Case clerks: Guerillero ( Talk) & NuclearWarfare ( Talk) Drafting arbitrator: Kirill Lokshin ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
---|
|
Track related changes |
Behaviour on this page: Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at a fair, well-informed decision. You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being rude or hostile, and to respond calmly to allegations against you. Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all). Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator, clerk, or functionary, without further warning, by being banned from further participation in the case, or being blocked altogether. Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or the clerks, will be met with sanctions. Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
at 23:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
Amend to
Rich Farmbrough has on a number of occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot, where this was uncontroversial, and generally with pre-approval of the blocking admin. In addition he has been scrupulous in ensuring that he has remedied any problems, or claimed problems, for which he is to be commended.
This is a more accurate statement of the situation. For the existing wording to stand the Committee would have to show that many (I would assume more than five) unblocks did not address the reason for stopping the bot. They will not be able to show this because it is not the case. It is a matter of regret that the committee would wish to publish such falsehoods without even the most cursory examination.
@Arbs. One, or even several is not many.
@Corcelles: Firstly it was established in the case that there is no such thing as process. Secondly in the case you cite the blocking admin had explicitly permitted a self unblock. Thirdly we are going back over a year to find one example, which fails.
@Fozzie: Since I was denied a chance to rebut the case at the time, the committee has left this the only on-wiki avenue available to me. To deny that would not only be ultra vires, and contrary to natural justice but counter productive. Moreover the Committee has added false statements to the case post closure. This is something the committee should want to rectify.
Additional notes. Fram continues to pursue me here. If that is not disruptive I don't know what is. Note that Fram refused to answer my questions on the case, and even changed my posts. Fram says I did not contribute to the case, I made over 500 edits (and I am still waiting for an answer as to how many hours a day I should be expected to dedicate to a case who's trolling tenet was debunked on day 1.
@Fram. Of course hiding the fact that you - like the other parties, are great at lip service to collegiality, but totally unable to put any actual effort into it is not fine. And redacting part of my post to an ArbCom case would seem very foolish, if not downright abusive. Note that another party suggested questions I should ask, I added them and still no response was forthcoming.
@Silk: You seem to have missed the part of the case where it was decided that unblocking one's own bots was totally within process per se.
@NewYorkBrad: You were more active than any other arbitrator, and, going by evidence, paid more attention to the content. AGK was also inactive, and had promised not to vote, but hat has not stopped him voting either on the main case or here.
@PhilKnight , I would be happy with striking the FoF altogether or a compromise wording.
Rich Farmbrough has on a number of occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot, where this was uncontroversial, and generally with pre-approval of the blocking admin. While Fram takes issue with one of the unblocks, almost all are uncontroversial, and all were made in good faith and the spirit of collegiality and cooperation we have come to expect from Rich.
@Beestra, It appears that ArbCom have collectively dug in and adopted a position of infallibility. I sincerely hope this is not the case.
Rich
Farmbrough,
12:41, 30 May 2012 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough is still using out-of-context facts to defend himself, even though the actual full context has been presented to him again and again. For all readers unaware of that context, "Secondly in the case you cite the blocking admin had explicitly permitted a self unblock." should be continued with "under strict conditions". The actual self-unblock did not follow these conditions at all. The self-unblock edit summary "Vexatious disruptive block" is quite clear as well.
As for "Since I was denied a chance to rebut the case at the time", this is a rather slanted reading of what actually happened, i.e. that he had every chance to defend himself, but largely ignored discussions (even though people like Dirk Beetstra, Hammersoft and Kumioko found the time and tried hard to do his work for him instead), often failed to provide evidence for his claims, and in general waited until the very last moment, after the proposed decision had been open for quite a while (since 5 May) and arbitrators started voting to close the case (12 May); then he suddenly needed a few more weeks to be able to present his case (14 May: "I started drafting my comments on the new material in the proposed decision yesterday." and "I will need at least a week, possibly two to respond to these matters."). This tactic failed. Like Kumioko said, "he spent a lot of time editing and not enough time discussing and defending". You were not "denied a chance", you choose to spend your time on other things and waited too long before starting your rebuttal; you shouldn't be blaming this on other people or on the ArbCom. Fram ( talk) 08:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich Farmbrough: "Additional notes. Fram continues to pursue me here. If that is not disruptive I don't know what is." You are making claims about a block of Smackbot I made, and the unblock conditions I gave. I think it is only natural that I give my version of that block, as a directly involved party. This has little to do with "pursuing". Apart from that, I was a party to the case, so amendments and clarifications to that case are of natural interest to me. I don't see you complaining that Beetstra and Hammersoft, who weren't parties to the case and not involved with these blocks, comment here, so apparently you are only bothered by people "pursuing you" when they don't support you, which is of course a good method to end with only supportive comments...
@Rich Farmbrough: "Note that Fram refused to answer my questions on the case, and even changed my posts." I presume you refer to my removal of the empty section "Replies by Fram" here? That's hardly "changing your posts", we shouldn't keep sections which will remain empty. Note that the final page still has two other such empty sections, since in reality no one answered your questions there. Perhaps the problem was more with the questions than with the refusal? I can't remember any instance where I actually changed a post you made.
@Rich Farmbrough: "Fram says I did not contribute to the case, I made over 500 edits (and I am still waiting for an answer as to how many hours a day I should be expected to dedicate to a case who's trolling tenet was debunked on day 1)." I did not say that you didn't contribute to the case, please don't make such incorrect claims. Fram ( talk) 07:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich Farmbrough: if you consider an edit summary of "Vexatious disruptive block." (your words at the unblock) as "the spirit of collegiality and cooperation we have come to expect from Rich." (your words used here to describe these unblocks), then I have nothing more to add, really... Fram ( talk) 12:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
As I asked the last time for the previous amendment - could the members of the ArbCom please specify which of the unblocks were out of line, and how they were out of line. This still suggests that ALL of the unblocks of Rich Farmbrough were out of line. A member of the ArbCom provides below one example, SilkTork now defines it as 'several' (which is also not the same as 'many'); I am sure that they can specify more examples to back up their statement 'on many occasions'. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:28, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich: As usual. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 14:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
It is clear from the wording Rich proposed that there is no way this amendment would ever be supported by any arbitrator. It is equally clear that ArbCom has failed to make its case for the revised FoF. So here we have one FoF wording that seems absurd being proposed by the target of an ArbCom case, and another FoF that seems absurd that has the backing of ArbCom. Not surprisingly, the body that wrote the latter refuses to consider modification of its version, and has (with SirFozzie's comments) threatened the writer of the former should he continue to make additional requests.
ArbCom has desysopped Rich. They have banned him from any automation (though, can't agree on what automation is). ArbCom considered banning him from the project. Rich has been pushed to the very edge of the precipice on this project. This, for one "wholly out of process unblock". I concur with Beetstra. Please show us the evidence that supports your finding. Please tell me there's more than one or two unblocks where Rich erred. Please. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:33, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
at 22:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Allowed to use Femto Bot to archive own talk page, as no other archiving solution has the required responsiveness, nor the ability to split-archive to to-do lists.
Allowed to use Femnto Bot to archive own talk page, as no other archiving solution has the required responsiveness, nor the ability to split-archive to to-do lists.
No. Listen. You turned it down because a standard archiving solution would do the job. I have explained that it would not. The request was closed and archived (without informing me - as usual). Given the extra information makes your previous reasoning moot, you should reconsider.
The suggestion was that the matters that were concerning "the community" applied to repetitive edits to many pages. This is an Arb's opinion. this does not fall in that category and should therefore be allowed without quibble.
@Casliber: Archiving my talk page was the key issue? I must have been in a different case.
@Jclemens: You remarked "We can deal with specific requests for clarification that pose real problems. In the context of the case, automation is clearly intended to be that allowing an editor to modify multiple articles or other pages in rapid succession." On that basis this should be a speedy approval. Lets see if consistency rears its beautiful head.
@AGK " No, it is too early, and I see some value to giving the whole issue some time to settle down." yet you wouldn't give me time to prepare a proper rebuttal?
@ArbCom Saying it is too soon is meaningless. The only thing that is likely to change between now and next week, is that one of us dies. Vague doomsday scenarios where the bot goes berserk and "vandalises all of the Wikipedia" are not helpful. The blanket application of the "remedy" to areas where it is not intended does not help anyone. Moreover, coupled with the committee re-writing the case it creates a bad impression of the committee to deliberately force a user's interaction with other users to be more awkward, for the sake of bureaucracy.
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
@Risker: thank you for being the first Arb to approve.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:46, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
@Silk: That "let them eat cake" response wholly fails to address the point.
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC).
I support this. It's completely unrelated to the behaviour that lead to the case, and Wikipedia gains nothing by disallowing Rich to manage his own userspace. This is utterly uncontroversial stuff, and one of the reasons WP:BOTPOL says bots editing the operator's userspace usually don't require approval.
[A]ny bot or automated editing process that affects only the operator's or their own userspace (user page, user talk page, and subpages thereof), and which are not otherwise disruptive, may be run without prior approval.
I hope ARBCOM realize that their "Really, you just asked for some derogation and it was declined... Therefore WP:SPEEDYDENY per WP:IDHT!" does no one a service here. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by Nobody Ent at 15:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using AutoWikiBrowser and any custom automation he has created whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be AWB or custom automation shall be assumed to be so.
Restriction as currently written is overly broad and vague and unnecessary to address the behaviors the community has found to be disruptive. What is "automation" in the context of a internet hosted web server? An absurd-for-explanatory-purposes example: the ping utility tells me that my client is currently using ip address 208.80.154.225 to access en.wikipedia.org, but I don't put that in my browser address bar because
DNS automates the process of converting domain names to IPs. The case revolved around customization RF created himself, not standard tools many users use, such as spell check or twinkle. Even a template is a type of automation and is therefore included in the scope of the remedy as currently written.
@JClemens Committee member's interpretation of the current wording are inconsistent
[1],
[2],
[3],
[4] and RF's rollback privilege has been removed by arbcom clerk
[5]
Nobody Ent 16:43, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
...and restored by arbcom member
[6] with their interpretation
[7]
Nobody Ent
19:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
@AGK ya'll can talk about
strawman all you want but the diffs above clearly indicate ArbCom has issued a remedy without the individual members actually knowing what it meant. Bureaucratic quibbling over whether this oversight should be pointed out to you via request for amendment, request for clarification,
WT:ACN, trouts on all your userpages, email, IRC or smoke signals is contrary to the
not pillar. It is ArbCom's responsibility to resolve disputes, not create them, and this ill conceived remedy is causing churn on
the noticeboard,
user talk , and
AN.
Nobody Ent
19:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think this request is a strawman at all. Already two arbitrators have felt that rollback could be reasonably concluded to be automation. Already arbitrators are disagreeing to the point of revoking/restoring his rollback rights because of this disagreement. The evidence here is already plain; if ArbCom can't figure out what automation is or is not, I dare say the community won't either. The restriction isn't so clear as Jclemens seems to think it is. There's apparently still uncertainty as to whether Twinkle or Huggle qualify as "automation". I have to agree with the filer of this request; the restriction as currently written is overly broad and vague. It can readily be used as a bludgeoning tool to generate an insane amount of drama. At a minimum, it should be modified such that any question regarding whether something is or is not automation should be addressed to ArbCom, and ArbCom required to respond via consensus before any block is applied for violation of that restriction. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 20:53, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Rather than ArbCom trying to decide "is Rollback automation?", it might be more useful if ArbCom simply decided is Rich allowed to use Rollback. This would solve the case-in-point, without getting side-tracked. — Sladen ( talk) 22:10, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Back on the proposed decision talk page, I suggested this remedy instead. But it's been ignored. Maybe now it will get some attention:
Rich Farmbrough is banned from mass editing regardless of the method, broadly construed, for a period of <INSERT PERIOD>. That is, RF is banned from both running bots and from behaving like a WP:MEATBOT. This does not cover script-assisted vandal fighting (such as the use of rollback), neither should it prevent the use of assisted-editing to make improvements to specific articles, such as putting the finishing touch on an article after a rewrite/expansion, provided RF took part in the rewrite/expansion himself.
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:07, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
In this edit, SilkTork stated "There are some that it would be highly unlikely would be a cause for concern if Rich used them (such as the one that with one click closes an AfD and does all the tedious stuff very efficiently)". I don't know whether Rich would do so, but it is certainly possible to use that script in a manner that would cause concern. Recall that Fastily ( talk · contribs) recently retired in the face of accusations that he was closing so many deletion discussions so rapidly that he was not exercising due care in doing so.
I think the problem some have with Rich is that he obviously likes to make mass edits of various sorts, to the point where it seems he doesn't pay enough attention to whether the edits are needed or are being done right. The hope behind the automation ban, in my opinion, is that he will direct his skills to making a few quality edits rather than large numbers of sometimes-controversial edits, and possibly that he will use his technical skills to assist others who will be able to make assisted edits in a manner more in-line with community consensus (in this, though, I doubt any sanction would succeed; there are enough editors around who would be happy to boost their edit count by making questionable edits, and enough others who would be happy to be proxy for Rich if they thought they could get away with it).
This amendment is proposing change in exactly the wrong direction. Opening up the gigantic loophope that Rich could go back to his old tricks as long as he uses automation created by someone else is an awful idea. If you Rich supporters really want to do some good, let Rich decide what he wants to do and let him apply for amendments. Anomie ⚔ 02:20, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
@Jclemens: That is a valuable clarification, thank you for that.
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC).
@SilkTork: Since it was demonstrated neither that I was "not editing responsibly" nor concomitantly that "using automation either encouraged, caused or multiplied" the hypothetical, it is not surprising that this becomes ever more Kafkaesque. I prefer here Jclemens approach that at least addresses the myth, to the suggestion, however true, that I might be banned due to vexatious wiki-lawyering, and should edit accordingly. I have avoided the discussion about what does and does not constitute automation for two reasons, firstly it is facile per se, secondly it gives credence to the tottering edifice upon which the ruling is founded.
Rich
Farmbrough,
10:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC).
@WohltemperteFuchs "it's best to simply put in place a clear restriction and then relax on a per-case basis afterwards" .. that's not really working too well right now.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:16, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
I believe Headbomb's suggested change is a good idea, except that it should stop after the word "rollback". The remaining text might provide a potential loophole to justify editing behavior which the community has clearly had problems with. I see no need for the use of automated tool to put the finishing touches on articles, this can be done quite adequately by hand. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 03:09, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
I think that the repeated dramas surrounding user:Δ should illustrate to everybody why simple, bright line restrictions are preferable to loose ones that give scope for wikilawyering (regardless of who by).
In this specific case, it has been demonstrated that Rich has proven he cannot be trusted to use automated tools solely to the benefit of the project. Until such time that Rich regains the trust of the community (which will likely be several months at minimum and definitely not be until Rich demonstrates he understands why he lost it in the first place) I suggest that SilkTork's statement, "[N]o automated tools, and if in doubt if the tool is automated, then it should be regarded as automated.", is the one that will produce the least drama and thus be the best way forward.
As I see it there are only five possible ways forward, in decreasing order of my preference:
SilkTork's interpretation of the restriction is the one with the greatest chance of avoiding the least desirable outcome. Thryduulf ( talk) 23:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
"Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so. ... Should any user subject to a restriction or topic ban in this case violate that restriction or ban, that user may be blocked." Seems clear to me, particularly in view of Arbitrations findings of fact. If one click of a mouse or one press of the enter key on the keyboard results in two or more edits, that's automation. One click, one edit, is a manual edit and is not automation. There's no need to establish that one click resulted in two or more edits, the edits only need to reasonably appear to be automated for an admin to apply the Arbitration enforcement remedy. In other words, Rich no longer is entitled to benefits of Assume good faith when it comes to the appearance of his multiple edits. As a result, Rich Farmbrough, not the admin enforcing the Arbitration remedy, has the burden of proof and Rich Farmbrough's burden is to make sure that there is objective evidence of manual edits independent of Rich Farmbrough to avoid the Arbitration compelled assumption that his multiple edits are automated. Automation assisting a manual edit is not automation and if an admin knows Rich Farmbrough is using Twinkle, Huggle, Snuggle, or whatever to assist his one click, one edit, then a conclusion that such edits appear to be automated may not be reasonable. The Arbitration enforcement remedy is limited to blocking only, so revoking Rich Farmbrough's rollback rights is not an Arbitration enforcement remedy and not a basis to amend the arbitration remedies. The remedy is may be blocked, not must be blocked, so a decision on whether to block Rich Farmbrough for using MiszaBot, for example, to archive his talk page falls under the exercise of good admin judgment. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 09:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@ Beetstra 10:11, 23 May 2012: The remedy reads, "any edits that reasonably appear," not "any edit that reasonably appears." Per the Arbitration remedy itself, the determination of whether Rich Farmbrough is using automation to make edits can be based on looking at two or more edits themselves without having to review the tool or draw a conclusion on the tool used to make those edits. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 10:44, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@ Beetstra 12:02, 23 May 2012: No, that's not right. It's a two part test, not a one part test. The admin first asks whether Rich Farmbrough's edit(s) is from a one click, more than one edit tool. If yes, automation. If no or unclear, then the admin asks whether Rich Farmbrough's edits reasonably appear to be automated. If no, then no. If yes, Arbitration requires the admin to assume that the edits are automated and act based on that. The Arbitration remedy is that the admin then may block Rich Farmbrough. If the admin doesn't think it warranted to block Rich Farmbrough, then they don't have to. If there still is confusion, the solution is not to make a different remedy for remedy 2), the solution merely is to add to the remedy, e.g., 2.1) Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using AutoWikiBrowser. Most people don't use AWB or their own bots, so other than the desyop, the outcome really isn't that onerous of remedy. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 11:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
@Uzma Gamal: 'If one click of a mouse or one press of the enter key on the keyboard results in two or more edits, that's automation.' - so, using WP:AWB is not automation: one click, one edit. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 10:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@Uzma Gamal 2: with AWB, you do multiple edits - 2 clicks, 2 edits - 10 clicks, 10 edits - 5000 clicks, 5000 edits. They are all manual. According to your interpretation, the use of AWB would not be automation, yet, we are talking about AutoWikiBot. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 12:02, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
I am uninvolved in this case as far as I am aware, but I am still making this request. Frankly, the finding of fact leaves the Community with more to speculate about (and is prejudicial to the subject). I ask that if there is support for this amendment, that this be amendment be passed without delay (before more people read finding as it is currently written). Ncmvocalist ( talk) 10:13, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Since ArbCom is not required to show a tie between evidence and findings of fact (in my opinion, a serious failing in the structure we've asked them to follow), they can vaguely wave at block logs and say there was a problem without actually identifying what the problem was. This is akin to someone in court over a speeding ticket, and when the accused asks for evidence the prosecution says "look at your driving record". Such a response is woefully inadequate, but this is the construct we've asked ArbCom to perform within.
In this particular case, ArbCom could not seem to get its case straight as to what the problem actually was vis-a-vis the unblocking of bots. Evidence was presented which showed admins routinely unblock their own bots and that policy does not address this case. There is an ongoing RfC to address the issue. This amendment makes a statement not connected to evidence nor in anyway showing how Rich's behavior violated policy. As such, it is void. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:08, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
This is terrible revisionism. Arbitrators would do better to simply strike this FoF which
Changing it as suggested would give the appearance of revising the FoF to desperately find support for the poorly thought out and hastily enacted remedies.
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:51, 20 May 2012 (UTC).
N/A
Rich to be allowed to use his talk page archiving task. Femto Bot task 2.
Note: Editors who have gathered that I am a loose cannon, may be interested to note that the BRFA for this task was almost turned down, since no BRFA is generally needed. However I preferred to have written authorisation. Much good it did me.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC).
@ AGK. Not so, Misabot does not archive on request, but by date. Moreover it does not allow archiving to different destinations.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC).
Right. Rich is trusted enough to be an editor here, but he's not trusted enough to have a bot that does nothing but edit in his own userspace. From Wikipedia:Bot policy, "any bot or automated editing process that affects only the operator's or their own userspace (user page, user talk page, and subpages thereof), and which are not otherwise disruptive, may be run without prior approval." Any bot that he would run in his own userspace would affect only him, and not the project, unless someone wants to speculatively claim Rich is going to launch a DOS attack. Alternatively, you could speculate that if he's permitted to run a bot in his userspace, he'd maliciously set it free to attack the encyclopedia. If he was planning to do that, he wouldn't be asking permission to let the bot run in his userspace. Wow. The enormous lack of assumption of good faith, combined with the undermining of Wikipedia:Bot policy is stunning. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 14:44, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
An offer [10] has now been made by User:28bytes to run the archiving task, if Rich provides the source code/accepts the offer. — Sladen ( talk) 08:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
Since the arbitrators did not understand the request, thinking that a standard archiving bot would suffice I have opened a new request. It is interesting that the habit of failing to notify me of anything important happening is continuing.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:15, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
Proposed:
Proposed:
Proposed:
Proposed:
The Arbitration Committee has established (through the checkuser tool) that Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs) has, in recent days, used Wikipedia:WikiFunctions and other forms of automation, has taken steps to conceal the automation used in preparing his edits, and thus is in flagrant violation of his editing restrictions.
Ordinarily, because of the aggravating factors, a ban of significant length would be contemplated. While noting that this editor's prior contributions are not grounds for exoneration, the Committee nevertheless is prepared to accept on this one occasion his past work in mitigation. Rich Farmbrough is therefore blocked for thirty days from the English Wikipedia.
After the block expires, Rich Farmbrough is encouraged to work constructively within the limits of his restriction and advised that once he can demonstrate at least six months of trouble free editing he may request reconsideration of the restriction on automation.
Whoa! Do you think I'm a complete idiot? [notes 1] I just posted on my talk page that I was aware that Arbs could see my user agent string.
I am awaiting the response from AGK to which edits are claimed to have this user-agent string, and have asked Rjwilmsi to email me to establish if there is any possibility that the code could post on it's own.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC).
It is quite remarkable that Rich Farmbrough saved any edits with AWB (because he is not listed on the check page). Nevertheless, the ban on automation has been effective, so far, in reducing the scope of the problematic editing, and Rich has taken up editing content on turtles, which is a positive development. Any "nontrivial" use of automation would be visible in Rich's contribs, but I have not seen any evidence of that. Given that there was use of AWB somehow, it appears from the editing history to have been unintentional. I would like to argue for a significant block (e.g. two weeks or one month) in lieu of a one-year ban, with the proviso that additional violations would lead to more severe sanctions. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:08, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Responding to SilkTork's comment of 02:05, 1 June 2012, I agree that is a real risk, but I think that the edit history will reveal if "hidden" automation is used to actually do anything. It's been apparent from the edit history (without any checkuser info) that Rich was still using some sort of code to remove whitespace etc., and was still occasionally violating his edit restriction, but the scope was so small that I didn't see a benefit in raising the issue. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:12, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
The job of ArbCom is to to act as a final binding decision-maker.
all models are wrong, but some are useful
While arbcom is "not a court" they are much more like a court than a legislature or executive. In the Rich Farmborough decision, rathering than rendering a final decision, in expounding this "relax on a per-case basis afterwards" ArbCom appears to have set itself up as some sort of probation officer / nanny -- not a "judicial" function.
The admissions [12] [13] a change was needed because ArbCom didn't finish the job in the first place are troubling. Traditionally ArbCom has taken the time needed to craft complete decisions (even if some editors complain when they run past decision date estimates).
Unfortunately, now, having painted itself into a metaphorical corner, ArbCom is faced with the ridiculous decision point of banning a long term prolific editor for correcting spelling mistakes??? At least two of you (JClemens, AGK) concurred on 19 May that "In the context of the case, automation is clearly intended to be that allowing an editor to modify multiple articles or other pages in rapid succession." can't find diff right now cause of page move.
But there's good news -- it's not real paint...
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
Did Wikipedia elect little minds to ArbCom? I think not.
Do the right thing. Suspend the decision, go back and hash out a workable defined of automation so Rich & the admin corps & the community knows what is allowed and what is not without ridiculous restrictions against spellcheck. Nobody Ent 02:15, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Hammersoft: You know that we gave Rich a last chance (by choosing an automation ban over a site ban) in the arbitration case. You know that I was the first arbitrator to oppose the site-ban. Now you imply that this is all some form of "cover-up" for a secret plot to site-ban him all along. This is utter nonsense, and you know it. AGK [•] 11:28, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Adding comment here from User:Varlaam that was
added to the voting section for motion RF1.
Carcharoth (
talk)
07:58, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Excessive.
Cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Fixed term of four weeks sounds right to me.
Varlaam (
talk)
07:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Who has been using checkuser to investigate Rich and when were each of these checkusers done? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 02:57, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
In any event the m:CheckUser policy is quite broad in allowing use to 'limit disruption', there would be no violation if RIch was routinely checkusered during the period that he is banned from using automation. There is no requirement that a separate new reason has to be established for each use of the tool, the arbcom sanction in itself justifies it. — Carl ( CBM · talk)
The privacy policy does not cover the date and timestamp on the logs and who performed the check. I am not asking for any identifying information. I am not asking for any private information about Rich whatsoever. I am asking for a list of the checkusers performed from 15 May 2012 through present towards Rich, with only a date and timestamp for each check, and who performed the check. I have asked several times now for this information. I would appreciate a straightforward answer this time. Thank you, -- Hammersoft ( talk) 14:26, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
(1) The checkuser log is confidential. (2) Disclosing data from the log is a slippery slope, and one onto which this project has determined we will not take even the tiniest step. We do not quote the log to those who are not identified to the Foundation. (3) You have not given a good reason to be given any excerpt from the log. (4) Checkusers are accountable to your representatives on the AUSC, to the Foundation's ombudsmen, and to one another—not to you. (5) The log does not exist for you to create drama.
Take your pick of those. I too decline your request. AGK [•] 14:57, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Kumioko, I do not want to explain again why I (or any other arbitrator) ran checkuser queries on Rich Farmbrough. I refer you to our previous statements on this subject, and respectfully ask that you not continue repeating this same, tired line. If you have a concern, refer it to the Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman Commission. AGK [•] 18:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
To address SilkTork's The reason we are here discussing it is: Having five motions for an alleged ArbCom restriction violation is simply additional evidence of the inadequacy of the automated sanction (previously raised by myself et. al.). If, using Elen's example, someone violates 1rr on Six-Day War arbcom wouldn't even be involved; a utility admin would simply deal with the situation. Because of your role as the final arbitrator for dispute resolution on Wikipedia it is important that you collectively act in a manner that instills confidence in the process. Ya'll got two decent options.
The concept 'RF concealed automated edits' is doubly invalid: 1. no workable definition of "automated" has been provided and 2. if the edits were concealed, how he get caught? Nobody Ent 19:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
I am annoyed and somewhat hurt that there is a suggestion I concealed automation. I know a similar accusation was made in the case, by an Arb (I forget which, I suppose it must have been Kirill). When I found I had a score of identical typos to fix I seriously considered fixing them with AWB and reporting myself for Arbitration Enforcement, so ridiculous the situation has become. In some ways I wish I had followed that route, but doubtless I would have been tagged as sociopathic, or "pointy" or something. Although I do not make much of my professional history on Wikipedia it includes running security for a major Internet banking property, reading the CERT advisories every day for years, and taking a deep interest in Internet security in general. Should I wish to "hide automation", with all due respect I doubt that the committee would be able to see through it, especially with blunt tools like Checkuser. (I have already told AGK why and how he can see that apart from one or two inadvertent edits, all my edits were made through the standard interface, though this could be hidden it would take more time than has been available, and is of no interest to me. The improvements I suggested to Checkuser should be taken up with the developers without delay.)
I have always conducted myself scrupulously on Wikipedia, editing under my own name, have never sought "office", never traded on my credentials, rarely used email prior to this case, rarely used IRC, believing in openness and honesty. The only information I have deliberately withheld is that private to or tending to damage other people, or posing a risk to the project.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC).
My approach to this is that the community have raised concerns with Rich regarding some of his edits, and Rich has not been helpful enough in his response to those concerns. It is not the actual edits for which he was brought to ArbCom, it is for his reluctance to deal appropriately with people's concerns. The concerns centred on Rich's use of automation because a) automation is so quick it spreads a contentious edit across a number of articles, and b) individual mistakes are harder to trace when someone's editing history consists of thousands of edits with the same edit summary. But, again, it was not the use of automation that brought Rich to ArbCom, but his reluctance to comply with restrictions on his use of automation. Again, I want to stress that during the case I was not looking at sanctioning Rich for any individual or group of edits, nor for his use of automation, but for his behaviour and attitude regarding concerns about his editing that were made via automation. Was a ban on using automation an appropriate remedy? Even without discussing the actual wording, or definitions of "automation", in retrospect it was perhaps not addressing the real issue, which is Rich's attitude. But how do we address that effectively? The case itself with the principles and findings about collegiality and responsiveness to people's concerns should have assisted in bringing home to someone that an adjustment in attitude was needed. And, as the concerns did centre on Rich's use of automation, then restricting Rich's use of them was appropriate.
Where am I now? Well, Rich can correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears from what I am told, and from what I have looked at, that he has used a hacked AWB in one browser to select changes in an article, and has then copy and pasted those changes over to the article in another browser. Should he have done that? Well, he is no longer an admin so his permission to use AWB would have been removed. Any non-admin user of Wikipedia has to apply to use AWB. He did not apply. He used a hacked version. This, already, is not in the spirit of openness and collegiality. Without going further I am concerned. That he then doesn't make the edits directly in the browser with the hacked AWB, but instead copy and pastes them over, indicates an intent to conceal what he is doing. I am now of the mind that even if Rich was not already under ArbCom sanctions not to use automation, that such behaviour warrants a block; considering all the circumstances, an indef ban seems appropriate as I would now want clear assurances from Rich that he recognises what he has done is wrong, and that he intends to amend his behaviour. Having said that, I am still open to discussing other avenues and approaches to find out the best way of dealing with this situation. SilkTork ✔Tea time 01:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
To come back to Rich's original point about being hurt with talk of concealment, there's no evidence that he tried a technical solution to conceal a use of an automated tool. And I don't believe he thought that preparing the edit in AWB and cutpasting it into the edit box was using automated tools. He's like the chap who, having lost his driving licence, has harnessed his ox to his car, and is using this contraption to get about town on the grounds that he's not driving it any more. So I don't think he's actually trying to conceal anything. I do hope that a definition that Rich can understand and sign up to can be worked out, because I think he'll stick to it. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:14, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I notice different people here wikilawyering over automation and/or checkusering, trying to somehow save their case by reductio ad absurdum reasoning (similar to "if a bot comes along and completes your edit, then your edit is "automated editing" as well", right...). These are in part the same people who during the case ( Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough/Proposed decision and the like) made claims like: "I would really like to see what happens if Fram is taken out of this - there are more than enough other community members left over who can report errors to bot operators. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:33, 10 May 2012 (UTC)" and "If problems would be reported without Fram being allowed to report them, then we really know there is a problem. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:20, 24 April 2012 (UTC)"
Meanwhile, I have been fixing some 500 errors created by Helpful Pixie Bot at the end of March 2012 (i.e. right before this case started), which had gone unnoticed for nearly two months and which I only found out about by checking User:Jaguars edits during discussions at WP:AN. These errors were not discovered until after the case was closed (and so not used as examples or taken into account), but are quite typical. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49 was approved on March 27, and was supposed to have "Estimated number of pages affected: 170". So after two days of editing, about three times as much errors were made as there were pages claimed to be affected by the bot in total. The bot request claimed that "If there is no such interwiki link a suitable annotation will be made to mark the article as inspected.", but in reality if no interwiki was present, the bot used one from its cache, i.e. a usually totally unrelated other article from that Wikipedia version. The result was articles like Nad lipom 35 linking to the Croation equivalent of Anti-communism, or Sandhofen (in Germany) linking to San Pedro de Buena Vista (in Bolivia).
I haven't done fixing all of these yet, but I think I have found and corrected the vast majority of them. Perhaps some of the defenders and praisers of Rich Farmbrough could first try to find and fix some of his problems (there are undoubtedly other ones lying around still) instead of lamenting here and blaming the messengers? Kumioko at least kindly offered to assist in the cleanup of these errors, which was nice, but most of the others seem more interested in protecting RF than in actually finding ways to avoid the creation of these many errors. Fram ( talk) 14:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
In his reply to this at the top, Rich claims that "Of course it would have been a simple matter for me to have corrected these myself, sans sanctions, and this has already been remarked." On 27 and 28 March, you made the error described above on hundreds of pages (despite the claim that the bot task would only affect about 170 pages in total!). By 29 March, you had changed your code to add "no interwiki=yes" to pages without an interwiki link, e.g. here. It didn't occur to you to do the "simple matter" of correcting all these errors at that time? As usual, it came down to someone else to point your errors out to you? If you need to change something in your script, perhaps it is useful to check whether errors were made before that change occurred? If you need constant supervision, you are not fit to run bots or other automation. You have demonstrated this need over and over again, right until the start of this case. Fram ( talk) 20:39, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@Carcharoth, Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard lists at least 16 of the 40+ bot requests that Rich was approved for and I don't see any that deal with spelling so you are over exaggerating the skills necessary to do these tasks but if you believe them to be trivial then by all means take a few of your favorites, submit a BRFA and prove me wrong. I would love to apologize if it means these edits get done. Particularly the WikiProject Watchlist capability formerly donen by Femto bot. I realize that you are a former a member of Arbcom and there is likely some feelings of needing to support them in their hour of need but your comments we assume that we non Arb members are too stupid to know better and that frankly just isn't the case. I personally am glad that Arbcom is letting Rich continue to edit however I wouldn't term it "generous". I don't think its needed at all and frankly its only one of a series of bad decisions lately. The reason its hard to argue with me is because I'm not an idiot and you and other members of Arbcom keep tried to feed me BS thinking I don't know better. For what its worth I am participating in some of the discussions about Rich's Bot tasks that need to be done but the reason I am railing on Arbcom and I suspect that others are as well is because they are making a kneejerk reaction to a non problem because one or 2 admins keep reaptedly submitting Rich at ANI for every edit regardless of whether its right or wrong. People are tired of dealing with the constant complaints and the easiest way to deal with it is be eliminating the guy filling up their watchlists. Kumioko ( talk)
Note that the task which yielded these errors also was run for a while (some 325 edits [15]) on his own account, i.e. another example from right before the start of the case of "running bot tasks from a non-bot account" (i.e. "violations of automation policy") and "undisclosed use of automation". The fact that this run contains the exact same errors as the following bot run (e.g. here and here) shows that it is not a manual run of similar tasks, but a bot running from his main account (the edit summary of the first edit here has the telling "build KB" as well, but that is removed from the second one on). Fram ( talk) 14:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
There is a typo in C iv "may request the Committee may reconsider." Leaky Caldron 20:03, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Typo in the first line; "is not in" should be "is in" Nobody Ent 22:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@Silktork. I am a little bothered by the attitude that you are displaying regarding Rich's edits. There are a whole lot of fabrications and misinformations in your statements above that simply aren't true. Its true that Rich has done some bad edits but we all have, its also true he unblocked his bot, every single bot operator I have ever seen has done so once the problems were addressed but only now is it an issue, A new requirement. To say he has a history in the way you do above though is a pretty big stretch. Has he had some users complain yes, but several of these users are also guilty of hounding and picking at his every edit. I understand you don't agree and you have your own feelings about the situation and that's fine but your stretching the story beyond whats true. Kumioko ( talk) 23:39, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@SilkTork: Above, you say "motion 1 had passed, the clock was ticking"; I'm confused. Could you point to the procedure, guideline, what have you about how motions pass or don't pass and what this clock is? At one point RF1 AND RF3 were passing (numbers were 6 needed for majority at the time). Was the clock ticking then? If so, which one passes? Does the clock keep on ticking when all active arbitrators haven't voted? Where is this process written down? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 00:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
@Kumioko. I have no problems in itself with Rich using automation, nor with any errors in his editing - we all make errors, and my understanding from Rich is that he has analysed his edits and finds in percentage terms that he makes less than the average user; my problem lies with what might be better termed as the conflict history regarding those edits. Other people, not me, have had issue with his edits. As a member of the Committee I am far more interested in Rich's conduct regarding how he responds to enquiries and concerns about his edits. My feeling is that ArbCom does not get involved in content disputes, which would include adjudicating if removing white space is good or bad, or creating sock-puppet categories is good or bad. I am not concerned about these edits, and will not pass comment on them. What troubles me is Rich's conflict history which has shown him to be reluctant to accept other people's concerns about his edits. While I am not supporting this motion, I understand why it is being made, and why other Committee members are supporting it, and I think it reflects well on ArbCom that this series of motions has been made in order to fine tune a solution until a consensus could be reached. I think it appropriate to leave my oppose to show that not all Committee members support the solution, so the outcome is not unanimous, but that all Committee members will accept the outcome. I like and agree with what has happened here, even though I do not support the actual motion. SilkTork ✔Tea time 09:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
ArbCom is commenting in a number of places on Rich using a "hacked" version of AWB, carrying the connotation that this is "bad". I remind everyone that AWB is licensed under GPL. ArbCom has no jurisdiction to prevent, and the GPL license on AWB allows Rich to do whatever modifications to AWB that he sees fit to perform. Anyone can dislike the idea of Rich modifying AWB all they want. But, there is nothing wrong in him doing so.
In my opinion where he made an error was in not modifying the code he was using to prevent it from making actual edits. If he wants to use it to whatever purpose he desires, so long as it is not making any edits there is no wrong being done. I fail to see that using AWB in the manner he was attempting (with it not editing Wikipedia) was some effort to deceive the community or that he was snubbing his nose at ArbCom. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd love to hear one Arbcom member describe how Wikipedia will be a better place after some ban is imposed on Rich ...William 18:46, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Those who really believe what they say about some of the edits being vital to the encyclopedia would be doing that—an emphatic no, as RF has since pointed out right here. I mean, maybe we'd be doing it, if we'd be doing it anyway. In any case, blocking someone for fixing spelling mistakes is almost surely not part of the best plan for recruiting spelling fixers—my only points being, so it is clear that I'm not trying to insult anyone, is that this can not be seen as a positive outcome of any of this and this oughtn't be used to try to placate those who think these sanctions against Rich are too much considering that no harm appears to have been done. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 16:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
@JClemens. After the rather scathing comment you left I felt obliged to reply. Rich has not been the onnly one commenting about the process. The fact is this case has invited questions and concerns from the moment an arbitrator opened it, continuing through the assumptions and preconceived notions by the members of the committee through the case all the way until now when a motion to ban him was being considered, which goes against an agreed escelating series of blocks approved by the committee. IF the committee doesn't want criticism for its decisions then it should be making wiser ones than to pass a motion and then come back and create a new one that contrasts it so drastically. Th bottom line is that the process of Arbitration needs a major overhaul and the members an attitude change. I do note that the committee has been very good in considering adopting some new policies and enacting some changes based on comments received by myslef and others in this case but here are a few more suggestions that may help in making some of these changes.
There are plenty more but these are some for folks to chew on for now. Kumioko ( talk) 18:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
I was just glancing at some of this case. I had forgotten just how laughably appalling the conduct of the case was. Really time to start to unwind some of it I think.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:42, 6 November 2012 (UTC).
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
05:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
Strike this finding completely.
The finding reads:
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
Let us analyse the block logs referred to in the finding:
There are a total of five unblocks by Rich Farmbrough on HPB's block log
Hence none of these fit the criteria
There are a total of seven unblocks by Rich Farmbrough on the SmackBot block log
Of a block by Fram (re-blocked by MSGJ)
So rather than their being "many" occasions, there are in fact zero occasions.
Rich
Farmbrough,
05:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
I would understand some prevarication if we were talking about matters of opinion. But we are not. We are talking about plain matters of fact. No one has pointed to a single instance that matches the accusation. Ever. It has been left to me to exhaustively research these actions, rather than for some accuser to present evidence, let alone proof of what was added without discussion, after the case. I would have thought that demonstrating explicit approval for unblock in every case bar one, which was incidentally before the policy was changed would make this an open and shut case, and indeed I have done more.
I am, though, happy to address the points raised by Arbitrators.
@Roger: Fairly clearly from the discussion surrounding the original FoF this relates to situations where the bot was (or was perceived to be) making incorrect edits. Broadening the scope ex post facto is, I'm sure, not something you would wish to do.
@Worm: Re the Ucucha case, the reason I stated "as far as possible" is that the bug was due, as near as I can remember, to category lag, which is less of a problem these days. I was reluctant to say it was fixed, then have, for some obscure reason, the bug recur, and get into wiki-drama at AN/I or something. Ucucha did not respond with "Don't unblock then" but " I hope it works"
@Silk: I think that the community has never expressed an opinion on "theses incidents". I think also that it is a mistake to assume that simply because I don't want this false FoF to stand that I am not aware of the reasons people were concerned. I would go further, different people had or have different concerns, and I am open to discussing all of them, and assuaging all but the most outlandish. For example I proposed a remedy which which would forbid me from continuing with a task that had caused errors until all errors had been corrected - or face blocking. This would address the concern of a critic that I "expect other people to fix my mistakes". That proposed remedy was not incorporated in the draft or final resolution - so it was not I that was ignoring "concerns with my conduct". I would be happy to discuss with you any other concerns about my conduct - indeed I will initiate such a discussion. And I can assure you that I would certainly not dream of unblocking one of my own accounts these days.
@Coren: Of course the unblocks happened - in every case but the 2006 (when we were all still feeling our way) the blocking admin made it crystal clear that an unblock by me was not a problem. I don't know how well you remember the original case but the blocks were seized upon as being contrary to policy. In discussion it came out that they were not. They were however left as a FoF - which is a shame, because although the FoF didn't say I was wrong to unblock, there is certainly an implication by them being in a FoF that they are (or were) bad. Subsequently a motion was brought to change the wording to a far more damming, and inaccurate, version. No specific unblocks were cited to support this version. And whether the unblocks were justified is important, but not relevant to this FoF, what is relevant is that there was permission to unblock, contrary to the implication.
@Salvio: Even though "occasionally" (or even "once") would be a very negative outcome for me, if that's what you believe you should stick to it. If you "go with the consensus" then you add nothing - I would rather you said every unblock was bad than go against what you believe is the case. As an Arb you can, of course, propose a motion, with your preferred wording.
@Carcharoth: Sure I'm willing to move on. The reason that I said "unwind" the case is that there is a great deal of it which, it seems to me, follows Silk's model "You haven't internalised your guilt, you are not ready to be rehabilitated". I was hoping that by sticking to small parts of the case they could be considered objectively, rather than as a monolithic block, with some ten or twenty people muddying the waters (however well meaning). And when I said the case was laughable, I do mean that. I made fundamental mistakes, for example I should have turned down the unblock to take part in the case, and insisted the case wait until I was unblocked. As it was I proposed a derogation to allow me to work on defence notes in my user space that was ignored by arbitrators. I then asked for time once the block had expired to prepare a defence, this was refused. It is a horrendously time consuming task, even to disprove a negative like this. Arbs, who, I submit, accepted the previous amendment with no diffs and no supporting evidence, should accept this one which is backed to the hilt.
Oh and you should also know that the initial attempts to amend the case were turned down as "too soon after the case".
I was intending to move on by simply showing evidence for most of the findings being false. We could then review whatever remains and come up with a useful solution. Addressing them all at once would likely result in a quagmire, indeed this highly focused amendment has already been pulled in several different directions.
Now as to moving on what would you propose? Personally I can see a bunch of ways of moving on, but leaving statements up that say I am "gratuitously uncivil" is not part of any of them (well perhaps of the most severe way). Especially when the diffs include things like saying "Tosh" - no one these days says "Tosh" unless they are being self deprecating. (Whoever included this in the findings must have had some reason. It would be interesting to know what it is.)
@Risker: The issues that brought me to arbitration in the first place were solved even before the case was opened. The case itself was about how to resolve other issues, where progress was being made until the drafting arb changed - it then became a mud-fest. Your suggestion that I am an unperson until I conform to your views is not helpful. This FoF is simply wrong, and for that reason should be struck. Or maybe you subscribe to the Jclemens view that "Justice and fairness are secondary"?
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:05, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
@NewYorkBrad:
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:56, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
@AGK: I don't think I suggested a miscarriage of justice. I am simply asking for an incorrect FoF to be withdrawn. Since the FoF was not used to support any of the remedies it does not bear on the overall "justice" of the case. I am curious why you think that it is a good thing to maintain a statement that is inaccurate. Maybe you would like to consider how you would feel if Wikipedia posted false and negative statements about you? Generally this is considered a bad thing, best remedied. I can see that, obviously, I am less deserving of consideration than someone who has never edited Wikipedia, or who has never challenged the status quo, but I am surprised by the defensiveness I am getting from some arbitrators here.
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:27, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Clerks: Can a clerk please remove Rschen7754's comments which do not adhere to the instruction "Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment."
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:00, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Anyone: tell me how Rschen7754's comments address the amendment? They simply say that I want to appeal my case, and imply (I think) that I am a bad person for doing so. And make other rather nasty claims "continued desire to override the wishes of the community" indeed. And they try to drag the November issue into this very simple request.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Timotheus Canens: thank you for reviewing the process. Such a phrasing would be a tiny step forward, it would still accuse me of misusing admins tools, effectively making me ineligible to run for Admin. The original FoF (that I had unblocked, but attaching no blame) was backed up by an extensive discussion that examined the change in practice over the years, and an undiscussed change to the policy page. Although the case finding never made it clear why my admin bit was removed, the discussion did - it was based on "civility issues" (saying "tosh" and so forth). Introducing the first amendment to this Fof muddied these waters greatly.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@ Worm.
@AGK. I really hope you are wrong. If six have declined then four have not been prepared to post their decisions in bold, in the normal manner. And really I can see no rational unbiased person declining this amendment.
@All: Although this wasn't the basis of my request, since the finding was added after the case and therefore could not be important to support a remedy, I would have thought that there is no reason to oppose removal. Keeping information (true or false) which does nothing but tarnish the reputation of others is inimical to a healthy community. Politeness, kindness and decency would support removal.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
@ T. Canens - the block summaries were unwise, and, for me, extremely strongly worded. However I would have a great deal to say about the background to these, and they do not go to the substance of the FoF. It seems to me that it would be an abuse of process to, by motion, add additional items to a laundry list of malfeasances. If someone feels that these summaries are worthy of attention, then it should be addressed separately, not woven into the fabric of a previous case. @ Coren - I have no idea how one would appeal "the substance" - procedurally I mean. The Ban appeals subcommittee,if that's what you mean, currently consists of AGK and the two arbs who were parties to my case (perhaps it needs updating?) so they would all have to recuse. @ SilkTork - Perhaps the comments from uninvolved editors will convince you that the community may not share your perspective about everything @ Salvio - The committee had made it clear that other requests were "too soon". As to the process, every comment I had made on process had been taken (by some at least) as combative, rather than a Wikipedian's natural desire to see errors corrected. @ Carcharoth - I look forward to a constructive discussion post amendment
Not that keen on this FoF.
The prospective FoF was written in the hope and expectation that it would provide support for draconian remedies. Of course the drafting Arb had misunderstood policy, and hence the finding was weakened to this wording which just states that "something happened". The FoF does not support a remedy, something only shared with FoF 1 - which arguably is there as token balance.
Therefore the Fof serves no purpose in the case at all.
Nonetheless the FoF is a false light defamation, because its very presence implies that the unblocks were wrong. We should not be defaming our editors, therefore the FOF should go.
Overall -
@ Roger - with respect, none of the case was fresh in the minds of the majority of Arbitrators, who had only read the proposed resolutions, and not the extensive discussions, relying on the drafting arbitrator to reflect these. @ Worm -
This is obviously my preferred version. I would ask, though, that the word "endorsement" be replaced with "opinion". Better still, remove the entire disclaimer, if one wishes not to express an opinion, it is better to simply not express it, than risk inadvertent apophasis.
Once again, I would strongly oppose this.
The main reason is that it is introducing new matter (in three directions, no less, summaries, another account, and another type of block), as outlined above this inimical to justice and fairness. One could successfully refute these allegations, only to find that claims about the timing were added. Address those, and have matters relating to the wording of unblock requests. And so forth.
This is not supposed to be "how many ways can we criticise Rich that he can't quickly shut down by using facts against us".
And of course the key point the FoF 8 did not feature in the structure of the original decision means that changing it to include allegations that do support the findings is revisionism. If someone has a problem with my block summaries, let them bring a case - or perhaps engage in constructive dialogue.
@ T Canens - I had, funnily enough, recently seen the comment you refer to. And yes, I should have taken these people to AN/I or an RFC. But I'm nice, I didn't. (Also I hate those sorts of venues.)
Rich
Farmbrough,
20:14, 4 January 2013 (UTC).
An RFC arising from the case was raised at
Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy/Archive_18#Unblocking_bot_accounts.
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC).
This is not noted anywhere in the ArbCom documentation, but in November I blocked Rich for two weeks for violating a community-imposed sanction on mass-creating pages (regardless of whether the creation was automated or not): Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive241#Rich_Farmbrough.27s_editing_restriction. This reflects a continued desire to override the wishes of the community, and thus I doubt that a lifting of the sanctions is appropriate, considering his responses, and his willingness to ax-grind against every ArbCom member he comes in contact with - see the bottom threads of [16]. It's obvious that this is an attempt to chip away at the case piece-by-piece, see [17] which makes it clear that he desires to appeal the case and have the sanctions lifted. -- Rs chen 7754 21:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC) @Rich: basically per Coren. -- Rs chen 7754 00:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I went through the block logs cited, and as far as I can see, Rich is largely right, and Arbcom is wrong. They had better correct their error now. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
This, if it wasn't an accident, is conduct unbecoming of an arbitrator. I have no interest in the case, and as far as I can remember no contact with Rich outside of normal processes, but his reading of the block logs is to an outsider persuasive. Bot operators unblock their bots all the time following issue resolution. If no one is going to answer Rich's statement then I can only assume no answer can be made. Mackensen (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
@Worm: I cannot see that fixing it "as far as possible" (per block log) in 13 minutes would be fixing the matter to the blocking admin's satisfaction.
—I can't imagine why you think this, but in any case it was to the blocker's satisfaction, wasn't it? Regarding the "procedural" unblock, isn't it true that "without first remedying the underlying issue" still doesn't really apply?
HaugenErik (
talk)
00:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I am a complete outsider on this, but it seems that this particular finding was amended without an opportunity for Rich to rebut it. I think this is a denial of fair hearing, and should be rectified (if contested, as it is). I don't think this is part of a campaign to have the whole case overturned, since this denial of fair hearing does not apply to any other findings. If anything, it will make the case stand stronger on its feet. In my view, this is all about procedural fairness, on which, presumably, ArbCom should lead by example. Cheers and Happy New Year! - BorisG ( talk) 13:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
This is not a good use of a limited wiki-resource (the AC's time) and it just not important in the big picture. Just delete it per motion 3. NE Ent 13:44, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me that you are displeased by the disposition of the case (which seems to me entirely reasonable given the disruption your automated editing had caused) and are picking at nits in order to "weaken" it in some manner. Let me make one thing clear: the remedies in place will not be changed by cherry picking corrections in the minutiae of the findings, nor will the case be overturned by applying a fresh coat of paint on the wording. If your objective is to get the restrictions you are currently under lifted or relaxed, you need to do so by addressing the substance of the concerns with your automated editing and convince us there is cause to re-evaluate the situation de novo, not by trying to pick apart the previous case. — Coren (talk) 19:13, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Moreover, I'm wary about creating rules that will make ArbCom even more bureaucratic. We are not a real-world court and we sometimes can, in my opinion, pass amendments following expedited or simplified procedures, especially when no Arbitrator voices any opposition and a majority of active Arbs have chimed in supporting a given proposal, as was the case here.
Now, I do have a problem with the revised FoF: the more I read it, the more I'm convinced it's inaccurate and that we should do something. I have not yet decided what, though. Salvio Let's talk about it! 13:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
There has been some discussion on the mailing list over how best to handle this. My views are that there are three main issues here: (i) the one of procedural 'fairness' with respect to how the finding was previously modified; (ii) whether the current finding 8 should be overturned, modified or dropped; (iii) whether further advice is needed on how to handle future requests related to this case. I would favour dropping (vacating) finding 8 rather than attempting to revise or modify it (it is not central to the case). In addition, we should ask Rich to state what further requests he plans to make and what the ultimate aim is, before he files any further amendment requests, noting that he does (as others have noted) need to take on board the issues that brought him to arbitration in the first place if any restrictions are to be lifted at any future point. Carcharoth ( talk) 08:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
In the Rich Farmbrough case, the revised Finding of Fact 8, enacted on 28 May 2012 is vacated. Nothing in this decision constitutes an endorsement by the Committee of Rich Farmbrough's use of administrative tools to unblock his own accounts.
Enacted. ( X! · talk) · @096 · 01:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
To the talk page that was here before the first amendment request was moved over it?
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
Note: this omnibus approach has been requested by Arbitrators, I have voiced my concerns that attempting too much will cause a process failure, however out of respect for the committee I am prepared to try this route. I note also, for the record, that the committee have previously overturned editing restrictions weather imposed by the committee or not (Kovaf), and on more than one occasion repealed an entire decision (Orangemarlin and others).
An editing restriction was imposed unilaterally in 2010, and a supplementary (supposedly temporary) restriction added, also unilaterally. I challenged the legitimacy and a good faith attempt was made to establish consensus to keep them, which failed. The restrictions serve no good purpose, significant time can be saved by the committee overturning these restrictions.
The substantive decision in the case consists of a number of findings and two remedies.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Rschen at the time we were trying to standardise banner template names there were only three out of over 1000 WikiProjects where there were objections to the renames. Namely:
All these objections used reasons contrary to the spirit and policy of Wikipedia, notably WP:OWN with a fair dose of WP:ABF thrown in.
I see that the WP:OWN mentality continues with your hatting threads on your talk page - with "Summaries" as if you were an admin closing a noticeboard thread.
If you are sick of it, I might wonder why you continue to stick the knife in. It was unacceptable at the previous Amendment, it remains so now. It remains the case that that FoF 8 was factually incorrect, and moreover defamatory. It is deeply disturbing that anyone would want to preserve such a statement on Wikipedia.
Rich
Farmbrough,
13:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Hersfold - Both you an Rschen are supporting my thesis that this is not a good way to approach the case.
Your point-by-point defence does little, since it really just shows the prejudices you exhibited since your self-admitted display of temper on my talk page before you initiated the case.
I will take one point - point 9 to illustrate. Here you are saying that the only way I can know the restriction is unenforceable is to successfully circumvent it, and hence that I am either making stuff up or breaking the restriction. Not so, and clearly not so on a moments consideration (and I have made my qualifications to make this statement clear to the committee previously). Therefore by the same argument you used, you are either misleading the committee, or you didn't stop and think. I prefer to assume the latter - and you should know better.
As to your patronising statements at the end, I am sure they are well meant, but really!
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Clerks
Please withdraw this request on my behalf, I stated that this approach would not work, and both the responses from those that have chosen to persue me here (as predicted) and Arbitrators support that contention.
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
My comments at [18] still stand. I find it disturbing that Rich is shifting the "blame" for the sanctions on the arbitrators, and on the community and basically on everyone but himself.
I also find it disturbing that Rich has been badgering everyone who has commented in opposition to his request to withdraw their comments, accusing them of bad faith even, as seen [19]. I also found [20] beyond the pale, where Rich tried to edit the same section on my talk page after I hatted it. Frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of this whole thing, and I was tempted to ragestrike all of my comments in the last amendment request to get this to stop. -- Rs chen 7754 05:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
For the record, while I was uninvolved per policy at the time of my initial block, I don't think I am now, and will not be taking any further administrative action in relation to Rich.
To address Rich's points...
Anyway. My advice, Rich, if you want any part of this case vacated or relaxed at any point in the future, is this: stop complaining about how people are out to get you, and work on figuring out what those people were saying and why they were saying it. Nobody is denying that you did useful work. What wasn't so useful was how you handled complaints about the not-so-useful bits. Not-so-useful bits happen. Consider this case one of them. Learn from them. Hersfold ( t/ a/ c) 07:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I am enormously sympathetic towards Rich. He has said often that he feels it is impossible to make any meaningful contributions, or even to edit Wikipedia, without use of automatic tools. To my mind, he is just one of many editors who were here since the early days, and who have struggled to adapt to the way the project is changing over time. I think it is to his considerable credit that he remains a committed editor, contributing as he feels able. Perhaps the ultimate crash was a result of an increasingly non-technical userbase, who want a Volkswagen Golf that starts first time every time, and a move away from the early editors who prefered an old LandRover so they could tinker under the bonnet. Whatever, I could not personally support the vacation of sanctions, as Rich still seems to have no concept of why users thought Helpful Pixie Bot was a nightmare, and Rich's persistence in making small changes that no-one could see was just annoying. But I would ask the committee to be considerate of Rich in his long history of editing, and his continued desire to improve the encyclopaedia. (should my opinion count for anything). -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
As to the calls to strike most of the findings as "personal attacks" or BLP violations, I see no merit in the claim. They were findings of the Committee and properly voted upon as appropriate, and will not be stricken on the simple basis that you feel they paint you in a negative light. I do not know if your username reflects your real name; if it does and you feel those findings could cause prejudice to you, we can consider courtesy blanking the case pages, however.
Finally, your request to strike the remedies as (alternately) "over-broad", "unenforceable", or "harmful to the encyclopaedia" need supporting evidence. They are none of those things simply because you assert them to be, you need to demonstrate that they are.
Honestly, the principal tenor of your appeal appears to be "I don't agree with the decision"; and that does not suffice as a basis to overturn it in part or in whole. You need to demonstrate material error, or that the circumstances have changed since the decision. — Coren (talk) 04:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Overall, Rich, I believe you have made a lot of assertions, hoping some of them might stick. This scattergun technique does little for your case, as anything that might be worth listening to gets lost in the the mix. I would be concerned with point 16, but you have put forward no evidence for it and it doesn't match the evidence I've seen so far. I am also very interested in point 10, as it appears to agree that there was previously an issue with your automated editing, but there is no longer, I'd like to know what's changed. WormTT( talk) 09:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC).
at 14:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
The motion is being used in an absurd way, as predicted by other editors. Three enforcement requests have been filed, one rejected, one upheld and one just filed today.
The upheld one involved a massive improvement to an article on a subject of critical importance to hundreds of millions of people - and that also defused part of a tense situation between a number of editors.
I have not made any edits that a sane person would consider automation, and the original motion was a result of two mis-clicks, for which I apologised profusely at the time, and indeed do so again.
The original arbitration case was brought on the basis that I was breaking BLP by associating suspected sockmasters with their suspected sockpuppets. This is so very far removed from that.
@T.Canens, doubtless I'm being dense here, but I fail to see how my article editing is anything other than beneficial to the project. Therefore while you can describe the sanction as "not working" form the point of view that I'm getting blocked for making positive edits, there is no way that it can be described as "not working" in the sense that harm is coming to the encyclopedia. In fact no substantive harm was ever demonstrated.
The three enforcement requests:
The original ArbCom case: the reason it was brought can be read at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough#Statement by Hersfold, the filer of the case. The motion currently disputed is a clear reflection of that original statement, and not "so very far removed from that" at all. Fram ( talk) 15:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm commenting here in an administrative capacity as one of the administrators active at WP:AE. There is currently an earlier enforcement request open relating to the restriction that Rich Farmbrough asks to be lifted here. It appears that he has submitted this amendment request instead of responding to the enforcement request. I would like to ask arbitrators whether the processing of the enforcement request should be stayed pending the disposition of this amendment request, or not. (Pending an answer, I, at least, won't act on the enforcement request). Sandstein 17:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
How many requests for clarification/amendment has Rich Farmbrough filed over his restrictions? I haven't counted but it's probably more than any other editor in recent memory, perhaps by orders of magnitude. How much time should ArbCom and the community waste in answering all these requests? Perhaps there should be a limit, say 6-12 months, between Rich's requests for amendment/clarification? ArbCom's duty is to break the back of a dispute, not contribute to it by allowing endless requests for clarification/amendment. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 22:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
IMO, the restriction and its enforcement have been overly rigid -- and it is grossly unfair to blame Rich Farmbrough for any problems that may currently exist with List of Other Backward Classes or its sister article List of Scheduled Castes. These were two seriously misbegotten articles created by Doncram; their creation played an important role in precipitating the recent Doncram Arbcom case. They weren't much discussed during the Arbcom case, mainly because Doncram was already topic-banned from working on them. This is what the Other Backward Classes article looked like when Doncram last touched it in late December; a substantial improvement over the version that I took to AFD back in early December, but still woefully incomplete, with poorly documented sourcing. The list survived AfD as "KEEP with a promise of FIXING the issues noted", but its creator was soon topic-banned and unable to fix it. I don't think it was wise of Rich Farmbrough to take pity on the list, but he did so, and his edits turned it into a reasonably solid page, but led to his 60-day ban. The fact that he edited the page again after his ban expired only indicated his conscientiousness about finishing a job he had left undone -- and his desire to improve the quality of the encyclopedia. Banning him for a full year for being conscientious is absurd. The fact that the restriction led to such a long ban is an indication that that the restriction is unduly severe. Taken together, his erroneous edits did not damage pre-existing content; he was adding a reference citation to previously unsourced content, and the errors only affected his additions. IMO, the article was better with misformatted citations than with no citations at all. I suggest that the remedy enforcement be amended to allow for a lesser enforcement (for example, admonishment) when any automated edits he makes do not delete or otherwise alter content previously contributed by another user. Furthermore, it could help prevent future violations when his ban expires if List of Scheduled Castes (which has not yet benefited from his attention) were removed from article space, so its presence won't tempt him to try to fix it. -- Orlady ( talk) 04:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure how useful comments from random editors on this matter are to the Committee (especially at this point), but I think that Jclemens hits the nail on the head. I can't remember having any direct interactions with Rich, but I've followed the post-arbitration developments (largely in my role as an admin), and it's clear that Rich has never accepted the findings against him and has been unable to let the matter rest. This has included obvious efforts to chip away at the restrictions, including by deliberately making fairly small breaches of them. The great shame is that if he'd put the same amount of effort into productive editing he'd be well on the way to having the restrictions lifted by now. Nick-D ( talk) 22:38, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
As to Sandstein's question, I think the AE request can proceed as usual, as I think it is highly unlikely that a majority of my colleagues would vote to grant the request. T. Canens ( talk) 21:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) at 08:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Fram ( talk · contribs) submitted an arbitration enforcement request regarding some recent edits by Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs). I've copied the applicable contents of that request below so that they are recorded here with this request, I won't copy Rich's statement across in case he wishes to say something different in this context.
- 04:49 8 April 2014: whether the original page was created using automation may be hard to prove (although everything points in that direction as well). But this subsequent edit is clearly not manually made. Every instance of " (*" (an opening bracket preceded by a space, plus every character after that on the same line) has been removed, no matter if that was wanted or not. The result is that you get changes like:
- Albategnius (al-Battani) (1333*) to [[Albategnius
- Alhazen (al-Haitam) (2490*) to [[Alhazen
- Alicia (344*) Boole (340*) to [[Alicia
- Julia (1945*) Bowman (1924*) to [[Julia
- ibn Sina (1984*) (1965*) to [[ibn Sina
- Anna (530*) Johnson (516*) to [[Anna
- Lord (2752*) Kelvin (2702*) to [[Lord
- Leonardo of Pisa (2250*) (2223*) to [[Leonardo of Pisa
And about ten further instances of the same pattern. Perhap others will see this as a manual edit nevertheless, but to me it certainly matches "For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so.".
- 06:27 6 April 2014 This one is taken from the end of this document, pages 104-105 (or from a different site with the same information and formatting, his page lists no source); note how, in Rich's article, four companies have a name ending in (a); 79 TOTAL Deutschland GmbH(a), Germany, 191 TOTAL Petrochemicals & Refining S.A. / NV(a), Belgium, 192 TOTAL Petrochemicals & Refining USA Inc. (a), United States, and 207 TOTAL UK Limited (a), United Kingdom. These just happen to be the same four companies that have a "*" after their name in the original document, indicating a footnote for "multi-segment entities". It seems unlikely that Rich Farmbroug made the same typo four times, matching exactly these four "starred" companies, the only ones to have that extra bit.
The administrators discussing the enforcement request could not agree if using the find and replace function meets the criteria set down by the Committee and if it does what an appropriate sanction would be. Given the disagreement regarding this and considering the Committee's motion that further violations will likely lead to a site-ban I thought it was best to refer this to the Committee for appropriate action. I'll close the AE request with a message that I've referred the issue to here. Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 08:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I was just about to close this as a 'close call but not actionable', but I was too slow and was edit conflicted twice, so I will post my draft closure decision here.
Most of the other admins here believe this doesnt fit within the arbitration committees decision, for a variety of reasons. Only Sandstein sees it that way, but I dont think it is healthy for him to be the leading enforcement admin on the third AE regarding Rich in a row. Given the other input to this AE, I dont think this is worth a clarification request. If Rich is trying to see how much he can get away with, it wont be long before there will be more a actionable AE request. These diffs are different from previous two reported to AE, and the general thrust of prior editing problems. The first diff is userspace, which should be ignored unless it is disruptive due to side effect on other users, which hasnt been claimed here. The second diff is a list article created by Rich (articles of this type are often created offline by manipulating other datasets) and the very minor issues in the initial version are within acceptable levels given the size of the page. It would have been easy to miss those '(a)'s even in a close review of the wikitext. If Rich regularly leaves small bits of junk in new content pages, this would be actionable, but not for just one instance. Rich, if you are going to create articles in this manner, I strongly suggest that you first of all push the data elements into Wikidata, and extract the data from there to obtain your draft wikitext table to be incorporated into the new Wikipedia article. That will reduce errors like the one Fram found, as it separates data extraction from data reporting, and utilises Wikidatas datatypes to validate the data. John Vandenberg ( chat) 09:04, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Considering the surprisingly intense disagreement among administrators (and other users of unclear involvedness) responding to the AE request, I recommend that the Committee examine whether the restrictions imposed in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough should continue to apply as written (in which case, in my view, Rich Farmbrough's apparent use of search-and-replace functionality violates the restrictions and should lead to an enforcement block), whether the site ban announced in the decision as a likely consequence of violations should be imposed, or whether the sanction should be modified or lifted.
I have not followed the original case and therefore express no opinion as to whether or to which degree the restrictions are (still) needed to prevent damage or disruption to the project. Sandstein 10:58, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I do implore ArbComm to review this situation, determine if the supposed transgression was indeed a transgression, and if it was, cast your stones upon the transgressor in the manner that you see fit.
Let me start by saying that I do not believe that I have been one of Rich's supporters in the past.
Personally, I find the AE Enforcement filing to have been distasteful, inappropriate, and simply "someone looking for a reason - weak as it was - to get Rich booted". In that light, I would actually desire sanctions imposed that would prevent such divisive and inappropriate behaviour from ever happening again, be it WP:IBAN, blocks, whatever. No editor should be targetted so regularly, and for such small things.
I suppose the predecessor to that, however, will be determining if using Find...Replace is considered to be an "automated tool" to make "automated edits", in contravention of the meaning and spirit of RF's restrictions.
I don't want to sound like a wikilaywer, but you'll also have to define what "editing Wikipedia" means. Is it the action of clicking "save" once? Or, is it sitting down, reading, searching, referencing, typing, copying/pasting over an entire editing session. For example, I may make some edits, go to ANI, use CTRL-F and search for a specific report, make some comments, go elsewhere and make article edits ... is all of this considered to be "editing Wikipedia", or just the few times I clicked "save" - this is important, because if I have a restriction against using a so-called "automated tool", and you consider Find...Replace to be "automated", then so is using CTRL-F because it prevents me from having to manually scan a page of words using my own eyes. If CTRL-F is "automated", I'll bet you'll need to block Rich a dozen times a day.
You'd then have to define if Copy...Paste is also an automated tool? Always? Sometimes? Never? It depends? For example, if I go to the article on Trinidad and Tobago right now, select a small amount of text, copy it, open the article on Tobago and paste it in ... am I using an "automated tool" because it prevents me from having to type the words manually? If copy and paste between articles is verboten as automated in that case, what about when I go to the top of the page and highlight the entire URL of the page I'm looking at, then paste it into a new browser window ... was that a use of an automated tool while editing Wikipedia?
Define the differences? Is there a difference between an "automated tool" and an "editing tool", or an "automated process", or "automated edits".
So, yeah, I was a bit cheesed off last evening when I saw the AE Enforcement request as I considered it petty, wrong, and harassment. So please, clarify for everyone edits, editing, automated proccesses and editing tools. Then, you'll need to cast stones in one of 2 directions ... or both. ES &L 11:29, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
While some of the admins at AE expressed surprise that search-and-replace would fall under this definition, there can actually be no argument that a software routine which makes edits as specified by a human editor is not a manual edit, but the use of automation. Search-and-replace is so familiar to us that we don't think of it that way, but this is nonetheless true.Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so. (emphasis added)
So, given the clarity of the remedy, and the fact that search-and-replace is undeniably automation, what's being asked for here is, in fact, not really a clarification of the remedy, but the rescinding of it, because it seems "nonsensical" to some. Perhaps they are right, perhaps it is "nonsensical" -- but it is also abundantly clear, and has been already used to block Farmbrough for a year. There is no difference here, despite Farmbrough's attempt to Wikilawyer the remedy into submission by reference to a definition of automation used in a different part of the Committee's decision ( Principle 3.1), which does not and cannot overide the clear definition of automation given in the remedy.
Given all this, the Committee should reaffirm its previous remedy and sanction Rich Farmbrough appropriately. BMK ( talk) 11:51, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
EatsShootsandLeaves starts with "Let me start by saying that I do not believe that I have been one of Rich's supporters in the past.", but forgots to add that he is one of my more vocal opponents, having forbidden me to go to his talk page in the future, and concluding "Just when one thinks that someone is improving as a person AND as an editor - WHAM! - they fuck it up badly (✉→BWilkins←✎) 14:00, 25 June 2013 (UTC)" When one points out that one is an objective commentator, it may be more correct to indicate the position one has about both editors, certainly when he concludes "Then, you'll need to cast stones in one of 2 directions ... or both.", as if the possibility that no stones will be cast doesn't exist. As for the substance of his comments: the difference between his examples and what happened here is that the result is what counts; how you browse or read pages is of no consequence, how you find things is your business, but if someone chooses to replace hundreds of instances of "A" with "B" in one unsupervised go, including some "A"s that shouldn't have been replaced, then yes, that is automation as defined in the rstriction, and similar to the one that led to the previous year-long block. What message are you trying to send with wanting to silence the one person that did most of the legwork in establishing that there was a pattern of problematic editing in the first place, and who corrected hundreds of such edits after the case ended and it became obvious that no one else would? Fram ( talk) 12:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
@EatsShootsandLeaves "close you down once" = told me not to come to your talk page again, with the clear wish that some other admin would block me if I did. "To be forced to restate the same thing to you every time you re-hash the same stupid "he hates me" thing, again, it doesn't make me a "vocal opponent".": let me count the ways: "restate", "same", "every time", "rehash", "same", and "again" in one sentence (and a few more in the next), wow, there must have been countless times I have made such "he hates me" statements. Shouldn't be too hard to find a few examples then. As far as I can remember, I raised the issue once before this. Please refresh my memory on all these other times. Fram ( talk) 12:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
@Everyone who thinks I shouldn't be the one making these reports. While I can see your point, the problem is that the mantra some people use of "someone else will see it" isn't correct. As an example: I opened Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough in April 2012, and it closed on 15 May 2012. Lots of his edits (account and bots) were scrutinised at the time, but even so, a long series of errors (first made from his account as an unapproved bot test, then ran as an approved but buggy bot task) wasn't found until some weeks after the case closed (and then only accidentally, because I was checking edits made by another user, User:Jaguar), and then corrected. I started these corrections on 30 May 2012 [23] and finished a few hundred error corrections later on 5 June 2012 [24]. I have no interest in waiting until such things happens again, so I try to prevent this by checking early. It is not really logical that the "reward" for researching a case, bringing evidence, showing the harm done by the problems, convincing people through a long and laborious process (with lots of abuse from some people), and correcting the problems, is that one would not be allowed to follow up on it, to check that the problems don't start again, and even get threatened with an interaction ban by an admin (I thought that usually for an interaction ban, a series of problematic interactions should be established, not someone repeatedly but correctly pointing out problems with the edits by another user). Obviously, if the conclusion of the Arbs is that userspace edits, or single page edits, are not actionable under the restriction, then I will not bring such edits to AE again. But whether an edit is a violation is not dependent on who reports it. Fram ( talk) 07:33, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Arbcom '12 messed this up. "Automation" is one of those words that we bandy about without thinking about too much -- it seems to have some sort of meaning so we're comfortable using it. It's a vague general nebulous concept, not something that is crisp and well understood. As an intentionally absurd argument, consider: on 4 April RF edited Poundworld, and since that time maybe 200 folks have viewed that page. Did RF make that edit 200 times -- no, it's automation! Or the text substitution of a {{u|NE Ent}} template is (or isn't), or the spell check built into the browser -- at one point Arbcom '12 members were arguing about whether that counted or not.
"may make reasonable inferences regarding the probable use of such tools on the basis of several factors, including the speed, number, timing, and consistency of the edits". Okay, so what if RF makes a series of 20 edits that are exactly 18 seconds apart? What if the 20 edits vary from 17 to 19 seconds, but are uniformly distributed instead of Gaussian -- or should "normal" editing be a Poisson distribution???
More ridiculous examples upon request.
The bottom line is that, despite Arbcom '12s good intentions, it is just inherently unreasonable to use "reasonably" in a remedy that references something as ill-defined as "automation." I think Arbcom '14 has to open this back up and provide a remedy that is clearly and unequivocally understood.
Note: I commented in the case pages under prior username Nobody Ent NE Ent 13:15, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
What Pine said. NE Ent 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
The devil lies in the detail. The Arbcom definition of automation cited above remains very subjective and leaves a lot to be desired. In truth, our notions of what constitutes automation evolves with the state of technology. My take is that in today's world, where we rely on computers to do routine and mundane things, performing calculations (instead of longhand or mental arithmetic) or copy–paste (instead of handwriting) is so off-the-scale in terms of what might reasonably be defined or considered "automation". Clicking on the undo button for a series of articles is equally not automation. The beginning of true automation lies somewhere between running a single regex and a 20-regex script over more than a small handful of articles. The edits brought here as examples look like one-off edit of one single and simple regex at worst. Poundworld is not an automated edit. Even if this were in mainspace, it's the product of a simple regex that I'd be inclined to dismiss as a piss-take. This extraction seems like something that can be manipulated with a spreadsheet or word processor. It seems so limited end of my definition that it would be unreasonable to consider it a breach. In addition, RF's editing seems not to have fallen foul of the "speed, number, timing, and consistency of the edits" criteria either. -- Ohc ¡digame! 15:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I'll repeat what I said at AE:
I hadn't planned on commenting, but I am taken aback by the suggestion that Find and Replace searches aren't automated searches edits. As a software developer for the past 15+ years, I can say that using a text editor's search and replacement feature is absolutely an automated process and one that requires special attention to each and every edit. While I don't know the specifics of RF's ArbCom history, apparently this user has screwed this up so many times that the community has decided that they cannot be trusted to do this again.
A Quest For Knowledge (
talk)
22:01, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I have little to add to what has been said, at the moment.
I would just like to remind Arbitrators (or point out if they didn't already know it) that it is not pleasant having people impugn one's motives at the best of times.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC).
@Harry: "Write an article..." what are
John Valentine Wistar Shaw and
Cayley's Sextic, chopped liver? And what is
chopped liver anyway?
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:39, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
@Roger: You ask:
"If you're able only to edit by typing into a box and pressing [save page], does editing Wikipedia have any long-term attraction at all for you?
Or, to put it another way, are you simply marking time here, until the moment when your bot privileges are restored?"
Here are two completely different questions, both, if I may say so, rather confused. I think I made it clear in my email to the committee that I am mainly catching up on edits I wanted to make while I was blocked. And I think I also made it clear, that just because I ran bots and used tools, it did not mean that I was not a content creator - albeit overshadowed in my fields by people like Matt Crypto, Charles Matthews, MIcahel Hardy, Oleg Alexander, etc.. I do not like to sit comparing dozens of pairs of texts as if I were searching for V1 launch sites (perhaps an apt comparison). However I do like to see the encyclopaedia improved. I find it strange that people would fix an error without asking themselves "How widespread is this sort of problem" and "How can we prevent it happening" and "How can ewe fix it everywhere?" So does Wikipedia hold a long term attraction for me? Yes, if we are talking in the realms of a few years, I will continue to fix errors whether they are substantive such as this, or stylistic. I will even search them them out, so for example the previous mentioned error was discovered after finding a dubious statement supported by unreliable sources in one article, that was also present in about ten other articles. These statements are linked to the Jagged 85 case, which means they have been on Wikipedia for 6 years and are propagating across the Internet and print media, and back into other WP articles. (We do not have the manpower to deal with this sort of thing, despite tremendous efforts by some editors - kicking out someone who might make a contribution there seems crazy.)
Similarly I tagged some 3000 incorrect ISBNs in 2012, 2600 of them remain (and probably some have only had the tag removed) and another 3-4000 ISBN errors have been made since. As far as I know, no-one has made a concerted effort to fix these in my two years absence. I am most of the way through fixing the 24 Featured Articles, and have fixed about a dozen others, including some of the 100 odd Good Articles. In the process I have done the following:
In the process of writing Cayley's sextic I also used the "Greek" gadget to insert π and θ (knowing full-well that there exits some combination of "alt" and numbers that will generate the symbol). I also cut-and-pasted the details of the references. And above, I cut and pasted the url of a diff.
So really the type of edit that is prohibited by the motion that is responding to my two mis-clicks in 2012 is pretty much inclusive of any serious editing. "But nobody would be such a jerk as to invoke the restriction for edits like this" I hear you cry. That, of course, is exactly what I thought. The purpose of this over-broad restriction, was to prevent what was seen as (perhaps reasonably) a work-around to previous restriction. In fact it provided another layer of "gotchas". I wonder if you can imagine what it is like working under these restrictions, and having people who don't know the facts say like "violation of all manner of BotOp, administrator, and consensus policies" or "apparently this user has screwed this up so many times".
The fact of the matter is, that, rightly or wrongly, the committee wanted to stop me using "automation tools", defined as "a technology designed to facilitate making multiple similar edits" - and this has resulted in me being blocked for a year over a single edit that provided references to an article, the only problem with that edit being a single character that was typed (or not typed, I forget) by hand. This was not, I believe the aim of the restriction.
So does editing Wikipedia hold any attraction? If people are going to edit cooperatively, then sure. If they are going to throw obstacles in my path for the sake of it, then not so much.
Am I marking time? Hardly! I think I have been pretty productive, I have in your area of interest, created at least stubs, or redirects for half the articles on this list. I have yet to attend to this problem with Elliot Roosevelt, and, have abandoned for now planned improvements to Carolingian Renaissance, because of the time I am spending on this, but please look at the work I have done in the last 2 weeks. It only scratches the surface, of course, but it is at least workmanlike, and an improvement. I also have spent some time at Teahouse and Help Desk, (which are the fora for being welcoming, rather than abrasive).
As to Fram's pathetic claim that he is forced to run around after me fixing my errors, I have always said that I will fix any errors brought to my attention. Fram reported three minor errors (two typos) on Jimbo Wales talk page, while I was blocked. Fixing them was the first thing I did when my block expired - Fram was happy to hunt for them to besmirch my name, but not to tell me about it. Similarly the Arb case was brought as a BLP issue - the world was about to implode because we were revealing who had had sock allegations made against them (this was debunked pretty quickly) my fourth edit was to address that issue. Although it was apparently vital enough that I should be whipped about town, have my rights removed etc. no-one was actually concerned enough to make sure that these details weren't exposed - except me. By their fruits shall ye know them.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:54, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies 2: "The purpose is to permanently wean Rich off high speed edits with collateral damage to a slower considered style where every edit moves the article forward and requires no external intervention to fix." It would be interesting to see how either of the edits complained about contravene this purpose. Notably one is not to an article, and could never be an article, the other complaint is based on some crazy hypotheses that I would replace all occurrences of "(a)" with "*". RF 22:48, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
@ T. Canens: No one has pointed out why these edits are "problematic". No one has pointed to any editing since the arb case that is problematic. Sure I worked on a lot of turtle articles, and using the same reference format as a colleague introduced a reference with a capitalisation error in it ("Vertebrate zoology" instead of "Vertebrate Zoology") into many of them. But it was correcting the error I was sanctioned for, not creating it.
Similarly the one year block which resulted from your previous "go ahead" to Sandstein was for adding references to an article. One. Article. Not for "making many similar edits to many articles" and certainly the only error there was a single character that was typed (or omitted, I forget which) by hand.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
A number of people have suggested that I am "testing my limits" or "pushing the envelope" - this simultaneously ascribes a level of both stupidity and bad faith that verges on bad faith and personal attacks - so much for claims to be "dispassionate".
Strange as it seems when I am editing my mind is not on "testing the limit" (which would be playing Russian roulette) or "not acting like a human" (which is a nasty turn of phrase), but helping people. I did not create Cayley's sextic out of some perverse desire to annoy ArbCom, but because it is an useful article. I did not clean up copy-violations such as Hidden Blade because I am "testing my limits", but because they break the law. I did not remove incorrect claims from articles as an act of defiance, but because they are misleading. I am not creating pages for Trinidad and Tobago portal to annoy other editors, but to be welcoming to Trinidadians and Tobagans. I am not working on [[Igbo] culture out of a sense of spite, but to redress systemic flaws in our coverage. I am not fixing ISBN numbers to... but you get the picture. Or I hope you do.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies I do wish people would stop telling me what I am thinking. It is bad enough having them make inaccurate statements about my actions. It seems likely that I will continue to edit on this project in my own small way, in whatever ways the community and I agree are reasonable and desirable. I have just produced some code that will, I hope, assist another editor to fix 11,000 articles. Of course I published it off-wiki. And I have just produced for another editor a list of over 5,000 red-linked palaeontology articles, also published off-wiki, under CCBYSA3. I I have also helped editors gain massive speed-ups on their bots, and use semi-automated tools to make impossible tasks feasible. I don't really care, for myself, if I never run another bot on this project, there are other, just as important and much harder things that need doing. I do, however, care deeply about the following three things:
It seems to me common sense, given the wide community support here, that the type of disruptive stalking that started the AE (and a host of other like actions before it) should be put a stop to once and for all, and that the Motion of May 2012 is long past its sell-by date, serves no useful purpose (if it ever did) and should be gracefully retired.
Thank you for reading this,
Rich
Farmbrough,
04:07, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
I would like Arbcom to revise/clarify the restriction to allow use of copy-and-paste in user space. Rich's recent edits clearly did violate the restriction as worded, but it appears to me that the wording of the restriction went beyond the scope of what was called for in the Arbcom discussion. Using copy-and-paste tools in Wikipedia user space is indeed a violation of the restriction as worded, but I can't see how it does any harm. However, it harms Wikipedia's image (i.e., Wikipedia looks pretty foolish) if Wikipedia blocks or bans a productive contributor for that kind of edit. -- Orlady ( talk) 19:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The real question ought to be, in an environment that is not punitive, whether Rich knew he was trespassing on an Arb Com restriction. I don't see that he did in which case he should be warned that this too is a way in which he cannot edit, rather than punish for ignorance, especially when even the arbs do not agree on whether he trespassed his restrictions . How can you sanction someone for not knowing. If that is the WP environment than as a collaborative project this fails. Further the tone of some of the arbs, and I do respect the job arbs have to do, is less than civil or respectful. That an editor may have transgressed does not mean they deserve to be treated in a less than respectful manner.( Littleolive oil ( talk) 19:36, 10 April 2014 (UTC))
My first thought on seeing that this had come up again was "oh, for fuck's sake", which is still a fairly accurate summary of how I feel.
Fram: move on. You've been following Rich around for years, and if you subjected anybody to the sort of scrutiny you've been subjecting Rich to, you could find grounds to sanction them. I thoroughly endorse Beeblebrox's suggestion that you find something else to do. If Rich is a problem and continues to be so after this clarification request, others will pick up where you left off and, frankly, the complaints would have a lot more credibility if they weren't all made by the same person.
Rich: go and write an article or something. I'd love for you to keep participating in this project, but you do so on the terms of its community or not at all. It is difficult to imagine that community (or its representatives on ArbCom, think of them what you will) permitting you, at any time in the foreseeable future, to edit in a way that involves mass changes to multiple articles, such as with AWB and/or bots. I can see the argument that the current restriction is overly harsh or cumbersome, but you are not going to get it lifted by testing its boundaries, and even if you succeed in having it loosened, you will still not be permitted to make those sorts of edits. So I'm afraid your options for the time being are either to find something else to do which is permitted by your restrictions, or to find another way to fill your time. Don't just while away the time until you can get back to what you used to do, because (quite apart from the fact that you'll be waiting for many years at the very least) that's not healthy for you or for the project.
Arbs: I don't think there's much to be done for the time being. Either Rich will find something that he can work on without violating his restrictions, or he has no interest in contributing in a way that the community finds acceptable. Much as I hope it's the former, whatever the case, his intentions will soon become apparent. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Rich should not do a search-and-replace in an article to rearrange whitespace or anything else—just edit text that will benefit from editing, and leave bot-like cleanups for others.
However, no bot-like cleanup has occurred in this case, and there is no reason to prevent Rich from doing search-and-replace while preparing an article in user space. Sanctioning an editor for saving a bad user-page draft would be Kafkaesque. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
As I understand it, Rich is being condemned for making edits that are "clearly not manually made"; to wit, using a regular expression search-and-replace.
If a logged-in user goes to Preferences → Editing, and enables both "Enable the editing toolbar" and "⧼wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference⧽", they get the button when editing - it's close to the upper right corner of the edit window. This, when clicked, opens a dialog box for a search-and-replace function which handles regular expressions. It has buttons Find next Replace Replace all; the operation of these should be familiar to anybody who has used, for example, Windows Notepad. Automated process it may be; but then, so is the action that is triggered by clicking [edit], Show preview, or Save page - or by simply following a wikilink. These set in motion a number of SQL requests - they are automated processes.
I recall that Rich was required to blank his .js pages: I am not aware of any requirement that he should also disable features included within the standard MediaWiki interface. I think that it is unreasonable to expect Rich to use a subset of those standard facilities which are available to any logged-in editor. He may have been required to disable all gadgets - but the abovementioned search-and-replace function isn't a gadget.
The intent of the original judgement was surely to prevent Rich from making identical edits on multiple pages in a short time frame - edits that might violate, say, WP:AWB#Rules of use. The interpretation of this judgement has been twisted to the point that Rich cannot even make one edit to one page without it coming under scrutiny. No evidence has been provided that two or more pages have been subjected to identical edits. I would ask how Fram discovered the first edit given in evidence: it's in Rich's userspace (specifically, User:Rich Farmbrough/wanted/mathematicians), and is a page that has never been edited by Fram, so is not likely to be on Fram's watchlist. There are two ways that he can have become aware of that edit: either he is stalking Rich's edits, or was tipped off. I cannot say which of these actually occurred, but it does seem to me that certain parties are out for blood, which they intend to get by any means possible. If the edits that Rich made to a page in his own user space are not in accord with WP:USERSPACE, there are several available routes: (i) edit the page per WP:UP#On others' user pages; (ii) put it up for WP:CSD (see WP:UP#DELETE); (iii) take it to WP:MFD. There is no need to make a whole drama out of a non-issue.
Finally, I would like to point out that one of those complaining made this edit, to this very clarification request; notice that in the added paragraph, it includes the phrases "using a text editor's search and replacement feature ... requires special attention to each and every edit" and "this user has screwed this up so many times". I invite you all to observe what happened to the post immediately preceding the newly-added subsection. How did all those punctuation marks become altered to hash signs, if not by an inattentive screwed-up edit? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 23:16, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The edit in discussion does not appear automated. In any case, it did not require copy, paste, and search. Instead of just looking at the diff and assuming that it is automation, I opened the original page for editing in a window. Then I saw that setting up the new version is merely a matter of deleting numbers and punctuation after each link in the list, and deleting some blank lines. Nothing fancy was needed to do that.
Italick (
talk)
09:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
well, here we are again. has arbcom learned yet that micromanaging editors is problematic? when will there be civility enforcement toward admins here? i see we have an admin who is blocked at bugzilla, acting the same way here. i have heard it said that editors are a dime a dozen, and replaceable. is this case a refutation? is anyone else fixing isbn's? is a high edit count rather a block me sign, since the error patrol has more to rake over the coals? when you ask if he is "marking time", is that a refutation of fresh start? when you ask why not just edit by typing, is that a refutation of all the tools and bots, most of which have unintended consequences? i note that bots that delete references are allowed to run, but heaven help the bot that adds a typo.
stop blaming the editor, and start fixing the system. if you don't like the editor's output, then give him the tools to reduce errors. this kind of zero defect thinking in this case, is profoundly incompetent. it leads to zero activity, and zero improvement.
and make no mistake, if you were to ever ask, why is there editor decline; this is a clarion call why. Duckduckstop ( talk) 19:30, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Isn't this just a "todo" list of sorts in his own userspace? What reasonable person would think curating a personal todo page could be a violation of the spirit of these restrictions? I'm pretty disappointed that some of you are voting for ~months-long blocks for this. Fram, I appreciate your diligence here, but I'm similarly disappointed that you wasted your time looking over his edits to his userspace; I'd echo the other calls here for you to take a step back. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 03:15, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
@ AGK:. If I were Newyorkbrad I would feel rather insulted by your comment that "the answer [to why the automation restriction should apply to Rich's userspace] seems obvious." If the answer were obvious then nobody would feel the need to ask the question, particularly not someone as experienced in dispute resolution matters as NYB.
For every sanction imposed on a user, the following questions must have known answers before it is imposed:
At the moment it is not clear what the answer to any of these questions is in relation to Rich not being allowed to use automation in his userspace. There may very well be good answers to all of them, but you need to actually answer them. Thryduulf ( talk) 16:17, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The intent is to give Rich a-fifth-or-sixth-absolutely-last-chance as an alternative to an indefinite site-ban. The spirit is to ensure that Rich's work comprises: click on [edit], type, then [save page]. The purpose is to permanently wean Rich off high speed edits with collateral damage to a slower considered style where every edit moves the article forward and requires no external intervention to fix.
In this context, the edits here clearly breach the restriction and, coming so soon after a twelve-month block, are deeply disappointing.
Now, Rich, I have a question for you:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
04:22, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
The previous arbitration case defined an automaton tool in principle 3.1
An automation tool is a technology designed to facilitate making multiple similar edits that would be unduly time-consuming or tedious for a human editor to perform manually.
A "remedy" was passed (Remedy 2)
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia....
Presumably, since the drafting arbitrator had defined "automation tool", and since the initial complaint was that automation tools had been used in a way that caused issues disruption, by making multiple similar edits, automation tools is what is meant here. The actual wording is overboard and unenforceable.
For this reason I request that:
The text of the first sentence of remedy 2 be forthwith changed to:
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation tool whatsoever on Wikipedia to make multiple similar edits.
A, hopefully unintended, side effect of is my inability to archive my talk page, (possibly) to create lists of articles for people to work on and make other perfectly innocuous changes. Therefore I request the following to be added to Remedy 2.
This shall not apply to pages in Rich Farmbrough's own User; And User talk: area.
I note that a similar request was turned down two years ago as being "too soon." I hope this no longer applies.
Motion 2 (which has been described by arbitrators as "draconian") was introduced in somewhat heated circumstances. I had mis-clicked on a tool I was using to compile lists and prepare text and made two "automated edits". Much ABF followed, together with many unfounded accusations and threats to bring out the ban-hammer. Nonetheless, the existing remedies were quite sufficient for a one-month block to be enacted. Given this the imposition of an additional editing restriction, especially one as broad reaching as this seems pointless.
Motion 2 has been subject to much abuse, resulting in a years block over an edit that added references to a page, but caused an error due to the wholly manual omission of a "/". It was even suggested that editing the page to insert the missing "/" constituted automated editing.
Neither this, nor the subsequent request for AE, nor any other complaint based on the Motion 2 have had anything to do with "making multiple similar edits" - the effect has been not to prevent disruption but to create disruption.
Moreover the Motion forbids such simple tasks as cutting and pasting, making even raising this request sanctioanble. I have given elsewhere examples of perfectly normal, not say essential, editing techniques which are banned by this Motion 2. I will repeat them here if requested.
So request 3 is:
Strike Motion 2
@ Beeblebrox. I think you confuse me with someone else. With the possible exception of the series of edits correcting the my own spelling error "Vertebrate zoology" to "Vertebrate Zoology", for which I apologized profusely and was blocked for a month two years ago, no-one has even suggested that I have done the type of multiple edits that allegedly caused disruption.
You might also want to look at some of the other parts of the case. For example this edit was considered a reason to remove my admin bit. And yet you can "sigh" in your edit summary with no consequences.
All I am trying to achieve here, is to restore sanity to the editing restrictions, not to remove them, however flawed they are. I can see no way these requested changes can harm the project, even if the manifest WP:ABF were justified.
I would really appreciate being treated in a courteous manner, and have the issues addressed, rather than coded and not so coded insults.
However, I will make an additional effort to move the dialogue forward: Suggest, please, an editing task which I could take on which would not violate Motion 2?
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:59, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
@Newyorkbrad, most certainly. All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
12:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies It's not nice to say that there were problems with my bots. If you look at the workshop even my most vociferous critic said "His bot edits (Helpful Pixie Bot mainly) generally fall under a), both authorized and correct. "
There are no "findings" relating to errors in bot edits, or indeed to any errors.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:34, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Beeblebrox I just read your comment again. I think that the point of the sanctions is supposed to be to protect the encyclopaedia. The idea that the sanctions themselves are important for their own sake is a very un-wiki idea. If the sanctions are only being perpetuated because it is believed that I have, will or want to break them, it is a bad case of the tail wagging the dog.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
Without wading into the details of Rich's motion I am hoping Arbcom can come up with a solution that will eliminate the need for constant supervision of Rich's situation, and reduce the frequency of trips to arbitration and arbitration enforcement pages. I think the original sanctions were intended to prevent disruption but if they have become an obstacle to Rich being a non-disruptive contributor and are frequently discussed at great length on arbitration and arbitration enforcement pages then I think it's time for a change. -- Pine ✉ 07:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Hasteur ( talk) at 20:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I seek clarification as to the extent of which the ban on automation extends. A request was made at Wikipedia:Bot requests seeking a bot operator to design a highly customized talk page archiving bot based on multiple rules and targeting. Based on this I seek clarification as to what line does a completely manual edit flip over to being automation when the edit triggers a automated response. Does a Rube Goldberg invention of triggered automation cross the line over what is considered automated? Hasteur ( talk) 20:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
This is pretty much what Femto Bot used to do, with corrections and minor upgrades. The committee seemed agreeable to having another editor run Femto Bot's code last time it was mentioned. This request is for a more robust version, notably it would be resistant to attempts by other users to manipulate it, and would be more scalable, being event driven rather scheduled. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 20:46, 23 April 2014 (UTC).
@AGK "I am actually thinking the automation restriction is utterly unenforceable" well, you shouldn't have voted for such stupid restrictions in the first place! Instead think about what is good for the encyclopaedia! All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 23:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Worm That Turned - I created a custom bot because I needed it. I think others would had found it useful too, had I made it as robust as would have been required for a general purpose bot. Similar degrees of complexity apply to existing bots, for example they create and head up new archives as needed, and can provide some forms of indexing.
I used four general bots before switching to my own. Running my own allowed me to be more responsive to user concerns, by keeping unfinished business on the page, and clearing dealt with items quickly away.
In the request for permission to run Femto Bot, Sladen reported that a kind offer had been made to run the bot for me. There were no objections at the time. Funny how it's now seen as major problem. I however do not stop assuming good faith, where it is deserved, simply believing that people are not as "dispassionate" as they would like to claim, and are reacting emotionally. That is absolutely fine, and emotion is not out of place here. However I would urge people who wish do deliver judgements to try to separate the factual, the procedural and the intentional.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 06:31, 25 April 2014 (UTC).
I am sure that it strikes me as a poor use of our bot-coding editors' time and effort
—@Newyorkbrad I sincerely hope you are not saying this in any kind of official capacity. It appears as though you mean to dictate what people spend their time on. Hopefully, you instead simply meant this as an idle expression of bewilderment about something that you don't understand.
This appears to be something genuinely useful to certain people. Not to me; I obviously don't get the kind of talk page traffic that would necessitate this kind of thing. But if someone wants to build it what is the harm in RF outlining the specification? Surely his restrictions don't preclude him from suggesting automation tasks to others?
The idea that RF triggering this bot would be a violation of his restriction is completely absurd. The tool and its effects would be completely someone else's responsibility. His alleged carelessness and obstinate attitude (IIUC the root cause of his restrictions) would not be an issue here at all. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 23:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Salvio—"just use Cluebot III or some other bot like that" — Isn't that what he's trying to do? If someone makes the suggested bot, then it will be "some other bot like that"—what is the problem? What do you mean by "decline" in this context? ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 21:33, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@Worm_That_Turned—you realize that this request wasn't filed by RF, right? I'm not sure what your point is in noting that this is the 6th one; I don't know why it was filed, but it wasn't RF's idea as far as I can tell. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 21:40, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
If the Committee wants to absolve itself of all credibility as a body willing and capable of resolving disputes to the benefit of the encyclopaedia it's going about it in the right way.
On the other hand the Committee could get their heads out of their posteriors and articulate what Rich's topic ban is actually intended to achieve, why that needs to be achieved, and how the restriction is intended to achieve that. Until such time as the community understand the purpose of the restriction (which these endless requests demonstrate it does not) it cannot reliably enforce it. You (the Committee) regularly ask admins to enforce the spirit of the rules, referencing the letter to determine that. In this case we cannot do that - the letter is ambiguous and the spirit changes depending on who asks and who answers.
If you aren't prepared to do your jobs in this regard, you can at least retain the basic decency to answer the simple, specific questions asked:
It has just occurred to me that if this is declined then we also need answers to other questions about what is an is not acceptable:
For each "no" answer, please explain why he should not be allowed to do that in terms of benefit to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf ( talk) 09:31, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@ AGK: I'd like to hear what's wrong with Rich's conduct, 'cause I (and I think many others) see absolutely no issue with it. To suggest that we ought to ban him for it is utterly bewildering. — lfdder 00:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad: "... but I am sure that it strikes me as a poor use of our bot-coding editors' time and effort." - surely, we have 4 archiving bots, that has then already been a massive poor use of time and effort for the other 3 programmers who wrote one after the first. I find that belittling, Brad, bot operators are free to do whatever they want to use time and effort poorly on. The community, nor the Arbitration Committee, have no say about what has to be programmed for them.
Regarding the whole, if one of those 4 bots would have this way of working already, you would not have a problem with Rich using that. You do not have problems with Rich setting the user-options for one of those that already exist, making it operate every 3, 5 or 13 days. You have no objections against Rich asking another Bot Operator to repair typo's for him. You do not have problems with another bot operator having a bot delivering messages to Rich's talkpage (where he has/d to opt-in). You do not have problems with bots signing messages left on his talkpage. You do not have problems with other bots notifying him of 'problems' with his edits (BracketBot). You DO have problems with this?
And if now an independent bot-programmer comes and thinks 'I like this, I want this on my talkpage', uses his time poorly to write the bot, tests it, gets permission and runs it on his talkpage, and makes it available to the larger community, do you have a problem that Rich switches to that bot, or are you going to ban him immediately?
AGK is right, this is a badly designed, poorly worked out decision, resulting in poor use (and actually a massive waste) of our community's time. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 06:55, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
link to withdrawal -- S Philbrick (Talk) 15:05, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
That said, I'm of the same opinion as NativeForeigner - Hasteur is a big boy, if he wants to code a bot to Rich's specifications - it's his responsibility to ensure it meets community guidelines. As such, he'll be the one who gets the come-uppence if anything goes wrong with the bot. Should he decide to do this, then I advise him to write it carefully himself and test it thoroughly.
Rich, I'm generally unimpressed that you took the tentative agreement by a few committee members to archive your talk page using existing bots as free rein to wander over to the bot request notice board and ask for a custom made bot. It's exactly that sort of behaviour that stops people from assuming good faith with your behaviour. WormTT( talk) 10:42, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Note: Here is an interesting quote from Roger Davies around the time of the case closure. [Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough/Proposed decision "You'll also be delighted to hear that the proposed remedies enable him to give you exactly the help you seek by way of planning the logisitics, working up the code, liaising with bot owners and so on."]
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 06:28, 29 April 2014 (UTC).
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Fram ( talk) at 08:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Rich Farmbrough has editing restrictions, one stating that he is "indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so." and another that "Regardless of the editing method (i.e. manual, semi-automatic, or automatic; from any account), Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from mass creating pages in any namespace, unless prior community approval for the specific mass creation task is documented."
One of the causes of these restrictions was the mass creation of script-generated biographies taken from the Dictionary of National Biography on Wikisource (see [ [26]], which was also at the start of my evidence on the RF arbcom case).
Now, RF has created many more similar pages (same method, same problems) at Wikisource, and is actively looking for people to import these to Wikipedia, if possible by bot or script. His script adds very little of value to the existing Wikisource pages: an extremely rudimentary infobox, bolding of the page title, some seemingly random wikilinks (sometimes none at all), birth and death year cats, and (the only thing of potential value IMO) the references used by the DNB article presented in a Wikipedia-style at the end of the article. The pages he creates are taken from all kinds of Wikisource transcriptions, not all verified for correctness (of transcription, this is not about factual correctness).
Evidence of same kind of problems (examples, not exhaustive at all):
Note also that every page starts with {{subst:Quick infobox|..., but there is no Template:Quick infobox.
As for evidence that he believes these pages are ready to be imported, that he is actively recruiting people to serve as proxies to circumvent his restrictions, and that speed is the defining characteristic for his creations and the manner he uses:
I had put a note on the project talk page to raise my concerns [32]. The response [33] speaks volumes.
Considering the April 2014 clarification issued by the Committee that "Accordingly, Rich Farmbrough is warned that the committee is likely to take a severe view of further violations, and may consider replacing his automation restriction with a site ban.", I would suggest that enough is enough, and simply siteban him for continuously trying to circumvent or violate his restrictions, and for basically not learning anything from his previous mistakes and the discussions and blocks surrounding them. Nothing less, including his last one-year block, seems to make any difference. A siteban won't stop him working on Wikisource, but it will at least stop the active recruitment on Wikipedia of editors to proxy for him. Fram ( talk) 08:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
After this was done, he did another run on the articles, changing "thither" to "there". Seven articles were changed, one incorrectly though, as "thither" was part of a title in that one, so the change made the article less correct [47], and would be hard to detect afterwards. Fram ( talk) 18:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: I don't care what he does on Wikisource, as long as he doesn't try to find people to import these pages here as a way to circumvent his restrictions here. My links to Wikisource are only used to show that the pages are problematic. My request here is about his actions here. Fram ( talk) 19:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@AGK: I don't really understand your statement about an "alleged import"; I have provided multiple piecees of evidence that Rich wants people to import these to Wikipedia: the category at Wikisource claims that they are ready to be copied into Wikipedia, this link is a section he started, called importing articles, where he specifically states "If you have the rights you might consider an export-import solution.", and elsewhere he also promotes bringing his drafts to Wikipedia as a "quick win" [48]. So it is obvious that he has already tried to "crowdsource" his automation, as you put it, and that he wants (or certainly wanted) these to be imported swiftly and preferably en masse. That no one so far has acted upon this (as far as I know) doesn't mean that he hasn't tried to breach the sanctions in this way, only that he was unsuccessful. The "proxying", brought up by others, is a red herring in that regard, as I am not seeking any sanctions against other editors, even if someone would have imported one of these. This request is only about the behaviour of Rich Farmbrough. He now claims that "I have never suggested using a bot or script to import the items, and indeed I would strongly disagree with doing that en masse, as it would break the proposed workflow."; I wonder how he reconciles this with his preferred "export-import solution" for someone with "the rights". I hope that, contrary to earlier ArbCom proceedings, he will actually explain what he intended, and not simply dismiss evidence without any justification for it. Note also this [49]: "As to importing, of course they would not be bulk imported to article space, but to my user namespace by default, or the project namespace by choice, which would create no issues for anyone, except to make mass updating difficult." This not only contradicts his advice to the gender project, but also would still violate his restrictions on mass creating articles, which clearly states that he is "indefinitely prohibited from mass creating pages in any namespace". Fram ( talk) 06:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
About Rich Farmbroughs comment (or "preliminary statement"). Most seems rather irrelevant, I'll stick to a few points.
@Seraphimblade. I don't really get this, you seem to be basically syaing that if someone has restrictions here, they are free to try to circumvent them and find other editors to help them continue their problematic editing? Doesn't that make the restrictions rather toothless? Fram ( talk) 07:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
@PBS: Both. Restrictions are not "don't do this unless your edits are good", they are "don't do this"; but in this case, as I presented in my opening statement, the edits still present the same or very similar problems as the earlier ones had, so I don't believe using them would be a net benefit either (I don't think using the RF versions will make it any faster to present decent articles compared to starting from the standard Wikisource pages, and the chances are considerable that they will introduce additional errors not present in those Wikisource pages, like in some of the examples above). Fram ( talk) 16:23, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
In the interests of collegial working, and to save everyone's time, I would appreciate guidance form the Committee, as to whether they would like a point-by-point commentary on the above, a general statement, or, indeed, whether it is not worth responding to. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 13:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC).
I have drafted a statement which I will post later tonight or tomorrow, once I have removed or reduced those points that Kim has already made more ably than I.
I will just point out, for the record this absurd statement of Fram's, which I had missed amongst the cruft (I may later incorporate it into my general statement:
is actively looking for people to import these to Wikipedia, if possible by bot or script.
This is quite simply a chimera. I have never suggested using a bot or script to import the items, and indeed I would strongly disagree with doing that en masse, as it would break the proposed workflow.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 22:01, 26 August 2014 (UTC).
1. Scope
:You are still welcome to proof-read or validate any of the pages in DNB, and if you let me know I will re-create their drafts, where appropriate. And you can add here any issues you discover which appear to be new. [1]
2. History
2. a) "The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history"
[2] and "many of the longer entries are still highly regarded"
[2], it covers tens of thousands of people from legendary figures from the mists of time, up to the the early years of the twentieth century, when the supplementary volumes are taken into account. Due to the publication dates the text is in the public domain.
[3] These texts, therefore, form a good potential starting point for Wikipedia articles. Over the last decade a small group of dedicated volunteers, lead by the redoubtable Charles Matthews have been working on creating a proofread version of the DNB on Wikisource with the express aim (although not the sole aim) of having the material available for Wikipedia. In parallel a very great number of Wikipedia articles have been created for the same subjects, sometimes based upon the DNB material, sometimes partially so, and sometimes from completely different sources (although these are often derived in whole or part from DNB).
[4]
A WikiProject DNB was set up on the 10th of September 2010, I joined on the 14th. [5] The DNB project exists solely to bring information, sometimes in the form of new articles, from the DNB into WP. It is a child project of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles [5] WikiProject DNB was broadly supportive of the previous automated creation of drafts on WP.
[While the best drafts may form tolerable articles, considerable manual work is required to most of them, and not just on the article. The links to regiments or battles, for example, may require ancillary articles to be created, or at the very least redirects or disambiguation pages. The draft merely removes tedious and repetitive workload.]
2. b) The "Gender Gap Taskforce" is a taskforce of the Sytemic Bias WikiProject, set up on the 13th of May 2013. It is active on other aspects of systemic gender bias than the Gender Gap, despite its name, for example Afd, categories and missing articles. I have been active there since the 4th of August, shortly after the taskforce saw a resurgence in activity, and had commented elsewhere on the subject of main discussion of 2013, category "ghettoization". I have previously produced lists of missing articles (and provided other, mainly technical, assistance) the Women's History project. I have also made a list of 187 women environmentalists (that I cannot share with fellow Wikipedians, except by providing a link to the off-wiki list), and have slowly been creating articles on notable women leaders form Wesleyan movements.
3. Proposed use
There was never any suggestion of automated import of these drafts as I have outlined above. You can clearly see that a 'manual process is suggested at the Gender Gap Taskforce, that implies individual articles need to be created and worked upon.
[6]
The advantage of using the import function, as I understand it, is that it allows attribution to be maintained, and a consistent edit summary of the import itself is used. I made it clear, when Fram raised the issue of import that bulk importing would "make mass updating difficult." [1] Had Fram the slightest concept of how the process of continual improvement works, he would have realised that bulk import by any means is anathema to my goals, at least while I am unable to work effectively upon the English Wikipedia.
Moreover it is clear that the drafts are not ready for article space as noticed to the DNB project, so any bulk import there would be a bad idea. [7]
4. Warnings given
4. a. Caveat: ... You remain responsible for your own edits. [6]
4. b. These pages are drafts ready to be copied into Wikipedia at your peril. [8]
Note that the WikiProject DNB members tend to be experienced editors who know that they are responsible for their own edits.
Members of both projects clearly have their own reason to create these articles. (See, Bruning, Kim: 2014)
5. Conclusions
No proxy editing is taking place here, and none has been proposed. Assistance is being offered to two projects I am already involved with, and which have aims in line with my own: to wit, creating missing articles on notable women, adding missing articles on notable Britons. To keep these projects in the dark about a possible resource would be unkind, unproductive and unwiki.
No proxy automation is taking place either, this is a trivial lemma.
6. Quotations It is, though, instructive to note the previous comments of a couple of current arbitrators:
7. Colophon It has been expressed to me by an Arbitrator that, despite the findings not saying anything about it, the root issue was the speed of editing. [notes 1] It is already perverse, then, that I was blocked for a year for mistyping a single character manually. It would be even odder if any sanction were considered for precisely zero edits
On this note if any Arbitrator knows of any other hidden reasons for sanctions, I would be most grateful to be appraised of them.
I wonder how he reconciles this with his preferred "export-import solution" for someone with "the rights".
I provided the Gender Gap Taskforce with two links, one to a list of red-linked articles and their corresponding DNB pages on wikisource, and one (IIRC) to a category of drafts.
Anyone who wishes may take the text of the Wikisource article, or of a draft, or they may retype the text from the image of the DNB page, or they may re-write it in their own words.
If they use the draft (which is in my userspace) they will, in general, have less work to do than if they if the Wikisource page. I will be happy whichever they use.
As to the particulars, the intention is to improve the conversion process continually, this is known as kaizen. If an improvement to the process is made it will be shared by all new and existing drafts. Moreover source changes will also be reflected to existing drafts.
If they try to polish a draft in my userspace in Wikisource, and it were to be overwritten, their changes would not be lost, but would be available in history. Nonetheless this is probably a bad idea. It would be better to polish it on Wikipedia. They can do this, for example, in their own userspace, in Draft space or at AFC. They could also do it under the WP:DNB project space, or indeed in article space, provided they are not going to abandon a particularly problematic draft. Clearly they would do this if they worked from the Wikisource article or the images.
So I don't think I am placing any large manual burden on anyone, rather removing a manual burden.
Anyone who wants to automatically import these drafts will need to propose a BRFA, which includes showing community consensus, per WP:BOTPOL. If the community consensus is to bulk import the pages, then I would not wish to stand against it, even though I don't think it is currently appropriate. The committee may have a different view of community consensus, of course.
I had not realised these fine distinctions were that important. However the prohibition on automation is recorded, as far as I know, as an "Editing restriction" and does not ascend to the lofty height of a "Topic ban".
No jurisdiction. Per
Wikipedia:Arbitration, This Arbitration Committee's jurisdiction extends only to the English Wikipedia
. See
m:Arbitration Committee for other committees. Apparently
Wikinews has a committee, but Wikisource does not. If you don't like what Rich is doing there, or in his own user space (which I'd assume was intended for debugging), then go to the Foundation and ask for an Office Action. –
Wbm1058 (
talk)
19:12, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Quick point of policy: Just pointing out that WP:PROXYING fails on both forks:
Even if we bend #1 to also apply to editing restrictions, #2 still applies full force.
Further, I guess Fram reads "are ready to be imported at your peril" opposite from me. (I read it as "Don't do it that way. (yet)").
Together with the fact that this is on ws instead of wp I'm not sure there's a case here for arbcom per-se. (Though Fram's frustration is quite understandable here.)
I know the tendency these days is to delete rather than improve, and ABF over AGF, but this is still wikipedia. :-)
You know, Rich can Code, and Fran knows their quality control. Could we establish procedures where Fram can cooperate with Rich to generate something that both would agree was useful? The large benefit to wikipedia if these folks could work together is obvious, imao. ;-)
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 13:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Fram has stated that many of the articles are "broken". I have not read the articles in detail, but would like to ask whether Fram's comments, such as that abbreviations for books of the Bible have been replaced with the names of the books, are valid. Is that criticism correct? If the criticism is correct, are the articles in Wikisource really ready to be pulled into Wikipedia, or will it be necessary for those copying the articles to make non-trivial edits? If, in your opinion, the articles are ready for Wikipedia, how is Fram mistaken? Why have you cautioned not to edit the articles in Wikisource? Am I correct in assuming that you are using a script in Wikisource? In that case, by overwriting and "rebreaking" any broken features in the script, it appears that you are proposing to place a large manual burden on Wikipedia editors. Robert McClenon ( talk) 23:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
If RF does something, and Fram doesn't obsess over it, is it really disruptive? This we have jurisdiction over anything in the universe that might affect Wikipedia slope ya'll seem to be on recently should stop, because it diminishes the credibility of the commitee (i.e. good luck banning Erik Möller).
RF was banned from automation because he demonstrated a lack of judgement in using automation to affect articles. If he automates off-en-wp, there is no violation. If the introduction of the work product of those automations by another editor diminishes the encyclopedia, the responsibility lies on the editor who did the edit, not RF.
If the committee is going to establish a vicarious liability policy in that an editor who encourages another editor to do something is as responsible for the one who does it … please desysop Fram for encouraging [51] the behavior of Kafziel Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel whom ya'll desysoped. No, that's not a serious request, it's a Reductio ad absurdum argument for the principle editors are only responsible for their own behavior, not what others do. NE Ent 10:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I have met Rich in real life many times, we have had great chats, as you might guess this includes our different experiences with Arbcom, and he is a fellow supporter of Wikimedia LGBT+. I expect the outcome here to be "I don't see anything that the committee should do", as others have highlighted. If Rich wants to play around with Wikipedia content away from Wikipedia, meh, this is something that is actually a good thing as if others are going to reuse his work to improve Wikipedia contents that's their editorial judgement, not Rich's.
The Wikipedia community has seen 2 years of Rich being publicly pilloried for his use of automation, or more accurately, even the appearance of automation such as simple cut & paste editing, has become a reason for eye-watering year long blocks. This has become a death of a thousand cuts, how about putting aside the punishment hat and instead talk realistic solutions that give Rich a way to regain his good standing as a Wikipedia editor, and we can all benefit from his significant talents and interest in writing better tools for our editors?
Those members of Arbcom who have not had a chance to meet Rich and discuss his passion for the English Wikipedia, I strongly encourage to take up the offer of a Skype call. Nobody can possibly doubt his good intentions, his enthusiasm for open knowledge and his great potential for helping to deliver on our shared mission. He is exactly the sort of long term Wikipedian you want to encourage.
Let's move on please. -- Fæ ( talk) 12:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
P.S. I note that Fram's statement is currently 1,395 words long and may well be added to. I have only briefly skimmed the text as a result.
As one of two editors who did most of the systematic clean-up of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#List in October–December 2011, I do not share all of Fram's concerns. At the time I was of the opinion that it was better to modify the text and fix the attribution than it was to delete the articles. I was disappointed at the number of editors who participated in the clean up, and because the pages had been published I felt a responsibility to clean them up (even thought I wanted to be editing other pages), and so resented RF for placing that extra burden on the DNB project.
If articles are manually ported by editors from wherever RF has placed them, those editors have three choices:
The decision and the responsibility for making sure that the text meets Wikipedia content policies guidelines must rest on the editor who chooses to import the text. One editor building on the efforts of another is the Wikipedia way. I suspect, given the lack of participation if fixing the problems in the 100+ pages in 2011 when RF generated similar content, that the speed at which the articles he creates are copied across to Wikipedia will occur far more slowly than RF hopes it will happen.
To facilitate monitoring the ports I would suggest that an audit page is kept consisting of:
I think Fram needs to question whether Fram is opposing this initiative by RF, because Fram believes that RF is gaming the system and should not be allowed to do so (whether or not the outcome of RF's initiative will be a net benefit to the Wikipedia project); or whether Fram's motives are because Fram believes that this initiative will inevitably harm the project and so should be strangled at birth.
I think on balance it should be a benefit to the project, but it largely depends on the the editing care of any editors who decide to import the text and their taking responsibility for doing so. Therefore I would suggest that the project is allowed to go ahead with the understanding that it can be reviewed at any time.
-- PBS ( talk) 16:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
It would be helpful if the committee could help clarify at what point Fram's reporting of Rich becomes abusive and/or excessive. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 00:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
If Rich were to persuade someone to import en masse the material he has generated off-site, there would be something to deal with. As it is, one-by-one article creations don't represent the same sort of problem. Mangoe ( talk) 19:47, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 02:56, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
Finding 4 cites "letter and spirit of bot policy" (without, of course, quoting the policy) and gives four alleged examples, apparently supported by links.
Taking these in order:
More on item 4
|
---|
|
Three of the four examples are clearly within policy. The fourth is within standard usage, and even so I went to great lengths to oblige CBM.
I have attempted to keep this short, so may have omitted something you think important. Please feel free to ask any questions, and I will do my best to answer them. I am happy to answer questions of opinion or fact, or even motivation.
From those Arbitrators who have already commented, I would like to hear one compelling reason that lies about a living person are more acceptable on arbitration pages than on articles. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 15:46, 25 November 2014 (UTC).
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 12:47, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
In a case brought against me some three and a half years ago, it was found that certain community norms had been broken by me, specifically WP:BOTPOL, WP:5P4 and WP:ARBRFUAT.
I note that in the intervening period I have complied with WP:BOTPOL, been civil and collegial with other editors, and been responsive to other editors concerns, as anyone active in the community will know.
In particular I have continued to work at WP:TEAHOUSE, welcome new users, attempted to smooth ruffled feathers at WP:GGTF, mainly by focussing discussion on substantive issues, provided assistance to other editors both on and off-wiki (a list could be made available if desired). I have continued to work on other wikis with no issues.
I also continue to perform work high community trust, on protected templates, but more importantly on edit filters where, together with others (notably Dragons flight) I have overhauled almost every filter to ensure that the whole system continues to work (it was failing) and new filters can be implemented.
Moreover not only have I been policy compliant, collegial and responsive, I have every intention of continuing indefinitely to be so.
For these reasons I request the Arbitration Committee to terminate remedy 2.
Addenda:
Please note that I am eligible to request termination of this sanction from 15 January 2013. The sanction, qua sanction, is continuing to impact my good name in the community, notably impeding my recent RfA, and so the time has come to remove it.
Please also note that I have suggested a more nuanced approach to complete termination in the past, which has been dismissed by various committee members, with rather unflattering characterisations.
Thryduulf I would certainly consider you views valuable. I have met with other members of the committee at various wiki-functions. Whether to recuse must be your decision. I would not find fault either way. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
20:28, 8 October 2015 (UTC).
Guerillero You must have a reason for saying that, do you mind if I ask what it is?
Gorilla Warfare It's hard to be specific. Indeed I have very little time to put into large scale projects. But even simple things like:
But the main point is the stigma. This affects not just my standing in the community, but my ability to volunteer for certain roles on-wiki, and even my eligibility for employment off-wiki.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:32, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
Seraphimblade What lead up to it? A lot of things, that I can address here (or elsewhere) if you wish. However what I prefer to address specifically is the negative "findings of fact" which are putatively the committee's take on "what lead up to it." For example one suggested that I was "not responsive". I do not here challenge that claim, I simply point out that since that date I have been responsive. Similarly I have not infringed on BOTPOL. And I doubt anyone could challenge that I have been collegial - indeed my main thrust on the non-content part of Wikipedia has to be to encourage people to work together - and civil. Indeed I have had two complaints about being too civil.
Moreover I can state categorically that I have every intention of continuing to be collegial, civil, responsive and policy compliant.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:11, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
(Currently watching
WikiConference USA live.)
Corcelles Your response does not provide any useful feedback. I have explicitly invited feedback from Arbitrators on several occasions over the years, which has given you plenty of opportunity to discuss any issues you think remain unresolved. If, of course, you believe that I am an unredeemable case, then no feedback is to be expected, as it would be a waste of your valuable time. Otherwise a more detailed response would be useful.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
16:35, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
AGK I am surprised you are not recusing yourself here All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
16:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC).
Native Foreigner I am always interested in any wisdom about my actions. I reiterate the invitation to share or discuss them, here, on my talk page, by email, by phone/Skype or in person which I made some considerable time ago.
As to looking into the case, I'm afraid it's a bit of a mammoth, but I find the weakness of the supporting evidence to the findings, and particularly the need to go back additional years quite telling. To take one example, I am under sanctions now, partly for making edits in 2010, which someone has deemed were "too fast" to comply with BOTPOL. And yet there is nothing in BOTPOL of 10 November 2010 about any limitation on assisted editing speed. (Later versions specifically exclude speed alone as being an issue.) And the speed wasn't excessive - most editors who do administrative work will have had bursts of comparable speed - for example you edited at 10 edits per minute on 17 July. According to the 2012 committee you should have submitted a BRFA authorisation for that.
Now this is just one part of one finding, and it took quite some research to check the BOTPOL pages for the appropriate dates, check the evidence, come up with a comparator. It is also a nominally objective piece of evidence and a nominally objective policy. For subjective matters like being "civil" and "responsive" the amount of work required to construct a good refutation is much higher. I therefore requested the committee allow me 14 days to put together a response to the proposed findings. This was refused and I never got to defend myself from the very surprising proposed decision, and have been working on-and-off to deal with the problems it has caused ever since.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:57, 13 October 2015 (UTC).
DGG Perhaps you would like to give an example? We have a lot of tools in our kit-bag to deal with problems, making them mostly trivial to resolve. There are no negative findings about any automated edits. Indeed finding WP:ARB RF EX EX EX states:
He has extensive experience with and expertise in the use of automation...
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
13:08, 14 October 2015 (UTC).
Salvio giuliano Thank you for your positive response.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC).
Doug Weller Thanks for your thoughtful response. It might be of interest to know that I offered to work with a similar halting system during the workshop phase of the case. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC).
DeltaQuad Thanks for your response, it's good to see another positive outlook. It's not really out of the blue I have suggested such steps as most arbs now seem to endorse several times over the years. In fact I emailed this request to the Committee over two months ago, so there was plenty of advance warning!
So perhaps it's time for a motion? All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:21, 7 November 2015 (UTC).
Pause clause = Any query, must halt until resolved, to the satisfaction of an uninvolved admin if required.
Stipulated that anything fully automated is subject to the normal WP:BOTPOL requirements, including BRFA where necessary.
Apologies in advance if I have mis-represented anyone or omitted anyone.
Let me suggest some motions - clearly some fancy wording would be needed:
Clearly 2 is my ideal, but any combination of 3 4 and 5 would allow me to proceed with most of the day-to-day tasks I do far more effectively, and to help other Wikipedians with their projects.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:46, 26 November 2015 (UTC).
@ Euryalus: I am afraid this is typical. I requested a fortnight, or at least a week to respond to the propose decision in this case. I was denied - time was too valuable. However a few months to pass a motion where there is clearly consensus that some relaxation, if not total removal, should be passed seems to be "meh, so what?" Moreover I am castigated for bringing requests for amendment, even though I have successfully had one important finding struck as factually inaccurate. It is hard to express how uninterested I am in this whole process, except as a necessity. If there had been a timely response to this request, even a partial lifting, we might now be half way through a six month period of evaluation whether a further lightening might be acceptable.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC).
I'm not sure what exactly would prevent Rich from parsing a large data set and posting his results, which he mentions above with regards to analysis of WMF data to draw inferences about the editing population. If anything stands in the way of this, it needs to be set aside, at a minimum. As for the rest, once again ArbCom is looking more than a little stubborn and vindictive here in not allowing RF some sort of path back to full functionality as an editor. Drop his restrictions and restore them by motion if he resumes negative behavior, it seems obvious. I'm very frustrated with the current committee's lack of faith or willingness to take minor risks for the greater good of the project. Carrite ( talk) 14:56, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
I can see that Arbcom might see an opportunity here merely to clarify the original excessive limitations and allow Rich to use hotcat and reflinks and to generate reports in his own userspace or ideally Wikipedia space. But really the time for such a clarification was three and a half years ago, surely by now it is time to simply lift that sanction.
As Rich mentioned he has produced some very useful lists
Wikipedia:Articles with UK Geocodes but without images being my favourite example. Along with a couple of other editors I've been testing image adding as an exercise for new editors, and we reckon we are ready, we just need this sanction lifted so we can get the report regularly refreshed instead of telling newbies to remove items from the list.
With the loss of toolserver and the problems at labs we have lost many regular reports. Including three areas I've started or been involved in such as Death Anomalies - which would be the next one I'd ask Rich to consider adopting. The lack of these reports is incredibly frustrating, and seriously holds the project back. You have an opportunity to reduce that problem by lifting or at least reducing the restrictions on Rich. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:23, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
It is time to move on, and let the Community of Wikipedians take over, rather than Arbcom never letting go and in the process throwing away the Committee's valuable time, which ought to be invested on real risks and divisive harmful issues within the community.
There is no risk whatsoever to Wikimedia projects if all sanctions are now lifted. This long ago became a incomprehensible and bureaucratic punishment, rather than a sanction that can be claimed to be done to "protect the community", or Rich for that matter.
If members of Arbcom wish to advise the Wikipedia community, they might validly suggest a voluntary restriction like 10 pages per minute. I have no doubt that Rich would subscribe to these suggestions and make a case with the community when he is ready to relax them further. There are plenty of highly active Wikimedians that will help Rich out with advice and reviews of his edits, should they introduce any issues with articles or templates.
Everyone writing here knows that Rich is a valuable contributor who has rare talents to offer our shared mission and he should be supported, encouraged and praised for his astonishing commitment, rare skills and patience during this years long case.
I haven't talked in person to Rich since last year. However we have had several chats about the future of the projects, chapters and the Foundation over the years. Back in 2012 I interviewed him about his experience with Arbcom, this remains unpublished. I expected to write it up once his Arbcom sanctions ended, as I did not want an interview which examined the experience and emotional impact that long punitive cases like this have, to influence the case or later appeals. We had no idea that this would be eating up our time and stopping Rich from contributing in 2015. -- Fæ ( talk) 12:55, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
After three and a half years, it's time to just lift these sanctions. I don't think leaving them in place in any way serves the interest of the project. I doubt very much that Rich is suddenly going to go off into 'La La Land' if these restrictions are lifted. It's time to AGF here and move on. Also, it is reasonable to assume that leaving these sanctions in place will make it impossible for Rich to advance at RfA and be resysopped – thus leaving sanction in place almost seems punitive at this point. Anyway, that's my $0.02. -- IJBall ( contribs • talk) 04:33, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Adding my support for the sanction to be lifted. Others have said it more eloquently above so I won't try and rehash it. Plus, if I'm honest, I'm still pretty annoyed about the original decision and I'm not sure if writing a few paragraphs criticising the committee would help Rich's case here. Suffice it to say, I think they made the wrong call then and it looks even more wrong three years down the track. Please do the right thing and extend Rich some good faith. Jenks24 ( talk) 07:28, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
While intuition and gut feeling about something might be legitimate on Wikipedia; in an Arbitration case and with the arbs as with the rest of the community those feelings must be supported by specific diffs of actions which clearly indicate a user cannot be trusted or has not functioned appropriately under a restriction. 31/2 years is along time, and I don't see any specific diffs from that time period pointing to poor editing behaviour or to behaviours which would indicate a restriction is necessary. Arbitrators are held to the same standards we all are and should support allegations with substantive proof for their positions. Arbitrators are not judges or juries; they are the neutral third party in disputes. Here the parties. the members of the community who have concerns and Rich have spoken so the arbs then, given the definitions of their role must indicate why this is not sufficient to undue a restrictions. In my opinion assuming a position on 3 1/2 years of editing with out anything specific or substantive to support that position is unfair and punitive neither which are appropriate.
The community is the encyclopedia. They, community and encyclopedia, as I think you are implying are not mutually exclusive except in some instances. Your comment brought up for me an conern I have when I see the statement, "this is an encyclpedia first." It is not an encyclpedia first, it is first a collaboratibe project the goal of which is to create an encyclopedia. Unless the individuals are treated fairly the communithy will eventually collapse and so of course will the encyclopedia. I have great respect for Thryduulf's consistent, deeply thoughtful comments. Thank you. :O)( Littleolive oil ( talk) 15:48, 19 October 2015 (UTC)) Statement by {other-editor}
Some of Rich statements are extremely encouraging: "one suggested that I was "not responsive". I do not here challenge that claim, I simply point out that since that date I have been responsive." and reassuring: "I am not looking to any of the half-dozen tools I mention to perform masses of edits.". These are countered by argumentation: "There are no negative findings about any automated edits."—Findings of fact are hopefully neutral; and rationale that are not obviously for the benefit of the encyclopedia: "eligibility for employment off-wiki" and "notably impeding my recent RfA".
The block has had a positive effect on Rich's contributions and it is extremely pleasing that Rich has built a new niche after the boundaries were made clear—but editors have long memories of the (past) unparalleled disruption caused by self-invented-up AWB tasks, so it's unlikely to be able to find a route that's going to please everyone the first time around. We can see the clearly divided opinions, so something down the middle is probably the least unpalatable to all.
It is extremely easy to simply say "no", but perhaps Doug et al's suggestions of limited parole in own User space and performing tasks requested by others (ie. not dreamt-up) in non-article space, are a plausible solution. For the proponents this gives Rich Farmbrough a chance to prove himself, and for the doubters this can be seen as WP:ROPE. Enforcement likely needs to stay at WP:AE with incrementing draconian blocks, because this is the only remedy has worked effectively in effecting behavioural change, with everything else has resulted in endless discussion ("dramaz"). For AE to be effective any new boundaries require equally clear-cut edges so that evaluation can be quantifiable and enforcement can be emotionless—Rich should know where the edges are without the need to feel or push.
Yes, I have [past tense] been massively inconvenienced by Rich + bots for several years, half-a-decade ago. I've been watching this and I'm even willing to argue for some level of rehabilitation. Even I'm amazed by that. Support has its limits through; and I would invite Rich to make a clear statement about whether he wishes to go the bot route (here) or the admin route (RfA)—I don't think any combination of trying to do both is either tenable or feasible. Such an undertaking might well be sufficient for even the most resolute doubters to come around. — Sladen ( talk) 21:58, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
The only lingering damage from Rich's automated editing that I'm aware of is that which is part of the history-merge backlog. It's unfortunately a catch-22 that Rich can't repair these without the admin tools. Can anyone with a long memory identify any other issues caused by Rich's automated edits which have not yet been repaired? If yes, I'd ask him to fix those first before granting this request. If no, then I agree that by now it is time to simply lift the sanction. "Probation" can simply be requiring him to promptly fix any damage he creates, and to make limited "trial runs" of any new major repetitive automated edits, then stop and wait to ensure that there is no negative reaction to it, so that if there is, the repair of such damage will not be exceedingly difficult or time-consuming. Wbm1058 ( talk) 02:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
It's been over 3 years now. IMHO, the restriction should be repealed & Rich given a chance to prove himself. GoodDay ( talk) 02:32, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Rich's sanctions were made 3.5 years ago. They were criticized as ill-defined back then, and 3.5 years on they are more ill-defined than they were, because Wikipedia editing tools have moved on. I would like to see the sanction lifted altogether, but I understand the "risk" that our honorable Arbitrators think they're taking on this manner. Even so, I think Remedy 2 desperately needs to be rewritten in a way that is tool-independent and objectively enforceable - "any edits that reasonably appear to be automated" has never been properly enforceable and has generated so much adverse wiki-lawyering over the years. As a compromise, I propose limiting the scope of Rich's sanctions to reader-facing namespaces only (article, template, category, portal; excluding all talk pages); and redefining the sanction in terms of edit rate, e.g. max 1 edit per minute, or 200 edits per 24 hours. Der yck C. 22:48, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
You can tell when a sanction has become punitive rather than protective in the mind of an arbitrator when the response to an amendment request is simply "no". That's it. No reasons, no discussion, apparently no consideration. This sanction should be lifted. -- MichaelMaggs ( talk) 01:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
I have added a question at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Rich Farmbrough/Questions#Question from User:Fram which contains some information relevant to this amendment request, particularly the part about the User:Rich Farmbrough/Redirect tool (an automatic redirect creator made between June and August 2015) and the apparent test runs of it in the mainspace, resulting in huge numbers of often useless (newly invented) redirects. Fram ( talk) 13:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Three+ years is more than enough already, and these restrictions were excessive to begin with. At bare minimum, most of the specifics asked for should be granted. I looked over Fram's election questions, and RichF's answers appear to be adequate. The "smoking gun" redirect tool is no smoking gun; it's not a bot or other automation tool, despite the name, just a rather simplistic template that helps reduce some typing (which is, pretty much, what templates are for). The community is supposed to forgive and assume the good faith that a second chance is warranted (absent total WP:JERK behavior or other WP:COMPETENCE problems). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:00, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Inam really surprised that a good editor like Rich is burdened by sanctions 3.5 years later, yet an Admin who created massive amounts of crap gets off loosing tools he was barely using. Lift the restructions outright. Legacypac ( talk) 23:56, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
Enacted - Mdann52 ( talk) 08:45, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 14:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
In a case brought against me something over four and years ago, it was found that certain community norms had been broken by me, specifically WP:BOTPOL, WP:5P4 and WP:ARBRFUAT.
I note that in the intervening period I have complied with WP:BOTPOL, been civil and collegial with other editors, and been responsive to other editors concerns, as anyone active in the community will know.
In particular I have worked at WP:TEAHOUSE, welcomed new users, attempted to smooth ruffled feathers at WP:GGTF, mainly by focussing discussion on substantive issues, provided assistance to other editors both on and off-wiki (a list could be made available if desired). I have continued to work on other wikis with no issues.
I also continue to perform work high community trust, on protected templates, but more importantly on edit filters where, together with others (notably Dragons Flight) I have overhauled almost every filter to ensure that the whole system continues to work (it was failing) and additional filters can be implemented.
Moreover not only have I been policy compliant, collegial and responsive, I have every intention of continuing indefinitely to be so.
For these reasons in October 2015 I requested (with substantially the wording above) the then Arbitration Committee to terminate Remedy 2. The Committee agreed, partly as a response to significant community support, as a first step to reduce the scope of the remedy, removing restrictions from my user spaces and subpages of Wikipedia:Database reports.
Subsequently, in addition to my regular contributions as outlined above, and other endeavours to help make the way Wikipedia works more public, [56] [57] I have been able to add value in other ways.
I have been able to run User:Femto Bot (after the usual, though not strictly necessary for user-page-bot Bot Authorisation Request), to maintain the reports, by county, of UK geolocated articles with no image - and appropriate links to Geograph, a source of suitably licensed images.
I have also implemented the control panel I suggested in 2012 which allows any editor to turn off any bot task.
I have also been able to perform mundane administrative tasks such as checking out systemic naming descriptors, monitoring the migration of RAN drafts, creating lists of missing women scientists, women of Scotland and redlinked FRSs without fear of retribution.
Given the above which indicates the benefits to the project of the previous reduction, the length of time which has elapsed since the original case was brought, and the lack of any subsequent substantive issue, and the apparent support from the community, I would request the Committee to terminate remedy 2 as soon as convenient.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC).
Note: I have already agreed with BAG to re-apply for any old tasks that still need running. So it is a matter of form only whether this clause is included.
I thank those Arbitrators who have already !voted on these proposals, and look forward to a speedy resolution. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
07:33, 4 July 2016 (UTC).
As an active member of the bot approvals group I am not opposed to vacating the prior remedy. I suggest that any closing motion include a final reminder to Rich Farmbrough that both the spirit and letter of the bot policy are important to the community. As far as bot tasks that were approved and since suspended prior to the original sanctions ( e.g. Fepto Bot tasks 0-6 and any other tasks approved prior to the sanctions listed on other bot accounts) , I recommend that the original approvals are explicitly rescinded, without prejudice for future (re)approval requests. — xaosflux Talk 19:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
As I BAG member, I am in favour of Rich being able to use semi-automated tools such as HotCat, Twinkle, etc. All old bot requests whether they have been approved or not, they should be considered as expired. This is something I would suggest to anyone who would like to resume a code written 4-5 years ago. Any bot request should go through the normal bot approval process. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 07:54, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
For a long time already these sanctions continue to be merely punitive rather than preventative. That is contrary to the spirit (and policy) of Wikipedia. RF is a highly intelligent and mature individual and I see no point in continuing to deprive him of the use of any scripts. After all that has been said and done, including the appalling treatment he received on his bid for re-adminship , I don't perceive any risk whatsoever in lifting the last remaining restrictions and it's time now to fully restore his dignity. -- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 16:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm not completely comfortable at the moment with a total removal of sanctions. However I am in favour of a near total relaxation. Specifically I would allow everything except unsupervised edits to content namespaces.
The reason for this is that I don't have confidence that he understands why the community viewed the mistakes as seriously add they did/do. Awkward42 ( talk) [the alternate account of Thryduulf ( talk)] 19:18, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
As a BAGer, I have no problem with rescinding his blanket prohibition against using all automation tools, as supervised script use can certainly make one more productive and generally less frustrated by many of the shortcomings of the editing experience. That said, I still feel it prudent to err on the side of caution when it comes to suspected unsupervised edits that haven't been approved, especially if done in high volumes or at high rates, as Thryduulf alludes to. For example, if, while a large number of clearly similar edits are being made, an editor pings his talk page with a concern related to them—especially if it's an objection—then he should be expected to immediately stop and respond, thereby demonstrating he's likely supervising his edits.
As far as old bot approvals go, I wholeheartedly agree with xaosflux and Magioladitis; all the old bots should be assumed to be unapproved (perhaps something along the lines of any of those approved prior to whenever the latest AE action was?). No prejudice against re-approval. -- slakr\ talk / 02:49, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Opabinia regalis: Weighing in purely as a matter of principle, the proposed probation terms don't look bad to me. They somewhat resemble probation terms imposed years ago, which commonly stated (something like) "so-and-so may be blocked if, in the opinion of any uninvolved administrator, so-and-so violates any [principle of Wikipedia, or Wikipedia policy, or whatnot]" or "so-and-so may be banned from any page so-and-so disrupts". The probation usually doesn't prohibit anything that's not already prohibited, it simply provides that administrators have greater available remedies available for breaches of the admonition. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:02, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
The case was quite a while ago, and no problems I know off have occurred during the last two years (perhaps longer, I haven't checked; the most recent ones I remeber were with the buggy "redirect creator", but I can't recall the date of those). I don't really see what could change between this appeal and a next one: either Rich Farmbrough has regained enough community (or ArbCom) confidence to give him a new chance at automated editing, and then now is as good a time as any, or else he will never regain that confidence, and then it is rather cruel to let him appeal every six months or so, and the committee should just send a "never" message. I would support a lifting of this restriction, with the need to get renewed bot approval for all tasks he wants to restart (or any new tasks obviously). The advantage of probation seems to be that, should serious problems happen in the probation period, we can go to Arb enforcement instead of ANI or a new ArbCom case? Fram ( talk) 11:44, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
I am in favour of removing all these restrictions, with the caveat that all bot tasks be deemed expired, and thus requiring re-approval. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:51, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't have much to add to what has been said above. The sanctions on Rich were ridiculously broad, and it is to his credit that he has complied with them. Time for the sanctions to be removed. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 00:29, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
The sanctions in question were applied over four years ago now. At the time, yes, that was probably necessary to prevent further disruption to the project. However, since that arbitration case, Rich has always fully complied with the sanctions laid upon him, and the remedy has long since been more of a punishment than a preventative measure. I would be fully supportive of a complete removal of these sanctions, assuming that the previous bot approvals are rescinded (as they're most likely outdated or done by other bots now). Omni Flames ( talk) 12:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
While reading through this request (and being familiar with previous controversy over the sanctions on Rich), I was working out how to express my opinion, and then I saw that Kudpung has expressed my thoughts perfectly (I wish I knew how he did that). So please consider my recommendation to be exactly the same as his, for exactly the same reasons. Boing! said Zebedee ( talk) 18:31, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
He's clearly gotten it, and changed. Four+ years is long enough. We should expire ancient sanctions, with much less drama, far more often when it's clear that the editor is question is not some nut-job or patently incompetent. Rich is capable, collaborative, and productive. ArbCom should remove the tattoo it placed on his forehead. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:37, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Some parts of the restrictions, such as the ban on use of hotcat, always looked punitive rather than precautionary. Other restrictions may have been worthwhile in the past but are now unneeded. Past Arbcoms have made some bad decisions re Rich, I hope this Arbcom will do better. Ϣere SpielChequers 18:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
Remedy 2 of the Rich Farmbrough case is rescinded. In its place, the following remedy is enacted:Rich Farmbrough is placed on probation for a period of six months. During this six month period, starting from the enactment of this motion, Rich Farmbrough is required to
- perform all high-volume and high-speed edits on authorized bot accounts only
- provide edit summaries sufficiently identifying their task on authorized bot accounts
- disclose on their userpage of the editing user (whether bot or Rich himself) any high-volume or high-speed editing tasks. In the disclosure Rich must give an appropriate description of the task being performed and include any appropriate links to approvals.
- comply with the bot policy.
If in the view of any uninvolved administrator Rich violates these sanctions during the 6 month period, they may block or restrict Rich from some or all aspects of bot editing or high-volume high-speed tasks, whatever is appropriate to prevent damage to the encyclopedia. After the 6 month period, this motion is rescinded unless blocks or new restrictions are placed as a result of this motion, which then will require the involvement of the Arbitration Committee at ARCA. It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.
If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the committee.
It's only a rough draft I made in about 20 minutes, so feel free to edit for grammar/wording and propose change on issues with it. I feel like it strikes a balence of ensuring a smooth transition and keeps our hands out of areas that aren't ours. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 05:54, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
Abstentions | Support votes needed for majority |
---|---|
0 | 8 |
1–2 | 7 |
3–4 | 6 |
Remedy 2 of the Rich Farmbrough case is rescinded. In its place, the following remedy is enacted:Rich Farmbrough is placed on probation for a period of six months. During this six month period, starting from the enactment of this motion, Rich Farmbrough is required to
- perform all high-volume and high-speed edits on authorized bot accounts only
- provide edit summaries sufficiently identifying their task on authorized bot accounts
- disclose on their userpage of the editing user (whether bot or Rich himself) any high-volume or high-speed editing tasks. In the disclosure Rich must give an appropriate description of the task being performed and include any appropriate links to approvals.
- comply with the bot policy.
If in the view of any uninvolved administrator Rich violates these sanctions during the 6 month period, they may block or restrict Rich from some or all aspects of bot editing or high-volume high-speed tasks, whatever is appropriate to prevent damage to the encyclopedia. After the 6 month period, this motion is rescinded unless blocks or new restrictions are placed as a result of this motion, which then will require the involvement of the Arbitration Committee at ARCA. It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.
If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the Committee.
The sanctions placed on Rich Farmbrough as part of the Rich Farmbrough arbitration case ( t) ( ev / t) ( w / t) ( pd / t) are rescinded. For clarity this includes remedy 2 which prohibited Rich Farmbrough from using automation and clause B in the June 2012 amendment.If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the Committee.
It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.
Case clerks: Guerillero ( Talk) & NuclearWarfare ( Talk) Drafting arbitrator: Kirill Lokshin ( Talk)
Wikipedia Arbitration |
---|
|
Track related changes |
Behaviour on this page: Arbitration case pages exist to assist the Arbitration Committee in arriving at a fair, well-informed decision. You are required to act with appropriate decorum during this case. While grievances must often be aired during a case, you are expected to air them without being rude or hostile, and to respond calmly to allegations against you. Accusations of misbehaviour posted in this case must be proven with clear evidence (and otherwise not made at all). Editors who conduct themselves inappropriately during a case may be sanctioned by an arbitrator, clerk, or functionary, without further warning, by being banned from further participation in the case, or being blocked altogether. Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or the clerks, will be met with sanctions. Behavior during a case may also be considered by the committee in arriving at a final decision.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
at 23:06, 28 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
Amend to
Rich Farmbrough has on a number of occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot, where this was uncontroversial, and generally with pre-approval of the blocking admin. In addition he has been scrupulous in ensuring that he has remedied any problems, or claimed problems, for which he is to be commended.
This is a more accurate statement of the situation. For the existing wording to stand the Committee would have to show that many (I would assume more than five) unblocks did not address the reason for stopping the bot. They will not be able to show this because it is not the case. It is a matter of regret that the committee would wish to publish such falsehoods without even the most cursory examination.
@Arbs. One, or even several is not many.
@Corcelles: Firstly it was established in the case that there is no such thing as process. Secondly in the case you cite the blocking admin had explicitly permitted a self unblock. Thirdly we are going back over a year to find one example, which fails.
@Fozzie: Since I was denied a chance to rebut the case at the time, the committee has left this the only on-wiki avenue available to me. To deny that would not only be ultra vires, and contrary to natural justice but counter productive. Moreover the Committee has added false statements to the case post closure. This is something the committee should want to rectify.
Additional notes. Fram continues to pursue me here. If that is not disruptive I don't know what is. Note that Fram refused to answer my questions on the case, and even changed my posts. Fram says I did not contribute to the case, I made over 500 edits (and I am still waiting for an answer as to how many hours a day I should be expected to dedicate to a case who's trolling tenet was debunked on day 1.
@Fram. Of course hiding the fact that you - like the other parties, are great at lip service to collegiality, but totally unable to put any actual effort into it is not fine. And redacting part of my post to an ArbCom case would seem very foolish, if not downright abusive. Note that another party suggested questions I should ask, I added them and still no response was forthcoming.
@Silk: You seem to have missed the part of the case where it was decided that unblocking one's own bots was totally within process per se.
@NewYorkBrad: You were more active than any other arbitrator, and, going by evidence, paid more attention to the content. AGK was also inactive, and had promised not to vote, but hat has not stopped him voting either on the main case or here.
@PhilKnight , I would be happy with striking the FoF altogether or a compromise wording.
Rich Farmbrough has on a number of occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot, where this was uncontroversial, and generally with pre-approval of the blocking admin. While Fram takes issue with one of the unblocks, almost all are uncontroversial, and all were made in good faith and the spirit of collegiality and cooperation we have come to expect from Rich.
@Beestra, It appears that ArbCom have collectively dug in and adopted a position of infallibility. I sincerely hope this is not the case.
Rich
Farmbrough,
12:41, 30 May 2012 (UTC).
Rich Farmbrough is still using out-of-context facts to defend himself, even though the actual full context has been presented to him again and again. For all readers unaware of that context, "Secondly in the case you cite the blocking admin had explicitly permitted a self unblock." should be continued with "under strict conditions". The actual self-unblock did not follow these conditions at all. The self-unblock edit summary "Vexatious disruptive block" is quite clear as well.
As for "Since I was denied a chance to rebut the case at the time", this is a rather slanted reading of what actually happened, i.e. that he had every chance to defend himself, but largely ignored discussions (even though people like Dirk Beetstra, Hammersoft and Kumioko found the time and tried hard to do his work for him instead), often failed to provide evidence for his claims, and in general waited until the very last moment, after the proposed decision had been open for quite a while (since 5 May) and arbitrators started voting to close the case (12 May); then he suddenly needed a few more weeks to be able to present his case (14 May: "I started drafting my comments on the new material in the proposed decision yesterday." and "I will need at least a week, possibly two to respond to these matters."). This tactic failed. Like Kumioko said, "he spent a lot of time editing and not enough time discussing and defending". You were not "denied a chance", you choose to spend your time on other things and waited too long before starting your rebuttal; you shouldn't be blaming this on other people or on the ArbCom. Fram ( talk) 08:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich Farmbrough: "Additional notes. Fram continues to pursue me here. If that is not disruptive I don't know what is." You are making claims about a block of Smackbot I made, and the unblock conditions I gave. I think it is only natural that I give my version of that block, as a directly involved party. This has little to do with "pursuing". Apart from that, I was a party to the case, so amendments and clarifications to that case are of natural interest to me. I don't see you complaining that Beetstra and Hammersoft, who weren't parties to the case and not involved with these blocks, comment here, so apparently you are only bothered by people "pursuing you" when they don't support you, which is of course a good method to end with only supportive comments...
@Rich Farmbrough: "Note that Fram refused to answer my questions on the case, and even changed my posts." I presume you refer to my removal of the empty section "Replies by Fram" here? That's hardly "changing your posts", we shouldn't keep sections which will remain empty. Note that the final page still has two other such empty sections, since in reality no one answered your questions there. Perhaps the problem was more with the questions than with the refusal? I can't remember any instance where I actually changed a post you made.
@Rich Farmbrough: "Fram says I did not contribute to the case, I made over 500 edits (and I am still waiting for an answer as to how many hours a day I should be expected to dedicate to a case who's trolling tenet was debunked on day 1)." I did not say that you didn't contribute to the case, please don't make such incorrect claims. Fram ( talk) 07:01, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich Farmbrough: if you consider an edit summary of "Vexatious disruptive block." (your words at the unblock) as "the spirit of collegiality and cooperation we have come to expect from Rich." (your words used here to describe these unblocks), then I have nothing more to add, really... Fram ( talk) 12:46, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
As I asked the last time for the previous amendment - could the members of the ArbCom please specify which of the unblocks were out of line, and how they were out of line. This still suggests that ALL of the unblocks of Rich Farmbrough were out of line. A member of the ArbCom provides below one example, SilkTork now defines it as 'several' (which is also not the same as 'many'); I am sure that they can specify more examples to back up their statement 'on many occasions'. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 08:28, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
@Rich: As usual. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 14:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
It is clear from the wording Rich proposed that there is no way this amendment would ever be supported by any arbitrator. It is equally clear that ArbCom has failed to make its case for the revised FoF. So here we have one FoF wording that seems absurd being proposed by the target of an ArbCom case, and another FoF that seems absurd that has the backing of ArbCom. Not surprisingly, the body that wrote the latter refuses to consider modification of its version, and has (with SirFozzie's comments) threatened the writer of the former should he continue to make additional requests.
ArbCom has desysopped Rich. They have banned him from any automation (though, can't agree on what automation is). ArbCom considered banning him from the project. Rich has been pushed to the very edge of the precipice on this project. This, for one "wholly out of process unblock". I concur with Beetstra. Please show us the evidence that supports your finding. Please tell me there's more than one or two unblocks where Rich erred. Please. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:33, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
at 22:14, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
Allowed to use Femto Bot to archive own talk page, as no other archiving solution has the required responsiveness, nor the ability to split-archive to to-do lists.
Allowed to use Femnto Bot to archive own talk page, as no other archiving solution has the required responsiveness, nor the ability to split-archive to to-do lists.
No. Listen. You turned it down because a standard archiving solution would do the job. I have explained that it would not. The request was closed and archived (without informing me - as usual). Given the extra information makes your previous reasoning moot, you should reconsider.
The suggestion was that the matters that were concerning "the community" applied to repetitive edits to many pages. This is an Arb's opinion. this does not fall in that category and should therefore be allowed without quibble.
@Casliber: Archiving my talk page was the key issue? I must have been in a different case.
@Jclemens: You remarked "We can deal with specific requests for clarification that pose real problems. In the context of the case, automation is clearly intended to be that allowing an editor to modify multiple articles or other pages in rapid succession." On that basis this should be a speedy approval. Lets see if consistency rears its beautiful head.
@AGK " No, it is too early, and I see some value to giving the whole issue some time to settle down." yet you wouldn't give me time to prepare a proper rebuttal?
@ArbCom Saying it is too soon is meaningless. The only thing that is likely to change between now and next week, is that one of us dies. Vague doomsday scenarios where the bot goes berserk and "vandalises all of the Wikipedia" are not helpful. The blanket application of the "remedy" to areas where it is not intended does not help anyone. Moreover, coupled with the committee re-writing the case it creates a bad impression of the committee to deliberately force a user's interaction with other users to be more awkward, for the sake of bureaucracy.
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:36, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
@Risker: thank you for being the first Arb to approve.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:46, 28 May 2012 (UTC).
@Silk: That "let them eat cake" response wholly fails to address the point.
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:10, 29 May 2012 (UTC).
I support this. It's completely unrelated to the behaviour that lead to the case, and Wikipedia gains nothing by disallowing Rich to manage his own userspace. This is utterly uncontroversial stuff, and one of the reasons WP:BOTPOL says bots editing the operator's userspace usually don't require approval.
[A]ny bot or automated editing process that affects only the operator's or their own userspace (user page, user talk page, and subpages thereof), and which are not otherwise disruptive, may be run without prior approval.
I hope ARBCOM realize that their "Really, you just asked for some derogation and it was declined... Therefore WP:SPEEDYDENY per WP:IDHT!" does no one a service here. Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 13:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
Initiated by Nobody Ent at 15:30, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using AutoWikiBrowser and any custom automation he has created whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be AWB or custom automation shall be assumed to be so.
Restriction as currently written is overly broad and vague and unnecessary to address the behaviors the community has found to be disruptive. What is "automation" in the context of a internet hosted web server? An absurd-for-explanatory-purposes example: the ping utility tells me that my client is currently using ip address 208.80.154.225 to access en.wikipedia.org, but I don't put that in my browser address bar because
DNS automates the process of converting domain names to IPs. The case revolved around customization RF created himself, not standard tools many users use, such as spell check or twinkle. Even a template is a type of automation and is therefore included in the scope of the remedy as currently written.
@JClemens Committee member's interpretation of the current wording are inconsistent
[1],
[2],
[3],
[4] and RF's rollback privilege has been removed by arbcom clerk
[5]
Nobody Ent 16:43, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
...and restored by arbcom member
[6] with their interpretation
[7]
Nobody Ent
19:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
@AGK ya'll can talk about
strawman all you want but the diffs above clearly indicate ArbCom has issued a remedy without the individual members actually knowing what it meant. Bureaucratic quibbling over whether this oversight should be pointed out to you via request for amendment, request for clarification,
WT:ACN, trouts on all your userpages, email, IRC or smoke signals is contrary to the
not pillar. It is ArbCom's responsibility to resolve disputes, not create them, and this ill conceived remedy is causing churn on
the noticeboard,
user talk , and
AN.
Nobody Ent
19:48, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think this request is a strawman at all. Already two arbitrators have felt that rollback could be reasonably concluded to be automation. Already arbitrators are disagreeing to the point of revoking/restoring his rollback rights because of this disagreement. The evidence here is already plain; if ArbCom can't figure out what automation is or is not, I dare say the community won't either. The restriction isn't so clear as Jclemens seems to think it is. There's apparently still uncertainty as to whether Twinkle or Huggle qualify as "automation". I have to agree with the filer of this request; the restriction as currently written is overly broad and vague. It can readily be used as a bludgeoning tool to generate an insane amount of drama. At a minimum, it should be modified such that any question regarding whether something is or is not automation should be addressed to ArbCom, and ArbCom required to respond via consensus before any block is applied for violation of that restriction. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 20:53, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Rather than ArbCom trying to decide "is Rollback automation?", it might be more useful if ArbCom simply decided is Rich allowed to use Rollback. This would solve the case-in-point, without getting side-tracked. — Sladen ( talk) 22:10, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Back on the proposed decision talk page, I suggested this remedy instead. But it's been ignored. Maybe now it will get some attention:
Rich Farmbrough is banned from mass editing regardless of the method, broadly construed, for a period of <INSERT PERIOD>. That is, RF is banned from both running bots and from behaving like a WP:MEATBOT. This does not cover script-assisted vandal fighting (such as the use of rollback), neither should it prevent the use of assisted-editing to make improvements to specific articles, such as putting the finishing touch on an article after a rewrite/expansion, provided RF took part in the rewrite/expansion himself.
Headbomb { talk / contribs / physics / books} 01:07, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
In this edit, SilkTork stated "There are some that it would be highly unlikely would be a cause for concern if Rich used them (such as the one that with one click closes an AfD and does all the tedious stuff very efficiently)". I don't know whether Rich would do so, but it is certainly possible to use that script in a manner that would cause concern. Recall that Fastily ( talk · contribs) recently retired in the face of accusations that he was closing so many deletion discussions so rapidly that he was not exercising due care in doing so.
I think the problem some have with Rich is that he obviously likes to make mass edits of various sorts, to the point where it seems he doesn't pay enough attention to whether the edits are needed or are being done right. The hope behind the automation ban, in my opinion, is that he will direct his skills to making a few quality edits rather than large numbers of sometimes-controversial edits, and possibly that he will use his technical skills to assist others who will be able to make assisted edits in a manner more in-line with community consensus (in this, though, I doubt any sanction would succeed; there are enough editors around who would be happy to boost their edit count by making questionable edits, and enough others who would be happy to be proxy for Rich if they thought they could get away with it).
This amendment is proposing change in exactly the wrong direction. Opening up the gigantic loophope that Rich could go back to his old tricks as long as he uses automation created by someone else is an awful idea. If you Rich supporters really want to do some good, let Rich decide what he wants to do and let him apply for amendments. Anomie ⚔ 02:20, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
@Jclemens: That is a valuable clarification, thank you for that.
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:57, 19 May 2012 (UTC).
@SilkTork: Since it was demonstrated neither that I was "not editing responsibly" nor concomitantly that "using automation either encouraged, caused or multiplied" the hypothetical, it is not surprising that this becomes ever more Kafkaesque. I prefer here Jclemens approach that at least addresses the myth, to the suggestion, however true, that I might be banned due to vexatious wiki-lawyering, and should edit accordingly. I have avoided the discussion about what does and does not constitute automation for two reasons, firstly it is facile per se, secondly it gives credence to the tottering edifice upon which the ruling is founded.
Rich
Farmbrough,
10:44, 20 May 2012 (UTC).
@WohltemperteFuchs "it's best to simply put in place a clear restriction and then relax on a per-case basis afterwards" .. that's not really working too well right now.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:16, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
I believe Headbomb's suggested change is a good idea, except that it should stop after the word "rollback". The remaining text might provide a potential loophole to justify editing behavior which the community has clearly had problems with. I see no need for the use of automated tool to put the finishing touches on articles, this can be done quite adequately by hand. Beyond My Ken ( talk) 03:09, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
I think that the repeated dramas surrounding user:Δ should illustrate to everybody why simple, bright line restrictions are preferable to loose ones that give scope for wikilawyering (regardless of who by).
In this specific case, it has been demonstrated that Rich has proven he cannot be trusted to use automated tools solely to the benefit of the project. Until such time that Rich regains the trust of the community (which will likely be several months at minimum and definitely not be until Rich demonstrates he understands why he lost it in the first place) I suggest that SilkTork's statement, "[N]o automated tools, and if in doubt if the tool is automated, then it should be regarded as automated.", is the one that will produce the least drama and thus be the best way forward.
As I see it there are only five possible ways forward, in decreasing order of my preference:
SilkTork's interpretation of the restriction is the one with the greatest chance of avoiding the least desirable outcome. Thryduulf ( talk) 23:10, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
"Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so. ... Should any user subject to a restriction or topic ban in this case violate that restriction or ban, that user may be blocked." Seems clear to me, particularly in view of Arbitrations findings of fact. If one click of a mouse or one press of the enter key on the keyboard results in two or more edits, that's automation. One click, one edit, is a manual edit and is not automation. There's no need to establish that one click resulted in two or more edits, the edits only need to reasonably appear to be automated for an admin to apply the Arbitration enforcement remedy. In other words, Rich no longer is entitled to benefits of Assume good faith when it comes to the appearance of his multiple edits. As a result, Rich Farmbrough, not the admin enforcing the Arbitration remedy, has the burden of proof and Rich Farmbrough's burden is to make sure that there is objective evidence of manual edits independent of Rich Farmbrough to avoid the Arbitration compelled assumption that his multiple edits are automated. Automation assisting a manual edit is not automation and if an admin knows Rich Farmbrough is using Twinkle, Huggle, Snuggle, or whatever to assist his one click, one edit, then a conclusion that such edits appear to be automated may not be reasonable. The Arbitration enforcement remedy is limited to blocking only, so revoking Rich Farmbrough's rollback rights is not an Arbitration enforcement remedy and not a basis to amend the arbitration remedies. The remedy is may be blocked, not must be blocked, so a decision on whether to block Rich Farmbrough for using MiszaBot, for example, to archive his talk page falls under the exercise of good admin judgment. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 09:31, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@ Beetstra 10:11, 23 May 2012: The remedy reads, "any edits that reasonably appear," not "any edit that reasonably appears." Per the Arbitration remedy itself, the determination of whether Rich Farmbrough is using automation to make edits can be based on looking at two or more edits themselves without having to review the tool or draw a conclusion on the tool used to make those edits. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 10:44, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@ Beetstra 12:02, 23 May 2012: No, that's not right. It's a two part test, not a one part test. The admin first asks whether Rich Farmbrough's edit(s) is from a one click, more than one edit tool. If yes, automation. If no or unclear, then the admin asks whether Rich Farmbrough's edits reasonably appear to be automated. If no, then no. If yes, Arbitration requires the admin to assume that the edits are automated and act based on that. The Arbitration remedy is that the admin then may block Rich Farmbrough. If the admin doesn't think it warranted to block Rich Farmbrough, then they don't have to. If there still is confusion, the solution is not to make a different remedy for remedy 2), the solution merely is to add to the remedy, e.g., 2.1) Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using AutoWikiBrowser. Most people don't use AWB or their own bots, so other than the desyop, the outcome really isn't that onerous of remedy. -- Uzma Gamal ( talk) 11:50, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
@Uzma Gamal: 'If one click of a mouse or one press of the enter key on the keyboard results in two or more edits, that's automation.' - so, using WP:AWB is not automation: one click, one edit. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 10:11, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
@Uzma Gamal 2: with AWB, you do multiple edits - 2 clicks, 2 edits - 10 clicks, 10 edits - 5000 clicks, 5000 edits. They are all manual. According to your interpretation, the use of AWB would not be automation, yet, we are talking about AutoWikiBot. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 12:02, 23 May 2012 (UTC)
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
I am uninvolved in this case as far as I am aware, but I am still making this request. Frankly, the finding of fact leaves the Community with more to speculate about (and is prejudicial to the subject). I ask that if there is support for this amendment, that this be amendment be passed without delay (before more people read finding as it is currently written). Ncmvocalist ( talk) 10:13, 20 May 2012 (UTC)
Since ArbCom is not required to show a tie between evidence and findings of fact (in my opinion, a serious failing in the structure we've asked them to follow), they can vaguely wave at block logs and say there was a problem without actually identifying what the problem was. This is akin to someone in court over a speeding ticket, and when the accused asks for evidence the prosecution says "look at your driving record". Such a response is woefully inadequate, but this is the construct we've asked ArbCom to perform within.
In this particular case, ArbCom could not seem to get its case straight as to what the problem actually was vis-a-vis the unblocking of bots. Evidence was presented which showed admins routinely unblock their own bots and that policy does not address this case. There is an ongoing RfC to address the issue. This amendment makes a statement not connected to evidence nor in anyway showing how Rich's behavior violated policy. As such, it is void. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:08, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
This is terrible revisionism. Arbitrators would do better to simply strike this FoF which
Changing it as suggested would give the appearance of revising the FoF to desperately find support for the poorly thought out and hastily enacted remedies.
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:51, 20 May 2012 (UTC).
N/A
Rich to be allowed to use his talk page archiving task. Femto Bot task 2.
Note: Editors who have gathered that I am a loose cannon, may be interested to note that the BRFA for this task was almost turned down, since no BRFA is generally needed. However I preferred to have written authorisation. Much good it did me.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:36, 21 May 2012 (UTC).
@ AGK. Not so, Misabot does not archive on request, but by date. Moreover it does not allow archiving to different destinations.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:53, 22 May 2012 (UTC).
Right. Rich is trusted enough to be an editor here, but he's not trusted enough to have a bot that does nothing but edit in his own userspace. From Wikipedia:Bot policy, "any bot or automated editing process that affects only the operator's or their own userspace (user page, user talk page, and subpages thereof), and which are not otherwise disruptive, may be run without prior approval." Any bot that he would run in his own userspace would affect only him, and not the project, unless someone wants to speculatively claim Rich is going to launch a DOS attack. Alternatively, you could speculate that if he's permitted to run a bot in his userspace, he'd maliciously set it free to attack the encyclopedia. If he was planning to do that, he wouldn't be asking permission to let the bot run in his userspace. Wow. The enormous lack of assumption of good faith, combined with the undermining of Wikipedia:Bot policy is stunning. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 14:44, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
An offer [10] has now been made by User:28bytes to run the archiving task, if Rich provides the source code/accepts the offer. — Sladen ( talk) 08:00, 24 May 2012 (UTC)
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
Since the arbitrators did not understand the request, thinking that a standard archiving bot would suffice I have opened a new request. It is interesting that the habit of failing to notify me of anything important happening is continuing.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:15, 26 May 2012 (UTC).
Proposed:
Proposed:
Proposed:
Proposed:
The Arbitration Committee has established (through the checkuser tool) that Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs) has, in recent days, used Wikipedia:WikiFunctions and other forms of automation, has taken steps to conceal the automation used in preparing his edits, and thus is in flagrant violation of his editing restrictions.
Ordinarily, because of the aggravating factors, a ban of significant length would be contemplated. While noting that this editor's prior contributions are not grounds for exoneration, the Committee nevertheless is prepared to accept on this one occasion his past work in mitigation. Rich Farmbrough is therefore blocked for thirty days from the English Wikipedia.
After the block expires, Rich Farmbrough is encouraged to work constructively within the limits of his restriction and advised that once he can demonstrate at least six months of trouble free editing he may request reconsideration of the restriction on automation.
Whoa! Do you think I'm a complete idiot? [notes 1] I just posted on my talk page that I was aware that Arbs could see my user agent string.
I am awaiting the response from AGK to which edits are claimed to have this user-agent string, and have asked Rjwilmsi to email me to establish if there is any possibility that the code could post on it's own.
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC).
It is quite remarkable that Rich Farmbrough saved any edits with AWB (because he is not listed on the check page). Nevertheless, the ban on automation has been effective, so far, in reducing the scope of the problematic editing, and Rich has taken up editing content on turtles, which is a positive development. Any "nontrivial" use of automation would be visible in Rich's contribs, but I have not seen any evidence of that. Given that there was use of AWB somehow, it appears from the editing history to have been unintentional. I would like to argue for a significant block (e.g. two weeks or one month) in lieu of a one-year ban, with the proviso that additional violations would lead to more severe sanctions. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:08, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Responding to SilkTork's comment of 02:05, 1 June 2012, I agree that is a real risk, but I think that the edit history will reveal if "hidden" automation is used to actually do anything. It's been apparent from the edit history (without any checkuser info) that Rich was still using some sort of code to remove whitespace etc., and was still occasionally violating his edit restriction, but the scope was so small that I didn't see a benefit in raising the issue. — Carl ( CBM · talk) 02:12, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
The job of ArbCom is to to act as a final binding decision-maker.
all models are wrong, but some are useful
While arbcom is "not a court" they are much more like a court than a legislature or executive. In the Rich Farmborough decision, rathering than rendering a final decision, in expounding this "relax on a per-case basis afterwards" ArbCom appears to have set itself up as some sort of probation officer / nanny -- not a "judicial" function.
The admissions [12] [13] a change was needed because ArbCom didn't finish the job in the first place are troubling. Traditionally ArbCom has taken the time needed to craft complete decisions (even if some editors complain when they run past decision date estimates).
Unfortunately, now, having painted itself into a metaphorical corner, ArbCom is faced with the ridiculous decision point of banning a long term prolific editor for correcting spelling mistakes??? At least two of you (JClemens, AGK) concurred on 19 May that "In the context of the case, automation is clearly intended to be that allowing an editor to modify multiple articles or other pages in rapid succession." can't find diff right now cause of page move.
But there's good news -- it's not real paint...
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
Did Wikipedia elect little minds to ArbCom? I think not.
Do the right thing. Suspend the decision, go back and hash out a workable defined of automation so Rich & the admin corps & the community knows what is allowed and what is not without ridiculous restrictions against spellcheck. Nobody Ent 02:15, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Hammersoft: You know that we gave Rich a last chance (by choosing an automation ban over a site ban) in the arbitration case. You know that I was the first arbitrator to oppose the site-ban. Now you imply that this is all some form of "cover-up" for a secret plot to site-ban him all along. This is utter nonsense, and you know it. AGK [•] 11:28, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Adding comment here from User:Varlaam that was
added to the voting section for motion RF1.
Carcharoth (
talk)
07:58, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Excessive.
Cutting off the nose to spite the face.
Fixed term of four weeks sounds right to me.
Varlaam (
talk)
07:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
Who has been using checkuser to investigate Rich and when were each of these checkusers done? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 02:57, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
In any event the m:CheckUser policy is quite broad in allowing use to 'limit disruption', there would be no violation if RIch was routinely checkusered during the period that he is banned from using automation. There is no requirement that a separate new reason has to be established for each use of the tool, the arbcom sanction in itself justifies it. — Carl ( CBM · talk)
The privacy policy does not cover the date and timestamp on the logs and who performed the check. I am not asking for any identifying information. I am not asking for any private information about Rich whatsoever. I am asking for a list of the checkusers performed from 15 May 2012 through present towards Rich, with only a date and timestamp for each check, and who performed the check. I have asked several times now for this information. I would appreciate a straightforward answer this time. Thank you, -- Hammersoft ( talk) 14:26, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
(1) The checkuser log is confidential. (2) Disclosing data from the log is a slippery slope, and one onto which this project has determined we will not take even the tiniest step. We do not quote the log to those who are not identified to the Foundation. (3) You have not given a good reason to be given any excerpt from the log. (4) Checkusers are accountable to your representatives on the AUSC, to the Foundation's ombudsmen, and to one another—not to you. (5) The log does not exist for you to create drama.
Take your pick of those. I too decline your request. AGK [•] 14:57, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Kumioko, I do not want to explain again why I (or any other arbitrator) ran checkuser queries on Rich Farmbrough. I refer you to our previous statements on this subject, and respectfully ask that you not continue repeating this same, tired line. If you have a concern, refer it to the Wikimedia Foundation Ombudsman Commission. AGK [•] 18:44, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
To address SilkTork's The reason we are here discussing it is: Having five motions for an alleged ArbCom restriction violation is simply additional evidence of the inadequacy of the automated sanction (previously raised by myself et. al.). If, using Elen's example, someone violates 1rr on Six-Day War arbcom wouldn't even be involved; a utility admin would simply deal with the situation. Because of your role as the final arbitrator for dispute resolution on Wikipedia it is important that you collectively act in a manner that instills confidence in the process. Ya'll got two decent options.
The concept 'RF concealed automated edits' is doubly invalid: 1. no workable definition of "automated" has been provided and 2. if the edits were concealed, how he get caught? Nobody Ent 19:31, 2 June 2012 (UTC)
I am annoyed and somewhat hurt that there is a suggestion I concealed automation. I know a similar accusation was made in the case, by an Arb (I forget which, I suppose it must have been Kirill). When I found I had a score of identical typos to fix I seriously considered fixing them with AWB and reporting myself for Arbitration Enforcement, so ridiculous the situation has become. In some ways I wish I had followed that route, but doubtless I would have been tagged as sociopathic, or "pointy" or something. Although I do not make much of my professional history on Wikipedia it includes running security for a major Internet banking property, reading the CERT advisories every day for years, and taking a deep interest in Internet security in general. Should I wish to "hide automation", with all due respect I doubt that the committee would be able to see through it, especially with blunt tools like Checkuser. (I have already told AGK why and how he can see that apart from one or two inadvertent edits, all my edits were made through the standard interface, though this could be hidden it would take more time than has been available, and is of no interest to me. The improvements I suggested to Checkuser should be taken up with the developers without delay.)
I have always conducted myself scrupulously on Wikipedia, editing under my own name, have never sought "office", never traded on my credentials, rarely used email prior to this case, rarely used IRC, believing in openness and honesty. The only information I have deliberately withheld is that private to or tending to damage other people, or posing a risk to the project.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:44, 2 June 2012 (UTC).
My approach to this is that the community have raised concerns with Rich regarding some of his edits, and Rich has not been helpful enough in his response to those concerns. It is not the actual edits for which he was brought to ArbCom, it is for his reluctance to deal appropriately with people's concerns. The concerns centred on Rich's use of automation because a) automation is so quick it spreads a contentious edit across a number of articles, and b) individual mistakes are harder to trace when someone's editing history consists of thousands of edits with the same edit summary. But, again, it was not the use of automation that brought Rich to ArbCom, but his reluctance to comply with restrictions on his use of automation. Again, I want to stress that during the case I was not looking at sanctioning Rich for any individual or group of edits, nor for his use of automation, but for his behaviour and attitude regarding concerns about his editing that were made via automation. Was a ban on using automation an appropriate remedy? Even without discussing the actual wording, or definitions of "automation", in retrospect it was perhaps not addressing the real issue, which is Rich's attitude. But how do we address that effectively? The case itself with the principles and findings about collegiality and responsiveness to people's concerns should have assisted in bringing home to someone that an adjustment in attitude was needed. And, as the concerns did centre on Rich's use of automation, then restricting Rich's use of them was appropriate.
Where am I now? Well, Rich can correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears from what I am told, and from what I have looked at, that he has used a hacked AWB in one browser to select changes in an article, and has then copy and pasted those changes over to the article in another browser. Should he have done that? Well, he is no longer an admin so his permission to use AWB would have been removed. Any non-admin user of Wikipedia has to apply to use AWB. He did not apply. He used a hacked version. This, already, is not in the spirit of openness and collegiality. Without going further I am concerned. That he then doesn't make the edits directly in the browser with the hacked AWB, but instead copy and pastes them over, indicates an intent to conceal what he is doing. I am now of the mind that even if Rich was not already under ArbCom sanctions not to use automation, that such behaviour warrants a block; considering all the circumstances, an indef ban seems appropriate as I would now want clear assurances from Rich that he recognises what he has done is wrong, and that he intends to amend his behaviour. Having said that, I am still open to discussing other avenues and approaches to find out the best way of dealing with this situation. SilkTork ✔Tea time 01:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
To come back to Rich's original point about being hurt with talk of concealment, there's no evidence that he tried a technical solution to conceal a use of an automated tool. And I don't believe he thought that preparing the edit in AWB and cutpasting it into the edit box was using automated tools. He's like the chap who, having lost his driving licence, has harnessed his ox to his car, and is using this contraption to get about town on the grounds that he's not driving it any more. So I don't think he's actually trying to conceal anything. I do hope that a definition that Rich can understand and sign up to can be worked out, because I think he'll stick to it. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 17:14, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I notice different people here wikilawyering over automation and/or checkusering, trying to somehow save their case by reductio ad absurdum reasoning (similar to "if a bot comes along and completes your edit, then your edit is "automated editing" as well", right...). These are in part the same people who during the case ( Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough/Proposed decision and the like) made claims like: "I would really like to see what happens if Fram is taken out of this - there are more than enough other community members left over who can report errors to bot operators. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:33, 10 May 2012 (UTC)" and "If problems would be reported without Fram being allowed to report them, then we really know there is a problem. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:20, 24 April 2012 (UTC)"
Meanwhile, I have been fixing some 500 errors created by Helpful Pixie Bot at the end of March 2012 (i.e. right before this case started), which had gone unnoticed for nearly two months and which I only found out about by checking User:Jaguars edits during discussions at WP:AN. These errors were not discovered until after the case was closed (and so not used as examples or taken into account), but are quite typical. Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Helpful Pixie Bot 49 was approved on March 27, and was supposed to have "Estimated number of pages affected: 170". So after two days of editing, about three times as much errors were made as there were pages claimed to be affected by the bot in total. The bot request claimed that "If there is no such interwiki link a suitable annotation will be made to mark the article as inspected.", but in reality if no interwiki was present, the bot used one from its cache, i.e. a usually totally unrelated other article from that Wikipedia version. The result was articles like Nad lipom 35 linking to the Croation equivalent of Anti-communism, or Sandhofen (in Germany) linking to San Pedro de Buena Vista (in Bolivia).
I haven't done fixing all of these yet, but I think I have found and corrected the vast majority of them. Perhaps some of the defenders and praisers of Rich Farmbrough could first try to find and fix some of his problems (there are undoubtedly other ones lying around still) instead of lamenting here and blaming the messengers? Kumioko at least kindly offered to assist in the cleanup of these errors, which was nice, but most of the others seem more interested in protecting RF than in actually finding ways to avoid the creation of these many errors. Fram ( talk) 14:37, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
In his reply to this at the top, Rich claims that "Of course it would have been a simple matter for me to have corrected these myself, sans sanctions, and this has already been remarked." On 27 and 28 March, you made the error described above on hundreds of pages (despite the claim that the bot task would only affect about 170 pages in total!). By 29 March, you had changed your code to add "no interwiki=yes" to pages without an interwiki link, e.g. here. It didn't occur to you to do the "simple matter" of correcting all these errors at that time? As usual, it came down to someone else to point your errors out to you? If you need to change something in your script, perhaps it is useful to check whether errors were made before that change occurred? If you need constant supervision, you are not fit to run bots or other automation. You have demonstrated this need over and over again, right until the start of this case. Fram ( talk) 20:39, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@Carcharoth, Wikipedia:Bot owners' noticeboard lists at least 16 of the 40+ bot requests that Rich was approved for and I don't see any that deal with spelling so you are over exaggerating the skills necessary to do these tasks but if you believe them to be trivial then by all means take a few of your favorites, submit a BRFA and prove me wrong. I would love to apologize if it means these edits get done. Particularly the WikiProject Watchlist capability formerly donen by Femto bot. I realize that you are a former a member of Arbcom and there is likely some feelings of needing to support them in their hour of need but your comments we assume that we non Arb members are too stupid to know better and that frankly just isn't the case. I personally am glad that Arbcom is letting Rich continue to edit however I wouldn't term it "generous". I don't think its needed at all and frankly its only one of a series of bad decisions lately. The reason its hard to argue with me is because I'm not an idiot and you and other members of Arbcom keep tried to feed me BS thinking I don't know better. For what its worth I am participating in some of the discussions about Rich's Bot tasks that need to be done but the reason I am railing on Arbcom and I suspect that others are as well is because they are making a kneejerk reaction to a non problem because one or 2 admins keep reaptedly submitting Rich at ANI for every edit regardless of whether its right or wrong. People are tired of dealing with the constant complaints and the easiest way to deal with it is be eliminating the guy filling up their watchlists. Kumioko ( talk)
Note that the task which yielded these errors also was run for a while (some 325 edits [15]) on his own account, i.e. another example from right before the start of the case of "running bot tasks from a non-bot account" (i.e. "violations of automation policy") and "undisclosed use of automation". The fact that this run contains the exact same errors as the following bot run (e.g. here and here) shows that it is not a manual run of similar tasks, but a bot running from his main account (the edit summary of the first edit here has the telling "build KB" as well, but that is removed from the second one on). Fram ( talk) 14:01, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
There is a typo in C iv "may request the Committee may reconsider." Leaky Caldron 20:03, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
Typo in the first line; "is not in" should be "is in" Nobody Ent 22:41, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@Silktork. I am a little bothered by the attitude that you are displaying regarding Rich's edits. There are a whole lot of fabrications and misinformations in your statements above that simply aren't true. Its true that Rich has done some bad edits but we all have, its also true he unblocked his bot, every single bot operator I have ever seen has done so once the problems were addressed but only now is it an issue, A new requirement. To say he has a history in the way you do above though is a pretty big stretch. Has he had some users complain yes, but several of these users are also guilty of hounding and picking at his every edit. I understand you don't agree and you have your own feelings about the situation and that's fine but your stretching the story beyond whats true. Kumioko ( talk) 23:39, 4 June 2012 (UTC)
@SilkTork: Above, you say "motion 1 had passed, the clock was ticking"; I'm confused. Could you point to the procedure, guideline, what have you about how motions pass or don't pass and what this clock is? At one point RF1 AND RF3 were passing (numbers were 6 needed for majority at the time). Was the clock ticking then? If so, which one passes? Does the clock keep on ticking when all active arbitrators haven't voted? Where is this process written down? -- Hammersoft ( talk) 00:23, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
@Kumioko. I have no problems in itself with Rich using automation, nor with any errors in his editing - we all make errors, and my understanding from Rich is that he has analysed his edits and finds in percentage terms that he makes less than the average user; my problem lies with what might be better termed as the conflict history regarding those edits. Other people, not me, have had issue with his edits. As a member of the Committee I am far more interested in Rich's conduct regarding how he responds to enquiries and concerns about his edits. My feeling is that ArbCom does not get involved in content disputes, which would include adjudicating if removing white space is good or bad, or creating sock-puppet categories is good or bad. I am not concerned about these edits, and will not pass comment on them. What troubles me is Rich's conflict history which has shown him to be reluctant to accept other people's concerns about his edits. While I am not supporting this motion, I understand why it is being made, and why other Committee members are supporting it, and I think it reflects well on ArbCom that this series of motions has been made in order to fine tune a solution until a consensus could be reached. I think it appropriate to leave my oppose to show that not all Committee members support the solution, so the outcome is not unanimous, but that all Committee members will accept the outcome. I like and agree with what has happened here, even though I do not support the actual motion. SilkTork ✔Tea time 09:27, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
ArbCom is commenting in a number of places on Rich using a "hacked" version of AWB, carrying the connotation that this is "bad". I remind everyone that AWB is licensed under GPL. ArbCom has no jurisdiction to prevent, and the GPL license on AWB allows Rich to do whatever modifications to AWB that he sees fit to perform. Anyone can dislike the idea of Rich modifying AWB all they want. But, there is nothing wrong in him doing so.
In my opinion where he made an error was in not modifying the code he was using to prevent it from making actual edits. If he wants to use it to whatever purpose he desires, so long as it is not making any edits there is no wrong being done. I fail to see that using AWB in the manner he was attempting (with it not editing Wikipedia) was some effort to deceive the community or that he was snubbing his nose at ArbCom. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 13:33, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
I'd love to hear one Arbcom member describe how Wikipedia will be a better place after some ban is imposed on Rich ...William 18:46, 5 June 2012 (UTC)
Those who really believe what they say about some of the edits being vital to the encyclopedia would be doing that—an emphatic no, as RF has since pointed out right here. I mean, maybe we'd be doing it, if we'd be doing it anyway. In any case, blocking someone for fixing spelling mistakes is almost surely not part of the best plan for recruiting spelling fixers—my only points being, so it is clear that I'm not trying to insult anyone, is that this can not be seen as a positive outcome of any of this and this oughtn't be used to try to placate those who think these sanctions against Rich are too much considering that no harm appears to have been done. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 16:55, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
@JClemens. After the rather scathing comment you left I felt obliged to reply. Rich has not been the onnly one commenting about the process. The fact is this case has invited questions and concerns from the moment an arbitrator opened it, continuing through the assumptions and preconceived notions by the members of the committee through the case all the way until now when a motion to ban him was being considered, which goes against an agreed escelating series of blocks approved by the committee. IF the committee doesn't want criticism for its decisions then it should be making wiser ones than to pass a motion and then come back and create a new one that contrasts it so drastically. Th bottom line is that the process of Arbitration needs a major overhaul and the members an attitude change. I do note that the committee has been very good in considering adopting some new policies and enacting some changes based on comments received by myslef and others in this case but here are a few more suggestions that may help in making some of these changes.
There are plenty more but these are some for folks to chew on for now. Kumioko ( talk) 18:57, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
I was just glancing at some of this case. I had forgotten just how laughably appalling the conduct of the case was. Really time to start to unwind some of it I think.
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:42, 6 November 2012 (UTC).
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
05:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
Strike this finding completely.
The finding reads:
Rich Farmbrough has on many occasions, after another administrator has placed a block on his bot account, used his administrative tools to unblock his own bot without first remedying the underlying issue to the blocking admin's satisfaction or otherwise achieving consensus for such unblock (see block logs of SmackBot, Helpful Pixie Bot).
Let us analyse the block logs referred to in the finding:
There are a total of five unblocks by Rich Farmbrough on HPB's block log
Hence none of these fit the criteria
There are a total of seven unblocks by Rich Farmbrough on the SmackBot block log
Of a block by Fram (re-blocked by MSGJ)
So rather than their being "many" occasions, there are in fact zero occasions.
Rich
Farmbrough,
05:29, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
I would understand some prevarication if we were talking about matters of opinion. But we are not. We are talking about plain matters of fact. No one has pointed to a single instance that matches the accusation. Ever. It has been left to me to exhaustively research these actions, rather than for some accuser to present evidence, let alone proof of what was added without discussion, after the case. I would have thought that demonstrating explicit approval for unblock in every case bar one, which was incidentally before the policy was changed would make this an open and shut case, and indeed I have done more.
I am, though, happy to address the points raised by Arbitrators.
@Roger: Fairly clearly from the discussion surrounding the original FoF this relates to situations where the bot was (or was perceived to be) making incorrect edits. Broadening the scope ex post facto is, I'm sure, not something you would wish to do.
@Worm: Re the Ucucha case, the reason I stated "as far as possible" is that the bug was due, as near as I can remember, to category lag, which is less of a problem these days. I was reluctant to say it was fixed, then have, for some obscure reason, the bug recur, and get into wiki-drama at AN/I or something. Ucucha did not respond with "Don't unblock then" but " I hope it works"
@Silk: I think that the community has never expressed an opinion on "theses incidents". I think also that it is a mistake to assume that simply because I don't want this false FoF to stand that I am not aware of the reasons people were concerned. I would go further, different people had or have different concerns, and I am open to discussing all of them, and assuaging all but the most outlandish. For example I proposed a remedy which which would forbid me from continuing with a task that had caused errors until all errors had been corrected - or face blocking. This would address the concern of a critic that I "expect other people to fix my mistakes". That proposed remedy was not incorporated in the draft or final resolution - so it was not I that was ignoring "concerns with my conduct". I would be happy to discuss with you any other concerns about my conduct - indeed I will initiate such a discussion. And I can assure you that I would certainly not dream of unblocking one of my own accounts these days.
@Coren: Of course the unblocks happened - in every case but the 2006 (when we were all still feeling our way) the blocking admin made it crystal clear that an unblock by me was not a problem. I don't know how well you remember the original case but the blocks were seized upon as being contrary to policy. In discussion it came out that they were not. They were however left as a FoF - which is a shame, because although the FoF didn't say I was wrong to unblock, there is certainly an implication by them being in a FoF that they are (or were) bad. Subsequently a motion was brought to change the wording to a far more damming, and inaccurate, version. No specific unblocks were cited to support this version. And whether the unblocks were justified is important, but not relevant to this FoF, what is relevant is that there was permission to unblock, contrary to the implication.
@Salvio: Even though "occasionally" (or even "once") would be a very negative outcome for me, if that's what you believe you should stick to it. If you "go with the consensus" then you add nothing - I would rather you said every unblock was bad than go against what you believe is the case. As an Arb you can, of course, propose a motion, with your preferred wording.
@Carcharoth: Sure I'm willing to move on. The reason that I said "unwind" the case is that there is a great deal of it which, it seems to me, follows Silk's model "You haven't internalised your guilt, you are not ready to be rehabilitated". I was hoping that by sticking to small parts of the case they could be considered objectively, rather than as a monolithic block, with some ten or twenty people muddying the waters (however well meaning). And when I said the case was laughable, I do mean that. I made fundamental mistakes, for example I should have turned down the unblock to take part in the case, and insisted the case wait until I was unblocked. As it was I proposed a derogation to allow me to work on defence notes in my user space that was ignored by arbitrators. I then asked for time once the block had expired to prepare a defence, this was refused. It is a horrendously time consuming task, even to disprove a negative like this. Arbs, who, I submit, accepted the previous amendment with no diffs and no supporting evidence, should accept this one which is backed to the hilt.
Oh and you should also know that the initial attempts to amend the case were turned down as "too soon after the case".
I was intending to move on by simply showing evidence for most of the findings being false. We could then review whatever remains and come up with a useful solution. Addressing them all at once would likely result in a quagmire, indeed this highly focused amendment has already been pulled in several different directions.
Now as to moving on what would you propose? Personally I can see a bunch of ways of moving on, but leaving statements up that say I am "gratuitously uncivil" is not part of any of them (well perhaps of the most severe way). Especially when the diffs include things like saying "Tosh" - no one these days says "Tosh" unless they are being self deprecating. (Whoever included this in the findings must have had some reason. It would be interesting to know what it is.)
@Risker: The issues that brought me to arbitration in the first place were solved even before the case was opened. The case itself was about how to resolve other issues, where progress was being made until the drafting arb changed - it then became a mud-fest. Your suggestion that I am an unperson until I conform to your views is not helpful. This FoF is simply wrong, and for that reason should be struck. Or maybe you subscribe to the Jclemens view that "Justice and fairness are secondary"?
Rich
Farmbrough,
19:05, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
@NewYorkBrad:
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:56, 1 January 2013 (UTC).
@AGK: I don't think I suggested a miscarriage of justice. I am simply asking for an incorrect FoF to be withdrawn. Since the FoF was not used to support any of the remedies it does not bear on the overall "justice" of the case. I am curious why you think that it is a good thing to maintain a statement that is inaccurate. Maybe you would like to consider how you would feel if Wikipedia posted false and negative statements about you? Generally this is considered a bad thing, best remedied. I can see that, obviously, I am less deserving of consideration than someone who has never edited Wikipedia, or who has never challenged the status quo, but I am surprised by the defensiveness I am getting from some arbitrators here.
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:27, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Clerks: Can a clerk please remove Rschen7754's comments which do not adhere to the instruction "Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment."
Rich
Farmbrough,
00:00, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Anyone: tell me how Rschen7754's comments address the amendment? They simply say that I want to appeal my case, and imply (I think) that I am a bad person for doing so. And make other rather nasty claims "continued desire to override the wishes of the community" indeed. And they try to drag the November issue into this very simple request.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@Timotheus Canens: thank you for reviewing the process. Such a phrasing would be a tiny step forward, it would still accuse me of misusing admins tools, effectively making me ineligible to run for Admin. The original FoF (that I had unblocked, but attaching no blame) was backed up by an extensive discussion that examined the change in practice over the years, and an undiscussed change to the policy page. Although the case finding never made it clear why my admin bit was removed, the discussion did - it was based on "civility issues" (saying "tosh" and so forth). Introducing the first amendment to this Fof muddied these waters greatly.
Rich
Farmbrough,
11:08, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
@ Worm.
@AGK. I really hope you are wrong. If six have declined then four have not been prepared to post their decisions in bold, in the normal manner. And really I can see no rational unbiased person declining this amendment.
@All: Although this wasn't the basis of my request, since the finding was added after the case and therefore could not be important to support a remedy, I would have thought that there is no reason to oppose removal. Keeping information (true or false) which does nothing but tarnish the reputation of others is inimical to a healthy community. Politeness, kindness and decency would support removal.
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:46, 3 January 2013 (UTC).
@ T. Canens - the block summaries were unwise, and, for me, extremely strongly worded. However I would have a great deal to say about the background to these, and they do not go to the substance of the FoF. It seems to me that it would be an abuse of process to, by motion, add additional items to a laundry list of malfeasances. If someone feels that these summaries are worthy of attention, then it should be addressed separately, not woven into the fabric of a previous case. @ Coren - I have no idea how one would appeal "the substance" - procedurally I mean. The Ban appeals subcommittee,if that's what you mean, currently consists of AGK and the two arbs who were parties to my case (perhaps it needs updating?) so they would all have to recuse. @ SilkTork - Perhaps the comments from uninvolved editors will convince you that the community may not share your perspective about everything @ Salvio - The committee had made it clear that other requests were "too soon". As to the process, every comment I had made on process had been taken (by some at least) as combative, rather than a Wikipedian's natural desire to see errors corrected. @ Carcharoth - I look forward to a constructive discussion post amendment
Not that keen on this FoF.
The prospective FoF was written in the hope and expectation that it would provide support for draconian remedies. Of course the drafting Arb had misunderstood policy, and hence the finding was weakened to this wording which just states that "something happened". The FoF does not support a remedy, something only shared with FoF 1 - which arguably is there as token balance.
Therefore the Fof serves no purpose in the case at all.
Nonetheless the FoF is a false light defamation, because its very presence implies that the unblocks were wrong. We should not be defaming our editors, therefore the FOF should go.
Overall -
@ Roger - with respect, none of the case was fresh in the minds of the majority of Arbitrators, who had only read the proposed resolutions, and not the extensive discussions, relying on the drafting arbitrator to reflect these. @ Worm -
This is obviously my preferred version. I would ask, though, that the word "endorsement" be replaced with "opinion". Better still, remove the entire disclaimer, if one wishes not to express an opinion, it is better to simply not express it, than risk inadvertent apophasis.
Once again, I would strongly oppose this.
The main reason is that it is introducing new matter (in three directions, no less, summaries, another account, and another type of block), as outlined above this inimical to justice and fairness. One could successfully refute these allegations, only to find that claims about the timing were added. Address those, and have matters relating to the wording of unblock requests. And so forth.
This is not supposed to be "how many ways can we criticise Rich that he can't quickly shut down by using facts against us".
And of course the key point the FoF 8 did not feature in the structure of the original decision means that changing it to include allegations that do support the findings is revisionism. If someone has a problem with my block summaries, let them bring a case - or perhaps engage in constructive dialogue.
@ T Canens - I had, funnily enough, recently seen the comment you refer to. And yes, I should have taken these people to AN/I or an RFC. But I'm nice, I didn't. (Also I hate those sorts of venues.)
Rich
Farmbrough,
20:14, 4 January 2013 (UTC).
An RFC arising from the case was raised at
Wikipedia_talk:Blocking_policy/Archive_18#Unblocking_bot_accounts.
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC).
This is not noted anywhere in the ArbCom documentation, but in November I blocked Rich for two weeks for violating a community-imposed sanction on mass-creating pages (regardless of whether the creation was automated or not): Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive241#Rich_Farmbrough.27s_editing_restriction. This reflects a continued desire to override the wishes of the community, and thus I doubt that a lifting of the sanctions is appropriate, considering his responses, and his willingness to ax-grind against every ArbCom member he comes in contact with - see the bottom threads of [16]. It's obvious that this is an attempt to chip away at the case piece-by-piece, see [17] which makes it clear that he desires to appeal the case and have the sanctions lifted. -- Rs chen 7754 21:40, 1 January 2013 (UTC) @Rich: basically per Coren. -- Rs chen 7754 00:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I went through the block logs cited, and as far as I can see, Rich is largely right, and Arbcom is wrong. They had better correct their error now. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
This, if it wasn't an accident, is conduct unbecoming of an arbitrator. I have no interest in the case, and as far as I can remember no contact with Rich outside of normal processes, but his reading of the block logs is to an outsider persuasive. Bot operators unblock their bots all the time following issue resolution. If no one is going to answer Rich's statement then I can only assume no answer can be made. Mackensen (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
@Worm: I cannot see that fixing it "as far as possible" (per block log) in 13 minutes would be fixing the matter to the blocking admin's satisfaction.
—I can't imagine why you think this, but in any case it was to the blocker's satisfaction, wasn't it? Regarding the "procedural" unblock, isn't it true that "without first remedying the underlying issue" still doesn't really apply?
HaugenErik (
talk)
00:06, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
I am a complete outsider on this, but it seems that this particular finding was amended without an opportunity for Rich to rebut it. I think this is a denial of fair hearing, and should be rectified (if contested, as it is). I don't think this is part of a campaign to have the whole case overturned, since this denial of fair hearing does not apply to any other findings. If anything, it will make the case stand stronger on its feet. In my view, this is all about procedural fairness, on which, presumably, ArbCom should lead by example. Cheers and Happy New Year! - BorisG ( talk) 13:32, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
This is not a good use of a limited wiki-resource (the AC's time) and it just not important in the big picture. Just delete it per motion 3. NE Ent 13:44, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
It seems to me that you are displeased by the disposition of the case (which seems to me entirely reasonable given the disruption your automated editing had caused) and are picking at nits in order to "weaken" it in some manner. Let me make one thing clear: the remedies in place will not be changed by cherry picking corrections in the minutiae of the findings, nor will the case be overturned by applying a fresh coat of paint on the wording. If your objective is to get the restrictions you are currently under lifted or relaxed, you need to do so by addressing the substance of the concerns with your automated editing and convince us there is cause to re-evaluate the situation de novo, not by trying to pick apart the previous case. — Coren (talk) 19:13, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Moreover, I'm wary about creating rules that will make ArbCom even more bureaucratic. We are not a real-world court and we sometimes can, in my opinion, pass amendments following expedited or simplified procedures, especially when no Arbitrator voices any opposition and a majority of active Arbs have chimed in supporting a given proposal, as was the case here.
Now, I do have a problem with the revised FoF: the more I read it, the more I'm convinced it's inaccurate and that we should do something. I have not yet decided what, though. Salvio Let's talk about it! 13:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
There has been some discussion on the mailing list over how best to handle this. My views are that there are three main issues here: (i) the one of procedural 'fairness' with respect to how the finding was previously modified; (ii) whether the current finding 8 should be overturned, modified or dropped; (iii) whether further advice is needed on how to handle future requests related to this case. I would favour dropping (vacating) finding 8 rather than attempting to revise or modify it (it is not central to the case). In addition, we should ask Rich to state what further requests he plans to make and what the ultimate aim is, before he files any further amendment requests, noting that he does (as others have noted) need to take on board the issues that brought him to arbitration in the first place if any restrictions are to be lifted at any future point. Carcharoth ( talk) 08:34, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
In the Rich Farmbrough case, the revised Finding of Fact 8, enacted on 28 May 2012 is vacated. Nothing in this decision constitutes an endorsement by the Committee of Rich Farmbrough's use of administrative tools to unblock his own accounts.
Enacted. ( X! · talk) · @096 · 01:18, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
To the talk page that was here before the first amendment request was moved over it?
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
Note: this omnibus approach has been requested by Arbitrators, I have voiced my concerns that attempting too much will cause a process failure, however out of respect for the committee I am prepared to try this route. I note also, for the record, that the committee have previously overturned editing restrictions weather imposed by the committee or not (Kovaf), and on more than one occasion repealed an entire decision (Orangemarlin and others).
An editing restriction was imposed unilaterally in 2010, and a supplementary (supposedly temporary) restriction added, also unilaterally. I challenged the legitimacy and a good faith attempt was made to establish consensus to keep them, which failed. The restrictions serve no good purpose, significant time can be saved by the committee overturning these restrictions.
The substantive decision in the case consists of a number of findings and two remedies.
Rich
Farmbrough,
02:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Rschen at the time we were trying to standardise banner template names there were only three out of over 1000 WikiProjects where there were objections to the renames. Namely:
All these objections used reasons contrary to the spirit and policy of Wikipedia, notably WP:OWN with a fair dose of WP:ABF thrown in.
I see that the WP:OWN mentality continues with your hatting threads on your talk page - with "Summaries" as if you were an admin closing a noticeboard thread.
If you are sick of it, I might wonder why you continue to stick the knife in. It was unacceptable at the previous Amendment, it remains so now. It remains the case that that FoF 8 was factually incorrect, and moreover defamatory. It is deeply disturbing that anyone would want to preserve such a statement on Wikipedia.
Rich
Farmbrough,
13:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Hersfold - Both you an Rschen are supporting my thesis that this is not a good way to approach the case.
Your point-by-point defence does little, since it really just shows the prejudices you exhibited since your self-admitted display of temper on my talk page before you initiated the case.
I will take one point - point 9 to illustrate. Here you are saying that the only way I can know the restriction is unenforceable is to successfully circumvent it, and hence that I am either making stuff up or breaking the restriction. Not so, and clearly not so on a moments consideration (and I have made my qualifications to make this statement clear to the committee previously). Therefore by the same argument you used, you are either misleading the committee, or you didn't stop and think. I prefer to assume the latter - and you should know better.
As to your patronising statements at the end, I am sure they are well meant, but really!
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:02, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
@Clerks
Please withdraw this request on my behalf, I stated that this approach would not work, and both the responses from those that have chosen to persue me here (as predicted) and Arbitrators support that contention.
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:11, 11 January 2013 (UTC).
My comments at [18] still stand. I find it disturbing that Rich is shifting the "blame" for the sanctions on the arbitrators, and on the community and basically on everyone but himself.
I also find it disturbing that Rich has been badgering everyone who has commented in opposition to his request to withdraw their comments, accusing them of bad faith even, as seen [19]. I also found [20] beyond the pale, where Rich tried to edit the same section on my talk page after I hatted it. Frankly, I'm getting a bit sick of this whole thing, and I was tempted to ragestrike all of my comments in the last amendment request to get this to stop. -- Rs chen 7754 05:10, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
For the record, while I was uninvolved per policy at the time of my initial block, I don't think I am now, and will not be taking any further administrative action in relation to Rich.
To address Rich's points...
Anyway. My advice, Rich, if you want any part of this case vacated or relaxed at any point in the future, is this: stop complaining about how people are out to get you, and work on figuring out what those people were saying and why they were saying it. Nobody is denying that you did useful work. What wasn't so useful was how you handled complaints about the not-so-useful bits. Not-so-useful bits happen. Consider this case one of them. Learn from them. Hersfold ( t/ a/ c) 07:05, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I am enormously sympathetic towards Rich. He has said often that he feels it is impossible to make any meaningful contributions, or even to edit Wikipedia, without use of automatic tools. To my mind, he is just one of many editors who were here since the early days, and who have struggled to adapt to the way the project is changing over time. I think it is to his considerable credit that he remains a committed editor, contributing as he feels able. Perhaps the ultimate crash was a result of an increasingly non-technical userbase, who want a Volkswagen Golf that starts first time every time, and a move away from the early editors who prefered an old LandRover so they could tinker under the bonnet. Whatever, I could not personally support the vacation of sanctions, as Rich still seems to have no concept of why users thought Helpful Pixie Bot was a nightmare, and Rich's persistence in making small changes that no-one could see was just annoying. But I would ask the committee to be considerate of Rich in his long history of editing, and his continued desire to improve the encyclopaedia. (should my opinion count for anything). -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 14:45, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
As to the calls to strike most of the findings as "personal attacks" or BLP violations, I see no merit in the claim. They were findings of the Committee and properly voted upon as appropriate, and will not be stricken on the simple basis that you feel they paint you in a negative light. I do not know if your username reflects your real name; if it does and you feel those findings could cause prejudice to you, we can consider courtesy blanking the case pages, however.
Finally, your request to strike the remedies as (alternately) "over-broad", "unenforceable", or "harmful to the encyclopaedia" need supporting evidence. They are none of those things simply because you assert them to be, you need to demonstrate that they are.
Honestly, the principal tenor of your appeal appears to be "I don't agree with the decision"; and that does not suffice as a basis to overturn it in part or in whole. You need to demonstrate material error, or that the circumstances have changed since the decision. — Coren (talk) 04:31, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
Overall, Rich, I believe you have made a lot of assertions, hoping some of them might stick. This scattergun technique does little for your case, as anything that might be worth listening to gets lost in the the mix. I would be concerned with point 16, but you have put forward no evidence for it and it doesn't match the evidence I've seen so far. I am also very interested in point 10, as it appears to agree that there was previously an issue with your automated editing, but there is no longer, I'd like to know what's changed. WormTT( talk) 09:35, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC).
at 14:40, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
The motion is being used in an absurd way, as predicted by other editors. Three enforcement requests have been filed, one rejected, one upheld and one just filed today.
The upheld one involved a massive improvement to an article on a subject of critical importance to hundreds of millions of people - and that also defused part of a tense situation between a number of editors.
I have not made any edits that a sane person would consider automation, and the original motion was a result of two mis-clicks, for which I apologised profusely at the time, and indeed do so again.
The original arbitration case was brought on the basis that I was breaking BLP by associating suspected sockmasters with their suspected sockpuppets. This is so very far removed from that.
@T.Canens, doubtless I'm being dense here, but I fail to see how my article editing is anything other than beneficial to the project. Therefore while you can describe the sanction as "not working" form the point of view that I'm getting blocked for making positive edits, there is no way that it can be described as "not working" in the sense that harm is coming to the encyclopedia. In fact no substantive harm was ever demonstrated.
The three enforcement requests:
The original ArbCom case: the reason it was brought can be read at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough#Statement by Hersfold, the filer of the case. The motion currently disputed is a clear reflection of that original statement, and not "so very far removed from that" at all. Fram ( talk) 15:23, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm commenting here in an administrative capacity as one of the administrators active at WP:AE. There is currently an earlier enforcement request open relating to the restriction that Rich Farmbrough asks to be lifted here. It appears that he has submitted this amendment request instead of responding to the enforcement request. I would like to ask arbitrators whether the processing of the enforcement request should be stayed pending the disposition of this amendment request, or not. (Pending an answer, I, at least, won't act on the enforcement request). Sandstein 17:06, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
How many requests for clarification/amendment has Rich Farmbrough filed over his restrictions? I haven't counted but it's probably more than any other editor in recent memory, perhaps by orders of magnitude. How much time should ArbCom and the community waste in answering all these requests? Perhaps there should be a limit, say 6-12 months, between Rich's requests for amendment/clarification? ArbCom's duty is to break the back of a dispute, not contribute to it by allowing endless requests for clarification/amendment. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 22:35, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
IMO, the restriction and its enforcement have been overly rigid -- and it is grossly unfair to blame Rich Farmbrough for any problems that may currently exist with List of Other Backward Classes or its sister article List of Scheduled Castes. These were two seriously misbegotten articles created by Doncram; their creation played an important role in precipitating the recent Doncram Arbcom case. They weren't much discussed during the Arbcom case, mainly because Doncram was already topic-banned from working on them. This is what the Other Backward Classes article looked like when Doncram last touched it in late December; a substantial improvement over the version that I took to AFD back in early December, but still woefully incomplete, with poorly documented sourcing. The list survived AfD as "KEEP with a promise of FIXING the issues noted", but its creator was soon topic-banned and unable to fix it. I don't think it was wise of Rich Farmbrough to take pity on the list, but he did so, and his edits turned it into a reasonably solid page, but led to his 60-day ban. The fact that he edited the page again after his ban expired only indicated his conscientiousness about finishing a job he had left undone -- and his desire to improve the quality of the encyclopedia. Banning him for a full year for being conscientious is absurd. The fact that the restriction led to such a long ban is an indication that that the restriction is unduly severe. Taken together, his erroneous edits did not damage pre-existing content; he was adding a reference citation to previously unsourced content, and the errors only affected his additions. IMO, the article was better with misformatted citations than with no citations at all. I suggest that the remedy enforcement be amended to allow for a lesser enforcement (for example, admonishment) when any automated edits he makes do not delete or otherwise alter content previously contributed by another user. Furthermore, it could help prevent future violations when his ban expires if List of Scheduled Castes (which has not yet benefited from his attention) were removed from article space, so its presence won't tempt him to try to fix it. -- Orlady ( talk) 04:27, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure how useful comments from random editors on this matter are to the Committee (especially at this point), but I think that Jclemens hits the nail on the head. I can't remember having any direct interactions with Rich, but I've followed the post-arbitration developments (largely in my role as an admin), and it's clear that Rich has never accepted the findings against him and has been unable to let the matter rest. This has included obvious efforts to chip away at the restrictions, including by deliberately making fairly small breaches of them. The great shame is that if he'd put the same amount of effort into productive editing he'd be well on the way to having the restrictions lifted by now. Nick-D ( talk) 22:38, 28 March 2013 (UTC)
As to Sandstein's question, I think the AE request can proceed as usual, as I think it is highly unlikely that a majority of my colleagues would vote to grant the request. T. Canens ( talk) 21:13, 25 March 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) at 08:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Fram ( talk · contribs) submitted an arbitration enforcement request regarding some recent edits by Rich Farmbrough ( talk · contribs). I've copied the applicable contents of that request below so that they are recorded here with this request, I won't copy Rich's statement across in case he wishes to say something different in this context.
- 04:49 8 April 2014: whether the original page was created using automation may be hard to prove (although everything points in that direction as well). But this subsequent edit is clearly not manually made. Every instance of " (*" (an opening bracket preceded by a space, plus every character after that on the same line) has been removed, no matter if that was wanted or not. The result is that you get changes like:
- Albategnius (al-Battani) (1333*) to [[Albategnius
- Alhazen (al-Haitam) (2490*) to [[Alhazen
- Alicia (344*) Boole (340*) to [[Alicia
- Julia (1945*) Bowman (1924*) to [[Julia
- ibn Sina (1984*) (1965*) to [[ibn Sina
- Anna (530*) Johnson (516*) to [[Anna
- Lord (2752*) Kelvin (2702*) to [[Lord
- Leonardo of Pisa (2250*) (2223*) to [[Leonardo of Pisa
And about ten further instances of the same pattern. Perhap others will see this as a manual edit nevertheless, but to me it certainly matches "For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so.".
- 06:27 6 April 2014 This one is taken from the end of this document, pages 104-105 (or from a different site with the same information and formatting, his page lists no source); note how, in Rich's article, four companies have a name ending in (a); 79 TOTAL Deutschland GmbH(a), Germany, 191 TOTAL Petrochemicals & Refining S.A. / NV(a), Belgium, 192 TOTAL Petrochemicals & Refining USA Inc. (a), United States, and 207 TOTAL UK Limited (a), United Kingdom. These just happen to be the same four companies that have a "*" after their name in the original document, indicating a footnote for "multi-segment entities". It seems unlikely that Rich Farmbroug made the same typo four times, matching exactly these four "starred" companies, the only ones to have that extra bit.
The administrators discussing the enforcement request could not agree if using the find and replace function meets the criteria set down by the Committee and if it does what an appropriate sanction would be. Given the disagreement regarding this and considering the Committee's motion that further violations will likely lead to a site-ban I thought it was best to refer this to the Committee for appropriate action. I'll close the AE request with a message that I've referred the issue to here. Callanecc ( talk • contribs • logs) 08:59, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I was just about to close this as a 'close call but not actionable', but I was too slow and was edit conflicted twice, so I will post my draft closure decision here.
Most of the other admins here believe this doesnt fit within the arbitration committees decision, for a variety of reasons. Only Sandstein sees it that way, but I dont think it is healthy for him to be the leading enforcement admin on the third AE regarding Rich in a row. Given the other input to this AE, I dont think this is worth a clarification request. If Rich is trying to see how much he can get away with, it wont be long before there will be more a actionable AE request. These diffs are different from previous two reported to AE, and the general thrust of prior editing problems. The first diff is userspace, which should be ignored unless it is disruptive due to side effect on other users, which hasnt been claimed here. The second diff is a list article created by Rich (articles of this type are often created offline by manipulating other datasets) and the very minor issues in the initial version are within acceptable levels given the size of the page. It would have been easy to miss those '(a)'s even in a close review of the wikitext. If Rich regularly leaves small bits of junk in new content pages, this would be actionable, but not for just one instance. Rich, if you are going to create articles in this manner, I strongly suggest that you first of all push the data elements into Wikidata, and extract the data from there to obtain your draft wikitext table to be incorporated into the new Wikipedia article. That will reduce errors like the one Fram found, as it separates data extraction from data reporting, and utilises Wikidatas datatypes to validate the data. John Vandenberg ( chat) 09:04, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
Considering the surprisingly intense disagreement among administrators (and other users of unclear involvedness) responding to the AE request, I recommend that the Committee examine whether the restrictions imposed in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough should continue to apply as written (in which case, in my view, Rich Farmbrough's apparent use of search-and-replace functionality violates the restrictions and should lead to an enforcement block), whether the site ban announced in the decision as a likely consequence of violations should be imposed, or whether the sanction should be modified or lifted.
I have not followed the original case and therefore express no opinion as to whether or to which degree the restrictions are (still) needed to prevent damage or disruption to the project. Sandstein 10:58, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I do implore ArbComm to review this situation, determine if the supposed transgression was indeed a transgression, and if it was, cast your stones upon the transgressor in the manner that you see fit.
Let me start by saying that I do not believe that I have been one of Rich's supporters in the past.
Personally, I find the AE Enforcement filing to have been distasteful, inappropriate, and simply "someone looking for a reason - weak as it was - to get Rich booted". In that light, I would actually desire sanctions imposed that would prevent such divisive and inappropriate behaviour from ever happening again, be it WP:IBAN, blocks, whatever. No editor should be targetted so regularly, and for such small things.
I suppose the predecessor to that, however, will be determining if using Find...Replace is considered to be an "automated tool" to make "automated edits", in contravention of the meaning and spirit of RF's restrictions.
I don't want to sound like a wikilaywer, but you'll also have to define what "editing Wikipedia" means. Is it the action of clicking "save" once? Or, is it sitting down, reading, searching, referencing, typing, copying/pasting over an entire editing session. For example, I may make some edits, go to ANI, use CTRL-F and search for a specific report, make some comments, go elsewhere and make article edits ... is all of this considered to be "editing Wikipedia", or just the few times I clicked "save" - this is important, because if I have a restriction against using a so-called "automated tool", and you consider Find...Replace to be "automated", then so is using CTRL-F because it prevents me from having to manually scan a page of words using my own eyes. If CTRL-F is "automated", I'll bet you'll need to block Rich a dozen times a day.
You'd then have to define if Copy...Paste is also an automated tool? Always? Sometimes? Never? It depends? For example, if I go to the article on Trinidad and Tobago right now, select a small amount of text, copy it, open the article on Tobago and paste it in ... am I using an "automated tool" because it prevents me from having to type the words manually? If copy and paste between articles is verboten as automated in that case, what about when I go to the top of the page and highlight the entire URL of the page I'm looking at, then paste it into a new browser window ... was that a use of an automated tool while editing Wikipedia?
Define the differences? Is there a difference between an "automated tool" and an "editing tool", or an "automated process", or "automated edits".
So, yeah, I was a bit cheesed off last evening when I saw the AE Enforcement request as I considered it petty, wrong, and harassment. So please, clarify for everyone edits, editing, automated proccesses and editing tools. Then, you'll need to cast stones in one of 2 directions ... or both. ES &L 11:29, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
While some of the admins at AE expressed surprise that search-and-replace would fall under this definition, there can actually be no argument that a software routine which makes edits as specified by a human editor is not a manual edit, but the use of automation. Search-and-replace is so familiar to us that we don't think of it that way, but this is nonetheless true.Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so. (emphasis added)
So, given the clarity of the remedy, and the fact that search-and-replace is undeniably automation, what's being asked for here is, in fact, not really a clarification of the remedy, but the rescinding of it, because it seems "nonsensical" to some. Perhaps they are right, perhaps it is "nonsensical" -- but it is also abundantly clear, and has been already used to block Farmbrough for a year. There is no difference here, despite Farmbrough's attempt to Wikilawyer the remedy into submission by reference to a definition of automation used in a different part of the Committee's decision ( Principle 3.1), which does not and cannot overide the clear definition of automation given in the remedy.
Given all this, the Committee should reaffirm its previous remedy and sanction Rich Farmbrough appropriately. BMK ( talk) 11:51, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
EatsShootsandLeaves starts with "Let me start by saying that I do not believe that I have been one of Rich's supporters in the past.", but forgots to add that he is one of my more vocal opponents, having forbidden me to go to his talk page in the future, and concluding "Just when one thinks that someone is improving as a person AND as an editor - WHAM! - they fuck it up badly (✉→BWilkins←✎) 14:00, 25 June 2013 (UTC)" When one points out that one is an objective commentator, it may be more correct to indicate the position one has about both editors, certainly when he concludes "Then, you'll need to cast stones in one of 2 directions ... or both.", as if the possibility that no stones will be cast doesn't exist. As for the substance of his comments: the difference between his examples and what happened here is that the result is what counts; how you browse or read pages is of no consequence, how you find things is your business, but if someone chooses to replace hundreds of instances of "A" with "B" in one unsupervised go, including some "A"s that shouldn't have been replaced, then yes, that is automation as defined in the rstriction, and similar to the one that led to the previous year-long block. What message are you trying to send with wanting to silence the one person that did most of the legwork in establishing that there was a pattern of problematic editing in the first place, and who corrected hundreds of such edits after the case ended and it became obvious that no one else would? Fram ( talk) 12:08, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
@EatsShootsandLeaves "close you down once" = told me not to come to your talk page again, with the clear wish that some other admin would block me if I did. "To be forced to restate the same thing to you every time you re-hash the same stupid "he hates me" thing, again, it doesn't make me a "vocal opponent".": let me count the ways: "restate", "same", "every time", "rehash", "same", and "again" in one sentence (and a few more in the next), wow, there must have been countless times I have made such "he hates me" statements. Shouldn't be too hard to find a few examples then. As far as I can remember, I raised the issue once before this. Please refresh my memory on all these other times. Fram ( talk) 12:57, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
@Everyone who thinks I shouldn't be the one making these reports. While I can see your point, the problem is that the mantra some people use of "someone else will see it" isn't correct. As an example: I opened Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough in April 2012, and it closed on 15 May 2012. Lots of his edits (account and bots) were scrutinised at the time, but even so, a long series of errors (first made from his account as an unapproved bot test, then ran as an approved but buggy bot task) wasn't found until some weeks after the case closed (and then only accidentally, because I was checking edits made by another user, User:Jaguar), and then corrected. I started these corrections on 30 May 2012 [23] and finished a few hundred error corrections later on 5 June 2012 [24]. I have no interest in waiting until such things happens again, so I try to prevent this by checking early. It is not really logical that the "reward" for researching a case, bringing evidence, showing the harm done by the problems, convincing people through a long and laborious process (with lots of abuse from some people), and correcting the problems, is that one would not be allowed to follow up on it, to check that the problems don't start again, and even get threatened with an interaction ban by an admin (I thought that usually for an interaction ban, a series of problematic interactions should be established, not someone repeatedly but correctly pointing out problems with the edits by another user). Obviously, if the conclusion of the Arbs is that userspace edits, or single page edits, are not actionable under the restriction, then I will not bring such edits to AE again. But whether an edit is a violation is not dependent on who reports it. Fram ( talk) 07:33, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
Arbcom '12 messed this up. "Automation" is one of those words that we bandy about without thinking about too much -- it seems to have some sort of meaning so we're comfortable using it. It's a vague general nebulous concept, not something that is crisp and well understood. As an intentionally absurd argument, consider: on 4 April RF edited Poundworld, and since that time maybe 200 folks have viewed that page. Did RF make that edit 200 times -- no, it's automation! Or the text substitution of a {{u|NE Ent}} template is (or isn't), or the spell check built into the browser -- at one point Arbcom '12 members were arguing about whether that counted or not.
"may make reasonable inferences regarding the probable use of such tools on the basis of several factors, including the speed, number, timing, and consistency of the edits". Okay, so what if RF makes a series of 20 edits that are exactly 18 seconds apart? What if the 20 edits vary from 17 to 19 seconds, but are uniformly distributed instead of Gaussian -- or should "normal" editing be a Poisson distribution???
More ridiculous examples upon request.
The bottom line is that, despite Arbcom '12s good intentions, it is just inherently unreasonable to use "reasonably" in a remedy that references something as ill-defined as "automation." I think Arbcom '14 has to open this back up and provide a remedy that is clearly and unequivocally understood.
Note: I commented in the case pages under prior username Nobody Ent NE Ent 13:15, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
What Pine said. NE Ent 11:35, 18 April 2014 (UTC)
The devil lies in the detail. The Arbcom definition of automation cited above remains very subjective and leaves a lot to be desired. In truth, our notions of what constitutes automation evolves with the state of technology. My take is that in today's world, where we rely on computers to do routine and mundane things, performing calculations (instead of longhand or mental arithmetic) or copy–paste (instead of handwriting) is so off-the-scale in terms of what might reasonably be defined or considered "automation". Clicking on the undo button for a series of articles is equally not automation. The beginning of true automation lies somewhere between running a single regex and a 20-regex script over more than a small handful of articles. The edits brought here as examples look like one-off edit of one single and simple regex at worst. Poundworld is not an automated edit. Even if this were in mainspace, it's the product of a simple regex that I'd be inclined to dismiss as a piss-take. This extraction seems like something that can be manipulated with a spreadsheet or word processor. It seems so limited end of my definition that it would be unreasonable to consider it a breach. In addition, RF's editing seems not to have fallen foul of the "speed, number, timing, and consistency of the edits" criteria either. -- Ohc ¡digame! 15:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I'll repeat what I said at AE:
I hadn't planned on commenting, but I am taken aback by the suggestion that Find and Replace searches aren't automated searches edits. As a software developer for the past 15+ years, I can say that using a text editor's search and replacement feature is absolutely an automated process and one that requires special attention to each and every edit. While I don't know the specifics of RF's ArbCom history, apparently this user has screwed this up so many times that the community has decided that they cannot be trusted to do this again.
A Quest For Knowledge (
talk)
22:01, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
I have little to add to what has been said, at the moment.
I would just like to remind Arbitrators (or point out if they didn't already know it) that it is not pleasant having people impugn one's motives at the best of times.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
23:32, 9 April 2014 (UTC).
@Harry: "Write an article..." what are
John Valentine Wistar Shaw and
Cayley's Sextic, chopped liver? And what is
chopped liver anyway?
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:39, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
@Roger: You ask:
"If you're able only to edit by typing into a box and pressing [save page], does editing Wikipedia have any long-term attraction at all for you?
Or, to put it another way, are you simply marking time here, until the moment when your bot privileges are restored?"
Here are two completely different questions, both, if I may say so, rather confused. I think I made it clear in my email to the committee that I am mainly catching up on edits I wanted to make while I was blocked. And I think I also made it clear, that just because I ran bots and used tools, it did not mean that I was not a content creator - albeit overshadowed in my fields by people like Matt Crypto, Charles Matthews, MIcahel Hardy, Oleg Alexander, etc.. I do not like to sit comparing dozens of pairs of texts as if I were searching for V1 launch sites (perhaps an apt comparison). However I do like to see the encyclopaedia improved. I find it strange that people would fix an error without asking themselves "How widespread is this sort of problem" and "How can we prevent it happening" and "How can ewe fix it everywhere?" So does Wikipedia hold a long term attraction for me? Yes, if we are talking in the realms of a few years, I will continue to fix errors whether they are substantive such as this, or stylistic. I will even search them them out, so for example the previous mentioned error was discovered after finding a dubious statement supported by unreliable sources in one article, that was also present in about ten other articles. These statements are linked to the Jagged 85 case, which means they have been on Wikipedia for 6 years and are propagating across the Internet and print media, and back into other WP articles. (We do not have the manpower to deal with this sort of thing, despite tremendous efforts by some editors - kicking out someone who might make a contribution there seems crazy.)
Similarly I tagged some 3000 incorrect ISBNs in 2012, 2600 of them remain (and probably some have only had the tag removed) and another 3-4000 ISBN errors have been made since. As far as I know, no-one has made a concerted effort to fix these in my two years absence. I am most of the way through fixing the 24 Featured Articles, and have fixed about a dozen others, including some of the 100 odd Good Articles. In the process I have done the following:
In the process of writing Cayley's sextic I also used the "Greek" gadget to insert π and θ (knowing full-well that there exits some combination of "alt" and numbers that will generate the symbol). I also cut-and-pasted the details of the references. And above, I cut and pasted the url of a diff.
So really the type of edit that is prohibited by the motion that is responding to my two mis-clicks in 2012 is pretty much inclusive of any serious editing. "But nobody would be such a jerk as to invoke the restriction for edits like this" I hear you cry. That, of course, is exactly what I thought. The purpose of this over-broad restriction, was to prevent what was seen as (perhaps reasonably) a work-around to previous restriction. In fact it provided another layer of "gotchas". I wonder if you can imagine what it is like working under these restrictions, and having people who don't know the facts say like "violation of all manner of BotOp, administrator, and consensus policies" or "apparently this user has screwed this up so many times".
The fact of the matter is, that, rightly or wrongly, the committee wanted to stop me using "automation tools", defined as "a technology designed to facilitate making multiple similar edits" - and this has resulted in me being blocked for a year over a single edit that provided references to an article, the only problem with that edit being a single character that was typed (or not typed, I forget) by hand. This was not, I believe the aim of the restriction.
So does editing Wikipedia hold any attraction? If people are going to edit cooperatively, then sure. If they are going to throw obstacles in my path for the sake of it, then not so much.
Am I marking time? Hardly! I think I have been pretty productive, I have in your area of interest, created at least stubs, or redirects for half the articles on this list. I have yet to attend to this problem with Elliot Roosevelt, and, have abandoned for now planned improvements to Carolingian Renaissance, because of the time I am spending on this, but please look at the work I have done in the last 2 weeks. It only scratches the surface, of course, but it is at least workmanlike, and an improvement. I also have spent some time at Teahouse and Help Desk, (which are the fora for being welcoming, rather than abrasive).
As to Fram's pathetic claim that he is forced to run around after me fixing my errors, I have always said that I will fix any errors brought to my attention. Fram reported three minor errors (two typos) on Jimbo Wales talk page, while I was blocked. Fixing them was the first thing I did when my block expired - Fram was happy to hunt for them to besmirch my name, but not to tell me about it. Similarly the Arb case was brought as a BLP issue - the world was about to implode because we were revealing who had had sock allegations made against them (this was debunked pretty quickly) my fourth edit was to address that issue. Although it was apparently vital enough that I should be whipped about town, have my rights removed etc. no-one was actually concerned enough to make sure that these details weren't exposed - except me. By their fruits shall ye know them.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:54, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies 2: "The purpose is to permanently wean Rich off high speed edits with collateral damage to a slower considered style where every edit moves the article forward and requires no external intervention to fix." It would be interesting to see how either of the edits complained about contravene this purpose. Notably one is not to an article, and could never be an article, the other complaint is based on some crazy hypotheses that I would replace all occurrences of "(a)" with "*". RF 22:48, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
@ T. Canens: No one has pointed out why these edits are "problematic". No one has pointed to any editing since the arb case that is problematic. Sure I worked on a lot of turtle articles, and using the same reference format as a colleague introduced a reference with a capitalisation error in it ("Vertebrate zoology" instead of "Vertebrate Zoology") into many of them. But it was correcting the error I was sanctioned for, not creating it.
Similarly the one year block which resulted from your previous "go ahead" to Sandstein was for adding references to an article. One. Article. Not for "making many similar edits to many articles" and certainly the only error there was a single character that was typed (or omitted, I forget which) by hand.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
22:58, 11 April 2014 (UTC).
A number of people have suggested that I am "testing my limits" or "pushing the envelope" - this simultaneously ascribes a level of both stupidity and bad faith that verges on bad faith and personal attacks - so much for claims to be "dispassionate".
Strange as it seems when I am editing my mind is not on "testing the limit" (which would be playing Russian roulette) or "not acting like a human" (which is a nasty turn of phrase), but helping people. I did not create Cayley's sextic out of some perverse desire to annoy ArbCom, but because it is an useful article. I did not clean up copy-violations such as Hidden Blade because I am "testing my limits", but because they break the law. I did not remove incorrect claims from articles as an act of defiance, but because they are misleading. I am not creating pages for Trinidad and Tobago portal to annoy other editors, but to be welcoming to Trinidadians and Tobagans. I am not working on [[Igbo] culture out of a sense of spite, but to redress systemic flaws in our coverage. I am not fixing ISBN numbers to... but you get the picture. Or I hope you do.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:27, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies I do wish people would stop telling me what I am thinking. It is bad enough having them make inaccurate statements about my actions. It seems likely that I will continue to edit on this project in my own small way, in whatever ways the community and I agree are reasonable and desirable. I have just produced some code that will, I hope, assist another editor to fix 11,000 articles. Of course I published it off-wiki. And I have just produced for another editor a list of over 5,000 red-linked palaeontology articles, also published off-wiki, under CCBYSA3. I I have also helped editors gain massive speed-ups on their bots, and use semi-automated tools to make impossible tasks feasible. I don't really care, for myself, if I never run another bot on this project, there are other, just as important and much harder things that need doing. I do, however, care deeply about the following three things:
It seems to me common sense, given the wide community support here, that the type of disruptive stalking that started the AE (and a host of other like actions before it) should be put a stop to once and for all, and that the Motion of May 2012 is long past its sell-by date, serves no useful purpose (if it ever did) and should be gracefully retired.
Thank you for reading this,
Rich
Farmbrough,
04:07, 15 April 2014 (UTC)
I would like Arbcom to revise/clarify the restriction to allow use of copy-and-paste in user space. Rich's recent edits clearly did violate the restriction as worded, but it appears to me that the wording of the restriction went beyond the scope of what was called for in the Arbcom discussion. Using copy-and-paste tools in Wikipedia user space is indeed a violation of the restriction as worded, but I can't see how it does any harm. However, it harms Wikipedia's image (i.e., Wikipedia looks pretty foolish) if Wikipedia blocks or bans a productive contributor for that kind of edit. -- Orlady ( talk) 19:28, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The real question ought to be, in an environment that is not punitive, whether Rich knew he was trespassing on an Arb Com restriction. I don't see that he did in which case he should be warned that this too is a way in which he cannot edit, rather than punish for ignorance, especially when even the arbs do not agree on whether he trespassed his restrictions . How can you sanction someone for not knowing. If that is the WP environment than as a collaborative project this fails. Further the tone of some of the arbs, and I do respect the job arbs have to do, is less than civil or respectful. That an editor may have transgressed does not mean they deserve to be treated in a less than respectful manner.( Littleolive oil ( talk) 19:36, 10 April 2014 (UTC))
My first thought on seeing that this had come up again was "oh, for fuck's sake", which is still a fairly accurate summary of how I feel.
Fram: move on. You've been following Rich around for years, and if you subjected anybody to the sort of scrutiny you've been subjecting Rich to, you could find grounds to sanction them. I thoroughly endorse Beeblebrox's suggestion that you find something else to do. If Rich is a problem and continues to be so after this clarification request, others will pick up where you left off and, frankly, the complaints would have a lot more credibility if they weren't all made by the same person.
Rich: go and write an article or something. I'd love for you to keep participating in this project, but you do so on the terms of its community or not at all. It is difficult to imagine that community (or its representatives on ArbCom, think of them what you will) permitting you, at any time in the foreseeable future, to edit in a way that involves mass changes to multiple articles, such as with AWB and/or bots. I can see the argument that the current restriction is overly harsh or cumbersome, but you are not going to get it lifted by testing its boundaries, and even if you succeed in having it loosened, you will still not be permitted to make those sorts of edits. So I'm afraid your options for the time being are either to find something else to do which is permitted by your restrictions, or to find another way to fill your time. Don't just while away the time until you can get back to what you used to do, because (quite apart from the fact that you'll be waiting for many years at the very least) that's not healthy for you or for the project.
Arbs: I don't think there's much to be done for the time being. Either Rich will find something that he can work on without violating his restrictions, or he has no interest in contributing in a way that the community finds acceptable. Much as I hope it's the former, whatever the case, his intentions will soon become apparent. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:11, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
Rich should not do a search-and-replace in an article to rearrange whitespace or anything else—just edit text that will benefit from editing, and leave bot-like cleanups for others.
However, no bot-like cleanup has occurred in this case, and there is no reason to prevent Rich from doing search-and-replace while preparing an article in user space. Sanctioning an editor for saving a bad user-page draft would be Kafkaesque. Johnuniq ( talk) 23:29, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
As I understand it, Rich is being condemned for making edits that are "clearly not manually made"; to wit, using a regular expression search-and-replace.
If a logged-in user goes to Preferences → Editing, and enables both "Enable the editing toolbar" and "⧼wikieditor-toolbar-dialogs-preference⧽", they get the button when editing - it's close to the upper right corner of the edit window. This, when clicked, opens a dialog box for a search-and-replace function which handles regular expressions. It has buttons Find next Replace Replace all; the operation of these should be familiar to anybody who has used, for example, Windows Notepad. Automated process it may be; but then, so is the action that is triggered by clicking [edit], Show preview, or Save page - or by simply following a wikilink. These set in motion a number of SQL requests - they are automated processes.
I recall that Rich was required to blank his .js pages: I am not aware of any requirement that he should also disable features included within the standard MediaWiki interface. I think that it is unreasonable to expect Rich to use a subset of those standard facilities which are available to any logged-in editor. He may have been required to disable all gadgets - but the abovementioned search-and-replace function isn't a gadget.
The intent of the original judgement was surely to prevent Rich from making identical edits on multiple pages in a short time frame - edits that might violate, say, WP:AWB#Rules of use. The interpretation of this judgement has been twisted to the point that Rich cannot even make one edit to one page without it coming under scrutiny. No evidence has been provided that two or more pages have been subjected to identical edits. I would ask how Fram discovered the first edit given in evidence: it's in Rich's userspace (specifically, User:Rich Farmbrough/wanted/mathematicians), and is a page that has never been edited by Fram, so is not likely to be on Fram's watchlist. There are two ways that he can have become aware of that edit: either he is stalking Rich's edits, or was tipped off. I cannot say which of these actually occurred, but it does seem to me that certain parties are out for blood, which they intend to get by any means possible. If the edits that Rich made to a page in his own user space are not in accord with WP:USERSPACE, there are several available routes: (i) edit the page per WP:UP#On others' user pages; (ii) put it up for WP:CSD (see WP:UP#DELETE); (iii) take it to WP:MFD. There is no need to make a whole drama out of a non-issue.
Finally, I would like to point out that one of those complaining made this edit, to this very clarification request; notice that in the added paragraph, it includes the phrases "using a text editor's search and replacement feature ... requires special attention to each and every edit" and "this user has screwed this up so many times". I invite you all to observe what happened to the post immediately preceding the newly-added subsection. How did all those punctuation marks become altered to hash signs, if not by an inattentive screwed-up edit? -- Redrose64 ( talk) 23:16, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
The edit in discussion does not appear automated. In any case, it did not require copy, paste, and search. Instead of just looking at the diff and assuming that it is automation, I opened the original page for editing in a window. Then I saw that setting up the new version is merely a matter of deleting numbers and punctuation after each link in the list, and deleting some blank lines. Nothing fancy was needed to do that.
Italick (
talk)
09:59, 12 April 2014 (UTC)
well, here we are again. has arbcom learned yet that micromanaging editors is problematic? when will there be civility enforcement toward admins here? i see we have an admin who is blocked at bugzilla, acting the same way here. i have heard it said that editors are a dime a dozen, and replaceable. is this case a refutation? is anyone else fixing isbn's? is a high edit count rather a block me sign, since the error patrol has more to rake over the coals? when you ask if he is "marking time", is that a refutation of fresh start? when you ask why not just edit by typing, is that a refutation of all the tools and bots, most of which have unintended consequences? i note that bots that delete references are allowed to run, but heaven help the bot that adds a typo.
stop blaming the editor, and start fixing the system. if you don't like the editor's output, then give him the tools to reduce errors. this kind of zero defect thinking in this case, is profoundly incompetent. it leads to zero activity, and zero improvement.
and make no mistake, if you were to ever ask, why is there editor decline; this is a clarion call why. Duckduckstop ( talk) 19:30, 14 April 2014 (UTC)
Isn't this just a "todo" list of sorts in his own userspace? What reasonable person would think curating a personal todo page could be a violation of the spirit of these restrictions? I'm pretty disappointed that some of you are voting for ~months-long blocks for this. Fram, I appreciate your diligence here, but I'm similarly disappointed that you wasted your time looking over his edits to his userspace; I'd echo the other calls here for you to take a step back. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 03:15, 17 April 2014 (UTC)
@ AGK:. If I were Newyorkbrad I would feel rather insulted by your comment that "the answer [to why the automation restriction should apply to Rich's userspace] seems obvious." If the answer were obvious then nobody would feel the need to ask the question, particularly not someone as experienced in dispute resolution matters as NYB.
For every sanction imposed on a user, the following questions must have known answers before it is imposed:
At the moment it is not clear what the answer to any of these questions is in relation to Rich not being allowed to use automation in his userspace. There may very well be good answers to all of them, but you need to actually answer them. Thryduulf ( talk) 16:17, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
The intent is to give Rich a-fifth-or-sixth-absolutely-last-chance as an alternative to an indefinite site-ban. The spirit is to ensure that Rich's work comprises: click on [edit], type, then [save page]. The purpose is to permanently wean Rich off high speed edits with collateral damage to a slower considered style where every edit moves the article forward and requires no external intervention to fix.
In this context, the edits here clearly breach the restriction and, coming so soon after a twelve-month block, are deeply disappointing.
Now, Rich, I have a question for you:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
In order to resolve the enforcement request referred to us, the committee resolves that:
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by
Rich
Farmbrough,
04:22, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
The previous arbitration case defined an automaton tool in principle 3.1
An automation tool is a technology designed to facilitate making multiple similar edits that would be unduly time-consuming or tedious for a human editor to perform manually.
A "remedy" was passed (Remedy 2)
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia....
Presumably, since the drafting arbitrator had defined "automation tool", and since the initial complaint was that automation tools had been used in a way that caused issues disruption, by making multiple similar edits, automation tools is what is meant here. The actual wording is overboard and unenforceable.
For this reason I request that:
The text of the first sentence of remedy 2 be forthwith changed to:
Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from using any automation tool whatsoever on Wikipedia to make multiple similar edits.
A, hopefully unintended, side effect of is my inability to archive my talk page, (possibly) to create lists of articles for people to work on and make other perfectly innocuous changes. Therefore I request the following to be added to Remedy 2.
This shall not apply to pages in Rich Farmbrough's own User; And User talk: area.
I note that a similar request was turned down two years ago as being "too soon." I hope this no longer applies.
Motion 2 (which has been described by arbitrators as "draconian") was introduced in somewhat heated circumstances. I had mis-clicked on a tool I was using to compile lists and prepare text and made two "automated edits". Much ABF followed, together with many unfounded accusations and threats to bring out the ban-hammer. Nonetheless, the existing remedies were quite sufficient for a one-month block to be enacted. Given this the imposition of an additional editing restriction, especially one as broad reaching as this seems pointless.
Motion 2 has been subject to much abuse, resulting in a years block over an edit that added references to a page, but caused an error due to the wholly manual omission of a "/". It was even suggested that editing the page to insert the missing "/" constituted automated editing.
Neither this, nor the subsequent request for AE, nor any other complaint based on the Motion 2 have had anything to do with "making multiple similar edits" - the effect has been not to prevent disruption but to create disruption.
Moreover the Motion forbids such simple tasks as cutting and pasting, making even raising this request sanctioanble. I have given elsewhere examples of perfectly normal, not say essential, editing techniques which are banned by this Motion 2. I will repeat them here if requested.
So request 3 is:
Strike Motion 2
@ Beeblebrox. I think you confuse me with someone else. With the possible exception of the series of edits correcting the my own spelling error "Vertebrate zoology" to "Vertebrate Zoology", for which I apologized profusely and was blocked for a month two years ago, no-one has even suggested that I have done the type of multiple edits that allegedly caused disruption.
You might also want to look at some of the other parts of the case. For example this edit was considered a reason to remove my admin bit. And yet you can "sigh" in your edit summary with no consequences.
All I am trying to achieve here, is to restore sanity to the editing restrictions, not to remove them, however flawed they are. I can see no way these requested changes can harm the project, even if the manifest WP:ABF were justified.
I would really appreciate being treated in a courteous manner, and have the issues addressed, rather than coded and not so coded insults.
However, I will make an additional effort to move the dialogue forward: Suggest, please, an editing task which I could take on which would not violate Motion 2?
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:59, 13 April 2014 (UTC).
@Newyorkbrad, most certainly. All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
12:53, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Roger Davies It's not nice to say that there were problems with my bots. If you look at the workshop even my most vociferous critic said "His bot edits (Helpful Pixie Bot mainly) generally fall under a), both authorized and correct. "
There are no "findings" relating to errors in bot edits, or indeed to any errors.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:34, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Beeblebrox I just read your comment again. I think that the point of the sanctions is supposed to be to protect the encyclopaedia. The idea that the sanctions themselves are important for their own sake is a very un-wiki idea. If the sanctions are only being perpetuated because it is believed that I have, will or want to break them, it is a bad case of the tail wagging the dog.
All the best,
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:40, 19 April 2014 (UTC).
Without wading into the details of Rich's motion I am hoping Arbcom can come up with a solution that will eliminate the need for constant supervision of Rich's situation, and reduce the frequency of trips to arbitration and arbitration enforcement pages. I think the original sanctions were intended to prevent disruption but if they have become an obstacle to Rich being a non-disruptive contributor and are frequently discussed at great length on arbitration and arbitration enforcement pages then I think it's time for a change. -- Pine ✉ 07:01, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Hasteur ( talk) at 20:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
I seek clarification as to the extent of which the ban on automation extends. A request was made at Wikipedia:Bot requests seeking a bot operator to design a highly customized talk page archiving bot based on multiple rules and targeting. Based on this I seek clarification as to what line does a completely manual edit flip over to being automation when the edit triggers a automated response. Does a Rube Goldberg invention of triggered automation cross the line over what is considered automated? Hasteur ( talk) 20:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
This is pretty much what Femto Bot used to do, with corrections and minor upgrades. The committee seemed agreeable to having another editor run Femto Bot's code last time it was mentioned. This request is for a more robust version, notably it would be resistant to attempts by other users to manipulate it, and would be more scalable, being event driven rather scheduled. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 20:46, 23 April 2014 (UTC).
@AGK "I am actually thinking the automation restriction is utterly unenforceable" well, you shouldn't have voted for such stupid restrictions in the first place! Instead think about what is good for the encyclopaedia! All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 23:58, 23 April 2014 (UTC).
@ Worm That Turned - I created a custom bot because I needed it. I think others would had found it useful too, had I made it as robust as would have been required for a general purpose bot. Similar degrees of complexity apply to existing bots, for example they create and head up new archives as needed, and can provide some forms of indexing.
I used four general bots before switching to my own. Running my own allowed me to be more responsive to user concerns, by keeping unfinished business on the page, and clearing dealt with items quickly away.
In the request for permission to run Femto Bot, Sladen reported that a kind offer had been made to run the bot for me. There were no objections at the time. Funny how it's now seen as major problem. I however do not stop assuming good faith, where it is deserved, simply believing that people are not as "dispassionate" as they would like to claim, and are reacting emotionally. That is absolutely fine, and emotion is not out of place here. However I would urge people who wish do deliver judgements to try to separate the factual, the procedural and the intentional.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 06:31, 25 April 2014 (UTC).
I am sure that it strikes me as a poor use of our bot-coding editors' time and effort
—@Newyorkbrad I sincerely hope you are not saying this in any kind of official capacity. It appears as though you mean to dictate what people spend their time on. Hopefully, you instead simply meant this as an idle expression of bewilderment about something that you don't understand.
This appears to be something genuinely useful to certain people. Not to me; I obviously don't get the kind of talk page traffic that would necessitate this kind of thing. But if someone wants to build it what is the harm in RF outlining the specification? Surely his restrictions don't preclude him from suggesting automation tasks to others?
The idea that RF triggering this bot would be a violation of his restriction is completely absurd. The tool and its effects would be completely someone else's responsibility. His alleged carelessness and obstinate attitude (IIUC the root cause of his restrictions) would not be an issue here at all. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 23:02, 23 April 2014 (UTC)
Salvio—"just use Cluebot III or some other bot like that" — Isn't that what he's trying to do? If someone makes the suggested bot, then it will be "some other bot like that"—what is the problem? What do you mean by "decline" in this context? ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 21:33, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@Worm_That_Turned—you realize that this request wasn't filed by RF, right? I'm not sure what your point is in noting that this is the 6th one; I don't know why it was filed, but it wasn't RF's idea as far as I can tell. ErikHaugen ( talk | contribs) 21:40, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
If the Committee wants to absolve itself of all credibility as a body willing and capable of resolving disputes to the benefit of the encyclopaedia it's going about it in the right way.
On the other hand the Committee could get their heads out of their posteriors and articulate what Rich's topic ban is actually intended to achieve, why that needs to be achieved, and how the restriction is intended to achieve that. Until such time as the community understand the purpose of the restriction (which these endless requests demonstrate it does not) it cannot reliably enforce it. You (the Committee) regularly ask admins to enforce the spirit of the rules, referencing the letter to determine that. In this case we cannot do that - the letter is ambiguous and the spirit changes depending on who asks and who answers.
If you aren't prepared to do your jobs in this regard, you can at least retain the basic decency to answer the simple, specific questions asked:
It has just occurred to me that if this is declined then we also need answers to other questions about what is an is not acceptable:
For each "no" answer, please explain why he should not be allowed to do that in terms of benefit to the encyclopaedia. Thryduulf ( talk) 09:31, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
@ AGK: I'd like to hear what's wrong with Rich's conduct, 'cause I (and I think many others) see absolutely no issue with it. To suggest that we ought to ban him for it is utterly bewildering. — lfdder 00:16, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Newyorkbrad: "... but I am sure that it strikes me as a poor use of our bot-coding editors' time and effort." - surely, we have 4 archiving bots, that has then already been a massive poor use of time and effort for the other 3 programmers who wrote one after the first. I find that belittling, Brad, bot operators are free to do whatever they want to use time and effort poorly on. The community, nor the Arbitration Committee, have no say about what has to be programmed for them.
Regarding the whole, if one of those 4 bots would have this way of working already, you would not have a problem with Rich using that. You do not have problems with Rich setting the user-options for one of those that already exist, making it operate every 3, 5 or 13 days. You have no objections against Rich asking another Bot Operator to repair typo's for him. You do not have problems with another bot operator having a bot delivering messages to Rich's talkpage (where he has/d to opt-in). You do not have problems with bots signing messages left on his talkpage. You do not have problems with other bots notifying him of 'problems' with his edits (BracketBot). You DO have problems with this?
And if now an independent bot-programmer comes and thinks 'I like this, I want this on my talkpage', uses his time poorly to write the bot, tests it, gets permission and runs it on his talkpage, and makes it available to the larger community, do you have a problem that Rich switches to that bot, or are you going to ban him immediately?
AGK is right, this is a badly designed, poorly worked out decision, resulting in poor use (and actually a massive waste) of our community's time. -- Dirk Beetstra T C 06:55, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
link to withdrawal -- S Philbrick (Talk) 15:05, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
That said, I'm of the same opinion as NativeForeigner - Hasteur is a big boy, if he wants to code a bot to Rich's specifications - it's his responsibility to ensure it meets community guidelines. As such, he'll be the one who gets the come-uppence if anything goes wrong with the bot. Should he decide to do this, then I advise him to write it carefully himself and test it thoroughly.
Rich, I'm generally unimpressed that you took the tentative agreement by a few committee members to archive your talk page using existing bots as free rein to wander over to the bot request notice board and ask for a custom made bot. It's exactly that sort of behaviour that stops people from assuming good faith with your behaviour. WormTT( talk) 10:42, 24 April 2014 (UTC)
Note: Here is an interesting quote from Roger Davies around the time of the case closure. [Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough/Proposed decision "You'll also be delighted to hear that the proposed remedies enable him to give you exactly the help you seek by way of planning the logisitics, working up the code, liaising with bot owners and so on."]
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 06:28, 29 April 2014 (UTC).
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Fram ( talk) at 08:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Rich Farmbrough has editing restrictions, one stating that he is "indefinitely prohibited from using any automation whatsoever on Wikipedia. For the purposes of this remedy, any edits that reasonably appear to be automated shall be assumed to be so." and another that "Regardless of the editing method (i.e. manual, semi-automatic, or automatic; from any account), Rich Farmbrough is indefinitely prohibited from mass creating pages in any namespace, unless prior community approval for the specific mass creation task is documented."
One of the causes of these restrictions was the mass creation of script-generated biographies taken from the Dictionary of National Biography on Wikisource (see [ [26]], which was also at the start of my evidence on the RF arbcom case).
Now, RF has created many more similar pages (same method, same problems) at Wikisource, and is actively looking for people to import these to Wikipedia, if possible by bot or script. His script adds very little of value to the existing Wikisource pages: an extremely rudimentary infobox, bolding of the page title, some seemingly random wikilinks (sometimes none at all), birth and death year cats, and (the only thing of potential value IMO) the references used by the DNB article presented in a Wikipedia-style at the end of the article. The pages he creates are taken from all kinds of Wikisource transcriptions, not all verified for correctness (of transcription, this is not about factual correctness).
Evidence of same kind of problems (examples, not exhaustive at all):
Note also that every page starts with {{subst:Quick infobox|..., but there is no Template:Quick infobox.
As for evidence that he believes these pages are ready to be imported, that he is actively recruiting people to serve as proxies to circumvent his restrictions, and that speed is the defining characteristic for his creations and the manner he uses:
I had put a note on the project talk page to raise my concerns [32]. The response [33] speaks volumes.
Considering the April 2014 clarification issued by the Committee that "Accordingly, Rich Farmbrough is warned that the committee is likely to take a severe view of further violations, and may consider replacing his automation restriction with a site ban.", I would suggest that enough is enough, and simply siteban him for continuously trying to circumvent or violate his restrictions, and for basically not learning anything from his previous mistakes and the discussions and blocks surrounding them. Nothing less, including his last one-year block, seems to make any difference. A siteban won't stop him working on Wikisource, but it will at least stop the active recruitment on Wikipedia of editors to proxy for him. Fram ( talk) 08:56, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
After this was done, he did another run on the articles, changing "thither" to "there". Seven articles were changed, one incorrectly though, as "thither" was part of a title in that one, so the change made the article less correct [47], and would be hard to detect afterwards. Fram ( talk) 18:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@Wbm1058: I don't care what he does on Wikisource, as long as he doesn't try to find people to import these pages here as a way to circumvent his restrictions here. My links to Wikisource are only used to show that the pages are problematic. My request here is about his actions here. Fram ( talk) 19:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
@AGK: I don't really understand your statement about an "alleged import"; I have provided multiple piecees of evidence that Rich wants people to import these to Wikipedia: the category at Wikisource claims that they are ready to be copied into Wikipedia, this link is a section he started, called importing articles, where he specifically states "If you have the rights you might consider an export-import solution.", and elsewhere he also promotes bringing his drafts to Wikipedia as a "quick win" [48]. So it is obvious that he has already tried to "crowdsource" his automation, as you put it, and that he wants (or certainly wanted) these to be imported swiftly and preferably en masse. That no one so far has acted upon this (as far as I know) doesn't mean that he hasn't tried to breach the sanctions in this way, only that he was unsuccessful. The "proxying", brought up by others, is a red herring in that regard, as I am not seeking any sanctions against other editors, even if someone would have imported one of these. This request is only about the behaviour of Rich Farmbrough. He now claims that "I have never suggested using a bot or script to import the items, and indeed I would strongly disagree with doing that en masse, as it would break the proposed workflow."; I wonder how he reconciles this with his preferred "export-import solution" for someone with "the rights". I hope that, contrary to earlier ArbCom proceedings, he will actually explain what he intended, and not simply dismiss evidence without any justification for it. Note also this [49]: "As to importing, of course they would not be bulk imported to article space, but to my user namespace by default, or the project namespace by choice, which would create no issues for anyone, except to make mass updating difficult." This not only contradicts his advice to the gender project, but also would still violate his restrictions on mass creating articles, which clearly states that he is "indefinitely prohibited from mass creating pages in any namespace". Fram ( talk) 06:58, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
About Rich Farmbroughs comment (or "preliminary statement"). Most seems rather irrelevant, I'll stick to a few points.
@Seraphimblade. I don't really get this, you seem to be basically syaing that if someone has restrictions here, they are free to try to circumvent them and find other editors to help them continue their problematic editing? Doesn't that make the restrictions rather toothless? Fram ( talk) 07:09, 29 August 2014 (UTC)
@PBS: Both. Restrictions are not "don't do this unless your edits are good", they are "don't do this"; but in this case, as I presented in my opening statement, the edits still present the same or very similar problems as the earlier ones had, so I don't believe using them would be a net benefit either (I don't think using the RF versions will make it any faster to present decent articles compared to starting from the standard Wikisource pages, and the chances are considerable that they will introduce additional errors not present in those Wikisource pages, like in some of the examples above). Fram ( talk) 16:23, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
In the interests of collegial working, and to save everyone's time, I would appreciate guidance form the Committee, as to whether they would like a point-by-point commentary on the above, a general statement, or, indeed, whether it is not worth responding to. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 13:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC).
I have drafted a statement which I will post later tonight or tomorrow, once I have removed or reduced those points that Kim has already made more ably than I.
I will just point out, for the record this absurd statement of Fram's, which I had missed amongst the cruft (I may later incorporate it into my general statement:
is actively looking for people to import these to Wikipedia, if possible by bot or script.
This is quite simply a chimera. I have never suggested using a bot or script to import the items, and indeed I would strongly disagree with doing that en masse, as it would break the proposed workflow.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 22:01, 26 August 2014 (UTC).
1. Scope
:You are still welcome to proof-read or validate any of the pages in DNB, and if you let me know I will re-create their drafts, where appropriate. And you can add here any issues you discover which appear to be new. [1]
2. History
2. a) "The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history"
[2] and "many of the longer entries are still highly regarded"
[2], it covers tens of thousands of people from legendary figures from the mists of time, up to the the early years of the twentieth century, when the supplementary volumes are taken into account. Due to the publication dates the text is in the public domain.
[3] These texts, therefore, form a good potential starting point for Wikipedia articles. Over the last decade a small group of dedicated volunteers, lead by the redoubtable Charles Matthews have been working on creating a proofread version of the DNB on Wikisource with the express aim (although not the sole aim) of having the material available for Wikipedia. In parallel a very great number of Wikipedia articles have been created for the same subjects, sometimes based upon the DNB material, sometimes partially so, and sometimes from completely different sources (although these are often derived in whole or part from DNB).
[4]
A WikiProject DNB was set up on the 10th of September 2010, I joined on the 14th. [5] The DNB project exists solely to bring information, sometimes in the form of new articles, from the DNB into WP. It is a child project of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles [5] WikiProject DNB was broadly supportive of the previous automated creation of drafts on WP.
[While the best drafts may form tolerable articles, considerable manual work is required to most of them, and not just on the article. The links to regiments or battles, for example, may require ancillary articles to be created, or at the very least redirects or disambiguation pages. The draft merely removes tedious and repetitive workload.]
2. b) The "Gender Gap Taskforce" is a taskforce of the Sytemic Bias WikiProject, set up on the 13th of May 2013. It is active on other aspects of systemic gender bias than the Gender Gap, despite its name, for example Afd, categories and missing articles. I have been active there since the 4th of August, shortly after the taskforce saw a resurgence in activity, and had commented elsewhere on the subject of main discussion of 2013, category "ghettoization". I have previously produced lists of missing articles (and provided other, mainly technical, assistance) the Women's History project. I have also made a list of 187 women environmentalists (that I cannot share with fellow Wikipedians, except by providing a link to the off-wiki list), and have slowly been creating articles on notable women leaders form Wesleyan movements.
3. Proposed use
There was never any suggestion of automated import of these drafts as I have outlined above. You can clearly see that a 'manual process is suggested at the Gender Gap Taskforce, that implies individual articles need to be created and worked upon.
[6]
The advantage of using the import function, as I understand it, is that it allows attribution to be maintained, and a consistent edit summary of the import itself is used. I made it clear, when Fram raised the issue of import that bulk importing would "make mass updating difficult." [1] Had Fram the slightest concept of how the process of continual improvement works, he would have realised that bulk import by any means is anathema to my goals, at least while I am unable to work effectively upon the English Wikipedia.
Moreover it is clear that the drafts are not ready for article space as noticed to the DNB project, so any bulk import there would be a bad idea. [7]
4. Warnings given
4. a. Caveat: ... You remain responsible for your own edits. [6]
4. b. These pages are drafts ready to be copied into Wikipedia at your peril. [8]
Note that the WikiProject DNB members tend to be experienced editors who know that they are responsible for their own edits.
Members of both projects clearly have their own reason to create these articles. (See, Bruning, Kim: 2014)
5. Conclusions
No proxy editing is taking place here, and none has been proposed. Assistance is being offered to two projects I am already involved with, and which have aims in line with my own: to wit, creating missing articles on notable women, adding missing articles on notable Britons. To keep these projects in the dark about a possible resource would be unkind, unproductive and unwiki.
No proxy automation is taking place either, this is a trivial lemma.
6. Quotations It is, though, instructive to note the previous comments of a couple of current arbitrators:
7. Colophon It has been expressed to me by an Arbitrator that, despite the findings not saying anything about it, the root issue was the speed of editing. [notes 1] It is already perverse, then, that I was blocked for a year for mistyping a single character manually. It would be even odder if any sanction were considered for precisely zero edits
On this note if any Arbitrator knows of any other hidden reasons for sanctions, I would be most grateful to be appraised of them.
I wonder how he reconciles this with his preferred "export-import solution" for someone with "the rights".
I provided the Gender Gap Taskforce with two links, one to a list of red-linked articles and their corresponding DNB pages on wikisource, and one (IIRC) to a category of drafts.
Anyone who wishes may take the text of the Wikisource article, or of a draft, or they may retype the text from the image of the DNB page, or they may re-write it in their own words.
If they use the draft (which is in my userspace) they will, in general, have less work to do than if they if the Wikisource page. I will be happy whichever they use.
As to the particulars, the intention is to improve the conversion process continually, this is known as kaizen. If an improvement to the process is made it will be shared by all new and existing drafts. Moreover source changes will also be reflected to existing drafts.
If they try to polish a draft in my userspace in Wikisource, and it were to be overwritten, their changes would not be lost, but would be available in history. Nonetheless this is probably a bad idea. It would be better to polish it on Wikipedia. They can do this, for example, in their own userspace, in Draft space or at AFC. They could also do it under the WP:DNB project space, or indeed in article space, provided they are not going to abandon a particularly problematic draft. Clearly they would do this if they worked from the Wikisource article or the images.
So I don't think I am placing any large manual burden on anyone, rather removing a manual burden.
Anyone who wants to automatically import these drafts will need to propose a BRFA, which includes showing community consensus, per WP:BOTPOL. If the community consensus is to bulk import the pages, then I would not wish to stand against it, even though I don't think it is currently appropriate. The committee may have a different view of community consensus, of course.
I had not realised these fine distinctions were that important. However the prohibition on automation is recorded, as far as I know, as an "Editing restriction" and does not ascend to the lofty height of a "Topic ban".
No jurisdiction. Per
Wikipedia:Arbitration, This Arbitration Committee's jurisdiction extends only to the English Wikipedia
. See
m:Arbitration Committee for other committees. Apparently
Wikinews has a committee, but Wikisource does not. If you don't like what Rich is doing there, or in his own user space (which I'd assume was intended for debugging), then go to the Foundation and ask for an Office Action. –
Wbm1058 (
talk)
19:12, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
Quick point of policy: Just pointing out that WP:PROXYING fails on both forks:
Even if we bend #1 to also apply to editing restrictions, #2 still applies full force.
Further, I guess Fram reads "are ready to be imported at your peril" opposite from me. (I read it as "Don't do it that way. (yet)").
Together with the fact that this is on ws instead of wp I'm not sure there's a case here for arbcom per-se. (Though Fram's frustration is quite understandable here.)
I know the tendency these days is to delete rather than improve, and ABF over AGF, but this is still wikipedia. :-)
You know, Rich can Code, and Fran knows their quality control. Could we establish procedures where Fram can cooperate with Rich to generate something that both would agree was useful? The large benefit to wikipedia if these folks could work together is obvious, imao. ;-)
-- Kim Bruning ( talk) 13:02, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
Fram has stated that many of the articles are "broken". I have not read the articles in detail, but would like to ask whether Fram's comments, such as that abbreviations for books of the Bible have been replaced with the names of the books, are valid. Is that criticism correct? If the criticism is correct, are the articles in Wikisource really ready to be pulled into Wikipedia, or will it be necessary for those copying the articles to make non-trivial edits? If, in your opinion, the articles are ready for Wikipedia, how is Fram mistaken? Why have you cautioned not to edit the articles in Wikisource? Am I correct in assuming that you are using a script in Wikisource? In that case, by overwriting and "rebreaking" any broken features in the script, it appears that you are proposing to place a large manual burden on Wikipedia editors. Robert McClenon ( talk) 23:18, 26 August 2014 (UTC)
If RF does something, and Fram doesn't obsess over it, is it really disruptive? This we have jurisdiction over anything in the universe that might affect Wikipedia slope ya'll seem to be on recently should stop, because it diminishes the credibility of the commitee (i.e. good luck banning Erik Möller).
RF was banned from automation because he demonstrated a lack of judgement in using automation to affect articles. If he automates off-en-wp, there is no violation. If the introduction of the work product of those automations by another editor diminishes the encyclopedia, the responsibility lies on the editor who did the edit, not RF.
If the committee is going to establish a vicarious liability policy in that an editor who encourages another editor to do something is as responsible for the one who does it … please desysop Fram for encouraging [51] the behavior of Kafziel Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kafziel whom ya'll desysoped. No, that's not a serious request, it's a Reductio ad absurdum argument for the principle editors are only responsible for their own behavior, not what others do. NE Ent 10:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
I have met Rich in real life many times, we have had great chats, as you might guess this includes our different experiences with Arbcom, and he is a fellow supporter of Wikimedia LGBT+. I expect the outcome here to be "I don't see anything that the committee should do", as others have highlighted. If Rich wants to play around with Wikipedia content away from Wikipedia, meh, this is something that is actually a good thing as if others are going to reuse his work to improve Wikipedia contents that's their editorial judgement, not Rich's.
The Wikipedia community has seen 2 years of Rich being publicly pilloried for his use of automation, or more accurately, even the appearance of automation such as simple cut & paste editing, has become a reason for eye-watering year long blocks. This has become a death of a thousand cuts, how about putting aside the punishment hat and instead talk realistic solutions that give Rich a way to regain his good standing as a Wikipedia editor, and we can all benefit from his significant talents and interest in writing better tools for our editors?
Those members of Arbcom who have not had a chance to meet Rich and discuss his passion for the English Wikipedia, I strongly encourage to take up the offer of a Skype call. Nobody can possibly doubt his good intentions, his enthusiasm for open knowledge and his great potential for helping to deliver on our shared mission. He is exactly the sort of long term Wikipedian you want to encourage.
Let's move on please. -- Fæ ( talk) 12:41, 27 August 2014 (UTC)
P.S. I note that Fram's statement is currently 1,395 words long and may well be added to. I have only briefly skimmed the text as a result.
As one of two editors who did most of the systematic clean-up of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#List in October–December 2011, I do not share all of Fram's concerns. At the time I was of the opinion that it was better to modify the text and fix the attribution than it was to delete the articles. I was disappointed at the number of editors who participated in the clean up, and because the pages had been published I felt a responsibility to clean them up (even thought I wanted to be editing other pages), and so resented RF for placing that extra burden on the DNB project.
If articles are manually ported by editors from wherever RF has placed them, those editors have three choices:
The decision and the responsibility for making sure that the text meets Wikipedia content policies guidelines must rest on the editor who chooses to import the text. One editor building on the efforts of another is the Wikipedia way. I suspect, given the lack of participation if fixing the problems in the 100+ pages in 2011 when RF generated similar content, that the speed at which the articles he creates are copied across to Wikipedia will occur far more slowly than RF hopes it will happen.
To facilitate monitoring the ports I would suggest that an audit page is kept consisting of:
I think Fram needs to question whether Fram is opposing this initiative by RF, because Fram believes that RF is gaming the system and should not be allowed to do so (whether or not the outcome of RF's initiative will be a net benefit to the Wikipedia project); or whether Fram's motives are because Fram believes that this initiative will inevitably harm the project and so should be strangled at birth.
I think on balance it should be a benefit to the project, but it largely depends on the the editing care of any editors who decide to import the text and their taking responsibility for doing so. Therefore I would suggest that the project is allowed to go ahead with the understanding that it can be reviewed at any time.
-- PBS ( talk) 16:06, 1 September 2014 (UTC)
It would be helpful if the committee could help clarify at what point Fram's reporting of Rich becomes abusive and/or excessive. -- Hammersoft ( talk) 00:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
If Rich were to persuade someone to import en masse the material he has generated off-site, there would be something to deal with. As it is, one-by-one article creations don't represent the same sort of problem. Mangoe ( talk) 19:47, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 02:56, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
Finding 4 cites "letter and spirit of bot policy" (without, of course, quoting the policy) and gives four alleged examples, apparently supported by links.
Taking these in order:
More on item 4
|
---|
|
Three of the four examples are clearly within policy. The fourth is within standard usage, and even so I went to great lengths to oblige CBM.
I have attempted to keep this short, so may have omitted something you think important. Please feel free to ask any questions, and I will do my best to answer them. I am happy to answer questions of opinion or fact, or even motivation.
From those Arbitrators who have already commented, I would like to hear one compelling reason that lies about a living person are more acceptable on arbitration pages than on articles. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough, 15:46, 25 November 2014 (UTC).
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 12:47, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
In a case brought against me some three and a half years ago, it was found that certain community norms had been broken by me, specifically WP:BOTPOL, WP:5P4 and WP:ARBRFUAT.
I note that in the intervening period I have complied with WP:BOTPOL, been civil and collegial with other editors, and been responsive to other editors concerns, as anyone active in the community will know.
In particular I have continued to work at WP:TEAHOUSE, welcome new users, attempted to smooth ruffled feathers at WP:GGTF, mainly by focussing discussion on substantive issues, provided assistance to other editors both on and off-wiki (a list could be made available if desired). I have continued to work on other wikis with no issues.
I also continue to perform work high community trust, on protected templates, but more importantly on edit filters where, together with others (notably Dragons flight) I have overhauled almost every filter to ensure that the whole system continues to work (it was failing) and new filters can be implemented.
Moreover not only have I been policy compliant, collegial and responsive, I have every intention of continuing indefinitely to be so.
For these reasons I request the Arbitration Committee to terminate remedy 2.
Addenda:
Please note that I am eligible to request termination of this sanction from 15 January 2013. The sanction, qua sanction, is continuing to impact my good name in the community, notably impeding my recent RfA, and so the time has come to remove it.
Please also note that I have suggested a more nuanced approach to complete termination in the past, which has been dismissed by various committee members, with rather unflattering characterisations.
Thryduulf I would certainly consider you views valuable. I have met with other members of the committee at various wiki-functions. Whether to recuse must be your decision. I would not find fault either way. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
20:28, 8 October 2015 (UTC).
Guerillero You must have a reason for saying that, do you mind if I ask what it is?
Gorilla Warfare It's hard to be specific. Indeed I have very little time to put into large scale projects. But even simple things like:
But the main point is the stigma. This affects not just my standing in the community, but my ability to volunteer for certain roles on-wiki, and even my eligibility for employment off-wiki.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:32, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
Seraphimblade What lead up to it? A lot of things, that I can address here (or elsewhere) if you wish. However what I prefer to address specifically is the negative "findings of fact" which are putatively the committee's take on "what lead up to it." For example one suggested that I was "not responsive". I do not here challenge that claim, I simply point out that since that date I have been responsive. Similarly I have not infringed on BOTPOL. And I doubt anyone could challenge that I have been collegial - indeed my main thrust on the non-content part of Wikipedia has to be to encourage people to work together - and civil. Indeed I have had two complaints about being too civil.
Moreover I can state categorically that I have every intention of continuing to be collegial, civil, responsive and policy compliant.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
15:11, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
(Currently watching
WikiConference USA live.)
Corcelles Your response does not provide any useful feedback. I have explicitly invited feedback from Arbitrators on several occasions over the years, which has given you plenty of opportunity to discuss any issues you think remain unresolved. If, of course, you believe that I am an unredeemable case, then no feedback is to be expected, as it would be a waste of your valuable time. Otherwise a more detailed response would be useful.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
16:35, 10 October 2015 (UTC).
AGK I am surprised you are not recusing yourself here All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
16:05, 12 October 2015 (UTC).
Native Foreigner I am always interested in any wisdom about my actions. I reiterate the invitation to share or discuss them, here, on my talk page, by email, by phone/Skype or in person which I made some considerable time ago.
As to looking into the case, I'm afraid it's a bit of a mammoth, but I find the weakness of the supporting evidence to the findings, and particularly the need to go back additional years quite telling. To take one example, I am under sanctions now, partly for making edits in 2010, which someone has deemed were "too fast" to comply with BOTPOL. And yet there is nothing in BOTPOL of 10 November 2010 about any limitation on assisted editing speed. (Later versions specifically exclude speed alone as being an issue.) And the speed wasn't excessive - most editors who do administrative work will have had bursts of comparable speed - for example you edited at 10 edits per minute on 17 July. According to the 2012 committee you should have submitted a BRFA authorisation for that.
Now this is just one part of one finding, and it took quite some research to check the BOTPOL pages for the appropriate dates, check the evidence, come up with a comparator. It is also a nominally objective piece of evidence and a nominally objective policy. For subjective matters like being "civil" and "responsive" the amount of work required to construct a good refutation is much higher. I therefore requested the committee allow me 14 days to put together a response to the proposed findings. This was refused and I never got to defend myself from the very surprising proposed decision, and have been working on-and-off to deal with the problems it has caused ever since.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:57, 13 October 2015 (UTC).
DGG Perhaps you would like to give an example? We have a lot of tools in our kit-bag to deal with problems, making them mostly trivial to resolve. There are no negative findings about any automated edits. Indeed finding WP:ARB RF EX EX EX states:
He has extensive experience with and expertise in the use of automation...
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
13:08, 14 October 2015 (UTC).
Salvio giuliano Thank you for your positive response.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC).
Doug Weller Thanks for your thoughtful response. It might be of interest to know that I offered to work with a similar halting system during the workshop phase of the case. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
18:21, 19 October 2015 (UTC).
DeltaQuad Thanks for your response, it's good to see another positive outlook. It's not really out of the blue I have suggested such steps as most arbs now seem to endorse several times over the years. In fact I emailed this request to the Committee over two months ago, so there was plenty of advance warning!
So perhaps it's time for a motion? All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
03:21, 7 November 2015 (UTC).
Pause clause = Any query, must halt until resolved, to the satisfaction of an uninvolved admin if required.
Stipulated that anything fully automated is subject to the normal WP:BOTPOL requirements, including BRFA where necessary.
Apologies in advance if I have mis-represented anyone or omitted anyone.
Let me suggest some motions - clearly some fancy wording would be needed:
Clearly 2 is my ideal, but any combination of 3 4 and 5 would allow me to proceed with most of the day-to-day tasks I do far more effectively, and to help other Wikipedians with their projects.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
21:46, 26 November 2015 (UTC).
@ Euryalus: I am afraid this is typical. I requested a fortnight, or at least a week to respond to the propose decision in this case. I was denied - time was too valuable. However a few months to pass a motion where there is clearly consensus that some relaxation, if not total removal, should be passed seems to be "meh, so what?" Moreover I am castigated for bringing requests for amendment, even though I have successfully had one important finding struck as factually inaccurate. It is hard to express how uninterested I am in this whole process, except as a necessity. If there had been a timely response to this request, even a partial lifting, we might now be half way through a six month period of evaluation whether a further lightening might be acceptable.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
01:14, 22 December 2015 (UTC).
I'm not sure what exactly would prevent Rich from parsing a large data set and posting his results, which he mentions above with regards to analysis of WMF data to draw inferences about the editing population. If anything stands in the way of this, it needs to be set aside, at a minimum. As for the rest, once again ArbCom is looking more than a little stubborn and vindictive here in not allowing RF some sort of path back to full functionality as an editor. Drop his restrictions and restore them by motion if he resumes negative behavior, it seems obvious. I'm very frustrated with the current committee's lack of faith or willingness to take minor risks for the greater good of the project. Carrite ( talk) 14:56, 10 October 2015 (UTC)
I can see that Arbcom might see an opportunity here merely to clarify the original excessive limitations and allow Rich to use hotcat and reflinks and to generate reports in his own userspace or ideally Wikipedia space. But really the time for such a clarification was three and a half years ago, surely by now it is time to simply lift that sanction.
As Rich mentioned he has produced some very useful lists
Wikipedia:Articles with UK Geocodes but without images being my favourite example. Along with a couple of other editors I've been testing image adding as an exercise for new editors, and we reckon we are ready, we just need this sanction lifted so we can get the report regularly refreshed instead of telling newbies to remove items from the list.
With the loss of toolserver and the problems at labs we have lost many regular reports. Including three areas I've started or been involved in such as Death Anomalies - which would be the next one I'd ask Rich to consider adopting. The lack of these reports is incredibly frustrating, and seriously holds the project back. You have an opportunity to reduce that problem by lifting or at least reducing the restrictions on Rich. Ϣere SpielChequers 09:23, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
It is time to move on, and let the Community of Wikipedians take over, rather than Arbcom never letting go and in the process throwing away the Committee's valuable time, which ought to be invested on real risks and divisive harmful issues within the community.
There is no risk whatsoever to Wikimedia projects if all sanctions are now lifted. This long ago became a incomprehensible and bureaucratic punishment, rather than a sanction that can be claimed to be done to "protect the community", or Rich for that matter.
If members of Arbcom wish to advise the Wikipedia community, they might validly suggest a voluntary restriction like 10 pages per minute. I have no doubt that Rich would subscribe to these suggestions and make a case with the community when he is ready to relax them further. There are plenty of highly active Wikimedians that will help Rich out with advice and reviews of his edits, should they introduce any issues with articles or templates.
Everyone writing here knows that Rich is a valuable contributor who has rare talents to offer our shared mission and he should be supported, encouraged and praised for his astonishing commitment, rare skills and patience during this years long case.
I haven't talked in person to Rich since last year. However we have had several chats about the future of the projects, chapters and the Foundation over the years. Back in 2012 I interviewed him about his experience with Arbcom, this remains unpublished. I expected to write it up once his Arbcom sanctions ended, as I did not want an interview which examined the experience and emotional impact that long punitive cases like this have, to influence the case or later appeals. We had no idea that this would be eating up our time and stopping Rich from contributing in 2015. -- Fæ ( talk) 12:55, 11 October 2015 (UTC)
After three and a half years, it's time to just lift these sanctions. I don't think leaving them in place in any way serves the interest of the project. I doubt very much that Rich is suddenly going to go off into 'La La Land' if these restrictions are lifted. It's time to AGF here and move on. Also, it is reasonable to assume that leaving these sanctions in place will make it impossible for Rich to advance at RfA and be resysopped – thus leaving sanction in place almost seems punitive at this point. Anyway, that's my $0.02. -- IJBall ( contribs • talk) 04:33, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
Adding my support for the sanction to be lifted. Others have said it more eloquently above so I won't try and rehash it. Plus, if I'm honest, I'm still pretty annoyed about the original decision and I'm not sure if writing a few paragraphs criticising the committee would help Rich's case here. Suffice it to say, I think they made the wrong call then and it looks even more wrong three years down the track. Please do the right thing and extend Rich some good faith. Jenks24 ( talk) 07:28, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
While intuition and gut feeling about something might be legitimate on Wikipedia; in an Arbitration case and with the arbs as with the rest of the community those feelings must be supported by specific diffs of actions which clearly indicate a user cannot be trusted or has not functioned appropriately under a restriction. 31/2 years is along time, and I don't see any specific diffs from that time period pointing to poor editing behaviour or to behaviours which would indicate a restriction is necessary. Arbitrators are held to the same standards we all are and should support allegations with substantive proof for their positions. Arbitrators are not judges or juries; they are the neutral third party in disputes. Here the parties. the members of the community who have concerns and Rich have spoken so the arbs then, given the definitions of their role must indicate why this is not sufficient to undue a restrictions. In my opinion assuming a position on 3 1/2 years of editing with out anything specific or substantive to support that position is unfair and punitive neither which are appropriate.
The community is the encyclopedia. They, community and encyclopedia, as I think you are implying are not mutually exclusive except in some instances. Your comment brought up for me an conern I have when I see the statement, "this is an encyclpedia first." It is not an encyclpedia first, it is first a collaboratibe project the goal of which is to create an encyclopedia. Unless the individuals are treated fairly the communithy will eventually collapse and so of course will the encyclopedia. I have great respect for Thryduulf's consistent, deeply thoughtful comments. Thank you. :O)( Littleolive oil ( talk) 15:48, 19 October 2015 (UTC)) Statement by {other-editor}
Some of Rich statements are extremely encouraging: "one suggested that I was "not responsive". I do not here challenge that claim, I simply point out that since that date I have been responsive." and reassuring: "I am not looking to any of the half-dozen tools I mention to perform masses of edits.". These are countered by argumentation: "There are no negative findings about any automated edits."—Findings of fact are hopefully neutral; and rationale that are not obviously for the benefit of the encyclopedia: "eligibility for employment off-wiki" and "notably impeding my recent RfA".
The block has had a positive effect on Rich's contributions and it is extremely pleasing that Rich has built a new niche after the boundaries were made clear—but editors have long memories of the (past) unparalleled disruption caused by self-invented-up AWB tasks, so it's unlikely to be able to find a route that's going to please everyone the first time around. We can see the clearly divided opinions, so something down the middle is probably the least unpalatable to all.
It is extremely easy to simply say "no", but perhaps Doug et al's suggestions of limited parole in own User space and performing tasks requested by others (ie. not dreamt-up) in non-article space, are a plausible solution. For the proponents this gives Rich Farmbrough a chance to prove himself, and for the doubters this can be seen as WP:ROPE. Enforcement likely needs to stay at WP:AE with incrementing draconian blocks, because this is the only remedy has worked effectively in effecting behavioural change, with everything else has resulted in endless discussion ("dramaz"). For AE to be effective any new boundaries require equally clear-cut edges so that evaluation can be quantifiable and enforcement can be emotionless—Rich should know where the edges are without the need to feel or push.
Yes, I have [past tense] been massively inconvenienced by Rich + bots for several years, half-a-decade ago. I've been watching this and I'm even willing to argue for some level of rehabilitation. Even I'm amazed by that. Support has its limits through; and I would invite Rich to make a clear statement about whether he wishes to go the bot route (here) or the admin route (RfA)—I don't think any combination of trying to do both is either tenable or feasible. Such an undertaking might well be sufficient for even the most resolute doubters to come around. — Sladen ( talk) 21:58, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
The only lingering damage from Rich's automated editing that I'm aware of is that which is part of the history-merge backlog. It's unfortunately a catch-22 that Rich can't repair these without the admin tools. Can anyone with a long memory identify any other issues caused by Rich's automated edits which have not yet been repaired? If yes, I'd ask him to fix those first before granting this request. If no, then I agree that by now it is time to simply lift the sanction. "Probation" can simply be requiring him to promptly fix any damage he creates, and to make limited "trial runs" of any new major repetitive automated edits, then stop and wait to ensure that there is no negative reaction to it, so that if there is, the repair of such damage will not be exceedingly difficult or time-consuming. Wbm1058 ( talk) 02:16, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
It's been over 3 years now. IMHO, the restriction should be repealed & Rich given a chance to prove himself. GoodDay ( talk) 02:32, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Rich's sanctions were made 3.5 years ago. They were criticized as ill-defined back then, and 3.5 years on they are more ill-defined than they were, because Wikipedia editing tools have moved on. I would like to see the sanction lifted altogether, but I understand the "risk" that our honorable Arbitrators think they're taking on this manner. Even so, I think Remedy 2 desperately needs to be rewritten in a way that is tool-independent and objectively enforceable - "any edits that reasonably appear to be automated" has never been properly enforceable and has generated so much adverse wiki-lawyering over the years. As a compromise, I propose limiting the scope of Rich's sanctions to reader-facing namespaces only (article, template, category, portal; excluding all talk pages); and redefining the sanction in terms of edit rate, e.g. max 1 edit per minute, or 200 edits per 24 hours. Der yck C. 22:48, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
You can tell when a sanction has become punitive rather than protective in the mind of an arbitrator when the response to an amendment request is simply "no". That's it. No reasons, no discussion, apparently no consideration. This sanction should be lifted. -- MichaelMaggs ( talk) 01:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
I have added a question at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates/Rich Farmbrough/Questions#Question from User:Fram which contains some information relevant to this amendment request, particularly the part about the User:Rich Farmbrough/Redirect tool (an automatic redirect creator made between June and August 2015) and the apparent test runs of it in the mainspace, resulting in huge numbers of often useless (newly invented) redirects. Fram ( talk) 13:57, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Three+ years is more than enough already, and these restrictions were excessive to begin with. At bare minimum, most of the specifics asked for should be granted. I looked over Fram's election questions, and RichF's answers appear to be adequate. The "smoking gun" redirect tool is no smoking gun; it's not a bot or other automation tool, despite the name, just a rather simplistic template that helps reduce some typing (which is, pretty much, what templates are for). The community is supposed to forgive and assume the good faith that a second chance is warranted (absent total WP:JERK behavior or other WP:COMPETENCE problems). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 14:00, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Inam really surprised that a good editor like Rich is burdened by sanctions 3.5 years later, yet an Admin who created massive amounts of crap gets off loosing tools he was barely using. Lift the restructions outright. Legacypac ( talk) 23:56, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
Enacted - Mdann52 ( talk) 08:45, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Initiated by Rich Farmbrough at 14:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
In a case brought against me something over four and years ago, it was found that certain community norms had been broken by me, specifically WP:BOTPOL, WP:5P4 and WP:ARBRFUAT.
I note that in the intervening period I have complied with WP:BOTPOL, been civil and collegial with other editors, and been responsive to other editors concerns, as anyone active in the community will know.
In particular I have worked at WP:TEAHOUSE, welcomed new users, attempted to smooth ruffled feathers at WP:GGTF, mainly by focussing discussion on substantive issues, provided assistance to other editors both on and off-wiki (a list could be made available if desired). I have continued to work on other wikis with no issues.
I also continue to perform work high community trust, on protected templates, but more importantly on edit filters where, together with others (notably Dragons Flight) I have overhauled almost every filter to ensure that the whole system continues to work (it was failing) and additional filters can be implemented.
Moreover not only have I been policy compliant, collegial and responsive, I have every intention of continuing indefinitely to be so.
For these reasons in October 2015 I requested (with substantially the wording above) the then Arbitration Committee to terminate Remedy 2. The Committee agreed, partly as a response to significant community support, as a first step to reduce the scope of the remedy, removing restrictions from my user spaces and subpages of Wikipedia:Database reports.
Subsequently, in addition to my regular contributions as outlined above, and other endeavours to help make the way Wikipedia works more public, [56] [57] I have been able to add value in other ways.
I have been able to run User:Femto Bot (after the usual, though not strictly necessary for user-page-bot Bot Authorisation Request), to maintain the reports, by county, of UK geolocated articles with no image - and appropriate links to Geograph, a source of suitably licensed images.
I have also implemented the control panel I suggested in 2012 which allows any editor to turn off any bot task.
I have also been able to perform mundane administrative tasks such as checking out systemic naming descriptors, monitoring the migration of RAN drafts, creating lists of missing women scientists, women of Scotland and redlinked FRSs without fear of retribution.
Given the above which indicates the benefits to the project of the previous reduction, the length of time which has elapsed since the original case was brought, and the lack of any subsequent substantive issue, and the apparent support from the community, I would request the Committee to terminate remedy 2 as soon as convenient.
All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
14:06, 22 June 2016 (UTC).
Note: I have already agreed with BAG to re-apply for any old tasks that still need running. So it is a matter of form only whether this clause is included.
I thank those Arbitrators who have already !voted on these proposals, and look forward to a speedy resolution. All the best:
Rich
Farmbrough,
07:33, 4 July 2016 (UTC).
As an active member of the bot approvals group I am not opposed to vacating the prior remedy. I suggest that any closing motion include a final reminder to Rich Farmbrough that both the spirit and letter of the bot policy are important to the community. As far as bot tasks that were approved and since suspended prior to the original sanctions ( e.g. Fepto Bot tasks 0-6 and any other tasks approved prior to the sanctions listed on other bot accounts) , I recommend that the original approvals are explicitly rescinded, without prejudice for future (re)approval requests. — xaosflux Talk 19:52, 22 June 2016 (UTC)
As I BAG member, I am in favour of Rich being able to use semi-automated tools such as HotCat, Twinkle, etc. All old bot requests whether they have been approved or not, they should be considered as expired. This is something I would suggest to anyone who would like to resume a code written 4-5 years ago. Any bot request should go through the normal bot approval process. -- Magioladitis ( talk) 07:54, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
For a long time already these sanctions continue to be merely punitive rather than preventative. That is contrary to the spirit (and policy) of Wikipedia. RF is a highly intelligent and mature individual and I see no point in continuing to deprive him of the use of any scripts. After all that has been said and done, including the appalling treatment he received on his bid for re-adminship , I don't perceive any risk whatsoever in lifting the last remaining restrictions and it's time now to fully restore his dignity. -- Kudpung กุดผึ้ง ( talk) 16:20, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm not completely comfortable at the moment with a total removal of sanctions. However I am in favour of a near total relaxation. Specifically I would allow everything except unsupervised edits to content namespaces.
The reason for this is that I don't have confidence that he understands why the community viewed the mistakes as seriously add they did/do. Awkward42 ( talk) [the alternate account of Thryduulf ( talk)] 19:18, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
As a BAGer, I have no problem with rescinding his blanket prohibition against using all automation tools, as supervised script use can certainly make one more productive and generally less frustrated by many of the shortcomings of the editing experience. That said, I still feel it prudent to err on the side of caution when it comes to suspected unsupervised edits that haven't been approved, especially if done in high volumes or at high rates, as Thryduulf alludes to. For example, if, while a large number of clearly similar edits are being made, an editor pings his talk page with a concern related to them—especially if it's an objection—then he should be expected to immediately stop and respond, thereby demonstrating he's likely supervising his edits.
As far as old bot approvals go, I wholeheartedly agree with xaosflux and Magioladitis; all the old bots should be assumed to be unapproved (perhaps something along the lines of any of those approved prior to whenever the latest AE action was?). No prejudice against re-approval. -- slakr\ talk / 02:49, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
@ Opabinia regalis: Weighing in purely as a matter of principle, the proposed probation terms don't look bad to me. They somewhat resemble probation terms imposed years ago, which commonly stated (something like) "so-and-so may be blocked if, in the opinion of any uninvolved administrator, so-and-so violates any [principle of Wikipedia, or Wikipedia policy, or whatnot]" or "so-and-so may be banned from any page so-and-so disrupts". The probation usually doesn't prohibit anything that's not already prohibited, it simply provides that administrators have greater available remedies available for breaches of the admonition. Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:02, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
The case was quite a while ago, and no problems I know off have occurred during the last two years (perhaps longer, I haven't checked; the most recent ones I remeber were with the buggy "redirect creator", but I can't recall the date of those). I don't really see what could change between this appeal and a next one: either Rich Farmbrough has regained enough community (or ArbCom) confidence to give him a new chance at automated editing, and then now is as good a time as any, or else he will never regain that confidence, and then it is rather cruel to let him appeal every six months or so, and the committee should just send a "never" message. I would support a lifting of this restriction, with the need to get renewed bot approval for all tasks he wants to restart (or any new tasks obviously). The advantage of probation seems to be that, should serious problems happen in the probation period, we can go to Arb enforcement instead of ANI or a new ArbCom case? Fram ( talk) 11:44, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
I am in favour of removing all these restrictions, with the caveat that all bot tasks be deemed expired, and thus requiring re-approval. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:51, 29 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't have much to add to what has been said above. The sanctions on Rich were ridiculously broad, and it is to his credit that he has complied with them. Time for the sanctions to be removed. Hawkeye7 ( talk) 00:29, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
The sanctions in question were applied over four years ago now. At the time, yes, that was probably necessary to prevent further disruption to the project. However, since that arbitration case, Rich has always fully complied with the sanctions laid upon him, and the remedy has long since been more of a punishment than a preventative measure. I would be fully supportive of a complete removal of these sanctions, assuming that the previous bot approvals are rescinded (as they're most likely outdated or done by other bots now). Omni Flames ( talk) 12:02, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
While reading through this request (and being familiar with previous controversy over the sanctions on Rich), I was working out how to express my opinion, and then I saw that Kudpung has expressed my thoughts perfectly (I wish I knew how he did that). So please consider my recommendation to be exactly the same as his, for exactly the same reasons. Boing! said Zebedee ( talk) 18:31, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
He's clearly gotten it, and changed. Four+ years is long enough. We should expire ancient sanctions, with much less drama, far more often when it's clear that the editor is question is not some nut-job or patently incompetent. Rich is capable, collaborative, and productive. ArbCom should remove the tattoo it placed on his forehead. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼ 17:37, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Some parts of the restrictions, such as the ban on use of hotcat, always looked punitive rather than precautionary. Other restrictions may have been worthwhile in the past but are now unneeded. Past Arbcoms have made some bad decisions re Rich, I hope this Arbcom will do better. Ϣere SpielChequers 18:03, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.
Remedy 2 of the Rich Farmbrough case is rescinded. In its place, the following remedy is enacted:Rich Farmbrough is placed on probation for a period of six months. During this six month period, starting from the enactment of this motion, Rich Farmbrough is required to
- perform all high-volume and high-speed edits on authorized bot accounts only
- provide edit summaries sufficiently identifying their task on authorized bot accounts
- disclose on their userpage of the editing user (whether bot or Rich himself) any high-volume or high-speed editing tasks. In the disclosure Rich must give an appropriate description of the task being performed and include any appropriate links to approvals.
- comply with the bot policy.
If in the view of any uninvolved administrator Rich violates these sanctions during the 6 month period, they may block or restrict Rich from some or all aspects of bot editing or high-volume high-speed tasks, whatever is appropriate to prevent damage to the encyclopedia. After the 6 month period, this motion is rescinded unless blocks or new restrictions are placed as a result of this motion, which then will require the involvement of the Arbitration Committee at ARCA. It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.
If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the committee.
It's only a rough draft I made in about 20 minutes, so feel free to edit for grammar/wording and propose change on issues with it. I feel like it strikes a balence of ensuring a smooth transition and keeps our hands out of areas that aren't ours. -- Amanda (aka DQ) 05:54, 24 June 2016 (UTC)
Abstentions | Support votes needed for majority |
---|---|
0 | 8 |
1–2 | 7 |
3–4 | 6 |
Remedy 2 of the Rich Farmbrough case is rescinded. In its place, the following remedy is enacted:Rich Farmbrough is placed on probation for a period of six months. During this six month period, starting from the enactment of this motion, Rich Farmbrough is required to
- perform all high-volume and high-speed edits on authorized bot accounts only
- provide edit summaries sufficiently identifying their task on authorized bot accounts
- disclose on their userpage of the editing user (whether bot or Rich himself) any high-volume or high-speed editing tasks. In the disclosure Rich must give an appropriate description of the task being performed and include any appropriate links to approvals.
- comply with the bot policy.
If in the view of any uninvolved administrator Rich violates these sanctions during the 6 month period, they may block or restrict Rich from some or all aspects of bot editing or high-volume high-speed tasks, whatever is appropriate to prevent damage to the encyclopedia. After the 6 month period, this motion is rescinded unless blocks or new restrictions are placed as a result of this motion, which then will require the involvement of the Arbitration Committee at ARCA. It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.
If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the Committee.
The sanctions placed on Rich Farmbrough as part of the Rich Farmbrough arbitration case ( t) ( ev / t) ( w / t) ( pd / t) are rescinded. For clarity this includes remedy 2 which prohibited Rich Farmbrough from using automation and clause B in the June 2012 amendment.If the bot approval group sees it fit, they may also revoke all previous bot requests without the authorization of the Committee.
It is noted that the original community sanctions are not affected by this motion as they were placed by the community.