gonna help", but on the other hand argue that if others respond in kind they deserve to be T-Banned? Why not just be fair? DarSahab ( talk) 12:22, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I am adding RaviC to the category of users involved in this style of disruption. He chimed into Kashmiris to repeat My Lord's behaviour [87] with the same misleading edit summary which basically falsifies consensus. There is nothing on the cited talkpage thread [88] indicating any consensus for that version (actually it shows the opposite). Not just My Lord but RaviC is also actively practising this deception and this I believe is disruption.

Statement by Spasage

The diffs shown of this user's conduct are enough to convince me that this user is not helping the project. User writes incorrect statements in edit summaries across several articles is not only disruption but also WP:BLUDGEONING. Not just by this reported user but by RaviC as well. I have seen My Lord's talkpage disputes, which he conveniently only began after this AE was filed for being deceptive while doing reverts on the mainspace articles, and having know how of these topics what I have read from these discussions has reaffirmed my feeling that My Lord is bludgeoning. Instead of refuting valid arguments he starts to nitpick and raise red herrings. I feel sorry for the users who are debating him because they are just going to get frustrated with all this. I am also going to add Kautilya3 "So this division you imagine seems to be in your own imagination" and Joshua Jonathan "Bullshit" here for incivility and WP:BLUDGEONING of other users. The former accuses a user of WP:OR even when that user referred to scholarly sources/historians such as Gulshan Majeed and Abdul Lone.

Statement by Obaid Raza

My Lord's talkpage interactions were highly uncivil. [89] [90] He was let off for this in his last AE due to the intervention of the same sympathetic admin, WBG. Sadly, My Lord has not improved since. There is what other users have reported of his recent and constant lying in his edit summaries. He is still lying and using diversionary tactics, an example is his posting a link to a very recent discussion as an answer to a question about locating support for his version in an older discussion. [91] Its a shame that English Wikipedia administrators choose not to act on such disruptive users until the water is over our heads and these users have infuriated everybody else. In a similar case, WBG came to my talkpage to ask for already posted evidence about Kautilya3's disruption. [92] Sadly, Kautilya3's own incivility is continuing in the same places as My Lord. He recently commented at Talk:Kashmiris like this, "So this division you imagine seems to be in your own imagination." [93] These two, My Lord and Kautilya3, are users who repeatedly comment on other users and not solely on the content in their content disputes. When I see such disruption and incivility on Urdu Wikipedia I block such accounts as a normal admin action. I would suggest the same approach with both here. Obaid Raza ( talk) 12:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Result concerning My Lord

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I've looked at the first seven diffs and don't find them actionable. They contain judgments about content, yes, but this is what we do as editors. Criticizing content is ok, it's criticizing editors personally that we disapprove of. Given that the first batch of diffs is completely non-actionable, I've not examined the rest of the request and would close this without action. Sandstein 21:05, 9 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Given that no other admin has expressed interest in taking action, I am closing this accordingly. Sandstein 13:07, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

‎Netoholic

No action. Sandstein 13:09, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning ‎Netoholic

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Tryptofish ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 23:45, 9 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: ‎Netoholic ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2#Discretionary sanctions (1932 cutoff)

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

Pretty much all of this is at Political views of American academics.

June 5, 2018 Just after the recent previous AE, does a massive revert while Template:In use is on the page. Another editor comments to him about it: [94].
June 9, 2018 Another massive revert, edit summary is misleading.
June 9, 2018 "Begin"s to restore material that had been deleted by consensus.
June 5, 2018 Battleground-y comments, disregard for actual policies.
June 6, 2018 Ditto.
June 6, 2018 Ditto.
June 7, 2018 Ditto, with me replying.
June 8, 2018 Ditto. ("Careful what you ask for.")
June 9, 2018 Uses "throw anything at the wall and see what sticks" argument to say that the page should not include what the author of a study says about her own study.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts): [95]

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Just days ago, another AE complaint was raised about Netoholic: permalink. I suggested cutting him some slack, [96]: "In the next several days, I plan to do a top-to-bottom rewrite of that page. In the past, that would likely have led to edit warring. But let's wait a couple of days, and see whether that happens now. I'm crossing my fingers that it won't." On that basis, TonyBallioni closed the thread: [97] (sorry Tony!). Unfortunately, exactly what Netoholic was supposed not to do is what he did, and repeatedly. He had every reason to be aware that DS were in effect. And please note that there was overwhelming support from other editors for the revisions that I had made: [98], [99], [100], [101], [102]. And before anyone gets the idea to go boomerang-y, I've been trying very hard to be fair to him: [103], [104], [105], [106]. When he added material that I thought should not be there: [107], I nonetheless made edits to try to improve it: [108], [109], [110], [111], [112], [113], [114], [115]. (Looking at Talk:Ideological bias on Wikipedia#Conservapedia, it looks like this may be happening at other pages too.)

At the very least, you need to topic-ban him from American Politics, explicitly including "political bias". -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:45, 9 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I want to make it clear that what I am raising here is not about asking AE to resolve a content dispute. Lionelt says that there is not a consensus (cf [116], [117]), but there really is a consensus. The page was moved, [118], on the consensus that it was a POV violation to write it as a stated fact that there is a liberal bias. When Sandstein closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political views of American academics, most of the "keep" arguments (of which I was one) were conditional on the page being significantly rewritten to address the "delete" concerns that the page was pushing a "liberal bias" POV. And, with the sole exception of Lionelt, every other editor strongly endorsed the revisions that Netoholic is nonetheless working to undo: [119], [120], [121], [122], [123]. So it most definitely is not just a two-editor disagreement that could use a 3O. This is a situation of a single editor working against a consensus in a manner that is tendentious. Don't decide it on content. Decide it on conduct. If it's OK for Netoholic to revert the edits that all those editors endorsed, when I for the most part am not reverting him, and for him to say of me "Frankly, dishonest writing", [124], that's not the way I understand DS. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:10, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Note: To make it abundantly clear that I am not filing this to get my way in a content dispute, I just completely self-reverted all of my edits back to where the page was before I started revising it: [125]. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:29, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

As of today, multiple other editors have arrived at the page, and all have disagreed with Netoholic. Nonetheless, he is engaging in reverts against consensus at that page and others: [126], [127], and made the bizarre assertion that the self-stated opinions of a BLP subject (with whom Netoholic disagrees) should be removed on the basis of supposedly violating BLP: [128]. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:26, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

And is edit warring over that, too: [129]. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:36, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested: [130]

Discussion concerning ‎Netoholic

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by ‎Netoholic

Statement by Lionelt

I do not see a consensus. I just see Tryp and Netoholic going back and forth on the Talk page and at the article. Occasionally another editor will chime in with "Good" or "Not good" but I would not call that consensus. I, for one, have voiced concern with Tryp's efforts at the article.

It's extremely difficult to completely re-write a controversial article from "top-to-bottom." Perhaps even ill-advised. It severely limits the ability to compromise over fine points. Imagine if an editor attempted to re-write Presidency of Donald Trump from "top-to-bottom"?

Yes, there does appear to be frustration at the page. However I do not see any violations which rise to the level of sanctioning. Our normal dispute resolution process should be adequate. Since this appears to be a content dispute primarily between Tryp and Netoholic, perhaps WP:3O is the solution.

Statement by (username)

Result concerning ‎Netoholic

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I'm not seeing actions worthy of sanctions here. Editors are allowed to criticize the writing of others as long as they remain civil in doing so and do not personally attack others. Netoholic's comments here touch but do not cross that line. The other diffs being reported here reflect content disputes, which AE does not decide. Sandstein 15:30, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Given that no other admin has expressed interest in taking action, I am closing this accordingly. Sandstein 13:09, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

TheGracefulSlick ‎

Apparent honest mistake, immediately corrected. No action necessary.-- regentspark ( comment) 19:22, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning TheGracefulSlick ‎

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Shrike ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 19:03, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: TheGracefulSlick ‎ ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#General_1RR_restriction :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

13 June 2018‎ Revert after not waiting 24 hours from this revert [131]
12 June 2018‎ 1 revert
Date Explanation
Date Explanation

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Date Explanation
Date Explanation

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

The policy is quite clear on this ". If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit."-- Shrike ( talk) 19:03, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Participated in an arbitration request or enforcement procedure about the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on Today.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Discussion concerning TheGracefulSlick ‎

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by TheGracefulSlick ‎

Sigh, here I outlined my edits and, according to my time stamps, I was six minutes past 24 hours. I asked Shrike if I was understanding this correctly; if I was wrong, I will gladly revert my mistake. Instead we are here, wasting time. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 19:08, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

On second thought, I will just self-revert and revert. Better than wasting any time here. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 19:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

RegentsPark it is done. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 19:19, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning TheGracefulSlick ‎

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

@ TheGracefulSlick: It does appear to be a violation since you're supposed to wait 24 hours after the first revert (21:48 EDT) of your edit (or your revert, in this case). Basing this on your talk page comment to Shrike, easiest if you just revert again and we can move on. -- regentspark ( comment) 19:15, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

TheGracefulSlick

Withdrawn

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning TheGracefulSlick

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Shrike ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 19:35, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: TheGracefulSlick ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#General_1RR_restriction :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

14 June 2018 Restoring word terrorist in his edit [132] that was reverted [133]
Date Explanation
Date Explanation
Date Explanation

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Only today he have broke 1RR [134]

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Participated in an arbitration request or enforcement procedure about the area of conflict in the last twelve months [135]

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

User today created the article and used the word "terrorist" his orignal edit was reverted and he restored the usage of "terrorist" once again The policy is quite clear on this ". If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit." As he original author of the article he have to wait 24 hours especially if it was created today. Also the user seem can't grasp 1RR he have history of not adhering to the rule for example: [136] [137] [138]

@TGS Becouse you doesn't seem to grasp 1RR.-- Shrike ( talk) 20:01, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[139]

Discussion concerning TheGracefulSlick

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by TheGracefulSlick

I did not realize the creation of the article counted as the "first" edit. Why could you not discuss this at my talk page, Shrike? TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 19:51, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Fixed. I appreciate your close observation of my edits Shrike, and you will find my talk page always open to discussing them. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 20:01, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Shrike editors with tenures much longer than mine still make similar mistakes. I am not going to shy away from the area, creating articles and content, simply because you wait to pounce on those mistakes without discussing them. I "grasp" 1RR just fine, have reverted, and encourage you to find anything better to do. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 20:11, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning TheGracefulSlick

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

SPECIFICO

No action taken, but SPECIFICO is advised to use more caution going forward. Awilley's advice to everyone below is also sound. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 13:23, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning SPECIFICO

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: JFG ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 13:37, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: SPECIFICO ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:ARBAP2, DS/1RR :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

23:27, 13 June 2018 First revert
13:03, 14 June 2018 Second revert, bright-line 1RR breach

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Previously given a discretionary sanction for conduct in the AP2 area on 22 April 2017 by NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).
Previously given a DS warning for conduct in the AP2 area on 20 May 2018 by TonyBallioni ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).
Received a "two strikes" warning for edit-warring in the AP2 area, on 3 June 2018 by NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict by 3 different users in the last twelve months, more earlier.
Gave alerts about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict to 18 different users in the last twelve months, more earlier.
Participated in several arbitration request or enforcement procedures about the area of conflict in the last twelve months: (search AE)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

In normal circumstances, I would have given SPECIFICO a chance to self-revert, but given the numerous warnings she recently received in the AP2 area, a closer examination by the DS/AE board is warranted. — JFG ^talk 13:42, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Awilley: Again, in normal circumstances I would have given SPECIFICO a chance to self-revert, but as other editors mentioned, she often asked for tougher AE enforcement, and several admins warned her that she might fall victim to that. In the thread User talk:SPECIFICO#Arbitration enforcement request, she wrote: Overall, what I think would help is 3-5 times the number of Admins keeping an eye on these Politics articles and willing to hand out sanctions. I've said this repeatedly for a couple of years now. And indeed she was admonished in 2017 for calling for sanctions all over the place. [140]

I do believe that SPECIFICO mistakenly overlooked her earlier revert here, but admins should decide what is their standard for DS enforcement. When an editor has been toeing the line so many times despite warnings from several admins, what should be done to prevent further disruption and restore a collegial editing atmosphere? — JFG ^talk 08:51, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

diff [141]

Discussion concerning SPECIFICO

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by SPECIFICO

Simple error. We generally don't file such AE complaints about an obvious error before posting a friendly warning on the perp's talk page. At any rate I self-reverted and replied to OP on my talk page. [142]. SPECIFICO talk 15:10, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Nomoskedasticity

JGF apparently missed the bit where Specifico already self-reverted: [143]. Hard to fathom, no? Nomoskedasticity ( talk) 14:18, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Winkelvi

While SPECIFICO did revert herself, the revert didn't occur until more than an hour after her original reversion (that went over 1RR) and a half hour after this report was filed. That doesn't seem like an "Oops, I forgot about 1RR" error to me where she would try to honestly correct her error on her own volition. An hour later seems like damage control to me. It should also be pointed out that she didn't revert and then leave her computer or Wikipedia to do something else, then return to see the notice JFG left on her talk page; she performed two edits after the 2RR [144] [145]. All this considered, she absolutely did violate the 1RR rule for that article, the bright line was crossed, and I believe she knew it and didn't act until she was caught. It's not as if she's not well aware of the 1RR restriction at that article. Anyone who regularly edits there knows it. SPECIFICO is a regular editor at the article (116 edits since 10/3/16) and at the article's talk page (684 edits since 12/11/16). -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 01:13, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Objective3000

Winkelvi: the revert didn't occur until more than an hour after her original reversion (that went over 1RR) and a half hour after this report was filed (undue emphasis removed). OMG, an entire hour. You must have a direct feed into your brain to edit here. I’m not saying Specifico (and numerous other editors) aren’t too quick on edits in DS articles. Long ago, the filer (JFG) was brought to a noticeboard and was probably about to receive a 0RR. Much as I disliked the editor’s quick trigger finger, and rather often disagreed, I thought the editor was valuable and argued that a 0RR would be too restrictive. We need good editors – including some that may have strong opinions (who doesn’t). But, the number of noticeboard efforts to sanction other editors over, basically, content disputes has been rapidly expanding. This is not only a time-sink, but has a chilling effect. As the edit was quickly self-reverted, I suggest the filer withdraw. I also think some warnings on bringing content disputes to noticeboards might be of value. Just my opinion. O3000 ( talk) 01:36, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Netoholic

In SPECIFICO's own words:

I am uninvolved with the Trump article. -- Netoholic @ 04:11, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning SPECIFICO

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

The self-revert was made after this report, but it does seem to obviate the need for action. Sandstein 14:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply
A few comments:
- @SPECIFICO: Please be more careful in your reverts. I'm getting tired of seeing your name here.
- @JFG: Please consider asking people to self-revert before jumping to an admin board. And @SPECIFICO, you'd better be sure to offer others the same courtesy you expect from them.
- @Nomoskedasticity, apparently you missed the bit where this report was made before SPECIFICO self-reverted.
- @Winkelvi, what Objective3000 said.
- @Netoholic, please don't try to pretend you're "uninvolved". You may not be editing the Trump article but it was only three weeks that ago you got an official warning not to use this noticeboard to further your disputes with SPECIFICO.

~ Awilley ( talk) 04:49, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Rafe87

Closing as no action. If people feel that the Yaniv's actions merit further looking into at AE, they can file a new request. TonyBallioni ( talk) 13:37, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Rafe87

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: יניב הורון ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 04:32, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Rafe87 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:ARBPIA#General 1RR restriction :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

22:03, 11 June 2018 revert of my edit challenging the source
22:04, 11 June 2018 Removal of previous content
21:28, 12 June 2018 Third revert in less than 24 hours, again replacing content and restoring controversial source by middleeasteye.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

[146]

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[147]

Discussion concerning Rafe87

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Rafe87

Statement by power~enwiki

Procedurally, as the first two diffs are consecutive, they only count as a single diff for 1RR purposes. While a gap of 23.5 hours between reverts does violate 1RR here, if there's no larger pattern here a warning should be sufficient. Largely thanks to Rafe87's lack of edit summaries, it's not immediately obvious whether these edits are reverts. The first diff is clearly a revert based on יניב הורון's evidence (and the second diff can be considered part of that); but the last one does not add the middleeasteye reference, and in fact removes an addition by Erictheenquirer. It's hard for me to see how two reverts, 23.5 hours apart, one adding a source and another removing that same source, should justify anything other than a warning to be extremely conscientious editing in this controversial area. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 04:40, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Nableezy

The reverts by יניב הורון ( talk · contribs · logs) across a range of articles should be looked at. But at this article Ill just note that the complainant here has made four edits at this article, all reverts, and exactly zero edits at the talk page. A look at their contributions will quickly demonstrate this user is strictly a revert warrior. Would be happy to expand on that if invited to do so. But at this article specifically an admin should look at who is drive-by edit-warring without even attempting to collaborate on the talk page. nableezy - 04:42, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ RegentsPark: I was thinking more of the reverts where the user reverts to include material that manifestly does not appear in the sources while demanding other read the damn sources while simultaneously, and hypocritically, reverting per ONUS. nableezy - 17:41, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ RegentsPark: honestly I am unsure how one could report such editing. You can look at each of those edits and say on their own they are justified, but taken together they demonstrate somebody who is here playing the rules against each other. Either this editor believes that consensus is required on the talk page to restore challenged material (which is a challenge when the user is never on the talk page), or they believe if something is sourced it remains, and that is completely leaving aside whether or not the material in question even appears in the source. But you cannot seriously make those two edits that are wholly philosophically opposite Wikipedia editing-wise. You cannot make this edit and then this edit. But the position at this board seems to be that a strict adherence to the 24 hour shot clock is sufficient to escape any sanctions. I get that admins do not want to be accused of judging content. But there are users who are gaming the rules against each other in blatant ways with nobody seeming to be willing to look at it beyond "not a 1RR violation". nableezy - 05:58, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by TheGracefulSlick

The filer not-so-ironically has been more disruptive at the article. Here he removed the Middle East Eye source; he was reverted and could have contributed to a talk page discussion. Instead, he waited and reverted again without discussion, this time calling it "propaganda". As Nableezy said, this editor is strictly a revert warrior and has not learned from past reports against himself. At Quds Day for instance, he has replaced a long-standing image without consensus three times [148] [149] [150], oddly citing an ongoing discussion that has no consensus. In a small twist, he actually engaged in discussion, but wrote a heinous, in my opinion, blockable personal attack: "Says the guy who comes from a country where dissidents are hanged in cranes". If BOOMERANG can be applied to AE, there is no better time than now. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 15:10, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

TonyBallioni the reverts without discussion by the filer are against the spirit of 1RR, but do not actually violate it, correct? So would, say Nableezy or I, be wasting community time with a seperate case? Or can a pattern be established and genuinely evaluated? In my opinion, the attack I mentioned above crosses the line extremely and the past history is enough to consider a than or something similar. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 18:20, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Icewhiz

I want to note that the Middle East Eye is a very borderline source, and probably not a RS (see RSN discussion). It is definitely not a source that should be used on a contentious subject that has been widely covered by mainstream media - removing this source was entirely within policy, and frankly adding (or reverting by Rafe87 - [151]) material based on a such source is quite questionable. Icewhiz ( talk) 15:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by יניב הורון

@ TonyBallioni: Sorry for the off-topic, but what TheGracefulSlick apparently "forgot" to mention is that this comment I made was a response to a previous personal attack by Expectant of Light (quote: ...It's not Israel here where you have your opponents either shut up or shot up!). My contributions speek for themselves. As for my previous mistakes, I was already sanctioned for them, despite some editors keep talking about them (while trying to invent new reports based on spurious reasons). I'm confident that you are an honest administrator who can investigate the matter by yourself without being influenced by users who are obsessed with banning me for political reasons. Thanks.-- יניב הורון (Yaniv) ( talk) 20:17, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Zero0000: This POV aberration of yours was a "mistake" or intentional? That's one example of many. You are the least appropriate to judge my edits.-- יניב הורון (Yaniv) ( talk) 03:21, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Expectant of Light regarding -יניב הורון

I was notified on this talk by -יניב הורון but I want to confirm a complaint by Nabzeely that -יניב הורון engages in revert wars on other pages, often citing irrelevant reasons in his explanations or reverting many edits while citing only one truly problematic edit. A recent example can be found on the Houthis. He reverts an edit claiming the source is a blog, then when reverted back explaining that the source is not a blog but a very reliable source , then reverts again this time claiming it's an opinion whereas the author is an high ranking expert named Bruce Riedel ~~who also happens to be from this user's own ethnicity and nationality (citing this since he seems to be driven by his strong political inclinations).~~ [I thought Riedel was a dual national. Appears not true.] In short, he keeps shooting in the dark until his/her counter-party backs down and accepts his desired version. That's not constructive editing. -- Expectant of Light ( talk) 05:36, 14 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Zero0000

In this AE case less than a week ago, יניב_הורון was "warned to be extremely careful with their reverts. Any future violations may result in more severe sanctions than usual given the editor's past history in this area." Mention was made of יניב_הורון's habit of making repeated "mistakes" that always seemed to match his POV. I'd like to mention this "mistake" only a day ago in which יניב_הורון removed text on the grounds "not supported by source" even though it consisted of direct quotations from the sources. As other people have written here, יניב_הורון is the paradigm edit warrior with no redeeming features. Zero^talk

Result concerning Rafe87

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

While a technical violation of 1RR (23.5, rather than 24 hours), I don't see this is worth acting on. From what I can see, the editor has been discussing their views and this particular edit on the talk page and generally editing responsibly. Perhaps a warning that, sometimes, care in observing bureaucratic requirements is the sensible course of action, but not much more than that. I'm also loathe to see a boomerang here. The way discretionary sanctions are set up, following the letter of the sanctions without being overly tendentious or disruptive (and I don't see a revert only policy as being any of those), is a sufficient condition for avoiding admin action. -- regentspark ( comment) 15:58, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Nableezy:, purely administratively, the examples given by you don't seem actionable. The editor is sticking to the page sanctions (albeit barely) and, looking at the sequence of edits, they look like a tit-for-tat revert war. Of course, none of this takes into account the content, consensus, and source fidelity involved in those reverts. Perhaps, as TonyBallioni suggests, it would be best to file a separate report with more details and, if that's the case, evidence of the broader problem that Tony alludes to but I'm not familiar with.-- regentspark ( comment) 18:14, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I’m inclined to close as a warning. @ Nableezy and TheGracefulSlick: As I’m familiar with Yaniv’s editing, and given his history here, I’m more open to a boomerang, I also don’t want to discourage the filing of good faith reports (which I think this is.) If someone thinks sanctions are needed against them, it would be best to open a new report rather than deal with it here. TonyBallioni ( talk) 18:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ TheGracefulSlick: Yaniv had somewhat of a baptism of fire into ARBPIA by being blocked for 30/500 violations (by me). They’re one of the few editors who gets blocked for that who actusllu stuck around. I’m willing to cut them some slack because they basically dived right into AE without getting acquainted with other areas first (partially their own fault, but our behavioral norms in this area are tough to follow sometimes).
  Re: your diff as a personal attack, yes, I think it’s agrigous and if I had seen it two days ago I would have blocked then as a regular admin action. That and some other things he’s been involved in of late especially after the last AE makes me think that there might be cause for a deeper look ( Doug Weller, I know arbs tend to stay away from AE, but you might be interested in these ones.) That being said, I believe in being fair to people and I think that in an area as complex as ARBPIA, the best way to handle it would be through a new report if someone thinks it is merited rather than a boomerang. TonyBallioni ( talk) 18:39, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ יניב הורון: I think I’ve been fair to you generally (or I’ve tried to be). You can be a bit like a bull in the china shop in these areas, but I get that it’s a highly contentious area. Like I said, I don’t think a boomerang should happen here, but if people think it should there may be grounds for opening a new AE (I haven’t looked in depth at any of your recent edits outside of the Muslim Brotherhood, which didn’t have any banners at the time.)
  All that being said please be more cautious in this area and with how you interact with others. TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:28, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I'd agree with TonyBallioni's assessment here. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 13:28, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Talatastan

Talatastan indefinitely blocked, first year under arbitration enforcement. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:57, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Talatastan

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: יניב הורון ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:18, 16 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Talatastan ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:ARBPIA3#500/30 :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

[164]
[165]

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

User doesn't care about ARBPIA restrictions. As soon as the sanction expires, he comes back to edit the same articles. An indefinite block might be necessary.-- יניב הורון (Yaniv) ( talk) 22:18, 16 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[166]

Discussion concerning Talatastan

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Talatastan

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Talatastan

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Talatastan, do you have anything to say for yourself? Because this is the third time, and an indefinite block seems reasonable to me. Drmies ( talk) 01:37, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply
NeilN just indef'd Yaniv (the OP), but I tend to agree with Drmies here: not even on the 30/500 but for the attitude that underlines them. Unless there is strong objection from other administrators I intend to block for POV pushing and 30/500 violations: the first year as an AE action, after that as a regular admin action. TonyBallioni ( talk) 02:49, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- Ha, you know the paperwork better than me. I just saw that block go by--I am surprised, but I don't know the editor's previous history. Drmies ( talk) 02:51, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- OK I think NeilN was momentarily puzzled too. Drmies ( talk) 02:52, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply
  - ( edit conflict)And after I posted that, NeilN unblocked as he apparently intended to block another user. If it was Talatastan the block was intended for, I endorse the block. TonyBallioni ( talk) 02:53, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- I clicky-clicked on the wrong browser tab. Talatastan is indeffed. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 02:55, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

SPECIFICO

No violation. Sir Joseph warned not to open frivolous AE requests. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning SPECIFICO

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Sir Joseph ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 14:56, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: SPECIFICO ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/CASENAME#SECTION :

WP:ARBAP2, CIVILITY RESTRICTION

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

June 17 antisemitic comment and insinuation, " or that the unwashed Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn who read that paper are dumb enough to think that a facile and unintelligible statement by a politician will win him their support -- or maybe he thinks these guys have got some money because, well... you know. "

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

[167] Specifico warned about 1RR
Previously given a discretionary sanction for conduct in the AP2 area on 22 April 2017 by NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).
Previously given a DS warning for conduct in the AP2 area on 20 May 2018 by TonyBallioni ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).
Received a "two strikes" warning for edit-warring in the AP2 area, on 3 June 2018 by NeilN ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict by 3 different users in the last twelve months, more earlier.
Gave alerts about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict to 18 different users in the last twelve months, more earlier.
Participated in several arbitration request or enforcement procedures about the area of conflict in the last twelve months: (search AE)

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

To those claiming that SPECIFICO didn't make these comments but is merely putting them into Trump's mouth, that is just as offensive and a BLP issue as well. These comments have no place on Wikipedia and I'm shocked that there are people here defending them. To Objective3000, my comment on WV's talkpage has nothing to do with this request or of Wikipedia. I was making a comment about the growth of antisemitism in the US. SPECIFICO's antisemtic comments were not read with any bias, I read them simply as they were typed out. Let's not start to blame the victim here.

User:My very best wishes which sources is SPECIFICO quoting?
SPECIFICO, we're not talking about Trump. We're talking about YOUR statements.
People are either purposely or accidentally turning this into a Trump issue. This has nothing to do with Trump or Trump's statements or his views. This is about SPECIFICO's statement. Bringing in sources about Trump is just trying to bludgeon-out the fact that SPECIFICO made comments that should not have happened.
@ NeilN: How is what I read and brought here indicative of a battleground? Again, SPECIFICO is not claiming Trump said it, and this is not about Trump's Mexican statements. This is a statement that is indeed antisemitic. Again, read the whole paragraph, ""MelanieN, there's a bit too much OR in your statement to use it for an editing decision. But just to follow that line of reasoning, I think what this shows is equally likely that Trump thinks l) religion is nonsense and he doesn't care about it at all - or 2) that the unwashed Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn who read that paper are dumb enough to think that a facile and unintelligible statement by a politician will win him their support -- or maybe he thinks these guys have got some money because, well... you know. But Melanie what about DUE WEIGHT? This is an insignificant interview, one of thousands Trump gave in 2015-6 and it was not picked up by RS. It has about 300 google hits. Most of Trump's memorable statements have at least a thousand times as many. SPECIFICO talk 8:30 pm, Yesterday (UTC−4)"" Again, SPECIFICO is saying, that "I think what this shows is equally likely that Trump thinks....." Warning me would be a terrible mistake and a miscarriage of justice and one that will just prove yet again that certain comments can be made on WP without consequences. That would be the truest definition of chilling effect.
@ Regentspark:, I think you're confused. I never said SPECIFICO is ascribing these views to Trump. That is what others are saying. You also say that the comments themselves, regardless of who said it is not antisemitic. That is just unbelievable. Talking about unwashed, dumb and money with regards to Orthodox Jews and you don't find those comments, regardless of who said it, troubling?

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Discussion concerning SPECIFICO

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
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Statement by SPECIFICO

I see that MrX has given the full text of my remark on the talk page. Several editors misrepresented that by cutting words out of context. I asked them to stop. Instead, here we are. To provide additional context, it was a long thread that got off into OR back and forth, so I started a subsection to focus on the only issue I was raising, to wit NPOV. This was a Trump interview by a small Jewish publication with a very defined readership in Brooklyn, NY on the occasion of Trump's attendance at a Jewish recognition ceremony. The interview was not picked up by mainstream media, and in the absence of any confirmation of its significance, it fails DUE WEIGHT as an indication of Trump's core values or beliefs. It was directed to a certain audience on this occasion and, as I said earlier in the thread, is typical of the kind of meaningless statement public figures or political hopefuls will make to win affinity from various defined groups. To my great surprise, MelanieN had a different view and wrote the following [168]

Look, it’s not just a matter of what he said, or to whom, or what he meant by “honored”. Forget the quibbling over that stuff. This is basically a matter of his actions. There are Christians who would disown a daughter who married a Jew and converted to Judaism. There are others who would try to hush up their daughter’s conversion, treat it as something “we don’t talk about.” Trump is no such person. He obviously loves his daughter as much as he ever did, is still very proud of her, respects and embraces her religious choice, and accepts and loves his son-in-law and grandchildren. That says something important about Trump and how he regards religion. And it deserves a mention in the religion section. -- MelanieN ( talk) 00:00, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

.

My reply responded to this (which, in its insinuation that many folks would disown Jewish offspring, may be quite offensive to some readers, BTW). My response simply posed the opposite interpretation of Trump's statement -- that he was acting only out of self-interest and that there was nothing to indicate this Ivanka snippet contradicts his well-documented and amply sourced record of anti-Semitic statements, enablement of neo-Nazi supporters, etc. My post clearly states that it's just as likely that Trump is at best indifferent to religion, Jewish people, and religious hatred, and that he is motivated only by perceived self interest in such matters.

I hope that's clear enough for the present thread. As some of the Admins know, I have been stalked and singled out over the past month or so by a series of mostly pro-Trump editors who have brought a series of specious or exaggerated complaints about me, possibly because I have insisted on NPOV editing and valid sourcing in articles that concern him. SPECIFICO talk 15:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ MelanieN: @ MelanieN: Of course I was indicating a possible Trump mindset, to tell you I rejected your confidence in your take on his mindset. That's plain from my English words. Thanks for your comment. I believe I was also clear -- but perhaps assumed too much context -- that my take on public figures' attitudes is often not that they have strong views, but that they don't care about the substance of this or that issue, they care about how it affects their image and popularity. I said Trump may just not care at all about religion. That's a personal interpretation, but not a disparaging one and not inconsistent with acknowledged fact. I also said, and gave the "unwashed" definition to demonstrate, that expression does not refer to folks who don't bathe or something. It's a colloquialism for the hoi polloi - for the sort of folks that don't travel in Trump's circles, that will never be business partners, counterparties, power-brokers, or other useful contacts. They are not in the market for Trump condos or golf memberships. They have other interests. Etc. etc. That means he might be completely indifferent to these folks, except for their votes and possible campaign contributions. And like the other bit, it was expressing the likelihood not that Trump is personally virulently anti-Semitic, but rather that a public figure courting favor with any group reflects the needs of a public figure, not an inner good or bad will. I'd previously illustrated the same point using the name of Hillary Clinton. SPECIFICO talk 18:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I'll be glad to provide citations that point to Trump's tolerance or enablement of anti-Semitism, but I didn't do so here at AE because it's a content matter. As a matter of fact I've been looking for the best references to add more content to the article, because it is a longstanding and noteworthy aspect of Trump's public persona. SPECIFICO talk 18:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I've just begun to look for valid sources, but per MVBW, it's surely not a BLP violation to suggest that Trump might be indifferent to or tolerate Anti-Semitism.

And then along came Trump. The dog whistles heard throughout his campaign turned into an unmistakable bullhorn of intolerance once he arrived in the White House, emboldening the likes of Richard Spencer, Andrew Anglin and David Duke. Not only was the new administration ham-handed in dealing with Jewish issues — releasing a message on Holocaust Remembrance Day that failed to mention Jews at all, for instance — it winked enough at the alt-right to make them feel legitimated and loved. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/awakening-to-the-depth-of-american-anti-semitism/2018/03/23/048b18ec-18aa-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html

Trump has made much of his support for Israel, a position that allows him to paint himself as a friend to Jews. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has even said that Trump feels “very warmly” about the Jewish people. And yet Trump entertains a degree of anti-Semitism unparalleled in recent American administrations. At home, Trump is responsible for stoking a resurgent white nationalist movement that’s still divided over the “Jewish Question”—whether or not Jews are tolerable in a nationalist America—as the New Republic reported yesterday. He galvanized these anti-Semites when he suggested the existence of a globalist Jewish conspiracy during his campaign, and his election may offer them unprecedented access to the political establishment. During the campaign, Jewish journalists reported facing a wave of anti-Semitic harassment, and since his election hate crimes against Jews have spiked. He also chose to elevate Steve Bannon, head of white nationalist favorite Breitbart News, to chief strategist.

Trump's remark about Gary Cohn, who had criticized Trump's words after the Neo-Nazi Charlottesville incident.

@ Tryptofish: Just for the record, the problem with cutting OP some slack for misreading my words is that by the time this complaint was filed, the whole thing had been hashed over 3-4 times on talk. Look at this user's recent block record [169]. SPECIFICO talk 01:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by MrX

Here is what SPECIFICO actually wrote:

"MelanieN, there's a bit too much OR in your statement to use it for an editing decision. But just to follow that line of reasoning, I think what this shows is equally likely that Trump thinks l) religion is nonsense and he doesn't care about it at all - or 2) that the unwashed Hasidic Jews of Brooklyn who read that paper are dumb enough to think that a facile and unintelligible statement by a politician will win him their support -- or maybe he thinks these guys have got some money because, well... you know. But Melanie what about DUE WEIGHT? This is an insignificant interview, one of thousands Trump gave in 2015-6 and it was not picked up by RS. It has about 300 google hits. Most of Trump's memorable statements have at least a thousand times as many. SPECIFICO talk 8:30 pm, Yesterday (UTC−4)"
— [170]

She did not say Hasidic Jews are unwashed; she posed a hypothetical of what Trump might think, using an idiom commonly understood to mean poor or unsophisticated. She also did not say that Hasidic Jews are dumb. To characterize these comments as antisemitic is ridiculous.- Mr X 🖋 15:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Comment by MONGO

SPECIFICO seems to think the purpose of a BLP page is to make assumptions about what the subject of the BLP thinks with nary a supporting reference to hold up the claim, which in itself would in this instance be relegated to an opinion piece anyway. MONGO 15:30, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

SPECIFICO has been warned repeatedly by what appears to be neutral admins, not pro-Trump editors. two in this thread alone, [171] MONGO 16:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Objective3000

I wouldn’t have said this as someone might misunderstand it or try to use it against me in a completely unrelated thread (a la [172] two hours ago). Looks clear to me that was a hypothetical about possibilities of the thinking of another person used to give alternatives to a previously mentioned possibility. That’s not anti-Semitic. O3000 ( talk) 15:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

May I point to a comment just made elsewhere by the filer stating: Sadly antisemitism is on the rise and in my opinion is being condoned by the left. diff. Whatever is meant by “the left”, I fear it's possible that we may, once again, have a politically motivated filing based on a bias against the left and an editor perceived to be in that grouping. Such a bias could color the way a person looks at a sentence; and the out of context quote in the filing removes the fact that this was a hypothetical of someone else's thinking. I'm not casting aspersions, simply showing how bias can color perception. Has to be a better way of handling these. O3000 ( talk) 16:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@WinkLevi, And, just for the record: there was no context given by SPECIFICO in the original statement. Yes there was. It was just omitted in the quote in the filing. an administrator admonished her for it an hour and a half after the comment was made And that administrator said she saw no reason to redact the text. Look, what was under discussion in that section was Trump’s relationship to Judaism. It was stated that he couldn’t be anti-Semetic because he accepted his daughter’s marriage and conversion. Specifico gave a couple of alternative possibilities. It’s really difficult to talk about anti-Semitism without talking about anti-Semitism. Let’s not be so sensitive (or quick to sanction). (And yeah, I’m Jewish under the Law of Return) O3000 ( talk) 18:49, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Winkelvi

Anti-semitic remarks on a talk page for an article that has views which number in the tens-of-thousands where anyone "off the street" could wander into the talk page discussion are incredibly unacceptable and inexcusable. What's more unacceptable is that after making excuses for why her unqualified comments were acceptable and having that pointed out to her by two editors (one being an admin), SPECIFICO didn't admit her error or strike with an explanation next to the strike. Such comments should never be just left without a qualifier and explanation. As they are written in the original comment, they are unabashedly anti-semitic, full stop. If an editor who's Jewish sees SPECIFICO's comments as anti-semitic, the proof is in the perception by those in the protected class, regardless of how many explanations are provided and how many apologists for her comments emerge. Indeed, if anti-discrimination law and the ADL or the ACLU and Southern Poverty Law Center would consider those comments discriminatory hate speech, why wouldn't we? Here's a hypothetical: if anyone who is Jewish (regular editor, infrequent, newbie or just a reader) happens to stop by there and read them and is insulted and/or offended and feels discriminated against, then there's extreme damage done. And not just to the person who is offended, but the reputation of Wikipedia. Which could also then become a feeling of "Wikipedia makes excuses for and allows editors to promote anti-semitic commentary". Can anyone not see this? I agree with what Sir Joseph said above: it's shocking there are editors defending these comments. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 16:17, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re: "Winkelvi tells: "If an editor who's Jewish ...". I think it is precisely the kind of argument one must avoid around here. OK, I am also partly Jewish. So what?" -- My very best wishes, the "so what?" here is that not one Jewish person can or should speak for all Jewish people. That in mind, if one Jewish person is offended by the what they see as anti-semitic comments written in SPECIFICO-voice (which, in this case, because it's on an article talk page is essentially Wiki-voice should an unknowing reader or editor stop by), then there is a problem. And not a small one. Any idea how this not only looks to the viewing public (and non-editors do look at talk pages as well as media) but how it can make Jewish editors feel unwelcome and discriminated against? And if it gets swept under the rug and no warning or sanction is issued, what does that say to the world (let alone Wikipedia editors)? The implications and future possibilities over such a non-action in the way of how Wikipedia looks to the world and feels to Jewish (and other minority) editors are huge. This is bad, very bad, all around. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 17:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re: "I am simply saying this is not a comment that would be universally accepted as antisemitic by a Jewish person - in context." My very best wishes, that is precisely the problem. A person who is Jewish brought the issue here and does have a problem with it because they see it as anti-semitic. If a non-Jewish person does see it that way and they are alone, that's one thing. If the non-Jewish person and the Jewish person sees it that way, then that's a problem. And, just for the record: there was no context given by SPECIFICO in the original statement. An attempt at context was given only after she made the comment and when an administrator admonished her for it an hour and a half after the comment was made and then SPECIFICO's attempt at context a half hour after that. See diffs and time stamps here: Comments written: [173], admonished for comments: [174], SPECIFICO's response: [175]. I find this interesting when you consider that an editor who pays very close attention to context and specific wording in articles was oblivious to what she had written and how it could be perceived, only to -- as an afterthought -- claim the context of an obscure reference should have been obvious. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:35, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re: "Based on the statement by MelanieN below, I realize that the comment by SPECIFICO was not antisemitic because she was probably talking about the alleged antisemitism of other people." My very best wishes, the issue is that apart from MelanieN's statement below or SPECIFICO's belated reference to an obscure source for the statement, there is no context. As a stand-alone, it's an anti-semitic statement -- whether she intended it way or didn't. On its own (and it's incredible to me that SPECIFICO still hasn't struck the stand-alone statement with an asterisk explanation to follow the strike) it is anti-semitic, no matter who would have written it. Fact remains, it's in SPECIFICO's voice because there's no context to it.

Re: "But was it a BLP violation?" That's a separate issue. It doesn't have to be a straight-up BLP violation for it to be sanctionable and an anti-discrimination policy violation.

Re: "I do not think so because the subject was indeed covered in multiple RS and because these RS discussed something they called "antisemitic"." This point is irellevant as Donald Trump has never referred to Hasidim as "unwashed" and "dumb". SPECIFICO did, however (attempting to use Trump-voice to do it), and that's why we are here. Not because of a BLP violation in the way of content on Trump, but what was said about Trump and how it was said. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 18:57, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

NOTE: For those who don't see the comments written by SPECIFICO as anti-semitic, I would like all of you to look at this, on the same article talk page, in the exact same section, compliments of Scjessey: "Like every politician running for higher offices, it is necessary for them to establish their "Jewdentials" (my own neologism)" [176] This, exactly this is what I expected to start seeing once the first admin said, "That's not anti-semitism" followed by "Shame on the filer". By blaming the filer and saying something obviously anti-semitic is not anti-semitic, you've given permission for others to follow suit. And if you look at the history of discrimination as well as how human nature works, this is how it all get started and grows. Now, how is this going to be dealt with, rectified and stopped, MelanieN, NeilN, Sandstein, and RegentsPark - with another slap on the wrist? Does it sound like I'm angry and disgusted? Good. Because I am. -- ψλ ● ✉ ✓ 14:12, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by My very best wishes

One should look at the comment by SPECIFICO in appropriate context [177]. This thread is a discussion of content, which includes such things as conversion to Judaism. This is something widely published. The comment by SPECIFICO is obviously not directed against any other participants of the project. Neither this is a BLP violation. Does it qualify as "antisemitic"? I do not think so because she discusses something published in sources. Winkelvi tells: "If an editor who's Jewish ...". I think it is precisely the kind of argument one must avoid around here. OK, I am also partly Jewish. So what? My very best wishes ( talk) 17:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@Winkelvi. I am simply saying this is not a comment that would be universally accepted as antisemitic by a Jewish person - in context. In addition, debating improvement of pages on the subject of antisemitism is a perfectly legitimate business. However, it is important that one contributor should not accuse another of antisemitism without very serious evidence, and I do not see such evidence here. If anything, this could be a problem on the part of Sir Joseph, in my opinion. My very best wishes ( talk) 18:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Based on the statement by MelanieN below, I realize that the comment by SPECIFICO was not antisemitic because she was probably talking about the alleged antisemitism of other people. But was it a BLP violation? I do not think so because the subject was indeed covered in multiple RS and because these RS used wording "antisemitic" ( just a random example). My very best wishes ( talk) 18:44, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I am not saying that the notable politician was antisemitic (he is very much pro-Israel!). I am only telling there are multiple RS that seriously discuss this question, so it can also be legitimately discussed on WP pages. That would apply to any other BLP subjects. How exactly such matters can be properly discussed on WP pages is a good question. Was it so improperly worded in this case by SPECIFICO that she deserves sanctions? I do not think so, but this is something for uninvolved admins to decide. My very best wishes ( talk) 19:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Geogene

MONGO said, SPECIFICO seems to think the purpose of a BLP page is to make assumptions about what the subject of the BLP thinks. Actually, the evidence already given seems to show it was MelanieN doing that. Geogene ( talk) 17:57, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by MelanieN

In an effort to Assume Good Faith, that was a possible interpretation I put onto SPECIFICO's comment - that maybe she was trying to convey that was how Trump thought about it. SPECIFICO has not confirmed this interpretation; she has related the use of "unwashed" to the term "great unwashed" meaning lower class or working class. It should be noted that I initially said "Shame on you" to SPECIFICO for using this language [178] - not realizing that it would escalate into a major issue. -- MelanieN ( talk) 18:04, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

P.S. An aside that may relate to SPECIFICO’s motivation: above she referred to Trump’s “well-documented and amply sourced record of anti-Semitic statements”. This claim on SPECIFICO’s part is not documented by the record. Trump’s supporters undoubtedly include many people who are anti-Semitic, and he does not disavow them, but he himself does not seem to hold any such views or make such statements. Apparently she felt free to ascribe such contemptuous comments to Trump’s thinking because she assumes he holds Jews in contempt. IMO that is a false assumption on her part, and she should remove it from her arguments from now on. -- MelanieN ( talk) 18:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ My very best wishes: The Washington Post article you linked does indeed discuss whether Trump is anti-Semitic - and concludes that he is not. (“My own guess is that Trump is not personally anti-Semitic (in the way that he clearly is, by contrast, sexist).”) As I said: he tolerates anti-Semitism in his followers, but IMO does not personally feel that way. This is not to say that her comment or implication was a BLP violation; IMO it was not. As for my advice above to SPECIFICO, I have taken that subject to her talk page. -- MelanieN ( talk) 19:02, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by JFG

No strong opinion on this particular dispute, except that the whole conversation looks excessively emotional for a talk page where everybody should be focused on improving article content instead of blaming each other. But I do challenge the admins' response: how many times is SPECIFICO going to walk away from her inflammatory attitude with yet another warning to edit more carefully and be more respectful of her fellow editors? — JFG ^talk 20:42, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Tryptofish

I've been looking at this section while participating more actively in the section above. I think it would be reasonable to cut Sir Joseph a little slack over initiating this report. I can appreciate how, seeing the language in question, a person acting in good faith could become concerned about it, even though, at the same time, it looks to me that SPECIFICO was not actually stating it as an antisemitic assertion. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:14, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

NeilN, sure, that's very reasonable. But per "bad cases make bad case law" (not that this is law, of course!), this is perhaps a bad example to base that decision on. The language sounds pretty awful on first read, even though it isn't awful in context. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Bus stop

This might squeak by as not being antisemitic but it is egregiously gratuitous. Bus stop ( talk) 01:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning SPECIFICO

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I've read the entire conversation leading up to the reported diff and I'm really not happy with this report. It's a waste of time as any reader not actively looking to take offense would see that the comments SPECIFICO made were a hypothetical and exaggeration for effect but not anti-Semitic. An editor writing, "Trump's Mexicans are all rapists and criminals" is not anti-Mexican. Accusing an editor of anti-Semitism is a serious charge and better be backed with solid evidence, something that is completely lacking here. Unless there are other admin viewpoints, I intend to close this with a logged warning to Sir Joseph for displaying a battleground mentality. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:21, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Tryptofish I would be inclined to cut Sir Joseph a little slack if they hadn't been blocked for the same type of behavior before. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:18, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

(ec) Like MelanieN, I read SPECIFICO’s comment at issue not as an attempt by SPECIFICO to perpetuate antisemitic stereotypes, but rather as an attempt to ascribe such beliefs to Donald Trump. That's also not a very nice thing to do, given that WP:BLP applies to Trump also, and it's not like he is very commonly associated with this kind of overt prejudice (as opposed to several other unflattering traits he is commonly associated with). But at least it's on the talk page rather than in the article, and the previous cited sanctions are not for similar issues. I'd take no action at this time and ask SPECIFICO to be more careful in the future when discussion BLP topics. Sandstein 20:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
That this is an antisemitic comment or insinuation, or even an attempt to ascribe beliefs to Trump, is a (fairly long) stretch. All I'm seeing is a response that provides alternative explanations for something that another editor (MelanieN) writes. (Frankly, 90% of the stuff in that thread is OR anyway!). I suggest closing this as no action. If a warning needs to be given, it should be to the filer for wasting everyone's time with sort of petty stuff. -- regentspark ( comment) 20:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Netoholic

There is consensus to decline this appeal. GoldenRing ( talk) 08:59, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.

To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).

Appealing user: Netoholic ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – TonyBallioni ( talk) 22:16, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Sanction being appealed: 72 hour block for battleground behavior and using admin boards to further disputes.

Administrator imposing the sanction: TonyBallioni ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Notification of that administrator: [179] I went ahead and copied myself since I was pinged TonyBallioni ( talk) 22:17, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Netoholic

My edits to COIN were in no way disruptive. Seconding the concern of another editor's report and asking for uninvolved editors to look into that concern is the whole point of having a Noticeboard. In essence, every Noticeboard discussion involves an existing dispute of one form or another, and this warning has a chilling effect on my ability to participate if I am to fear a block every time I post about a concern. TonyBallioni was petitioned directly to enact this block, and I was given no opportunity for uninvolved admins to evaluate whether my post was disruptive at all, as such a concern is normally brought to AE first. The person who asked for this block had a previous AE request closed with no action, and that's why I suspect they petitioned Tony directly instead today. Per discussion about this warning with TonyBallioni, he and others provided extensive clarification that the warning was to encourage me to "think twice before submitting reports that the rest of the community would think should not be resolved through admin boards" and should NOT be thought of as a TBAN. -- Netoholic @ 21:38, 17 June 2018

Statement by TonyBallioni

In my view Netoholic used COIN inappropriately and disruptively and clearly against the spirit of the warning they had previously about use of the administrative processes here on Wikipedia to further disputes with other editors. It resulted after this thread, in which a new user made a retaliatory COIN filing against MrX. It was closed by Jytdog, a COIN regular, because COIN doesn't deal with NPOV issues and there was no evidence at all that an established user. Netoholic then posted under it conflating NPOV with COI issues (which we recently saw with the Andrevan saga) and then implying that MrX might have created a promotional article [180].

This is simply not how COIN works, occurred after a regular at the board had closed it, and was aspersion without evidence made against one AP2 regular against another in a thread initially about American politics. As MrX had noted, they were already in a dispute elsewhere and this seems like a clear use of a board mainly used to fight spam to deal with someone they were in conflict with on AP2. Tryptofish closed it again, and Netoholic commented again. This was reverted by Dave Dial [181] (against TPO, but a possible application of IAR and the edit summary summed up basic practice at COIN.)

This was reverted by Netoholic still insiting on his COI concern (unclear if he was referencing cryptocurrency or politics). Looking at his contributions and based on the fact that he should have known better than to use COIN for these purposes after the warning and after three editors had told him such, I blocked him for 72 hours to prevent further disruption at COIN and because of the battleground behavior he was displaying in the topic area. TonyBallioni ( talk) 22:37, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Only in death: Jytdog alerted them at my request in the last AE thread to the BLP DS (see: [182]) To @ Thryduulf and Tryptofish: my concern yesterday was stopping the immediate disruption. If another administrator determines that further action is needed to deal with a larger problem, I have no objections to their taking action. TonyBallioni ( talk) 18:20, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ Thryduulf: having been bitten in the past for trying to craft narrow/unique sanctions for editors I’d suggest just making an especially strong final warning that further disruption in the AP2 or BLP topic areas will likely result in a topic ban and/or a long block. Given the WikiLawyering I saw from this editor after the last warning, I suspect a narrow “suspended sanction” would be more trouble than its worth. TonyBallioni ( talk) 20:15, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ Thryduulf: I agree with Sandstein re: it being a bit complex, but if you feel it is needed and are willing to enforce it, I have no objections. TonyBallioni ( talk) 15:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by MrX

Netoholic made this unsavory post a WP:COIN as an unprovoked retaliation for my edit on Ideological bias on Wikipedia, following up to his assumption of bad faith here. He then edit warred with three other editors who intervened attempting to put out the fire. TonyBallioni's block was both reasonable and proportionate given Netoholic's recent battleground conduct. [183] - Mr X 🖋 22:31, 17 June 2018 (UTC), 22:41, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Dlthewave

One more example of Netoholic's misuse of noticeboards is a recent spurious post at BLPN. After multiple editors rejected the BLP concerns and directed Netoholic to the NPOV and RS noticeboards, they continued to raise non-BLP concerns, culminating with this critique of another editor's recent contributions. The block seems appropriate given their seeming inability to take a hint. – dlthewave ☎ 23:02, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by JzG

I advocate declining this appeal. Netoholic appears to me to be in violation of the Law of Holes. Guy ( Help!) 23:25, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Tryptofish

If anything, a 72-hour block is rather lenient. Not only did Netoholic unambiguously violate the previous warning from Tony, but he edit warred over it. And not only did he do that, but, just since the previous AE filing, he has made himself into a huge time-sink for the community at multiple pages, some of which have already been pointed out above (don't say I didn't warn you). He has edit warred against consensus at Political views of American academics (AP2), [184], and at Neil Gross (AP2 and BLP), to make deliberate BLP violations denigrating Gross, [185], [186], [187], in an attempt to discredit an inconvenient source at the political views page – where a content RfC is going overwhelmingly against him and he seems to be setting up an attempt to argue that the community consensus is invalid for when it closes, [188]. In each case, multiple editors have been telling him that he is acting against consensus: [189], [190], [191]. And here's the bottom line: he doesn't get it and is pretty much telling us that he will take up right from where he left off once the block ends. There is nothing in his appeal statement that acknowledges having learned anything or indicating that he will try to do better in the future. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 23:57, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I thank the admins who have responded here. I do want to emphasize my concern that we could be right back here at AE by the end of the week. Perhaps you should consider how to prevent that. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 17:10, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Following up on the most recent comments by OID and TonyB, I think there are some options available to the admins, for the purpose of preventing an immediate relapse. And I'll offer my personal opinion that, despite all my comments above, there is something (a little bit) useful in having Netoholic raise dissenting views about the POV of the "academics" page. I've previously made changes to the page based on some of his comments (although he even reverted some of those!). So – I hope that the close here will, at a minimum, include a very clear-cut warning, although even such a warning probably just means that we will be back here as soon as the warning gets disregarded. A better option, I think, is to ban him from directly editing Political views of American academics and Neil Gross, along with the warning, but to allow him to edit the associated talk pages. He could still comment on the talk pages, subject to the warning, and editor consensus could determine which of his comments result in changes to content, but he would be prevented from edit warring or directly disrupting the pages themselves. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:39, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Anything "suspended" is just about guaranteed to be triggered within a day or two, so I urge not using a suspended mechanism. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 20:37, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Thryduulf: Thank you very much. Personally, I agree with the sanction as you have written it. If I were to take into consideration the concerns by Sandstein and Tony about the complexity, then I would simply make it a topic ban from AP2 and BLP, subject to appeal after not less than x months. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:07, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Alternatively, a less harsh option would be a two-page page ban, rather than the entire topics, but applying in both article and talk space. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 18:37, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

(Lionelt's statement sounds to me like mooning the jury, which is probably obvious, but I think this: [192], gives it a little context, and not necessarily in a good way. -- Tryptofish ( talk) 21:49, 19 June 2018 (UTC)) reply

Statement by Pudeo

Got to love MrX lecturing others about user conduct whilst a while ago telling people to "fuck right off". It's amazing how much the policies are bent for some, and how strictly observed for others (Netoholic).

This is a perfect example how letting some users off the hook and selectively being strict against others forms an unfair snowball effect: sanctions will be placed on the existing sanctions. -- Pudeo ( talk) 06:48, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by OID

While we are here - and to avoid opening *another* discussion, just to expand on Trypt's comments. I cannot see that Netoholic has previously been warned under the DS for editing BLP's - but if admins would like to take a look at the Neil Gross issue (discussion at BLPN and on article talk page). Netoholic has demonstrated an amazingly incorrect understanding of the BLP - he genuinely argued that it was a BLP violation to quote a subject directly because there may be other quotes by the subject (not identified or even evident they exist) that differed - and even a quick look at the quotes in dispute shows thats is unlikely. When multiple editors told him he was wrong he then vindictively selectively edited the biography in a deliberately cherry-picked negative manner, I need to echo Trypt's comments that we will be back here soon. The only reason I didnt look deeper into starting a discussion about getting them restricted from biographical articles is because of this similar block. Opening a discussion at a relevant noticeboard is fine, arguing with people til you are blue in the face when the consensus disagree with you is not. Nor is then deliberately violating a number of policies out of spite. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 17:41, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Responding to ping. Ignorance or misunderstanding of policy is one thing. That can be resolved - that is not a behavioural issue. The problem I have is then the deliberate NPOV and (ironically) far more BLP-problematic editing when they didnt get the answer they wanted. It really doesnt matter what their understanding of policy/guidelines are if they are going to then ignore them when crossed. I doubt a simple restriction is going to fix that. However a restriction to talk pages only will at least prevent the articles being edit-warred over. No further comments from me, as they will undoubtedly become more blunt. Only in death does duty end ( talk) 20:17, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Lionelt

Folks I think we've really jumped the shark here. This editor in good faith disputed the warning from the outset. To say it is ambiguous is an understatement. He came here, again in good faith, to seek redress for a block based on a warning which he felt unfair.

This veteran, productive editor, has had no blocks in 4 years. Setting aside this recent incident.

So how on earth does an editor like this who comes here for some kind of justice--not only doesn't get any satisfaction--but instead gets topic banned?

In a recent expose Signpost reported editors have a 73% dissatisfaction with ANI and a major contributing factor to this is boomerang. I guess AE is not that much different from ANI. Same admins. Same problems. – Lionel^(
talk) 20:38, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (editor)

Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Netoholic

Result of the appeal by Netoholic

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

I'm not seeing any plausible reason why this appeal should be granted. Indeed, per Tryptofish I think Tony has shown significant leniency here - so much that my initial feeling here is that this should be declined with a warning that any repetition of any of the several problematic behaviours displayed here will result in a block on the order of months not hours and a topic ban from American politics applying to all namespaces. Thryduulf ( talk) 00:59, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ Pudeo: This appeal is only about the sanctions imposed on Netoholic. If you believe that other users' behaviour is worthy of sanction then open a thread about them on the appropriate noticeboard - person A's bad behaviour does not excuse person B's independent bad behaviour. Thryduulf ( talk) 08:28, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- I'm rather attracted by Trypto's idea for a topic ban that still allowed contribution on talk pages, subject to good behaviour, and I'd like to hear from others, particularly Only in death and TonyBallioni what they think of it. My gut feeling is that any topic ban should be suspended, such that it takes effect only if there is any further disruption but it takes effect without the need for discussion. Thryduulf ( talk) 20:06, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- repinging Only in death Thryduulf ( talk) 20:10, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- Based on that feedback, I think the way forward here is as follows:
  1. The 72-hour block is endorsed, and appeal of it declined.
  2. Netoholic is indefinitely topic banned from all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States, broadly interpreted, including participating in discussion related to this topic area on noticeboards, but excluding constructive comments on article talk pages subject to strict adherence to the BLP policy.
  3. If this restriction is violated then any uninvolved administrator may remove the exception to the topic ban and/or block Netoholic for up to six months without further discussion.
If there are no further comments (and nobody beats me to it) then I'll implement this late Wednesday (UTC) (I'll be offline most of tomorrow). Thryduulf ( talk) 12:22, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Pinging @ The Blade of the Northern Lights, Sandstein, Drmies, TonyBallioni, Only in death, and Tryptofish:. Thryduulf ( talk) 12:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Agree regarding the appeal, no opinion regarding the necessity of a topic ban, and I think its construction as proposed is overly complicated. Editors should either be banned from a topic or not. Sandstein 12:40, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I'm with Sandstein. "excluding constructive comments" is waaay to much open to interpretation. Nothing wrong with an old-fashioned topic ban with the possibility of appeal after six months. Drmies ( talk) 23:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Concur with the above. If you've shot yourself in the foot the best approach is to treat your injury, not to find a bigger gun to blow your entire leg off. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 02:43, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I don't see anything to indicate that this block is outside admin discretion. Admins can and often do take action without a request on this board. I would therefore decline the appeal. Sandstein 08:46, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I don't see any validity for the report either. Drmies ( talk) 17:23, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The Rambling Man

No violation. Step hen 23:46, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning The Rambling Man

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: BU Rob13 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 02:15, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: The Rambling Man ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/The_Rambling_Man#The_Rambling_Man_prohibited :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

[193]
[194]

Explanation below.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

March 5, 2017: 1 month block for AE enforcement related to this remedy, later reduced to 1 week on appeal
September 25, 2017: 2 week block for AE enforcement related to this remedy
See the block log for blocks unrelated to this specific remedy

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

In the past, I've repeatedly noticed TRM threatening to take editors to ArbCom and never following through. This produces a chilling effect on contributions. I noticed these edits earlier today on my watchlist [195] [196] [197], prompting me to place a polite note on TRM's talk page asking he avoid wielding ArbCom like a weapon in his disputes. I was attempting to de-escalate that situation, but instead I was accused of making some type of threat toward him [198], something I very clearly did not do. The two diffs linked above speculate wildly about my motivation for posting that note on his talk page, ascribing it to some type of ArbCom conspiracy to "get him". This is a rather blatant violation of his prohibition against speculating about the motivation of others. In the past, TRM has asked me to use his talk page if I have any concerns instead of going to a noticeboard, which is what I tried to do here. Evidently, that doesn't work, as even a short and polite note receives this sort of response, so here we are.

I strongly object to characterizing an attempt at a polite conversation as "baiting". We simply can't be in a situation where merely talking to an editor, leading to them lashing out in violation of a sanction, is "baiting". ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 10:54, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

TRM literally states below that he was discussing motivations, so I'm more than a little confused how some people aren't seeing speculation about motivations here. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 12:29, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: That's not what I've reported for enforcement; I added it as background to the situation. See the diffs I linked as violating the remedy above, the most relevant of which I'll repeat here: [199]. In that diff (including the edit summary), he states I asked him to stop threatening editors because TRM is a "marked man", not because I genuinely wanted to resolve problematic behavior. He directly speculates about "why I'm here", referring to his talk page. As for the "colorful past", it involves TRM belittling me or claiming some vague wrongdoing on my part, mostly. In most cases, I ignore it. In one past case, I took it to AE. That's the full extent. I find it disturbing that my report can be marginalized as the report of someone involved because I am the target of poor behavior. Speaking of involvement, Fish and karate works closely with TRM at ERRORS, most recently today: [200]. His last post at AE was also to defend TRM. [201] Working with an editor closely on content makes one involved with respect to that editor, and I encourage Fish and karate to move his comment out of the uninvolved section. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:08, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Fish and karate: Can you show me examples of Sandstein interacting with TRM in a non-administrative setting, which is what's required for involvement? If so, sure. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:58, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Davey2010: To be clear, TRM has a pattern of threatening others with ArbCom cases. NeilN noted below that they saw them do the same three months ago, and I know he's done the same to me multiple times over the past year or so. If it was a one time thing, I would not have left the message (obviously). ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:15, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Perhaps a bit ironically, I’ve already started receiving anonymous threatening emails related to this filing, threatening an ArbCom case and desysopping for reporting a blatant breach of sanctions. This is what happens to those who dare to report TRM breaching his sanctions. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 23:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[202]

Discussion concerning The Rambling Man

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by The Rambling Man

Despicable that a member of Arbcom has resorted to such. Just leave me alone. Even the admin in question who I am building the case against has encouraged me to do so. Baited and entrapped. The Rambling Man ( talk) 04:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

By the way, a few thoughts:

Coming to my talk page literally out of nowhere (i.e. no participation in any of the discussions) and stating "You've asked me to come to you with concerns rather than go to noticeboards" is most definitely a passive-aggressive threat.
I noted the motivations of Arbcom, not any one individual user. Arbcom are here to resolve Arbitration cases, not to police Wikipedia, and certainly not to make passive-aggressive threats against editors with whom they already have a chequered history, irrespective of claims of "independence".
To suggest that I am a "marked man" is, as Basil Fawlty would say, "stating the bleedin' obvious". It was only a few weeks ago that a flippant attempt to drag me through here failed. And a few months before that the admin against whom I'm forming a case threatened to drag me here.
The admin in question has encouraged me to raise a case. So there's literally no dispute here. So why the veiled threat in the first place, I know not. Once again, Arbcom and its members are here to serve the community in an arbitration role, not a policing role. Plenty of other dispute resolution methods are available. I thought that was something we all knew. The Rambling Man ( talk) 05:58, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I strongly object to characterizing an attempt to passively-aggressively threaten me with yet another noticeboard trip from an involved member of Arbcom as a "polite conversation". Anyone could have initiated a conversation about this meaningless issue, so why did it have to be an Arb with whom there has been considerable "involvement"? Completely misjudged and unnecessarily inflammatory. The Rambling Man ( talk) 11:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Allow me to repeat: Arbcom are not here to police Wikipedia. Nor should their emissaries act in involved ways under any circumstances when dozens, if not hundreds of other individuals are far better placed to conduct such discussions. Not that any such discussion was actually required. This is a bugger's muddle, a right mess, and as Fram noted, no-one's coming out this looking good at all. The Rambling Man ( talk) 12:36, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

... other admins who seem to show up at AE only to take the view that The Rambling Man should not be sanctioned... wow, talk about commenting on other people's motivations. The Rambling Man ( talk) 14:22, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Looks like we need an RFC to understand the meaning of WP:INVOLVED since there are complete chalk vs. cheese usages here from various admins. Maybe something useful will come from that. Sandstein is definitely involved having already blocked me against community consensus, while Karate and Chips happens to be someone who usually addresses errors on the main page (there are many). They are absolutely not involved. Although I suppose they could be my sock.... The Rambling Man ( talk) 14:53, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

With no irony whatsoever, I've received many emails which aren't anonymous from long-standing editors who haven't contributed to this case who support me completely. I guess that's what happens when these kinds of "reports" are made. The Rambling Man ( talk) 08:24, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Vanamonde93

TRM and I don't exactly see eye to eye on several things (see this discussion and this one that followed) but nonetheless, I don't see a purpose being served by a block here. I wish TRM would treat people who respectfully disagreed with more respect; I, for one, don't see him as an enemy, and find his comments helpful when he's discussing content; but I do not see how a month's block will make this more likely. Vanamonde ( talk) 07:56, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Sandstein isn't involved, folks. It's there in the definition, which Jbhunley has kindly copied below. Neither is the Miyagi from Okinawa. There's really no point in debating that. BUT, as I've said before, there's a big difference between Sandstein being uninvolved, and it being a good idea for him to take action here. He is not required to recuse, but it would be wise to leave this to other administrators. ARE isn't a court of law, and we're not here to obtain justice. We're here to resolve conflict and get back to constructive editing. A sanction from you, Sandstein, won't help us get there, and I think you know that. Vanamonde ( talk) 17:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Fram

Sanctioning an editor when he first is baited, reacts as could be expected, and then gets reported by the baiting "concerned editor", seems more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. TRM should know when to shut up, but Bu Rob certainly should know where his "concerns" are likely not wanted and bound to be counterproductive. An ArbCom member talking about ArbCom to an ArbCom sanctioned editor shuoldn't be surprised that them posing simply as a "concerned editor" isn't really convincing or helpful. Trout Bu Rob and TRM and drop this for the non-event it actually is. Fram ( talk) 08:27, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Dweller

Dismiss this nonsense, per what the others above say. And once again, Sandstein, I maintain that you are not an uninvolved administrator when it comes to TRM. If you don't believe me, look at how every time he's brought here, you opine below that he should have some hefty block and the community roundly disagrees with you. -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 09:24, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Oh, and while we're at it, this is supposed to be Arbitration enforcement. I've read the page 3 times and must have missed (3 times) an allegation that TRM has breached any restrictions placed on him by ArbCom. I just cannot see it. Can someone point it out to me? -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 11:39, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

There's consensus. Move to close -- Dweller ( talk) Become old fashioned! 08:13, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by WBG

What Vanamonde says (esp. that TRM would treat people who respectfully disagreed with more respect.)
I also think that given the colorful past between Rob and TRM, it was not much/any prudential for Rob to be the concerned fellow.The complaint would have got much more merit, if this response was to some other sitting arbitrator.
As to remedies, I, don't think a one-month block is going to alter TRM's behavior.If things are so worse, the choice ought be between an indef and utter-normalcy.The rest of the options are worthless.
- Basically, civility blocks have never worked and they never will. ∯WBG ^converse 10:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Davey2010

Personally I feel the comments were baiting, Had TRMs comments been made over a few days or weeks then I could kinda understand the message but as they were made within an hour I feel the message was OTT, I also feel BuRob should not have replied (or if they felt the need to then they should've replied with "okay well this was made in good faith and that's it" and then left it at that), Speedy close, Speedy decline. – Davey2010^Talk 15:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Jbhunley

I just want to note the relavent part of INVOLVED reads: One important caveat is that an administrator who has interacted with an editor or topic area purely in an administrative role, or whose prior involvements are minor or obvious edits which do not show bias, is not involved and is not prevented from acting in an administrative capacity in relation to that editor or topic area. While it seems to give a pure pass for 'purely administrative role' the whole point of INVOLVED is to limit administrators from acting as administrators in situations where they may have formed a bias based on their prior editing and interactions. It does not really envision a long term conflict between an admin and editor where the admin has potentially formed a bias because of administrative work.

While I do not know enough of the history between these two I have seen Sandstein's netutality with respect to The Rambling Man questioned in good faith by respected editors and administrators. If Sandstein does not want to step aside simply to avoid the appearance of bias and out of respect for those who have repeatedly expressed concern, I would suggest biting the bullet and opening up an AN thread to address the question.

I do not know that I like the idea that INVOLVEMENT can be triggered by any administrative interactions, even if long term and adversarial as this one seems to be. Generally I would expect an admin to recognize when their judgement may be compromised, as envisioned by INVOLVED, regardless of whether they meet the letter of it. Failing that I would expect that they would step aside once several editors repeatedly bring the matter up; If for no other reason than to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Since this has not occurred and leaving the matter outstanding will ultimatly lead to Sanstein's administrative actions being questioned and the inevitable drama which will follow, I strongly suggest the matter be resolved sooner rather than later. Jbh ^Talk 15:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by power~enwiki

I do see a clear violation here in TRM's comments to BU Rob here (speculating on Rob's motives); I also feel that was deliberately baited and recommend closing with no action. An ARBCOM case regarding conduct at WP:DYK has been widely speculated for quite some time and I don't feel TRM's comments on that topic justify any action. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 18:16, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Result concerning The Rambling Man

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

The statements by The Rambling Man at issue ("and now you mysteriously appear from nowhere (indicative of yet more off-wiki shenanigans from Arbcom for no good reason) to pass off this threat", "so why the need for the interjection, you may ask? Well, why indeed. It's as if I'm a marked man") fall squarely within the sanction by ArbCom that "The Rambling Man is prohibited from posting speculation about the motivations of editors". Such speculation continues even in The Rambling Man's statement here in which he alleges "baiting" and entrapment, "a practice whereby a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a criminal offence" according to our article. Given the previous blocks of 1 and 2 weeks, I think that an escalating block of one month is now in order. Sandstein 07:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

As noted in the previous request concerning The Rambling Man, I do not consider myself WP:INVOLVED because my previous interactions with The Rambling Man have been administrative in nature. Being of the view that sanctions are warranted does not make me any more involved than other admins who seem to show up at AE only to take the view that The Rambling Man should not be sanctioned. Sandstein 14:04, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

No action, I don't see any of that as speculation, and I don't think any of this is helpful, at all. Fish+ Karate 11:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ BU Rob13: I think if you could construe me as being "involved" (I don't see it myself - lots of admins help out at WP:ERRORS, it's an important page to keep an eye on), you'd have to construe Sandstein as being a heck of a lot more "involved"; are you going to ask him to move his statement also? Fish+ Karate 14:39, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
No action - I wish TRM would be a bit more laid back at times, but I don't see his replies as speculation at all. And I will say that the original post was ill-advised. Ealdgyth - Talk 11:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Exactly four things are needed here:
1. A trout for BU Rob 13 per Fram. This is not behaviour that in commensurate with that expected of an arbitrator (and I speak as a former arbitrator).
2. An endorsement of Dweller's comments re Sandstein.
3. A polite request to TRM to try and avoid antagonising people such that they bring him to this noticeboard.
4. A request (of varying degrees of politeness) to everyone who is not TRM to think twice before bringing him to this noticeboard. Thryduulf ( talk) 12:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ BU Rob 13: Drop the stick. That is still not speculation on the motives of editors - TRM has simply stated his opinion about the purpose of Arbcom (which he is allowed to do), and commented that users who are involved in a siltation are not the best people to try and resolve that situation (which he is allowed to do). He is also allowed to state his opinion about whether a given user is or is not involved in the situation. Thryduulf ( talk) 13:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
- @ BU Rob13: No, working closely with a user does not automatically mean you are involved with respect to that user. It just means you might be. WP:INVOLVED makes it clear that it is about lack of neutrality because of involvement with past disputes. This is similar to Dweller's concerns re Sandstein - there is a clear perception of a lack of neutrality. I am not seeing that in the case of Fish and karate. Thryduulf ( talk) 14:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
First, taken at face value, BU Rob13's initial post was not baiting. I've added a caveat as Winged Blades of Godric's allusion to a "colorful past" is short on details. I handled a run of the mill edit warring report a few months ago where TRM's threats to go to Arbcom, disparagement of another admin and ex-admin, and other extremely aggressive posts were probably the main obstacle to getting the situation resolved. Having said this, nothing in TRM's restrictions stops him from making constant threats to open Arbcom cases and BU Rob13 probably should've dropped the matter after TRM's first response. I really wish TRM would stop, though. And before an admin decides these constant threats are getting disruptive and decides to block. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:33, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Per NeilN, Rob should have withdrawn early in this. Prolonging it has predictably led to more drama and the purpose of this board is to minimise disruption, not to enforce the letter of the law. And per NeilN, though going a step further, repeated allusions to a promised arbcom case are disruptive (though not currently a matter for arbitration enforcement). If there's a dispute that needs arbitration then bring a case; otherwise we expect editors to behave civilly and collegially with everyone, even editors you disagree with our might privately think are not very good. Now, can everyone go and do something useful? GoldenRing ( talk) 17:52, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

This is all rather concerning. On the one hand, we have a bit of what appears (appears, because what do I know) to be paranoia ("marked man", "arbcom shenanigans"). On the other we have a thin skinned arb. Not sure if I can figure out which one is the bigger problem. Perhaps we should just close this post haste before we all get mega depressed. -- regentspark ( comment) 00:43, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I don't think there's any appetite for levying sanctions here. BU Rob13 raised some valid concerns on The Rambling Man's talk page and was rebuffed. The Rambling Man's comments during the rejection may have violated his editing restrictions but there's no consensus for that. Sandstein has proposed a block but I don't think he will impose it unilaterally (as he's entitled to do - those of you invoking INVOLVED need to think really hard about how easily that could be gamed). BU Rob13's original concern about The Rambling Man's references to Arbcom has been fully communicated so if they continue, and editors find them disruptive, ANI or Arbcom (yes, I note the irony) would be the way to go. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:27, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I would just close this. Anything else is likely to result in even more of a waste of many editor's time. I'm not going to do it myself because I once voted against TRM getting a sanction (there's a hint there). Black Kite (talk) 20:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Calton

Calton is assumed to be aware that because of their previous blocks for incivility, there's going to be increased scrutiny of their posts. They are advised to remember this and use a more neutral tone in their posts and edit summaries to get their point across. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 11:44, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Calton

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: D.Creish ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 20:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Calton ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American_politics_2#Discretionary_sanctions_(1932_cutoff) :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

Repeated personal attacks in edits to American Politics articles:

Identity Evropa "Your inability -- or pretense thereof -- to understand plain English is not my problem." [203]
Alexander Downer Personal attack in edit summary: "No, genius, I said nothing -- zip, zero, nada -- about the source. Pay attention: WP:DUE for the purpose of insuation which, again, has fuck-all to do with reliable sources. Any more non sequitors?" [204]
Lana Lokteff He restores an unsourced "white supremacist" label in a BLP ( The source uses "white nationalist.") Personal attack in edit summary: "Far left? Cool, way to out yourself." [205]
He continues the edit war. Personal attack in edit summary: "Please don't make shit up about VOX. The talk page awaits you." [206]
Continues. Personal attack in edit summary: "Your link doesn't say what you claim, so yep, making shit up. Talk page? Have you heard of them?)" [207]
Continues. Personal attack in edit summary:"I DID prove it: you pretended not to understand it." [208]
Prostitution in the United States Personal attack in edit summary: "Get over yourself and your persecution complex. Repeat: per WP:UNDUE" [209]
Continues attacks on editor's talk page with Section title "Your garbage edits"; "Making shit up about other editors's motivations for basic quality control isn't go to fool anyone, son." [210]
Andrew McCabe Personal attack in edit summary: "Thought you could sneak out the Russian-contact mention, eh?" [211]
Alexander Downer Removes content sourced to thehill.com with edit summary "Save this insinuating crap for Breitbart News. [212]
Political correctness Personal attack in edit summary: "You've got an ax to grind? Find a blacksmith." [213]

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Many previous blocks for personal attacks and incivility [214]

Blocked in August 2006 for "repeated personal attacks"
Blocked in September 2007 for "Persistent incivility and taunting of other users"
Blocked in November 2007 for "Continued incivility and taunting after previous block"
Blocked in August 2008 for "Incivility"
Blocked in September 2009 for "Personal attacks or harassment"
Blocked indefinitely in March 2013 for "Personal attacks or harassment: racist edit sumamries & general awful attitude to others"
Unblocked after "Assurances given that offensive epithets will not be repeated"
Days later "Per ANI discussion. The consensus on ANI is any further use of edit summaries to make any sort of disparaging comments about other editors will lead to another block"
Blocked in April 2015 "Further use of edit summaries to make disparaging comments about other editors, after being clearly infomred that doing so would lead to another block."
Blocked in January 2016 "Personal attacks or harassment"

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on June 29 2017

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Despite many warnings and blocks editor is unwilling to refrain from personal attacks.

In suggesting they won't consider this report, Black Kite and Seraphimblade do a disservice to the editors against whom these PAs were directed which includes established wikipedians @ HiLo48:

As far as my own comments and edit summaries, I'm not concerned as long as they're evaluated objectively - PA on talk page vs PA on article page under discretionary sanctions; pattern of PAs vs a single example; unblock on the condition that further PAs would result a block vs clean block record; and so on.

Maybe an excess of good faith but I can't imagine a single offensive response to an editor who ignored my request to stay off my talk page will be judged more harshly than continuous incivility across the project. D.Creish ( talk) 17:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Extended content

I saw the one PA and checked recent edits then his block log but given the IP's list of complaints and number of editors complaining it's mind boggling that he's still editing and continues as if nothing's wrong.

(Redacted)

I'm at a loss. Pinging @ RegentsPark: who was the last admin to unblock. D.Creish ( talk) 18:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

NeilN: I don't know procedure so please collapse those excerpts if necessary but I think it's relevant that the problem continued for "more than ten years." I'm not asking admins to address the earlier behavior but the current behavior in the context of earlier behavior that suggests the editor has no intention of stopping. Their only response (below) is to argue the PAs were appropriate. D.Creish ( talk) 19:34, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[215]

Discussion concerning Calton

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Calton

I can already see where this is going, so I'll only say a few things, unless otherwise required.

Lana Lokteff involved a brand-new account ( User:Hansnarf, with 5 edits, and their previous IP) edit-warring to remove "white supremacist", despite sources -- a constant problem on this and other pages about alt-right and white-supremacist pages. Amusingly, the editor proclaimed one source as invalid because it was from a "far-left" website (VOX), despite the fact that their own "proof" of this didn't say what they claimed. I did make a mistake: I didn't notice that the VOX source wasn't attached directly to the lede, so I have fixed that. My apologies for not noticing.
Identity Evropa involved yet-another brand-new account ( User:Barbarossa139, with 29 edits) edit-warring to remove "Neo-Nazi", despite sources and the talk page, with wikilawyering demands that I show where in policy the term "whitewashing" appears. I don't play that game, where someone establishes a false framework and demands that I justify it.
Continues attacks on editor's talk page with Section title "Your garbage edits": that was from indef-blocked Miacek ( talk · contribs) -- whom you may remember from here, odd how D.Creish leaves off the name -- who left this bad-faith gem on my talk page:

Eager to just pick up a fight, yes?

A pretty much a textbook case of WP:WIKIHOUNDING I guess [216]. What next? Gustav Naan? Talk:Mass killings under Communist regimes? Miacek (talk) 03:48, 19 May 2018 (UTC) reply

This is all I care to respond to unless necessary. -- Calton | Talk 02:19, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Maybe it's not directly a matter for this page and maybe it's just me, but does anyone else find this entire conversation just a tad suspicious? -- Calton | Talk 06:00, 11 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Addendum: Given @ Sandstein:'s comments, I'd again urge him to take a look at this entire conversation on D.Creish's talk page. -- Calton | Talk 13:38, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ GoldenRing:: I'm also not seeing the equivalence between an account with a clean block log who has made one uncivil remark and an account with a log as long as your arm covering 10+ years with 10+ diffs of recent incivility that would lead to equal sanctions. If the block log is your only measure, then you really really haven't been paying attention to the conversation. Look above your comments for some context. -- Calton | Talk 13:56, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Dave Dial

Most of the links given by D.Creish are of Calton rightly making sure some of the articles concerning or about white supremacists/neo-nazis/racists remain NPOV, without obvious whitewashing. Some edits reverted were ips, obvious sock accounts or throw aways. If anything, D.Creish should be topic banned. One of his examples he writes:

Lana Lokteff He restores an unsourced "white supremacist" label in a BLP ( The source uses "white nationalist.") Personal attack in edit summary: "Far left? Cool, way to out yourself." [217]

In the NPR source it states:

Asked how she would pitch the alt-right to conservative white women who voted for Trump, but are also wary of being labeled a white supremacist, Lokteff told her, "we have a joke in the alt-right: How do you red-pill someone? ("Red-pill" is their word for converting someone to the cause.) And the punch line was: Have them live in a diverse neighborhood for a while," Darby says. "She also said that when she is talking to women she reminds them that white women are under threat from black men, brown men, emigrants, and really uses this concept of a rape scourge to bring them in."

The edits of D.Creish and the editors he is defending really speak for themselves. This is absolutely an attempt to rid these articles of editors that know the subject so they can more easily be whitewashed. Dave Dial ( talk) 23:21, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by SPECIFICO

I urge Admins here to take a close look at the DCreish account's history and behavior on Wikipedia. Here is his editing history profile [218] This ID has few edits, but an extraordinarily high proportion of aggressive AE, AN, and other noticeboard complaints, and what I evaluate as aggressive and uncivil POV editing and wikilawyering. This is a NOTHERE account, in my opinion. SPECIFICO talk 12:24, 12 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by uninvolved SMcCandlish

I would urge caution. There is a MEATy campaign going on to white-wash the articles of far-right, alt-right, white-nationalist, white-supremacist [which are not quite the same thing, despite considerable overlap], and neo-Nazi [ditto] subjects. It's not surprising that an editor with a bit of a WP:HOTHEAD past can be successfully baited by a round-robin tagteam of sockpuppets and trolls into losing their temper momentarily. There's a good chance this is an actual goal: game the system to thin the opposition and take ownership of the articles. I agree with comments below that imposing lengthy blocks and bans on long-term contributors who are actually trying to follow the core content policies in the face of a wave of PoV-pushing is neither going to be a constructive result nor going to go over well. It's excessive legalism in an editorial community that's trying to produce and publish quality content, not set up as moot court or a political simulation game. Our rules exist to serve us, not the other way around. And it's more important that the reader-facing content rules be followed closely than than editor-to-editor conduct rules be applied too narrowly, especially when many of the "editors" who maybe got their feelings hurt are bogus and had it coming. [Disclaimer of sorts: As far as I know, I have no significant involvement at any of the articles under discussion, nor with any of the editors under discussion. However, I have dealt with similar bullshit at various articles covered by WP:ARBR&I, WP:ARBAA2, etc., so I know exactly what's going on here, and have been subjected to similar antics by the nebulous PoV-pushing crowd on these issues.] —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:33, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by JantheHansen

I tentative agree with Goldenring about the non-equivalance between the two, one of who has been rude to others for so many years. The least we can ask for against the rude user is an indefinite civil restriction like The Rambling Man and no, this thread is of controversial nature that'll take countless behind-the scenes discussions for a resolution so it's not expected be quickly closed. JantheHansen ( talk) 07:33, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Result concerning Calton

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

One of the first things I always do when looking at an AE request is check the contribution history of the editor filing the complaint. On this case, I don't think there's any reason to even go further than that. Black Kite (talk) 21:40, 7 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Per Black Kite's suggestion to check contrib history, without even looking at any diffs, I straightaway see this: [219], with the edit summary of "Didn't I already tell you to fuck off? If not, consider yourself notified." If D.Creish is advocating that sanctions be placed for uncivil comments, I think they might want to carefully consider who that might cover. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 23:10, 7 June 2018 (UTC) reply
D.Creish, providing a long list of diffs, some from more than ten years ago and others having nothing to do with the topic area, is not helpful. This is WP:AE, not WP:ANI. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:08, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I've removed submissions not pertaining to the AE request at hand. If you want to present general and old editing history then open an ANI discussion separate from an AE request. We are focused on specific topics covered by discretionary sanction here. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:41, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I am minded to turn this around and TBan D.Creish instead. Guy ( Help!) 20:03, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Since I've been pinged. The unblock referred to by D.Creish was back in 2013 and is way too long ago to be germane to this discussion. -- regentspark ( comment) 20:34, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I think I missed a memo somewhere. Can someone explain the enthusiasm for a boomerang against D.Creish? Yes, that one diff provided by Seraphimblade is not good but it's one diff. If everyone who reported here had to have a clean history, we could almost mark this page as historical and focus our energies elsewhere. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:45, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

We could, but seriously, look at the history. D.Creish involves themselves at one contentious article or another ( Ahmed Mohamed clock incident, Men's rights movement, The Hunting Ground, Debbie Wasserman Schultz Murder of Seth Rich), gets involved in various AE and ANI shenanigans around those articles, then disappears again. A while later, they pop up again, find another article ... rinse and repeat. Their very first edit was this, with an edit-summary invoking WP:COATRACK. Hmmmm. No, I don't expect people bringing AEs to be sparkling clean, but this report is a waste of time; let them bring it to ANI, and let's see what happens there. Black Kite (talk) 20:57, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I'm not necessarily suggesting a boomerang. More just how frustrating I find it when people will happily dish it out, but run straight to AN-(insert letter here) when they get a bit of their own medicine in return. It's rather like when someone reports to the edit warring noticeboard, and both of them are well past 3RR. And realistically, I find Calton's comments to be somewhat abrasive, but not really what I'd consider attacks. But if the level of discourse you practice is "fuck off", you'd probably best not be too surprised when people in turn speak that way to you. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:29, 8 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I've blocked Hansnarf ( talk · contribs) for 48 hours making accusations of racism against Calton after warnings and several opportunities to just stop. Acroterion (talk) 02:11, 10 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Calton's edits reported here fail WP:CIVIL, particularly in a contested area, and they have a relevant sanctions record. On the other hand, Seraphimblade above cites an edit by D.Creish that is at least as problematic, and D.Creish seems generally to be here to engage in political drama. I'd either topic-ban both for a month or take no action, depending on what other admins here prefer. Sandstein 13:21, 13 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I agree with Sandstein that Calton's edits are not acceptable. This is from an editor who has been repeatedly, over a period of years, unblocked on the basis of assurances that "offensive epithets will not be repeated" and "any further use of edit summaries to make any sort of disparaging comments about other editors will lead to another block" (quotes from the block log). The message has clearly not gotten through. I appreciate that the objective of their recent editing has been good, but this is not a license to be offensive. I'm also not seeing the equivalence between an account with a clean block log who has made one uncivil remark and an account with a log as long as your arm covering 10+ years with 10+ diffs of recent incivility that would lead to equal sanctions. I'm sorely tempted to simple block Calton indefinitely as a normal admin action; the history more than warrants it. If other admins object to this, please say so here. GoldenRing ( talk) 09:20, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

As Wikipedia's resident civility enforcement fundamentalist, I can hardly disagree with this argument, but my experience has shown that lengthy civility blocks, particularly against long-established editors, are among the most controversial admin actions and can generate an inordinate amount of drama, perhaps because it signals to very many editors that Wikipedia is not in fact their private playground but a work environment - a collegial, collaborative project among adult professionals. That's not to say that the drama isn't occasionally worth it. So feel free to go ahead as far as I'm concerned. Sandstein 10:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply
No, don't do that, for goodness' sake. I think I'm on pretty safe ground when I say that indeffing someone for an incident in which they were not even the worst behaving party would go very, very, badly indeed - especially given the existence of this and similar. I agree with Sandstein's original point. above - either topic-ban both for a month or take no action. Black Kite (talk) 14:03, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply
What Black Kite says. Calton isn't a model editor (I've blocked them before) and they have a fairly short fuse, but the disruption in these articles wasn't caused by their behavior. I also agree with some others that topic banning D.Creish from this area will be a larger and more meaningful action. While I appreciate Sandstein's measured approach, the two editors are not equivalent. Incivility is one thing but political grandstanding (which is what Sandstein and others, including me, think D.Creish is engaging in) is far more harmful to the project. Drmies ( talk) 15:33, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Aside from Dave Dial, other participants have given no diffs of D.Creish's problematic editing and have settled for "just look at his editing". If a separate request was brought against D.Creish it would probably be rejected if that's all the reporter presented. If editors think D.Creish should be sanctioned, provide evidence. Any admin sanctioning D.Creish would have an interesting time justifying themselves during any appeal when all they have to point to is one diff. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:55, 17 June 2018 (UTC) reply

What NeilN said. From my (relatively cursory) look through I got the impression that most of what Calton was reacting to was from a range of other editors, not D.Creish. GoldenRing ( talk) 10:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Well, a range of other usernames, though I'd be surprised if every one was a different person. The only established editor that Calton has had an issue with in that list is User:HiLo48. But, let's look at the users and behaviour that Calton was reacting to in that laundry list. (I'll add diffs if required, but most of them have so few edits that it's simpler just to look at their contrib history).

Identity Evropa - in reaction to User:Barbarossa139 (67 edits) edit-warring to whitewash the article of (well-sourced) references to Neo-Nazism.
On Alexander Downer (twice), User:Wesley Craig (152 edits), whose entire modus operandi is to simply remove unflattering sections from the articles of right-wing politicians, regardless of how well they are sourced or written.
Lana Lokteff - a 2-edit IP that simply reverted his edits, and User:Hansnarf, since blocked.
Prostitution in the United States - User:Miacek, since indeffed.
Andrew McCabe - User:PZP-003, since indeffed for sockpuppetry.

Far be it for me to say "there's a pattern there", but ... there's a pattern there. Frankly, given that list of editors and their editing, I'd be more surprised if Calton didn't get irritated more often. Black Kite (talk) 11:07, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Calton, you are aware that because of your previous blocks for incivility, there's going to be increased scrutiny of your posts and you are walking a narrower tightrope than most editors. If you want to edit in this area, you'll have to avoid taking the bait from editors who may not be here to improve the encyclopedia according to our content guidelines. This will entail biting your tongue (or stopping from clicking "Publish changes") and using a rather more staid tone to get your point across. Can you do that? Because if not, its likely you'll be here or at ANI again and I see little point in doing this all over again. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 18:25, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Could someone just close this, please? It's obviously not going anywhere. Black Kite (talk) 20:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Nishidani

No action. TonyBallioni ( talk) 15:13, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Nishidani

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Shrike ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 20:25, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Nishidani ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Palestine-Israel_articles#General_1RR_restriction :

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

13:43, 18 June 2018 Revert of Material that he removed [220] and not waiting 24h before the last revert [ https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Khan_al-Ahmar&diff=846303318&oldid=846174932 21:00, 17 June 2018]
14 June Calling editors "Pov warriors"
15 June calling editor "revert specialsit

16 June Calling other editors that don't agree with him insane( "No one in her right mind..")
I urge the admins to look at the diffs presented by IceWhiz

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Was blocked in March as AE sanction [221]

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Previously blocked as a discretionary sanction for conduct in the area of conflict, see the block log linked to above.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

Except the 1RR violation and edit warring that should be taken care by admins the editor creates toxic atmosphere around him, calling the editors he don't agree various names to diminish them and create a chilling effect its not the fist time its happens since the topic ban was lifted by ARBCOM(he was banned exactly for that) take for example case from the last year [222]

Yes I well aware that other user might violated 1RR in this article like I noted [223] and if the admins see fit they may sanction them or not but the problem with Nishidani editing are going beyond that

I just like to remind everyone that revert is an edit too of course so the rule does apply so please stop WP:Wikilawyering Per WP:3RR " An or a series of consecutive edits that undoes other editors' actions—whether in whole or in part—counts as a revert".So yes now that he reverted he became the original author of the edit as it his revert.Also if there are still any doubts please look at TGS case [224] it was ruled as violation
And if there some problem with user editing there are appropriate venues and its not talk page of RSN board by doing that he crated vexatious atmosphere -- Shrike ( talk) 04:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
BellezzasoloMaybe I missed that we have a new rule that editors that under WP:SPI investigation could be reverted at sight? Shrike ( talk) 04:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

RegentsPark

I urge you to look at the diffs presented by IceWhiz. Also do you think commentaries like "revert specialist" and "pov wariors" are acceptable in the topic area?

* No he didn't wait for 24 hours from the last revert, he was reverted at [ https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Khan_al-Ahmar&diff=846303318&oldid=846174932 21:00, 17 June 2018] and then he reverted back 13:43, 18 June 2018

As it was noted the 1RR is very complex rule I was mistaken and I am sorry but the WP:NPA violation are still not acceptable in topic area

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

[225]

Discussion concerning Nishidani

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Nishidani

Sigh. Shrike,AE is not a venue to get rid of editors. It serves to deal with problematical behaviour that is obstructive of rational constructive and collaborative work to make wikipedia authoritative in its neutral presentation of the realities of the world based on a capacity to ascertain grounds for compromise. You well know that, as in the past, I have, save for one distant exception, when notified of a perceived 1R infraction either immediately reverted or consulted an expert to make a call, and adhere to his or her judgment.

What your interpretation is saying about 1R strikes me as bizarre. I must wait 24 hours after a bad edit is made before reverting it? I waited three days, watching Attack Ramon persist in restoring poor material against the advice of three editors?

I notified Attack Ramon that his sources were deeply defective, at 17:19, 15 June 2018‎, reverting him, and as is proper immediately (2 minutes). told him he was using an appalling source for a controversial edit. He added a further non RS source, ignoring my point that the Gatestone Institute cannot be used for facts, by adding two more very dubious sources, without removing the former. I told him to go to the RSN board (as I regularly do) if he doubts my judgement (based on this, to cite one of several. He persisted in reintroducing bad material, had no talk page backing, indeed was contrary to the provisory consensus there, and I reverted him 3 days later, advising him to take up the matter at the RSN board, which he refused to do. In Shrike’s interpretation of 1R, Attack Ramon (the name says it all) can break 1R, persist against consensus in restoring quarter baked opinion pieces from dubious sources in several edits over some days, and I must wait a full day after his last edit in order to revert him.

Without wishing to blow a personal trumpet, I go to great lengths on any I/P page I happen on to lay forth abundant academic textual material that would appear to lend weight to my edits. It takes hours to do this. See here, Here (regarding the extensive addition I made here, or at the page in question where I am accused of a 1R violation here.

If I have a big problem with an editor I try to avoid AE and reason it out with a neutral umpire, even if my request is met with silence. My revert warrior remarks merely annotate the reality: only Icewhiz appears to trouble himself with talk page arguments for his edits or mine. The rest sit round, turn up and either ‘vote’ against any edit I may make, or drop a one liner in favour of anyone whose POV they share. People who do not read up sources, who insistently restore notoriously bad sources into a text, or, rather than tweak, simply revert mechanically trusting that the 1R rule will block intelligent editorial changes are, in my book, not committed to wikipedia’s core policies. Our encyclopedic function is not to erase, revert, vote,or use egregiously bad sources to support a POV: it consists in the careful weighing of evidence fairly and its inclusion or exclusion according to strict standards of quality.I think of the score or more of people regularly editing the I/P area five or six understand this. The rest read everything in terms of which nationalistic POV is at stake.

‘no one in his right mind’ refers to anyone who who deny that a Palestinian murdering innocent people constitutes terrorism. Everyone on that page would agree with that, and my point was that, law is neutral as to acts like these, (and therefore if a Jewish Israeli group goes round murdering innocent people it logically falls under the same commonsense definition , as I evidenced by mustering 22 academic or quality specialist sources which define such acts committed by the Irgun as terrorism). I have personal matters to attend to for most of this day. Nishidani ( talk) 11:02, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I think I get into trouble here because I don’t report the daily falsifrication of sources or abuse of policy ( WP:Undue apparently means in the I/P area WP:IDONTLIKEIT), while every p and q of frustration at the attritional war by revert warriors is noted in my ‘file’ and then duly brought up every few months to get me permabanned. I don’t care to waste time noting how many times frivolous reports against me have been made here and rejected, compared to the exiguous number that proved effective. But it is too regular to suggest that such reports have a driving concern for the integrity of wikipedia.

Most I/P AE reports prompt me to think of the following analogy, hyperbolic but that’s one’s only redress against a frivolousness that can, undetected, have menacing consequences. The I/P area is a bit like a Bronx ghetto, where the police don’t venture in, -too many shootings, rapes, general violence, theft, thrashings, destruction of property, extortion racketeering. -unless someone comes out of the daily inferno and complains of the law had been broken, i.e. – someone inside the infernal ghetto is named as being uncourteous, or impolite, or even insinuating that the plaintiff and friends accept the rule of disorder, except for observing only one rule in the code: watching one’s p’s and q’s while rampaging generally. At this, the Supreme Court is alerted, and an criminal indictment requesting immediate house arrest is laid by the plaintiff against the accused, who then has to hire a lawyer to show that, other than paying his taxes, assisting the poor and disadvantaged, etc., and having only a few minor motor car infractions on his police file, the plaintiff’s charges are taken out of context, and that a complete. Investigation should require her background and behaviour, arguably more serious than the instance cited, be closely examined. Even that strategy is a potential loser, because it’s not often deemed material to the case under examination.

I will refrain from wasting everyone’s time in a close examination of the contexts. But I should note that falsely accusing me of a 1R infraction at Khan al-Ahmar, when on that page Shrike was virtually absent from the talk page, and yet simply reverted back material whose stark unreliability was agreed to consensually, was deeply problematical. He confirmed an edit made by someone (perhaps wrongly, but still) suspected of sock puppetry, including, without checking, a piece from the Gatestone Institute which ‘has attracted attention for publishing false articles and being a source of viral falsehoods.’ And you, Shrike, endorse that to prove that a people criminally displaced from their traditional pastures by settlers who want more room for comfortable suburbs on their land, and argue the Bedouin relocated to camps next to a foully smelling rubbish dump, got a good deal?

As to your complaint, Icewhiz. A week or so ago, Yaniv’s in-your-face elision of sourced material as ‘not in source’ when it was patently so, met with no AE sanction. To the contrary was given the benefit of the doubt. Fair enough. But this lack of equilibrium between hyper scrutiny of WP:AGF issues, and relative tolerance of false edit summaries, etc.etc., can set precedents. The other day, you went ahead and excised a chunk of material at Blockade of the Gaza Strip namely

‘Israel violated the terms of post-June 2008 ceasefire agreements on various occasions, amongst others by failing to comply fully with its accepted responsibility to lift the blockade on Gaza.[5][6][7]’ with the es: ’Not in cited sources, and probably not lede worth.’

That sentence was not well crafted (‘ease’ should replace ‘lift’ etc.) but reference to Israel’s failure to carry through with its commitments is in two of the three sources And further, every I/P editor knows this is an easily documented truism ( here, here, here, (multiple newspapers cited), etc.etc., all googled within 30 seconds),

The first source alone, Nathan Thrall, states:

‘with the 21 November 2012 ceasefire agreement Israel undertook to ‘end attacks against Gaza by land, sea and air – including the ‘targeting of individuals’ (assassinations, typically by drone-fired missile) – and that the closure of Gaza would essentially end as a result of Israel’s ‘opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods, and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas’ but Israel therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters. . . Israel had committed to holding indirect negotiations with Hamas over the implementation of the ceasefire but repeatedly delayed them . . The talks never took place. The lesson for Hamas was clear. Even if an agreement was brokered by the US and Egypt, Israel could still fail to honour it.

I know this evidence will be dismissed as irrelevant on the grounds it is a 'content dispute'. But it isn't. It is behavioural: consistently careless, discourteous or bold POV pushing, causing serious editors endless expenditures of time.

So you did exactly what Yaniv did, make a false edit summary. The difference is, I see this nationalistic POV pushing abuse every day, and don’t report it. I don't even have much time to fix a tenth of it. The Japanese for such chutzpah is tetsumenpi (鉄面皮). My occasional frustration at egregiously bad editing is constantly parsed to see if I overstepped the line about ‘assuming good faith’. Now, can I get back to actually doing something productive on wiki articles? Nishidani ( talk) 10:11, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Nableezy

Um Shrike, Nishidani isnt required to wait 24 hours from the last revert to remove material from an article. The restriction you are misreading says the original author of an edit may not restore that edit for 24 hours after the revert. Nishidani isnt the original author of that edit. In fact, if you were interested in actually enforcing the rules here, there is one violation of that restriction, but it isnt by Nishidani. Attack Ramon ( talk · contribs) is the original author of the edit, and was reverted by Nishidani. Attack Ramon however did not wait the required 24 hours to revert the revert. So, if you are interested in a neutral application of the rules, perhaps you should refactor this request into one about Attack Ramon. nableezy - 22:32, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Youre also, either purposely or otherwise, misreading the no one in their right mind quote. nableezy - 22:34, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The talk page reverts are reverts of a user making unsourced claims about a living person explicitly calling for terrorism. That a user sees that as evidence to bring for banning the user removing BLP violations rather than the user making BLP violations is I guess quaint is the most appropriate word I can muster. nableezy - 18:19, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

He shouldnt have removed the other things though, Nishidani take care to not remove non-BLP violations when removing BLP violations. nableezy - 18:25, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Bellezzasolo

It looks like the WP:1RR provision was technically violated, on the "If an edit is reverted by another editor, its original author may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit." clause. In my experience, it is this clause that catches people out, and I can see no evidence of a self-revert request before coming to AE. Whether Nishdani is aware of the intricacy of that clause or not is therefore questionable (although, given a previous block, they should have checked the details). The other factor here is that Attack Ramon has an attitude towards GAMING 1RR. Finally, there exists Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/NoCal100, where Attack Ramon is listed, so we should allow that investigation to conclude before judging the 1RR violation, under WP:NOT3RR. Diffs 2 and 3, while not CIVIL, well, given gaming. 4 doesn't seem to be a directed attack to me. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 22:35, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

It's also been pointed out that Nishdani is no tthe original author of the edit. In which case, I don' think there's anything actionable here. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 22:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Shrike: It's a dodgy area, and I'd only do it when I'm certain that the user is indeed a sock (and is being disruptive, even if it's not clear vandalism). But reverting edits by banned/blocked users is exempt, and that clause I'd say does apply. Of course, if you get it wrong, there's the double whammy of edit warring and treating the non-sock uncivily. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 09:29, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Hijiri88

(Disclosure: I am technically a Nishidani talk page stalker, but I rarely check in, but the notification of this report appeared on my screen after I saved an unrelated message I just left him, and I decided to check out of curiosity.)

Just noting that, regardless of whether a violation of 1RR technically took place, the other diffs are apparently bogus.

"revert specialist" refers to an editor of whose mainspace edits roughly 50% include edit summaries beginning "Undid", "rv", "restoring", etc., and the other 50% would need to be checked to determine how many are manual reverts or had their edit summaries altered from the automated ones that giveaway whether they are reverts.
"POV warriors" does not refer to any specific named editor, and in context clearly only applies to editors who themselves make an arguably worse accusation against the "other side", calling them "activists" which carries implications about off-wiki activity. Basically this is not a "personal attack" but an assertion that there are POV warriors in the topic area, which is a truism, and is the reason this stuff is reported in AE.
"No one in her right mind" refers to editors on Nishidani's "side" who insist that Palestinian terrorism should not be called "terrorism"; it is not an attack on "other editors that don't agree with him". These kind of bogus reports are what makes it so difficult to get sanctions against people when they actually are constantly questioning other editors' sanity.

Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 03:37, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Icewhiz: Haven't clicked on your diffs, since you probably wouldn't provide quotes that, out of context, looked more benign than the actual comments. None of the quotes you provide seem particularly egregious, and in fact most seem like fair descriptions and are quite polite given the context. As above, there are POV pushers; if there weren't, this wouldn't be a problem area on which ArbCom had to place sanctions. The Khazar comment in particular is completely benign, and actually very even-handed and reasonable. I don't know how "right" he is on the substance (I personally have never heard the theory cited by anyone but antisemites, but I don't read as much as I perhaps should on medieval Jewish history), but the fact that he "attacks" (to use the language of those who apparently want to sanction him) both sides evenly actually argues against the claim that he is a POV-pusher who attacks editors who disagree with him. That, plus the fact that the Khazar theory is only very loosely related to the Arab-Israeli conflict; neither Khazars nor Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry is apparently subject to the general prohibition as neither appears to be under any level of protection, let alone EC protection. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 11:42, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Describing, for example, the removal of this apparent BLP violation as prohibited by TPO is extremely questionable. If you believe there are legitimate content concerns being raised by the SPAs in question, then you should raise them yourself. Nishidani did not invoke the General Prohibition in his blankings, so there's no indication that he has misunderstood it as applying to talk pages as you imply (non-extended confirmed users are permitted to post suggestions on talk pages); those kinds of blankings would be justified -- or at least justifiable -- on any BLP's talk page, ARBPIA or no. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 12:22, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Claiming that 1RR applies to talk page removals is questionable -- has the Committee ruled on this? I ask because removing multiple different questionable messages over any period of time is not "edit-warring" by the traditional definition, especially if the messages were by multiple editors. Additionally, if at least one was a BLP violation, then it was not a 1RR violation since only one of the reverts counts. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 20:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Shrike, it should be noted that you have not addressed the fact that your accusations of NPA violations have been questioned and you have not responded, and per WP:WIAPA your accusation that Nish broke some kind of 1RR restriction with the weak evidence you provided is itself an NPA violation. This is your fifth ArbPIA AE filing in the last two months, and your third that specifically cited 1RR; you should be more familiar with it by now. Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 20:50, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Shrike: Huldra's advice is good. You should take it to heart. If you had mentioned this on the talk page first, someone might have pointed out to you that the 1RR concern was invalid and what you were interpreting as "personal attacks" definitely are not such except if one assumes a high degree of bad faith (per, for example, my and BK's notes on "revert specialist"). Hijiri 88 ( 聖やや) 22:10, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Icewhiz

Some additional diffs:

Revision as of 18:40, 19 June 2018, Revision as of 18:48, 19 June 2018 - removal of posts of others in violation of WP:TPO, the posts by the new users user:Brileiweis user:Charlotte253 were addressing possibly valid content concerns, and non-extended confirmed users are permitted to post suggestions on talk pages.
Revision as of 14:27, 17 June 2018 - You are a serial POV reverter of fair and balanced information - against a different editor (myself) than the one labelled above.
Revision as of 14:43, 18 June 2018 - I discount Shrike’s mechanical edit, which was meaningless policywise.
Revision as of 07:42, 18 June 2018 " As you readily admitted several times, you are a beginner unfamiliar with the niceties of policy, and this practice, with false edit summaries, is called drive-by reverting".
Revision as of 09:07, 16 June 2018 edit summary Patently silly revert POV pushing.
Revision as of 07:09, 12 June 2018 "This is the usual POV-driven nonsense reverting.".
Revision as of 13:54, 7 June 2018 " Despite the best efforts of politicized POV pushers, who have tried to wreck this article in order to equate the Khazar theory with anti-Semitism, or who have argued to the contrary that the Khazar theory has nothing to do with anti-Semitism".
Revision as of 13:08, 7 June 2018 There's a cognitive or stylistic error in 'repeated lack of responses'

These comments are directed towards at least 7 different editors (some are general comments on a group of editors - so that's why I'm using "at least" - others are specific). Icewhiz ( talk) 09:20, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

In regards to claims that the talk-page removals were BLP violations - some of them definitely weren't. Tamimi was convicted for violence (and a few incidents were filmed), and incitement. Renaming the "Slapping incident" has some merit (due to the conviction, and indeed it included more than just slapping - though the slapping has been the media focus). The connection (which goes beyond blood - e.g. travelling to the wedding in Jordan) to Ahlam Tamimi (of Sbarro) and Nizar Tamimi (also convicted) is source able - and has been covered in RS - e.g. [226] [227]. The ""Slapping incident" should be retitled" section definitely wasn't a BLP vio, and the other section - should have had perhaps soruces next to each assertion - but sources could've been placed next to each one. I'm not sure I support the editing suggestions of the new users (this article is on my watchlist - and I choose not to reply) - but there is a potential discussion to be had. Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers is a guideline - and removing a new user's talk page posts (without even a followup to their talk page) is not very friendly. Icewhiz ( talk) 12:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Also the talk page removals (2 reverts - 8 minutes apart, intervening edit by other user) are 1RR violations beyond just TPO - the exception would be removing a BLP violation perhaps - but they don't look like a BLP violation and that hasn't been asserted in the edit summaries. Icewhiz ( talk) 13:10, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by TheGracefulSlick

As of late, Shrike has seemingly been waiting to pounce on "violations" committed by editors he does not like. True, my cases were violations, but editors make mistakes and Shrike gave me no opportunities to correct them before running to AE. What would make it irritating for someone like Nishidani, a dedicated content creator, is that Shrike hardly contributes to content or discussions. His comments are synonymous with a yes-man, and his edits to the I/P area are largely reverts that contribute to edit wars "within the rules". I can provide diffs of this behavior if the spotlight shifts on Shrike's behavior, but I would much rather see him just change his behavior and walk away from this. TheGracefulSlick ( talk) 18:52, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Huldra

Shrike seem to have developed a habit of reporting users, without discussing it on the relevant talk pages first, and without asking them to revert first. (Disclosure: I was reported by him last year Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive220#Huldra, also without any warning) (And there are two report by Shrike, of TheGracefulSlick, closed without action, presently on this page)

Mostly these reports end in nothing...just a massive waste of everyones time. Shrike should be gently reminded that he shouldn't report editors to WP:AE, or WP:AN/I, without having discussed the problematic edit(s) on the relevant talk page(s) first, Huldra ( talk) 20:56, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

PS, and calling someone a "revert specialist", is pretty accurate, when 150 to 200 of each of their 500 edits is an "undid" edit.

Statement by K.e.coffman

I believe that Shrike should be cautioned against filing frivolous 1RR / 3RR reports. I was the subject of their misunderstanding in the past: April 2018, where he more or less confused normal article editing with reverts. Then he filed 3RRN report anyway. It closed as "no violation" [228]. -- K.e.coffman ( talk) 03:27, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Nishidani

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

The 1RR restriction is frankly too complicated for me to figure out and so I leave that aspect to others. (If I were an active editor in that topic area, I'd probably inadvertently break it on a daily basis.) The "in her right mind" is harmless hyperbole. The "revert specialist" and "POV warrior", though, are battleground-like conduct if not personal attacks, and I could see sanctions for that. Some of the diffs by Icewhiz are also of concern. Waiting on other admins to comment. Sandstein 11:58, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I agree with Sandstein that the 1RR sanction is way too complicated. The way I read it, Nishidani had to wait 24 hours after the first revert after removing the material. Which they did (they waited three days). So that's not a violation. (The text reads may not restore it within 24 hours of the first revert made to their edit, note the first (emphasis mine) rather than last that is stated by the complaint. So we can forget about that one. -- regentspark ( comment) 18:25, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Looked at the other ones. Frankly, I find it hard to take seriously a complaint that interprets the use of "no one in her right mind" in an argument as an accusation of insanity. I would deny the appeal made by Shrike. Admins with more patience are welcome to look at the diffs provided by other editors but I think we need to put a stop to this culture of throwing trivial stuff at AE, perhaps with the hope that other editors will emerge with more diffs. -- regentspark ( comment) 18:32, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Per Regentspark. Oh, and calling someone a "revert specialist" if a very large proportion of their edits are reverts is not a personal attack. Black Kite (talk) 21:38, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
There's definitely no 1RR violation here. Nishidani hadn't edited the article for 3 days before his revert on 18 June. His talk page commentary does not show the level of courtesy I would expect, but isn't blockable; the folks he's arguing with are behaving just as badly, and if we blocked editors for calling others POV-warriors, we'd have to block most editors editing topics involving socio-political conflict (including most of the opposition at my RFA). I would close with nothing more than a suggestion to Nishidani to take it easy and stick to commenting on content, and possibly a trout to Shrike for being overeager to bring someone to AE. Vanamonde ( talk) 05:12, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Volunteer Marek

Volunteer Marek will voluntarily refrain from editing the Donald Trump article for a week. They are prohibited for six months from adding any article-level maintenance tags to any Trump-related articles. They are also strongly warned against casting general aspersions against editors who they see as "pro-Trump". -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:03, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Volunteer Marek

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Power~enwiki ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 18:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Volunteer Marek ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log
Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2#Discretionary sanctions (1932 cutoff) : standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to post-1932 politics of the United States and closely related people.

For Donald Trump, a variety of other restrictions apply, including civility and "consensus required".

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

2018-06-20 18:28 Adding despite the fact that it has resulted in several indictments and guilty pleas of Trump campaign aides and associates. to the lead of Donald Trump.
2018-06-20 16:37 Adding the {{ update}} tag to Donald Trump.
2018-06-20 13:51 - on Talk:Donald Trump - More evidence of how dysfunctional the situation is here where a vocal minority obstructs to prevent obviously relevant info from being added to the article. - a reasonable statement, but evidence he is fully aware of the dysfunctional editing situation here.
2018-06-19 15:58 Adding the {{ NPOV}} tag to Donald Trump. This tag had been removed by L293D less than 3 hours earlier.
2018-06-19 14:46 Adding what I believe to be an absurd-on-its-face amount of content regarding the Trump Foundation to the lead section of Donald Trump
While any single diff between Atsme and VM is defensible, their recent back-and-forth at Talk:Donald Trump is troublesome. Some of Marek's hostile comments towards Atsme include [229], [230], and [231] (though some of Atsme's comments are equally problematic).

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

2017-11-15 1-month TBAN from Trump-related topics

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Previously given a discretionary sanction for conduct in the area of conflict on 2017-11-15 by GoldenRing ( talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

American Politics has been a contentious area for some time, and the recent actions of President Trump have escalated it further. Volunteer Marek is making WP:POINT-ed edits, and additions to the lead that have no chance of obtaining consensus. This makes it more difficult for normal editing to find consensus, and requires an interminable series of lengthy talk-page discussions. Throwing maintenance tags at the article to try to get one to stick is so far from constructive behavior that some action is necessary.

@ NorthBySouthBaranof: - that diff is evidence of his awareness of the editing situation, presented in context with his perpetuating that situation in other diffs. I can move it to "Additional comments by editor filing complaint" if you prefer. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 18:48, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Sandstein: Discretionary sanctions are discretionary; I'm not claiming there's any specific remedy breached that requires enforcement. This is the forum to request discretionary sanctions against previously alerted editors. I feel Marek's edits violate the expectation to follow editorial and behavioural best practice and refrain from gaming the system. An editor of his experience should know that tag-bombing Donald Trump is entirely un-productive, and I get the sense that his recent additions to the lead were deliberately controversial to create a pattern of "reverts of additions to the lead". power~enwiki ( π, ν) 19:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I would have considered it needlessly bureaucratic to propose "Non-inline maintenance tags should not be added to this article ( Donald Trump) without prior discussion on the talk page" before opening this thread, but that may be necessary. power~enwiki ( π, ν) 22:25, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested: [232]

Discussion concerning Volunteer Marek

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Volunteer Marek

Am I missing something or is this whole request just a "he edited the article" type of complaint? None of these edits violate any of the discretionary sanctions.

Like the first one - yeah, I added it. Am I not allowed to edit the article or something?

The second one - yeah, I added it. Am I not allowed to edit the article or something?

Third one - talk page comment. Am I not allowed to comment on the talk page? And while the comment makes a general criticism, it's perfectly civil.

Fourth one - I added the tag for a different reason then another user. The tag I added was because of the POV coverage of the issues related to the Trump Foundation. Somebody else apparently had a problem with some other, unrelated part of the article. Incidentally, User:L293D broke the 1RR restriction with his two reverts but I decided to let it go. As always, no good deed goes unpunished and I'll remember for the future that any opportunity to file a WP:AE report should be seized as quickly as possible else, someone else will do it to you (sarcasm)

Fifth one - I'm sorry that the user feels this content is "absurd" (it's not - in fact the complete absence of any mention of the foundation is a glaring POV problem), but regardless, there's no violation of any sanction here. Am I not allowed to edit the article or something?

Likewise my comments with Atsme were perfectly appropriate. She posted a source claiming it supported her views, whereas in fact the source was actually contradicting everything she said (hence, she probably didn't read it past the headline). She explicitly stated that she regards reliable sources as "propaganda" and that they shouldn't be used. I have no idea how you're suppose to achieve consensus with someone who takes that position - that they just not going to observe Wikipedia policy because it doesn't fit in with their POV - but at the very least the position should be noted. Likewise, claiming " WP:RECENTISM" in regard to an edit and subject matter which goes back to ... wait for it, wait for it, wait for it... 1988 (no, there's no typos there, it's a one, followed by a nine, followed by two eights - so, you know "recent") is in fact ridiculous. Actually it's worse than that. It basically shows that Atsme was struggling to find an excuse to perform a blanket revert and couldn't find one, so she went with just some random one. Which is pretty clearly WP:TENDENTIOUS and WP:GAMEing.

Again, there isn't a single violation here, it's just power_wiki complaining that I had the nerve to make edits to the article. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:05, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User:NeilN actually I wasn't aware of this discussion (I searched the talk page for any thing related to the topic before making the edit but missed it). If you look at my edit history, you can see that my editing fell of sharply between May 15th and May 28th. I made only a few edits in these two weeks and none of them were Trump related. This is because I was travelling, had only sporadic access to the internet and stopped following all but a few pages. The discussion you reference occurred between May 20th and May 23rd, so yeah I missed it. I would not have made my edit if I had known about it.

Coincidentally, that discussion is another example of how the "consensus required to restore" provision is so easily WP:GAMEd by certain editors. No matter how reasonable and how well supported by sources, it only takes a few voices (and it's always the same few voices) to sabotage discussion and veto any proposal. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:11, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User:NeilN - as JFG notes below, there is a list of "Current consensus" items [233] and in fact I checked it prior to making that edit. There's nothing about indictments on it. The relevant discussion was buried in the archives. I'm not quite clear what you expect here - that every user memorizes the entire archive of the talk page so that they don't accidentally restore something that has been removed prior?

As for the POV tag - I put the tag in in good faith, because I believed and still believe that not including any information about the Trump Foundation in the article on Donald Trump is a POV violation (and removing such information under the pretense of "RECENTISM" is ridiculous). The "consensus required to restore" restriction can't apply to inclusion of tags for different reasons. Otherwise it would mean that once somebody removes a POV tag from an article, it can never be put back (without a lengthy process), which is of course unworkable. And in response to User:Sandstein - we have top level articles tagged all the time. This is the first I hear of such a practice being considered "disruptive". If I had restored the tag after it was removed, you'd have a point, but I didn't (L293D did violate 1RR in removing it though).

And sure I can refrain from making any edits to the article for a week. I'm pretty sure there'd be blind-reverted anyway, since that what happens to pretty much any attempt to update that article, all thanks to the stupid "cannot restore" restriction which gives anyone a veto power over content. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:23, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Also, want to note that it's not true that I "tag-bombed" the article. That would involve adding numerous tags for spurious reasons, see WP:TAGBOMBING, or adding a whole bunch of tags to whole bunch of articles. I didn't do that. I just added a tag in two different instances and explained the rationale each time. This is standard procedure actually, it happens all the time, and it's the removal of the tag that is disruptive. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:28, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User:Masem, the discussion from June 5th started by Ellen was about including "his administration's record number of criminal indictment". That's not what I added. My edit just provided context to the "witch hunt" part that's somehow included in the lede. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 20:53, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by NorthBySouthBaranof

How is a talk page post that even you admit is reasonable, does not in any way constitute a personal attack, and is a cogent, non-judgmental summarization of the issue at hand, in any way evidence which justifies sanctioning someone? If we're sanctioning editors for saying the words "vocal minority," we better be ready to sanction every editor on Wikipedia. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

That doesn't answer the question. The fact that you disagree with their edits, and the fact that consensus requires "lengthy talk-page discussions," are not grounds for sanctioning anyone. I could probably scour through the article and talk page histories and find enough reverts and talk page posts by you, JFG or any number of other people highly active on that page that I could use to declare that you are "making it more difficult for normal editing to find consensus". But that's not how the discretionary sanctions should be used. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:53, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Your first "evidence" diff is VM adding something to the lede of the article which is provably true and arguably relevant. The fact that you have reverted the addition is evidence that you disagree with VM, but it is not evidence of any DS violation. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 18:57, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ NeilN: If I felt like editing that article (and I don't, really), I would not have known to search a month (or more?) deep in talk page archives to try and deduce what there has and hasn't been consensus reached on. The revert is eminently reasonable on the "Consensus required" grounds, but it seems to me that articles with "Consensus required" sanctions should have a talk page header box with quick references to talk page discussions where such consensus has been reached, so that editors don't unintentionally run afoul of consensuses long ago reached. NorthBySouthBaranof ( talk) 19:17, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by involved editor MelanieN

VM, I see that you did the same thing at Presidency of Donald Trump: Added a {{POV}} tag to the article because a portion of one item got removed. [234] I’m not sure if this was before or after this kind of edit became an issue at this AE report, but this kind of spite-tagging is something you need to stop doing. IMO it amounts to petty vandalism of the page. -- MelanieN ( talk) 22:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Power~enwiki: I think more to the point would be something like “Volunteer Marek is prohibited from adding maintenance tags to Trump-related articles” - or “to articles he is actively editing” - or maybe “in retaliation for one of his edits getting reverted”. -- MelanieN ( talk) 23:12, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by L293D

Thanks for the ping, VM^sarcasm, I had no knowledge of this thread. But since he decided to ping me, Ill comment here. VM clearly broke DS because the {{ NPOV}} tag had already been added to the article here. I contested the addition of the tag, and then VM added it again. VM has long history of disruptive editing and POV-pushing, as seen here, when he added an {{ update}} tag to the article simply because he was not happy with a detail of it, or here. L293D ( ☎ • ✎) 19:23, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by JFG

NorthBySouthBaranof wrote: it seems to me that articles with "Consensus required" sanctions should have a talk page header box with quick references to talk page discussions where such consensus has been reached, so that editors don't unintentionally run afoul of consensuses long ago reached. That is exactly what we have on this article: Talk:Donald Trump/Current consensus, and it has tremendously helped to avoid rehashing settled issues, while leaving changes open per WP:CCC (which happened a few times, see documented amendments and stricken items in the consensus list). I would agree that such a summary should be applied to other high-profile articles under DS/CR with a long history. — JFG ^talk 20:09, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

On the merits of each cited diff:

This sentence was discussed extensively during the Andrevan debacle from 23 to 29 May, and no consensus was reached to keep it in the lede. I understand that VM was not paying attention at that time, so he may well not have noticed. However, the same discussion was re-ignited (with a broader scope) by EllenCT on 2 June, and VM actively participated in that thread, making 13 edits in 3 days. Specifically, he expressed on 4 June his frustration that indictments of Trump-connected people were not included in the lede, [235] so he was definitely aware on 4 June that this addition was under debate and had not gained consensus. This context places his bold edit today in a poor light.
Nothing wrong, just an unhelpful tag that I reverted, asking VM to specify what should be updated. He hasn't responded yet.
Along with numerous prior edits to the talk page, this shows VM's disdain for the DS restrictions in place. Wrong venue to debate them.
Bright-line DS/CR violation. That another editor had added [236] the same NPOV tag for another reason does not give VM a free pass against restrictions in place. The correct attitude would have been to open a talk page thread, stating what is purportedly non-neutral, and suggesting paths to improvement.
Fine as a bold edit, but it was rather pointy to add so much material smack in the middle of the lede, given VM's good understanding of the editing caution advisable on this article. In the ensuing talk page discussion after this was reverted, VM's proposal faced near-unanimous opposition, and was rejected by a WP:SNOW close.
Testing the limits of civility and assumption of bad faith (see also MONGO's list of inflammatory diffs below), but we all know Marek is a good editor despite his abrasive language. In the November 2017 case closed by GoldenRing, in addition to his Trump TBAN, VM had been warned to edit collegially and assume good faith. [237]

Overall, this string of edits looks like the result of VM's personal exasperation with the way Trump is covered in his BLP, and our DS restrictions that prevent him from righting great wrongs unilaterally. No idea whether any of this is worthy of sanctions. I'll leave admins to ponder this remark by VM on 3 June: So you have a situation where one side acts in good faith, the other side acts in bad faith... guess whom an absolutist sanction such as this one benefits most? It's a no brainer. It's a bad sanction. It kills articles. It goes against spirit of Wikipedia. And the 5 pillars. [238] — JFG ^talk 22:16, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Vanamonde93: I would strongly object to lifting the DS/CR editing restriction on this article. As I wrote in a recent thread [239] where VM and another editor complained about it: The "special DS arrangement" is here to improve article stability; it does not prevent any solid content to be added. In fact, the current lede section is the product of extensive discussions involving hundreds of editors, so that virtually every word in there has gone through scrutiny by the community, ensuring neutrality, due weight and encyclopedic tone, irrespective of individual editors' opinions. This is Wikipedia working at its finest. — JFG ^talk 05:40, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by MONGO

Frequent aspersions about the motives, editing and other perceived issues VolunteerMarek has with those he disagrees with do absolutely nothing to help the articles. It definitely comes across as bullying and it is not in the least bit conducive to a collaborative editing environment:

[240] "Yup. More evidence of how dysfunctional the situation is here where a vocal minority obstructs to prevent obviously relevant info from being added to the article."
[241] "...I'm going to say it again. It's simply impossible to arrive at WP:CONSENSUS with people who live in an alternative delusional reality and refuse to even agree on some basic facts, or who refuse to respect the Wikipedia policy of reliable sources. It's simply idiotic to give such individuals veto power over any edit made to the article in the way that the "consensus required to restore" provision does."
[242] "...You're trying to excuse the inexcusable and should really reevaluate what kind of a person you want to be."
[243] "...Oh this is ridiculous. It's the biggest story of the past two weeks, it's reported on everywhere, internationally, domestically, in conservative and liberal outlets, and yet... Wikipedia is not suppose to mention it because... a couple users realize that it's making the president look bad so they start with the WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT."
[244] "WP:NOTAFORUM|NOTAGODDAMNFORUM" (removed the links to show he swapped NOTAFORUM to well, what he said.)
[245] "there are actually compassionate reasons why the separations are done" <-- only a certain kind of person could say something like that with a straight face."
[246] "...I'm always amused by the logical pretzels some people will come up to justify their WP:IJUSTONTLIKEIT."
[247] "...Oh, nonsense. It's pretty clear from his statement that he indeed meant it literally. You are demanding that he say "I mean it literally" at the end of his every claim, or it's not meant literally. Again, this is just lame ass excuse making for an obvious lie. Oh, wait. For "speaking figuratively". Hey, I guess some people enjoy being lied to."
[248] "...Oh jebus freakin crust but this is dumb. No, there's no fucking ISIS camp on the US-Mexico border [249] (and this is why JudicialWatch is a garbage source)and I'm sorry but anybody who believes in that nonsense is a total fucking idiot. Senators or reps or secretaries included. And it's precisely by treating people who say dumb ass shit like that seriously and pretending like this stuff can be part of regular discourse among intelligent people that we get into a situation like this, where obvious bullshit is being presented on part with established facts, and where absurd conspiracy theories are treated as possibilities, and where people walk into pizza parlors with the intent to shoot them up cuz they heard something somewhere. Enough. COMPETENCE IS REQUIRED and that applies to the very basic ability of being able to differentiate between plausible phenomena and obviously witless conspiracy theories."
[250] "Oh BS. And a good thing that Wikipedia users' ridiculous personal "testimonies" are not considered as reliable sources and have no bearing on what content we include or not include. This is WP:FORUMSHOPPING and belongs in some conspiracy subreddit, not on a talk page of an encyclopedia article."

Statement by My very best wishes

I simply think the "consensus required" restriction should never be used on WP pages because a contributor must be well aware of all previous discussions and previous editing history of the page to follow such restriction. This is very difficult even for the most experienced and well intended contributors. See an example here [251]. My very best wishes ( talk) 21:07, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Mandruss

Only one (off-topic) comment here, otherwise I'm a disillusioned lurker on this one.

@ My very best wishes: - I simply think the "consensus required" restriction should never be used on WP pages because a contributor must be well aware of all previous discussions and previous editing history of the page to follow such restriction. - If an editor got sanctioned solely for making what could be reasonably seen as a good faith mistake, you would have a point. In practice at Donald Trump, at least, such an editor is reverted citing the restrictions and we move on. The reverted editor is free to seek more information on the talk page, if necessary, and nobody would fault them for doing so.

Thus the current system does not require every editor to be familiar with the history, it only requires one to be. The objective here is not to prevent all uninformed, good-faith mistakes and the resulting reverts, which are fairly common and not a problem.

Anyway, there are better venues for such a discussion. ― Mandruss ☎ 02:31, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Vanamonde93: I concur with JFG in strong opposition to the idea of eliminating DS/CR.

Too often we focus on the downside of something and fail to fully consider the downside of the alternative. The restriction was not put in place without a demonstrated need for it, and removing it would be a step backward. There will always be widespread gaming no matter what we do—until we become better at showing the door to the editors who do it constantly—and I don't see how DS/CR makes gaming easier than does any other rule or process.

Show me a real-life example of this stonewalling and I'm confident I can show you how it wasn't stonewalling or wasn't the fault of DS/CR. If I can't, I'll change my opposition to support. The DS/CR does slow down the editing process, which is not a bad thing. Some editors lack the patience, and some editors are very quick to see bad faith in any opposition on content, particularly from editors who are on the other side of the political center.

But again, such a change should not be made without a full hearing, and I don't see how that can be done here. Surely the views of the editors who have extensive experience with DS/CR should weigh heavily in such a decision. ― Mandruss ☎ 06:42, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Volunteer Marek

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

The first diff came up on my watchlist and caught my eye as it seems to be an obvious violation of consensus-required. The only thing saving Volunteer Marek from a block was I couldn't find any indication they were aware of this discussion. If anyone can provide evidence that VM was aware they were restoring contested material then harsher sanctions are in order. Otherwise, I'm considering an editing ban for article space on Trump-related articles. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:00, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Volunteer Marek: Your tagging of the article isn't great behavior, either. It distinctly reminds me of editors, frustrated at not getting what they want, resort to tag-bombing the article. Will you voluntarily refrain from editing Trump articles for one week (you can still use talk pages)? -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:18, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
@ NorthBySouthBaranof: I don't disagree with you but almost every thread is a discussion about content and there are tens/hundreds of sentences being discussed. These discussions either achieve consensus for something or peter out with no consensus being achieved. Documenting this would probably be less fruitful than telling an editor to go read the archives. If it's any consolation, I don't think I've sanctioned any editor yet for (credibly) unknowingly violating consensus-required. -- NeilN ^{talk to me} 19:47, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

These look like content disputes, which are not AE's business. The request does not indicate how exactly these edits violate which specific restriction or remedy. Looks not actionable to me so far. Sandstein 19:09, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

OK, I see now that the tagging of the article with such tags as {{ NPOV}} or {{ update}} is disruptive. Top-profile articles do not need these kinds of tags to draw editor attention because there's already a lot of attention on these articles, and adding such tags nonetheless looks like a case of WP:POINT. I wouldn't oppose an article ban of some kind in response to this. The rest I still think are content disputes. Sandstein 19:31, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Agree with Sandstein (again!). I don't see a battleground behavior or gaming of the system here. Content disputes are best handled on the article talk page and that's where I suggest this be redirected. -- regentspark ( comment) 19:22, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
@ NeilN: The discussion in your question "ended" on May 29 (date of seemingly latest comment) and was removed and archived on June 6. VM did not edit the talk page during the period the discussion was had (May 23 to May 29) but did edit on June 2 [252] and several days after. In other words, that un-hatted discussion was visible on at least on the version of the talk page that VM had to edit.

To try to give VM the benefit of the doubt, EllenCT raised the question that included why the other indictments weren't included, and said they could not find where in the archives this was decided. No one appeared to provide a link but clearly it was there (and as I see, the "Peripheral_indictments_in_lead" section is still visible on the page as of June 2). But giving benefit of doubt towards VM, there is still this closed discussion about adding, among other things, the indictments to the lead that was closed as no consensus by Galobatter on June 5, during a period that VM was active on the talk page (eg June 4 edit - June 8 edit). In other words, that closed but non-collapsed discussion was there when Marek was editing the talk page.

Granted, the method for tracking "consensus required" additions or omissions in a situation like this is woeful, but if we're working on the principle that an editor has edited a page that had some obvious message or caution in the specific edit that they have thus must have knowledge of it, VM definitely should be considered to have been aware of this one. And thus, of course a June 20th change that countered that would be out of line. -- Masem ( t) 20:48, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Um, this request is pretty ... I'm not sure how to express this ... thin. If you have to go back into the history of multiple articles to work out what was visible when and where, then to be honest I don't think it rises to something that has to be dealt with here. The tag-bombing is not ideal but as Sandstein said in his original post, this is mostly a content dispute here. Black Kite (talk) 21:34, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply
The edit flagged by Neil is not good behavior, and neither is the tag-bombing. That said, a lot of the editing on that page is sub-par. I don't think we need to do anything more about Marek besides warning him that tag-bombing an article when his edits have been objected to is disruptive. But we should seriously consider lifting the consensus-required restriction, which both makes stonewalling very easy, and leads to enormous amounts of drama. Vanamonde ( talk) 05:27, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Paul Siebert

No action. Sandstein 07:10, 23 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning Paul Siebert

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: My very best wishes ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 22:19, 18 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: Paul Siebert ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Eastern_Europe#Standard_discretionary_sanctions

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

[253] (last phrase at the bottom) - This is a BLP violation - accusing Stéphane Courtois of forgery; accusing a scientist of a scientific forgery is a very serious accusation.
[254] - This is a repeated BLP violation - contrary to claims by Paul, Courtois was not accused of forgery by his colleagues. They only had a public disagreement about numbers in a book and some interpretations.
[255] - This is a personal attack on article talk page (if a person behaves as a troll, then it is reasonable to conclude they are a troll, etc.) Paul argued about his edits: (a) (edit summary: "The source did not say the order was to use gas vans" and (b) [256]. Note that based on his own words (diff #3), Paul was well aware that the sources did say it, contrary to his edit summary. Here is whole thread. Paul make this edit to remove phrase "who acted on the orders from the higher NKVD administration" (his edit summary is "It is not clear that usage of gas vans was authorised by Berg supervisors...". This is also the title of the thread he started. How he justifies the removal? He tells (diff #3): "Nobody claims executions [of prisoners in gas vans] was Berg's own initiative. Obviously, he was doing that according to the order of his supervisors. The question was if the construction and usage of gas vans was the order of his supervisors." Does it sound logical?
[257] - This is personal attack on article talk page (starting from You cannot pretend you are an educated and skillful person...). This is clearly a personal comment, not just a criticism of something I have written during any discussions. He responds to this my comment.
[258] This is an unsubstantiated accusation of bad faith.
[259]. His "explanation" why I act in the bad faith.
[260] (last phrase at the bottom of the diff) - This is false accusation of misinterpreting a source. The accusation is completely groundless.
[261] Paul tells: if you see no anti-Semitism in these Solzhenitsyn's words, that tells something about you - reply to this. No, I do not see anti-Semitism in this quotation (last diff). Do you? What it suppose to tell about me? Yes, some writings by Solzenitsyn were debated as possibly antisemitic.
[262] - Long political rant culminating in accusing user Woogie10w of ... not respecting Paul's grandfather and Soviet people (your father came back .... because my grandfather was killed... Please, show respect to the people whose deaths allowed you to live. They were not just cattle...).
(older) [263] (at the bottom) - This is bad faith assumption - accusing Collect of deliberately violating a policy: You are repeatedly adding the text that violates WP:NPOV without properly explaining this addition on the talk page, citing a deliberately wrong reason. Their conversation resulted in such exchange: [264] ("you accused me of lying"), [265] ("I never accused you of lying, ... You falsely accused me in 1RR violation.")
[266] - misleading edit summary. The edit was explained on talk page [267], and Paul was well aware of this (some further comments: [268]).
(older) [269] - a thread started by Paul on article talk page. It was entiteled by Paul as "POV pushing". This is a violation of talk page guidelines. As banner on the top of the page tells, one should discuss only the improvement of the corresponding main space page. The thread by Paul was not about improvement of the page, but a flow of personal accusations ("POV pushing"). The accusations were bogus because there was no 1RR violation or any other "violations" alleged by Paul. This is actually a perfect example to explain how and why numerous article talk pages in the project are transformed to the "battlegrounds" simply because contributors (Paul in this case) start accusing others on the pages which exist only for discussing the improvement of content.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

The alert was given on May 13, 2018

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

I was very reluctant to submit this request and thought it might be avoided. Therefore, prior to filing any requests, I tried to explain to Paul that his editing was problematic ( whole thread), but he responded with offenses (diffs #5, #6, "that's a lie", "you continue to pretend"). Moreover, he continued doing the same (for example, diffs #1, #2 and #9). All these discussions were related to Eastern Europe.

In addition, Paul produces very long and fruitless discussions on article talk pages and refuses to accept consensus or the lack of consensus. For example, speaking about "Black Book", he posted this question a few years ago. He recently re-posted it again [270]. He received no support, but still continue defaming the author of the book on WP pages (diffs #1 and #2). I do not know if his sources to discredit Stéphane Courtois are cherry-picked or just random, however they do not support the assertion by Paul that the notable academic has been involved in a scientific misconduct. I believe it is a BLP violation and WP:OR by Paul.

@Woogie10w. I am not surprised you do not want edit this subject. I think one problem is that Paul clearly exhibits an WP:TE editing pattern on the talk page (diffs #1, #2, #10, and #12; #9 was also related to this page). He also starts multiple threads trying to discredit the "Black Book of Communism", which is probably one of the best academic RS on the subject of this page. He does it over and over again: [271], [272], [273], [274]. And he continue doing the same on this AE page - see his response below [275].

@Paul Siebert. "Troll" again [276]? I do not find your arguments convincing, sorry.

Diff #7. You continue to insist that I mistranslated or misinterpreted something. Where? Any diff with my alleged "translation"? There is nothing.

Diff #8 (antisemitism accusations) -No, there was no any misunderstanding. Please check my comment Paul responds to in diff #8. Paul, what does it "tell about me"?

Diff #11. No, I did not make my edit against consensus. Paul provided incorrect/misleading link to something that had happen much later, after his and my edit [277]. Here is the state of discussion at the moment of his edit. What consensus? In fact, these words were unilaterally just inserted by Paul [278] (so I acted per WP:BRD).

Diff/link #12. I asked Paul previously not to make personal comments on article talk pages [279]. Nevertheless, he started this thread on article talk page 10 days later. Why? Paul tells that discussing other people on article talk pages is a proof of his good faith [280].

@TTAAC. In the first chapter of Black Book Courtois provides his own numbers of victims, which are not based on the chapters by Margolin and Werth, and he does not tell these numbers are based on their chapters. Therefore, the numbers must be explicitly attributed to Courtois. That is what I did in this edit. For some reasons Paul called this my edit "POV pushing" (link #12; at the bottom of the diff he tells I made "misleading edit summary" in this edit. Wrong. It was correct edit summary and good edit.).

Text in excess of 500 words deleted as an admin action. Sandstein 17:24, 22 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

Notified

Discussion concerning Paul Siebert

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by Paul Siebert

I have to skip the most ridiculous accusations because of space limitations.

1. Re: Forgery etc: reliable sources say that Courtois "manipulated"^[1] or "deliberately inflated"^[2] some figures, which he then used as a proof for his theory. A beginning if the discussion of this question can be found here, all diffs cannot be provided because there were a lot of them). Manipulation of figures by Courtois lead to a serious conflict between Courtois and his co-authors:^[3] Two main contributors of this book (Werth and Margolin) claimed that Courtois took the figures produced by them and produced the figures that were considerably inflated as compared to the original data. Such manipulation is not necessarily tantamount to forgery, but it is very close. That is exactly what I say ("it seems Courtois simply forged his figures"), and a well documented public scandal over this story demonstrates that my statement was hardly an exaggeration.

2. redundant

3. Re: "if a person behaves as a troll, then it is reasonable to conclude they are a troll": To explain this, I need to briefly describe a content dispute in a formal way. Durin a discussion, I said: "I agree that the facts A and B did occur. However, I disagree that C follows from A and B. ^[4] MVBW twisted my words, and claimed "You admitted that A and B did occur, which mean you yourself agreed with C". To me, such behaviour is a typical trolling.

4. Re: "You cannot pretend you are an educated and skillful person..." Truncation completely changed the meaning of this sentence. A brief summary of my full post is: "You are smarter than the posts you make, please, return to a rational discussion". (MVBW is a scientist who is supposed to be familiar with the criteria applied to scientific publications and good articles).

5. Re: "This is an unsubstantiated accusation of bad faith" (partially addressed above (#4)). The whole discussion can be seen here. Obviously:

There were no accusations of bad faith, it was an answer to a direct question: "do you accuse me of bad faith?" MVBV asked me on my talk page.

It looks like MVBW started the whole discussion in attempt to force me to make this statement (as if they were already contemplating to file this AE request).

The policy does not prohibit accusations of bad faith, it prohibits unsubstantiated accusation. In this particular case, my words were not "an unsubstantiated accusation", but a logical summary of a long discussion.

6. Re: This diff see above.

7. Re: "last phrase at the bottom of the diff". A key point here is that the exact translation of the word "расстрелять" (that means not "execution" (a general term), but "shooting").^[5] Obviously, if one sees this my phrase taken out of context, it looks somewhat rude. However, taking into account that, as a rule, any discussion with MVBW makes several rounds where all arguments are being repeated ad nauseum, some degree of irritation is quite understabdable.

8. Re: "if you see no anti-Semitism in these Solzhenitsyn's words, that tells something about you" retrospectively, I see that it was just misunderstanding. I thought we were discussing this statement,^[6] whereas that book described the same subject in two different chapters, and the wording in another chapter was less anti-Semitic.

9. Re: "Long political rant" Actually, it was a friendly discussion between Woogie10w and me on our talk pages, where Woogie10w and I disclosed some personal information about our ancestors. I feel very uncomfortable that a third person wedged into this discussion, and I am not intended to discuss the details here. Although Woogie10w and I interact very rarely, I think he is a very kind and interesting person, and I am glad he thinks the same about me. Since I believe off-Wiki communication is something we should avoid, my email is disabled, so a talk page dialogue was the only way to communicate with Woogie10w. In my opinion, MVBW's behaviour in this particular case was profoundly dishonest.

10. Re: "accusing Collect of deliberately violating a policy" Don't have space to discuss this unrelated story.

11. Re: "misleading edit summary" In reality, (MVWB was acting against talk page consensus (see the "War breaks out in Europe; a pretext for a Soviet invasion" section).

12. Re: "a thread started by Paul on article talk page" This thread must be read in full from the beginning to the final TFD's post. It is a representative example of MVBW's behaviour. I just wanted to add that although I know MVBW since very early times (starting from his conflict with another user, which gave a start to the WP:EEML story, when MVBW was editing under the currently deleted account "Biophys"), I still assumed MVBW's good faith until June 2018. Regrettably, after this case, I have no possibility to assume it any more.

-- Paul Siebert ( talk) 04:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

References

^ "Through the manipulation of numbers (...) the impression is created that Communism is four times worse than fascism and that the Holocaust was not a uniquely evil crime
^ Hiroaki Kuromiya. Review Article: Communism and Terror. Reviewed Work(s): The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression byStephane Courtois; Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 191-201. [1]
^ Courtois enormous body count of Communism's victims certainly sparked the ire of some of his detractors - including Nicolas Werth, a contributor of the Black Book of Communism who broke over several aspects of the introduction, including the fact that Courtois used a figure of twenty million dead at the hands of Soviets, whereas Werth's own estimate, given in his chapter of his volume, was fifteen million
^ More concretely, (i) the source says that a person X obtained general instructions from his supervisors; (ii) to implement these instructions, X had to do some technical step; (iii) however, the source does not say this particular technical step was a part of instructions X got from supervisors.
^ The source says about Stalin's Great Purge. It tells about one person, Berg, who was accused of inventing the gas van. Berg explained that he was acting in accordance with the orders of his supervisors, who demanded his team execute (literally, "shoot") a huge number of people. The team was incapable of doing that, so he had to build a gas van. The source uses the word "shoot", not just "execute", which means the order to execute people did come from Berg's supervisors, but creation of gas vans was Berg's own initiative. Since MVBW is proficient in Russian, they could not make this misinterpretation just by mistake.
^ Google translates this fragment as follows: "And - I call on the Jews. Repent not for Trotsky-Kamenev-Zinoviev, they are already on the surface, they can be brushed aside: "they were not Jews!" And - to look honestly at the depth of the early Soviet oppressor apparatus - to those "invisible" like Isai Davidovich Berg, who created the famous "gas vans", which killed the Jews themselves too, and even to more inconspicuous people who were doing routine paperwork in the Soviet apparatus and never went public." In other words, Solzhenitsyn directly accused Jews, as an ethnic group, in inventing gas vans.

Text in excess of 500 words deleted as an admin action. Sandstein 20:24, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by GPRamirez5

I regret that I don't have more time to write testimony and assemble evidence right now, but I stand by the ANI case I brought against MVBW, and I second everything that has been said here in Paul Siebert's defense. GPRamirez5 ( talk) 16:29, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (-- Woogie10w ( talk) 13:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC))

I got involved in this discussion about Mass Killing under Communist regimes and gave up. The discussion degenerated into a gigantic POV storm because the editors, including myself, were not discussing the source Courtois. When I tried to discuss the various sources related to the topic I was ignored. The editors I interacted with constantly argued based on their own POV rather than citing reliable sources. I suspect that the editors were acting in good faith but were not familiar the topic and the sources. In my case I made the big mistake of wasting my time engaging a long winded discussion that involved my own POV, I realized my mistake and opted out of the discussion. Paul was acting in good faith and really needs to base his arguments on reliable sources that can be verified. I have hard copies of the sources and am willing to work with editors who want to improve the article.-- Woogie10w ( talk) 13:15, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@My very best wishes-By engaging in endless POV discussions ie.BS an editor can scare away other editors and by default own an article. I got tired of trying to discuss reliable sources and ran away from Mass killings under Communist regimes -- Woogie10w ( talk) 20:30, 20 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by TheTimesAreAChanging

To give context to Paul Siebert's (admittedly unnecessarily inflammatory) "forgery" accusation against Courtois, it should be noted that Courtois authored the introduction to the Black Book, in which he purported to summarize the conclusions of the book's various contributors—notably Nicolas Werth, author of the chapters on the Soviet Union, and Jean-Louis Margolin, author of the chapters on China, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. (The Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia account for the great majority of all mass killings under communist regimes.) In the introduction, Courtois claimed that approximately 100 million individuals died as a result of communist regimes during the 20th century, compared to the roughly 25 million victims of Nazi Germany. To reach this total, Courtois cited estimates of the death toll attributable to communism in specific countries; for example, Courtois gave the figures of 65 million deaths in China, 20 million deaths in the Soviet Union, and 1 million deaths in Vietnam. Werth and Margolin, however, used somewhat lower and more speculative numbers for China and the Soviet Union, and Margolin ( pp. 565–575) concluded only that North Vietnam's land reform was accompanied by "probably some 50,000 executions in the countryside" (an estimate that, just as an aside, has been contradicted by recent scholarship) and that "at least 3,000 people were massacred" during the infamous Viet Cong occupation of Huế in South Vietnam; Margolin further emphasized that "the subsequent fall of the South Vietnamese regime on 30 April 1975, was not in fact followed by the bloodbath that so many feared and that did take place in neighboring Cambodia." Werth and Margolin subsequently engaged in a public dispute with Courtois regarding the liberties he took with the introduction, as documented in several 1997 articles in Le Monde: "The two authors reproach Stéphane Courtois his 'obsession to arrive at one hundred million deaths.' Nicolas Werth thus accounts for fifteen million victims in the USSR, when Stéphane Courtois, in his introduction, adds five. Mr Margolin explains that he has never mentioned a million deaths in Vietnam." (In the original French: "Les deux auteurs reprochent à Stéphane Courtois son « obsession d'arriver aux cent millions de morts ». Nicolas Werth décompte ainsi quinze millions de victimes en URSS, quand Stéphane Courtois, dans son introduction, en ajoute cinq. M. Margolin explique « qu'il n'a jamais fait état d'un million de morts au Vietnam ».") While the ~20 million estimate for deaths under Stalinism was popularized long before Courtois by Robert Conquest—and it would indeed be hyperbolic to accuse Courtois of "forgery" for citing it—it appears that Courtois essentially conjured the 1 million estimate for Vietnam out of thin air, relying on Margolin to lend it some credibility even though Margolin's partial tally actually put the victims of Vietnamese communism at 53,000 or higher. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 02:04, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Side comment by SMcCandlish

An obvious part of the problem here is that the entire Mass killings under Communist regimes page is basically a giant multi-pronged WP:Coatrack. These are not all one topic, and putting them together is a WP:POV and WP:OR exercise, verging on propaganda. These should be split into separate articles on each government (and should not use the loaded word "regime", per MOS:WTW). I think that would go a long way to defusing conflict; a pseudo-encyclopedic article like this a magnet for PoV-pushing in both directions. And don't capitalize "communist", per MOS:ISMCAPS. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:14, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ My very best wishes: That may be the case, but it's not related to what I'm talking about. That whole page is a "we're in a magical fiefdom of our devising" WP:LOCALCONSENSUS playground, and it needs to be brought to a close. I'm not at all surprised that some editors are losing their temper there, but some editors being temperamental doesn't appear to be the root problem. The page being set up as an unencyclopedic WP:BATTLEGROUND on purpose is the problem. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:52, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re your 2nd response: Yes, I see what you mean. I'd labelled my section "Side comment" because I know it's only partially on-topic. I"m not trying to address the user-behavior specifics (others have that covered), just relate some of them (correlatively if not entirely causally) to the battleground nature of one of the pages at issue, to direct some attention there. I don't mean to imply that's a cure-all. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:47, 22 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Volunteer Marek

I have some mixed thoughts on the issue of MVBW and Paul Siebert, but as concerns this edit summary by GPRamirez5 I believe that's what's usually called "casting WP:ASPERSIONS". You can't make allegations like that against another editor without solid evidence, especially in an edit summary (which means it's impossible to strike or undue the comments). Volunteer Marek ( talk) 16:35, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Collect

I note my name has appeared above. My goal would be a short article on the topic of "Noncombatant deaths attributed to communist regimes" as is clear on the talk page. I note that Paul seems to have made a substantial number of contributions to the talk page, and a substantial amount of verbiage. Some of that verbiage is, per Paul, self-attributed to English not being his first language, [281] [282] but other example indicate that he feels exceedingly strongly on the topic, to the extent of accusing others of lying, violating Wikipedia policy, and more, and some of his charges are poorly worded or unsupportable.

I also note that an IP has posted on his talk page aspersions about some editors here. [283]

Paul has greatly misapprehended my positions and made charges about me which are ill-worded, inapt, and objectionable. (see above diffs) I did not issue a complaint mainly because in his large number of edits to the article talk page (I suggest looking at the quantity and length of such edits might be useful), he has iterated such charges for a long time now.

Thus I ask that the complaint be viewed as being of a serious nature, devolving on the Wikipedia principles of affording all editors due respect, and not simply lashing out at them. IMHO, it would not hurt Paul to have a vacation from the article in question, though. Say, a month or so? Collect ( talk) 18:29, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Vanamonde93

SMcCandlish's assessment is quite correct. The page has been constructed in a manner that does not represent consensus among sources, and this construction itself is then used to exclude and/or stonewall any changes to the sources. It is completely unsurprising that tempers are getting frayed. I've taken Paul to task myself over his tendency to open numerous and lengthy discussions, but that's hardly a blockable offense, and I would concur with Sandstein's assessment of this report. Vanamonde ( talk) 06:47, 23 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning Paul Siebert

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

At first glance it does look as if Paul Siebert needs to dial it back a few notches. I'm not sure whether this necessitates sanctions at this point, I could be persuaded either way, but clearly several of those comments add much more heat than light. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 00:44, 19 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Yeah, there's some aggressiveness in there, and I'd support a warning for that, but I for one am not a friend of the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to AE. Much of the reported conduct isn't obviously problematic or reflects content disputes. Sandstein 20:32, 21 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I'll close this as no action without admin objection in 12 h. Sandstein 17:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I concur. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 00:48, 23 June 2018 (UTC) reply

GizzyCatBella

GizzyCatBella is topic-banned from the World War II history of Poland. Sandstein 19:59, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.

Request concerning GizzyCatBella

User who is submitting this request for enforcement: Icewhiz ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 11:45, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

User against whom enforcement is requested: GizzyCatBella ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts : in user talk history • in system log

Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe#Standard discretionary sanctions, specifically not complying with Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines in regards to Wikipedia:Do not create hoaxes, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view - due to entering information citing a source, which does not appear in the source (or in any reliable source).

Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it

Revision as of 09:12, 24 June 2018 revert to 27 Aug 2017 version.
Revision as of 09:15, 24 June 2018 revert challenged as "gross misrepresentation of sources" + talk page Revision as of 09:18, 24 June 2018 post explaining the problem of misrepresentation.
Revision as of 09:20, 24 June 2018 - re-revert to August 2017 version (+breaking cutting out infobox of the article - resulting in a -4 byte diff - but the article body. was a simple re-revert.
Revision as of 09:30, 24 June 2018 + Revision as of 10:08, 24 June 2018 - refused request to self-revert.
User made some additional edits after this - but did not self-revert, and article continues to contain serious misrepresentations which are strongly defamatory.

Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any

Revision as of 14:44, 26 April 2018 - blocked 72 hours for edit-warring in EE.

If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS#Awareness and alerts)

Revision as of 10:41, 19 February 2018 alerted + previous AE discussions.

Additional comments by editor filing complaint

This is beyond not following WP:BRD, and previous conduct on this article (by a different user handle) has been covered outside of Wikipedia here - by Morris S. Whitcup.

This is the second re-revert - diff. This version contains a number of sentences sourced to Rossino. Rossino, however contains a single sentence mentioning Stawiki - After passing through Stawiski on 23 June, Radziłów and Jedwabne on 24 June, and Osowiec on 25 June, these units moved to the north and east of Białystok.. No Jewish communists. No Ethnic Polish families being rounded up by Jews. No Poles hiding in the forest (~6 emerging from the forest to join the Nazis in killing Jews).Other sources have been misrepresented as well. This version is in WP:HOAX territory - conveying Jewish repressions of Poles, and a German massacre of Jews (just ~6 Poles joining in) - as opposed to Poles massacring Jews which is what RS report.

Following more editing - 11:13, 24 June 2018 contains the following misrepresentations:

During the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, Stawiski was ...administration was abolished and replaced with local communists.[5] - Cites Rossino - not in cited source.
The Soviet terror lingered until the Germans returned ... .[6] - citing The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust: Seredina-Buda-Z - which does not say "Soviet terror" - it does say "reign of terror with active Polish participation" in relation to the month long German occupation in 1939 (the Soviet/Polish border was adjusted after the military offensive). ~~instigated is also somewhat inaccurate.~~
The the Germans set the Great Synagogue on fire.[7] citing a yizkor book (this is more of a PRIMARY source). This account does not appear in the source. The Yizkor book does not contain a synagouge burning account in August. It does contain one for June 1941, and for 1942.
Some 60 Jews remained, mainly skilled workers and their families, who were confined to a ghetto. On 2 November 1942, the ghetto was closed and its occupants were transferred to Łomża Ghetto, and from there sent to Auschwitz extermination camp and Treblinka extermination camp.[8] - sourced to a dead link on virtual shtetl (which is not a RS AFAICT - user generated Wiki) The details do mostly match the Jewish life Encyclopedia (with Łomża instead of Bougusze, and Treblinka vs. Treblinka/Auschwitz).
The fate of the Jews of Stawiski was similar... thus linking perpetrators and victims. sourced to this - The book is academic, but is a collection of translated non-academic newspaper reports (the purpose is covering the media discourse) - not a good source. It does not say what we are citing (nor do other mentions of Stawiki in this collection) - no "Stawiski a day earlier thus linking perpetrators and victims".

Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested

notified. Icewhiz ( talk) 11:45, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Additional comments by Icewhiz

Text in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 20:53, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

In regards to Piotrus/MyMoloboaccount - I miscited a page number (start of chapter - 280 instead of 283) - in a book chapter by relevant scholars. Naliboki village is in Naliboki forest, and the source refers to the incident in the village (as is evident in the text and citations).

Text in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 16:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Icewhiz ( talk) 06:45, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Text in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 16:41, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Discussion concerning GizzyCatBella

Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.

Statement by GizzyCatBella

This report was filed at 11:45, June 24, 2018 [284] (Talk page and the whole conversation with the filing user before the report was presented can be found here [285])

Timestamp of my plea for more time to work on the article and address opposing users concerns [286] - 09:37, 24 June 2018 (2.08 hours before the report was filed)
Timestamp of my another (unanswered) attempt to engage the filing user in assisting me and a plea for more time to work [287] - 10:28, 24 June 2018 (1.17 hours before the report was filed)
Timestamp of my last attempt (unanswered) to engage the filing user into cooperation (I pinged the user) 10:54, 24 June 2018 [288] (51 minutes before the report was filed)
This is how article looked like 1 minute before the report was filed [289] 11:44, 24 June 2028 versus opposing users preferred version [290]
This is how the article looked 32 minutes after this report was filed. (Please note that I was still unaware of the report, I didn't check my inbox) [291] (12:16, 24 June 2018) versus opposite users preferred version [292]

At all times I was acting in good faith (genuinely). The version about the Jewish life reverted to was seven years old [293],(note that not a single word or source in that version was mine) that is why I said it was the most stable, not because I intended to keep that version. I meant to start with an old version. I planned to edit it over the span of few hours, confirm and update sources, include information about the Jewish life before the war, during, about the 1739 synagogue (two actually), about a Polish mob massacre of Jews, about the 1942 Nazi ghetto, about the cloth and hats factories, distillery, a wartime picture and about the current Jewish cemetery. At all times I had in mind this version [294] and the objections of the opposing user despite his hostile attitude. I went through normal editing process; I modified the article best to my knowledge, I asked the opposing user for assistance (3 times) and worked my way down, so the article resembled the opposite user's preferred version. Article resembled others editors version before the report has been submitted. Despite all of this the user went ahead and filed the report choosing one first edit only, omitting everything else and claiming usage of ill sources which were not even mine. This sadly indicates to me ill intentions. Please note that the same user already reported me for placing a tag on his talk page [295]. Having said all of that I must also say that I'd try to be more careful with restoring stuff in the future. I'll try to use a template “editing in progress” (is such template available? I think it is.) Important – IM NOT AN ANTISEMITE(!). GizzyCatBella ( talk) 19:25, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Ealdgyth

There is definitely some misuse/misrepresentation of sources in this edit by GCB. The edit makes the statement "Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia" and sources it to this article (?). The closest thing I can find in the source that discusses the deportations of Poles is the paragraph starting "Yet arrest by the NKVD was not the only means of repression.." but that paragraph does not support the information in the article. First - it is discussing the deportations that took place throughout the period of Soviet rule. Second, it notes that Poles made up 60% of the deportees in the area - so a sweeping statement that "ethnic Poles" without qualifying that other ethnicities were also deported is incorrect based on the source. Further ... no mention in the paragraph mentions "Jewish militia" at all. Lastly, the deportations from the Lomza and Bialystok areas took place in 1941, not in 1939 as implied by the placement of the sourced sentence. The other possible paragraph in the source that is meant to support this statement starts "Other leading scholars.." but this doesn't support this statement either - as it states "Jewish militiamen helped NKVD agents send local Poles into exile" first - this is a quote from Dov Levin, and second it doesn't say that the Jewish militia was the only force that sent people into exile. The source also notes in the next paragraph some reasons why Jews may have been over-represented in the Soviet occupation administration and concludes "It seems then that the outburst of Polish anti-Semitism in reaction to the arrival of German forces was largely based on a stereotype of the "Jewish-Communist" that was shared by anti-Semites across Europe."... which definitely is not reflected in the use made of this source in the article.

The same source is used to source "Some Poles, who emerged from their forest hideaways, including prisoners released by the Nazis from the NKVD prisons" - but there is not a single mention of the word "prisoners" in the source article, and the four mentions of "prison" do not support this at all. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:54, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

VM... I did read the source. In fact, I've quoted the very same sentence above - "Jewish militamen helped NKVD agents send local Poles into exile" - this statement is not strong enough to support a sentence that says "Ethnic Polish families were being rounded up by newly formed Jewish militia." NOthing there is about "newly formed" ... and the sentence baldly states that that militiamen did the rounding up - when the source says that the militiamen HELPED the NKVD agents send local Poles into exile. That's misrepresentation in my book... taking a "X helped Y" and turning it into "X did". Ealdgyth - Talk 18:34, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

And if the source says "Musiał found that in many cases Jewish militia members directly participated in mass arrests and deportation actions." ... this cant be used to source that the militia in Stawiski did the deportations without Musial actually saying that the militia in Stawiski deported Poles. The source is making a generalized statement that cannot be used to source a specific statement in an article about a specific location without the source directly stating that it took place in that location. Since the first sentence of the paragraph added at Stawiski says "Upon the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939, the local administration was abolished by the Soviet NKVD and replaced with Jewish communists who declared Soviet allegiance." The statement is obviously meant to apply to the local adminstration of Stawiski (which is the subject of the article, right?) unless it's explicitly stated that it applies to some other administration. But if it applies to some other administration - what's it doing in an article on a local community? Ealdgyth - Talk 18:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Text in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 20:47, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Volunteer Marek

@ Sandstein: (and User:Ealdgyth) - how are you guys missing it? Just do a search for "militia". "Musiał found that in many cases Jewish militia members directly participated in mass arrests and deportation actions. " and "Dov Levin has similarly concluded "the labeling of the Soviet administration as a 'Jewish regime' became widespread when Jewish militiamen helped NKVD agents send local Poles into exile."", and " In eastern Poland, the vision of Jews greeting the Red Army, and in isolated cases of Jews in militia uniform assisting the NKVD, appeared to bear out the deepest suspicions of a nefarious Jewish-Bolshevik alliance." The last one doesn't say it was the case, but the first two sentences do.

You can question the reliability of the source but that's a content dispute and since this has been in the article for some time there's nothing wrong with GCB restoring a previous stable version. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 17:27, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Sandstein and Blade - you guys didn't read a source carefully and you go and accuse an editor of anti-semitism???? Volunteer Marek ( talk) 17:31, 24 June 2018 (UTC) Here it is again. Note that the text is not supported just by Polish historians, but also by Jewish ones, such as Yitzhak Arad, Dov Levin and Jan Gross. reply

As has already been pointed out, GZB was restoring a stable version from August 2017 in response to several of Icewhiz's edits (which removed relevant sourced material). If you want to blame somebody for that text, then blame whoever put it in: [296], which was this guy.

Text in excess of 500 words removed as an admin action. Sandstein 20:46, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Revised to cut down word length further Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:04, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re Sandstain's removal of my comments - just read the freakin' source, and look at the edit history of that article before you go accusing editors of anti-semitism! You owe them at least that much! GizzyCatBella REMOVED the info you bring up in statement herself, just minutes later. All she was restore an older version of the article to work off of. And the stuff on the Jewish militia - which is no longer in the article BECAUSE Gizzy removed it - is in the source! Sandstein you need to strike that odious and false WP:ASPERSION. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 21:25, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re Icewhiz’s newest diff-padding – these are all about a month old. Most concern issues which were discussed at the time (e.g. use of Anna Poray). They are not BLP vios – just disagreements over what sources are acceptable. These discussions continue. Icewhiz’s reflexive and false crying of “HOAX!!!” at any edit he disagrees with (even when these are based on sources – ones which Icewhiz happens to disagree with), is just indicative of his WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 07:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Note: restoring an older version as a basis for improvement, then proceeding with changes, is standard editing procedure on Wikipedia. If the final version Gizzy left had all the problems of the original version then maybe there'd be a basis for sanctions. But as has been pointed out repeatedly, Gizzy's final version removed almost all the problematic content (and probably would have gotten to all of it, if Icewhiz didn't jump in with this report) and is very close to Icewhiz's version from March. Volunteer Marek ( talk) 19:55, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by SMcCandlish

Tending toward Volunteer Marek's interpretation (if not tone), and Piotrus's "the article was going through a perfectly normal WP:BRD process". Citing a source that's critical of some group action that happened to have involved Jews, and which even Jewish writers also cite, doesn't make an editor an anti-Semite, but someone doing their editorial "job". While I have some minor involvement in the broader topic area, about a year or two ago (esp. about the Polish army of the era), I don't know enough about the subject and the real-world conflicts between people researching it to know whether this is aspect of the "job" is being done well. But the knee-jerk rush to T-ban and indef is not supportable, and is a good example why AE (and ArbCom) have to stay out of content disputes. This isn't addressing user behavior, it's a half-assed decision that some sources in a content dispute are preferable to some other sources in it (which is what most content disputes boil down to). I agree with Ealdgyth that GizzyCatBella appears to have ~~engaged in~~ accidentally and temporarily restored some OR (namely novel interpretation and perhaps synthesis). But that's also a content dispute matter. Icewhiz's complaint is firmly in the same territory; it's almost entirely predicated on source reliability analysis and dispute (both among editors and in the real world); this is something for the article talk page, not AE, especially given that GCB didn't write this material at all, but simply restored it with the sources for it, before doing substantive work on the material shortly thereafter. That might have been better done in a sandbox, perhaps. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 19:30, 24 June 2018 (UTC); revised: 15:59, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Re Sandstein's "I'm not interested in ..." – Yeah, yeah, we know. Fortunately, AE is open to anyone's input, the input of non-partisans is frequently helpful (and already has been in this case), and AE isn't owned by one particular admin. —  SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 22:28, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by My very best wishes

The edit by GizzyCatBella [297] (in the comment by Sandstein below) was apparently only the first in the series of edits by GizzyCatBella who wanted to create an entirely different version, as follows from their edits made before the submission of this request by Icewhiz. Therefore, making any sanctions on the basis of this diff (or any other intermediate edits by GizzyCatBella) seems to be unjustified.

It also appears that Icewhiz submitted this report at the very moment when GizzyCatBella was working to fix the content after the objections by Icewhiz on the article talk page [298]. This is clearly a battleground behavior by Icewhiz, in my opinion. He may or may not be right about sources used in the initial edit by GizzyCatBella, but he had to wait until GizzyCatBella completes their editing and discuss on the talk page any possible disagreements about new version prior to submitting this request.

Moreover, even the initial edit/revert by GizzyCatBella [299], does not strike me as something deserving a topic ban or an "antisemitic propaganda". The edit does not removes anything about the atrocities by Nazi. It only inserts some info about the previous Soviet occupation, followed by the atrocities by Nazi, i.e. in chronological order. My very best wishes ( talk) 19:38, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by MyMoloboaccount

GizzyCatBella didn't add the disputed information as some claim, he restored a previous version of the article that somebody else added.I also note that he politely asked Icewhiz to wait and let him finish the article this hostile attitude and threats??? Please stop. Will you please let me work on it? I started already and I would really welcome your input and help. Can you work with me to improve the article please?.He then removed unfounded allegations is a communist, so ethnicity removed unless a secondary source found confirming ethnicity of local communist. But I don't think it is crucial anyway. Please read the edits carefully, GizzyCatBella actually agreed with Icewhiz and removed what he was disputing.

To sum it up.

GCB restored previous version of article to start from scratch.
GCB didn't add any disputed information as alleged.
GCB asked Icewhiz to work with him on improving the article
GCB removed allegations about Jewish ethnicity of NKVD militia.

Why is this request in the first place, if GCB actually agreed with Icewhiz and removed this information?

-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 19:42, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Interestingly, it seems Icewhiz falsified a source himself on the similar issue in a different subject, claiming that villagers massacred by Jewish-Partisant unit were supposedly hunting down Jews [300] However I checked the source and there is nothing about Naliboki village on page 280.There is mention about Jewish partisants raids in Naliboki Forest on page 283 and their attacks against local population which authors show as example of change from victim to perpetrator role.Naliboki village and Naliboki forest are two different locations. If we are dealing here with falsifying sources than perhaps this can be looked as well by admins. To make it easier, I even uploaded a screenshot from the source in question showing that there is nothing about Naliboki village on page 280 [301].If admins believe this is not the place for this, that is ok with me, I can ask about this in other thread as there is additional information I would like to point out.

-- MyMoloboaccount ( talk) 20:36, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by Piotrus

I agree with SMcCandlish, it's ridiculous to declare someone an anti-Semite and block them for that (and that isn't even what Icehwiz is claiming). The RR violation is dubious (editing in progress) and I don't see what is really actionable here outside RR, rulings in interpretation of sources are for ArbCom, not a random AE admin. That said, 'both sides' seem to have a lot of problem with interpreting the sources (see MyMolobo's comment on Inewhiz). This entire topic is overdue for a proper ArbCom review, and this AE should not end with penalizing any editor, but refer this entire mess to the ArbCom. Polish-Jewish topics have become unstable in the last half a year, as several relatively new editors turned them into a battleground, as I am sure regulars here have noticed (since there were several mostly non-actionable but illustrative reports here). This needs to stop. PS. I've finally gotten around to reviewing Talk:Stawiski. This is a very short talk page, and it makes it clear that GCB was in the process of rewriting this, explained this to I., and asked for few hours to be allowed to finish this. Instead, he reported her here. If there is something concerning here, it is the WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude from the reporter, IMHO, who instead of AGF waiting few hours, tries to win content disputes over here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here} 05:03, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Vanamonde93: Looking at the recent comment by Icehwiz about the sources, I'll note that the sources in question have been extensively discussed and we have more or less consensus on either removing them or limiting their use. None of them has been described by anyone, however, as anti-semitic (there is a bit of controversy on Ewa Kurek, but this hasn't been resolved yet either in academia or on Wikipedia, all there's to it is some criticism in press). The main problem with Poray and Paul is that they are amateur researchers and mostly self-published. Kurek is an academic and is not unreliable per se, through controversial, and her latest work is self-published. All that said, while those are not ideal sources, and I've generally support replacing them with more reliable works, they are hardly at a level I'd think someone using them should be banned. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here} 07:26, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

PS. I think we are arriving at the stable version of the Stawiski. I stand by my initial assessment that this entire AE thread is unnecessary (the article was going through a perfectly normal WP:BRD process), but it showcases serious WP:BATTLEGROUND issues present and merits IMHO a deeper ArbCom review of more then a single editor. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here} 09:00, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by François Robere

The change in question does two thing: 1) accuses Jews of killing Poles, and 2) shifts the blame for killing Jews from Poles to Germans. The first cites the references cited by a journal article re-posted in a blog. Did anyone actually read the sources? The second tries to excuse the Poles: "Some Poles... were led to acts of revenge-killing in German presence." What's "led to act"? What are they, sheep?

Other sources supporting Icewhiz's revision: Kossak, Zofia (May 1942). "Proroctwa sie wypelniaja". Prawda. No. 5.:

In many places (Kolno, Stawiski, Jagodno, Szumow and Deblin) the local population voluntarily took part in the massacre.

Bender, Sara (2015). "Not Only in Jedwabne: Accounts of the Annihilation of the Jewish Shtetlach in North-eastern Poland in the Summer of 1941". Holocaust Studies. 19 (1): 1–38. doi: 10.1080/17504902.2013.11087369. Retrieved 2018-06-25.:

...the Poles welcomed [the German soldiers] with flowers... German army scouts... noted the hatred that Poles harboured towards the Jews. Local Poles, most of them newly released from Soviet prisons, asked the Germans to permit them to avenge themselves on the Jews, and were allowed to kill 70 of them.
On 4 July, armed Poles from nearby villages arrived in town, broke into Jewish houses and ordered their inhabitants to go to work... [Descriptions of hard labor follow] While the Jews were thus occupied, Poles went into their houses and robbed their property...
That night, a mob of Poles from nearby villages again flocked into town, and started another pogrom near midnight. All night long, dead and severely injured Jews were loaded on carts that had been prepared in advance, while the Germans stood by and photographed. That night Poles murdered 360 of the town’s Jews...
On 15 August 1941 the remaining Jews in town were surrounded and led outside the town by the Gestapo, aided by Poles. The younger Jews were shot and buried in pits near the village of Montewice, while the elderly and the children were taken to the Kieszelnice woods, shot and thrown into trenches that had been prepared in advance for the purpose. Hundreds of the Stawiski Jews were buried in the two mass graves. By the late summer of 1941, there were no Jews left in Stawiski.

This is what GizzyCatBella is trying to sanitize, and not for the first time. She's made numerous biased or misleading edits and comments [302] [303] [304] (also notice edit summary) [305] [306] (as an IP) [307] [308]. We've already had source restrictions placed on one article [309], but obviously that's not enough; either the user is banned, or the entire topic area is placed under new restrictions.

And one more thing: Volunteer Marek, who commented above in his particular style - spiteful and condemning [310] [311] [312] [313] [314] [315] (edit summary) [316] (last comment) - has been warned against doing so repeatedly [317] [318]. Another editor was already banned from the topic for WP:BATTLEGROUND [319]; I urge the admins to consider the same here. François Robere ( talk) 17:54, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Statement by (username)

Result concerning GizzyCatBella

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

All right. My first instinct was to decline action as a content dispute. But some of these edits by GizzyCatBella appear, at first glance, very dubious. In [320], GizzyCatBella removes an apparently reliably sourced mention of an anti-Jewish pogrom in WWII Poland. Instead, GizzyCatBella ascribes a 1939 deportation of "ethnic Polish families" to "Jewish communists" and "Jewish militia". I'm by no means knowledgeable about the history of this place and period, but this strikes me as very surprising to say the least, and would need very good sourcing. Instead, Icewhiz appears to be correct that Rossino, the source cited by GizzyCatBella (however reliable it may be - a web archive of a blog copy of a copyvio?) does not appear to mention anything of the sort. On the basis of this first assessment, I suspect that GizzyCatBella is using Wikipedia to for anti-semitic propaganda by misrepresenting sources; all in violation of any number of policies. Unless GizzyCatBella has a really good explanation for this, I can't see any other outcome but a long block and a topic ban. Sandstein 13:27, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I'm waiting for a statement by GizzyCatBella. It is they who need to explain their editing. I'm not interested in the opinion of anybody except the parties and uninvolved administrators. Sandstein 20:51, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I'm still waiting on GizzyCatBella's statement, but if it is not made by 06:50, 26 June 2018 (UTC), I intend to impose an indefinite topic ban from everything related to the World War II history of Poland, as well as an indefinite block, the first year of which under AE authority. A brief review of GizzyCatBella's articlespace contributions indicates that they are a single-purpose account dedicated solely to editing articles about the World War II history of Poland with a view to (as far as I can tell) making them more sympathetic to right-wing Poles, and less sympathetic to Polish Jews or left-wing Poles. Such single-purpose and tendentious editing is, in and of itself, incompatible with the fundamental conduct aspect of WP:NPOV which as determined by ArbCom requires that editors dedicate themselves to writing a neutral encyclopedia, rather than just trying to get their own point of view across. (Accordingly, the same manner of contributing with the opposite ideological slant would be just as disruptive.) reply

I am also not convinced that it is a mitigating circumstance that the revert by GizzyCatBella was the basis of later edits by them, as a result of which the article no longer contained the problematic content mentioned above. That's because in their two reverts ( [321], [322]) to the problematic version, GizzyCatBella describes it as a "sourced and stable version" or "well-sourced stable version" in the edit summary, indicating that they assumed responsibility for publishing this content and at that time intended that it should remain in this form.

I agree with Vanamonde93 that there may well be grounds to examine Icewhiz's editing as well (in my experience, in this kind of situation there's generally problematic conduct on both sides), but any misconduct by Icewhiz does not mitigate that by GizzyCatBella and has no bearing on the sanction we may decide to impose on GizzyCatBella. I'd prefer it to examine Icewhiz's conduct in a separate request, if needed, to avoid complicating this case. Sandstein 16:37, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

@ Sandstein:: having just read the replies to my post down below, I would support a topic ban with the scope you have proposed. I am particularly unimpressed by the repeated use of dodgy sources after they have been questioned. That said; I would argue against imposing both a ban and a block. Based on the evidence here, this user is unable to edit neutrally in this area, and needs to be removed from. But having imposed a topic ban, I do not think a block would be justified unless there was additional disruption that a block would prevent. I do not see GSB being intentionally disruptive; rather, they are being problematic despite editing in good faith, because their views on this topic affect their judgement. As such I do not see an argument for preventing them from editing elsewhere. Vanamonde ( talk) 17:56, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

Agree with the above. An indefinite topic ban for sure, and unless there are other really good contributions elsewhere that I'm not seeing a very long or indefinite block. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 16:15, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply
Your comments on my reading comprehension are duly noted, thanks. The Blade of the Northern Lights ( 話して下さい) 18:30, 24 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I've read through the recent versions of the article, the talk page, and the source. I agree that the version of the article GCB restored is not supported by the source, and this is of concern.From the article history, it seems fairly clear that GCB was reverting to a version she wished to build on, rather than one she considered perfect. This does not address my concerns entirely, but it is a mitigating factor. Furthermore, I looked at the diffs presented by MyMoloboaccount, and they, too, are concerning. That does not mitigate GCB's behavior, but I'm less inclined to issue a unilateral sanction when the OP is guilty of similar behavior. That said, I'm inclined to wait at least a few more hours before recommending action: I think a 24 hour wait for a statement, when the reporting party has requested such a wait, is reasonable.
Sandstein, the diffs in question hardly make someone an anti-semite, and I think we ought to be more careful in using such a label; what exactly would constitute anti-semitism in this case seems to be a complex matter, and it's easy for the label itself to lose meaning when tossed around lightly. @ Piotrus: While it is true that determinations of source reliability are generally outside the remit of AE, when the use of questionable sources and/or the misrepresentation of sources is what is being reported, then investigation of the source is definitely required here. Volunteer Marek For pity's sake, tone your language down. I understand that you're upset, but you're doing yourself no favors, particularly for a person who is dragged to AE as often as you. Vanamonde ( talk) 06:26, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply
@ Icewhiz: Can you point me to discussions about the reliability or lack thereof of the sources you are linking to? While I'm not impressed with them (particularly saving, I don't want to jump to conclusions in a topic I'm unfamiliar with. Vanamonde ( talk) 06:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply
I have now taken into consideration GizzyCatBella's statement. The first part is irrelevant because it is about the conduct of others, not GizzyCatBella. Even if one accepts GizzyCatBella's assertion that the reverts at issue were intended to be the basis of further improvement - which is in fact borne out by the article history - GizzyCatBella does not explain why they twice chose to revert to an obviously problematic version rather than to improve the version of the article that did not contain such defects, or to make the improvements outside articlespace (in a text editor or sandbox) before publishing their preferred version. More importantly, neither in the talk page discussion nor here does GizzyCatBella address or even appear to recognize the problems with source misrepresentation highlighted multiple times by Icewhiz. Neither does GizzyCatBella address the problematic nature of their WP:SPA editing mentioned above.
For these reasons, and those described above, I am of the view that GizzyCatBella's continued editing of this topic area is not a benefit to Wikipedia, and am imposing the topic ban mentioned above. I invite GizzyCatBella to appeal it in six months showing evidence of substantial, competent, prejudice-free editing in other topic areas. Assuming good faith, i.e. that this is more of a case of stubbornness and incompetence rather than a deliberate attempt to insert anti-semitic propaganda, I am not blocking GizzyCatBella at this time. Sandstein 19:58, 25 June 2018 (UTC) reply

[1] "Through the manipulation of numbers (...) the impression is created that Communism is four times worse than fascism and that the Holocaust was not a uniquely evil crime

[2] Hiroaki Kuromiya. Review Article: Communism and Terror. Reviewed Work(s): The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, and Repression byStephane Courtois; Reflections on a Ravaged Century by Robert Conquest. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 2001), pp. 191-201. [1]

[3] Courtois enormous body count of Communism's victims certainly sparked the ire of some of his detractors - including Nicolas Werth, a contributor of the Black Book of Communism who broke over several aspects of the introduction, including the fact that Courtois used a figure of twenty million dead at the hands of Soviets, whereas Werth's own estimate, given in his chapter of his volume, was fifteen million

[4] More concretely, (i) the source says that a person X obtained general instructions from his supervisors; (ii) to implement these instructions, X had to do some technical step; (iii) however, the source does not say this particular technical step was a part of instructions X got from supervisors.

[5] The source says about Stalin's Great Purge. It tells about one person, Berg, who was accused of inventing the gas van. Berg explained that he was acting in accordance with the orders of his supervisors, who demanded his team execute (literally, "shoot") a huge number of people. The team was incapable of doing that, so he had to build a gas van. The source uses the word "shoot", not just "execute", which means the order to execute people did come from Berg's supervisors, but creation of gas vans was Berg's own initiative. Since MVBW is proficient in Russian, they could not make this misinterpretation just by mistake.

[6] Google translates this fragment as follows: "And - I call on the Jews. Repent not for Trotsky-Kamenev-Zinoviev, they are already on the surface, they can be brushed aside: "they were not Jews!" And - to look honestly at the depth of the early Soviet oppressor apparatus - to those "invisible" like Isai Davidovich Berg, who created the famous "gas vans", which killed the Jews themselves too, and even to more inconspicuous people who were doing routine paperwork in the Soviet apparatus and never went public." In other words, Solzhenitsyn directly accused Jews, as an ethnic group, in inventing gas vans.

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