Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Fred Bauder (talk | contribs) at 17:47, 13 September 2006 (→‎Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/0/0/0)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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A request for Arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution. Before requesting Arbitration, please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom).

Dispute resolution
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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

[edit]
Open cases
Case name Links Evidence due Prop. Dec. due
Venezuelan politics (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) 20 Apr 2024 04 May 2024
Mzajac (t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t) — Case suspended
[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Conflict of interest management 13 Apr 2024
Request name Motions  Case Posted
Amendment request: Conduct in deletion-related editing none (orig. case) 30 April 2024

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and (exceptionally) to summarily review new evidence and update the findings and decisions of a previous case. Review is likely to be appropriate if later events indicate the original ruling on scope or enforcement was too limited and does not adequately address the situation, or if new evidence suggests the findings of fact were significantly in error.

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. If you are going to make a request here, you must be brief and cite supporting diffs. If your case is accepted for arbitration, the arbitrator or clerk will create an evidence page that you can use to provide more detail. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person against whom you lodge a complaint.

0/0/0/0 corresponds to Arbitrators' votes to accept/reject/recuse/other. Cases are usually opened at least 24 hours after four accept votes are cast. When a case is opened, a notice that includes a link to a newly created evidence page will be posted to each participant's talk page. See the Requests section of the arbitration policy page for details.

This is not a page for discussion, and Arbitrators or Clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Please do not open cases; only an Arbitrator or Clerk may do so.

See also



How to list cases

Under the Current requests section below:

  • Click the "[edit]" tab on the right of the screen appearing above the section break line;
  • Copy the full formatting template (text will be visible in edit mode), omitting the lines which say "BEGIN" and "END TEMPLATE";
  • Paste template text where it says "ADD CASE BELOW";
  • Follow instructions on comments (indented), and fill out the form;
  • Remove the template comments (indented).

Note: Please do not remove or alter the hidden template

Current requests

Jessica Lunsford

Initiated by Cumberbund at 06:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Articles

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Marine_69-71 (talk · contribs) referred me to mediation.

Statement by party 1

User/s keeps adding irrelevent advertising (web host info) along with false "Alexa" website stats (if true these could easily be verified and a link provided, but they are not). Who hosted a murdered girl's website is not encyclopedic - this is advertising. And putting this next to clearly fallacious website stats is false advertising. The back and forth of my deleting and the reading of the info has led to two instances of page protection. If arbitrated, I will respect whatever change the committee agrees to.

  • Can you clarify which users are adding the content and which ones are removing them? If the users who keep adding the information use different names and IPs but can be confirmed to be the same by WP:RFCU, arbitration may not be needed. - Mgm|(talk) 12:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party 2

Clerk notes

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/0/0/0)

Falun Gong

Wikizach at 05:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Articles

Involved parties

Fire Star 火星

dispute resolution Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-09-03_Falun_Gong WP:RFM#Falun_Gong

I am a mediator in a case brought to me by a user working on the Falun Gong article. I researched further about the dispute; and found that some policies of wikipedia were key to the arguments on their page. On request and approval of parties, I have brought this to the Arbitration Committee, in hopes of solving the problem. I will be working on our page to give the council members information quickly, by both me and other parties.

Statement by party 1

The picture Falun Gong presents of itself to the West...something akin to a peaceful medititative group...is a false picture of the real teachings and practices of Falun Gong. I have written most of what appears in the current Criticism and controversies page and ask that the content remain, subject to adding new edit material if it is deemed necessary for balance. Master Li tells his disciples that when they talk about Falun Gong ("clarify the truth" to use FG jargon) they absolutely must not speak about the teachings "at a higher level." Those higher levels include the core concepts of Fa-rectification (the Falun Gong equivalent of judgment day, but with some different twists) and salvation for those who do not resist the Fa-rectification or think that Li's teachings (called the Dafa, or "great law") are not good. Practitioners are promised the status of gods if they follow Li's requirement that during this period of Fa-rectification they do everything they can to expose what he considers the evil and wicked Chinese Communist Party.

The Falun Gong goal is the elimination of the CCP through a variety of non-violent means, including spreading the Nine Commentaries through such Falun Gong media outlets as the Epoch Times. Falun Gong practitioners deny this goal...arguing that Li says it's the gods who will eliminate the CCP, not them...they nevertheless spend most of their time actively pursuing the elimination of the CCP. Thus the Falun Gong must be thought of as a spiritual movement with an agenda to destroy to a foreign government, not just a passive victim of that government. Much of the resisence by FG practitioners to inclusion of these obvious aspects of Falun Gong has amounted to quibbling about the meaning of words. If one says this is a "political" agenda, the practitioners in unison will say it is not because Li supposedly is not seeking power for himself in China.

Li assumes the role of a god or main Buddha, but to western reporters has also said he is just an ordinary man. There has been endless debate about what terminology to use, but nevertheless the teachings are clear in this regard. Li says "without me the cosmos wouldn't exist" and that his Dafa is providing the only means for salvation during this period of the last havoc. Simply stated, Li assumes many supernatural powers which are absolutley essential for a Falun Gong practitioner to reach "consumation." They cannot do this without the direct intervention of Master Li, yet they resist any honest reporting of his divine status in Wikedia.

In the opinion of many Western cult experts, Li has all the characteristics of a classic cult leader. He manipulates his followers, demands total obedience (if he withdraws his protection they forfeit their only chance for salvation), and says he cures the illnessnes of his disciples at the exercise sites. One harmful aspect of Falun Gong teachings is Li's insistence that sickness is not really sickness, but rather the opportunity to get rid of bad karma. Although practitioners deny it, they do avoid seeking medical attention when they are sick and frequently report on this practice on the Falun Gong web sites.

The bottom line for this Wikipedia article is that it must present the well-published opinions of Falun Gong critics, most of whom are Western academics and many of whom are cited in the Criticism and Controversies page. While the Criticism page itself has been fairly stable for several months...it is thoroughly sourced with publshed material...the biggest obstacle has been the resistance of Falun Gong practitioners to the inclusion of material on Fa-rectification and salvation of the "Fa-rectification Dafa disciples."

The editors who are critical of the Falun Gong do not object to the inclusion of sourced and verifiable material on the so-called persecution of practitioners in China, however much of the material...such as the allegations of organ harvesting from live FG...is highly dubious at best.

I think that's about 500 words, so I will stop here. In order to get a more detailed idea of some of the content that has been disputed for the past 6 months, please read through some of the archives. --Tomananda 08:17, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party 2

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by uninvolved party User:Continueddonations

Party 1 doesn't go far enough in exposing the known evils of Falun Gong, which, for example, include overt racism against mixed marriages by the movement's founder, Li Hongzhi. There is no question that the Falun Gong proponents, in the article as elsewhere, are involved in an attack on China's ruling communism, subtle only to those who aren't really paying attention. All that really remains to be discussed, once having admitted to this obvious reality, is to what extent this political subterfuge can be justified as a reaction against totalitarian rule - and to what extent it cannot. As things stand, the article's Falun Gong proponents persist in testing the credulity of Wikipedia's English-speaking readership by persisting in flatly denying all this. Continueddonations 00:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/0/0/0)

New anti-Semitism

Initiated by Tony Sidaway at 02:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

  • Seems to be a huge amount of bad blood over editing on the article New anti-Semitism. Perhaps arbitration would be advisable in order to forestall further ugliness.

Prior dispute resolution

Statement by User:Tony Sidaway

I'm not really involved in this but I'm sure I'm not the only one seeing some extremely ugly interactions between some of my colleagues, all of whom are extremely highly respected members of the community. In my limited perception and experience the dispute seems to revolve around perceived ownership issues over this article. Jayjg and SlimVirgin have put a tremendous amount of effort into this article but there seems to be a widespread and possibly defensible perception that they are permitting their personal biases to intrude into the editing. Because of personal criticism on the basis of this perception, interactions have become rather unfriendly. --Tony Sidaway 02:53, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think El C's criticism is valid. I could have tried to mediate this dispute. My only excuse for not doing that is that I'm not one of life's mediators. --Tony Sidaway 23:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party 2

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by Ben Houston

I was invited to contribute to the New anti-Semitism (NAS) article by User:CJCurrie a couple months ago [1]. I understood from Homeontherange and CJCurrie's perspective that SlimVirgin was fighting off other editors of the article. I stayed away for a month but eventually, in the hopes of avoiding a front-on confrontation, I gave her a honest note about how I felt on the issue and why I was eventually going to put some editing time in [2]. She told me to stay away from the article (as a "sign of good faith" in her words) since she was in the midst of rewriting it following contentious editing and a failed mediation attempt [3] which she felt had wrecked havoc on the article, and more worrisome, she told me if I started to edit the article immediately there "would be consequences" although she didn't say exactly what those were [4]. I did actually stay away from the NAS for a few weeks at her request but but when I came to it, I was still treated like crap -- I would say that SlimVirgin acted with prejudice towards me and effectively marginalized my efforts to edit the article (I can expand on this, for example [5].) --Ben Houston 20:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Bastique

I made three edits to the article as a whole and several comments on the talk page. Having limited involvement, I unblocked Netscott after consulting with other admins because the block was vindictive and only applied to him. I was harangued for this, and reacted to what I felt was complete hypocracy. Netscott and anyone else who disagrees with the "owners" of this article (including User:Humus sapiens and User:Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg, who have not been named and others with whom I'm not familiar) are bullied into rash behavior, because of the frustration in dealing with the volume of activity from a singularly unified POV-pushing. People with moderate viewpoints, like myself, are completely dismissed, being told they know nothing about the issue. SlimVirgin--or anyone in a position of power--should not be connected to any article on which they have a strong, one-sided view. It prevents neutrality and balance, and makes editors who are less likely to edit war completely unwilling to participate. Bastique▼parler voir 14:36, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Netscott

Having personally been involved with trying to edit this article and having had little success in having my good faith edits be adopted due primarily to the efforts of SlimVirgin and Jayjg, I can attest that the characterization of "ownership" relative to this article (particularly by User:SlimVirgin) is very appropriate. I encourage the arbitration committee to take this case so that remedies relative to this problem can be instituted. I will be able to provide evidence of this "ownership" as well as other users' (not currently mentioned here) characterizations regarding this article. (→Netscott) 09:41, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by an uninvolved party abakharev

It is a very strange RfAR as far as I can tell. There has been a mild edit dispute over the article with a productive discussion on the talk page. All parties as far as I can tell are active in the search for a compromise. There is no RfCs over the article, no mediation attempts, even the good olde straw polls are not present in the talk page. Then out of the blue this mild edit dispute is going into Arbcom. I thought that Arbcom is the last step in a dispute, not the first one. If nowadays Arbcom is the first step in dispute resolution of a content dispute I would be happy to bring a few dozens of more contentious disputes here - it would make my life as an admin and as an editor much easier. abakharev 01:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party who thinks she is probably involved User:Itsmejudith

I don't know if this is the best way to deal with the disputes on this page or not, but I hope a way can be found sson. There are aspects that I would like a chance to bring to wider attention. In early August I found that my comments were not being taken in good faith, but I was not able to take this up properly before I went off on holiday. A similar pattern has recurred since my return. Itsmejudith 12:10, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:KimvdLinde

This will be a difficult case for the ArbCom. Most of the individual actions by some editors will be within the realm of the acceptable, however, together they form a worrying pattern of POV-pushing and original research, using tactics that border to incivility, trolling and harassment. Furthermore, ownership is asserted by effective wearing out other editors in long and intense discussions using just mentioned tactics. Finally, this problem is not isolated to this article, but a general problem.
I am only marginally involved in the article, but have followed it for some time after doubts about neutrality and conduct arose. I myself have only made 12 edits at the page itself, including the removal/fixing of faulty quoted material [6] [7]. The later 'quote' was presented as a conclusion in the report: "A British parliamentary inquiry concluded that ...." (contra http://thepcaa.org/Report.pdf: p.32., § 158) when it was nothing more than evidence that the inquiry heard and does not appear in the conclusions of the report. It was inserted twice by SlimVirgin image caption main text and was subsequently discussed extensively at the talk page: Accuracy in quoting. CJCurrie removes the image [8] around 16:30, SV restores it with modified caption still focussing on the evidence [9]. At 21:42, several removals and reinsertions and a long talk-page discussion (50-80 posts) further SV moves the image and changes it to a more appropriate caption[10].
The above example illustrates two major problems with this (and other) articles.
  1. WP:NOR: It is a nice example of quote-mining. Trying to present the evidence first as a conclusion in the report and than presenting the evidence in the caption of the report as if it is the most important aspect (while it is not even a conclusion!) is a severe misrepresentation of the source.
  2. WP:OWN: The incident starts at 16:08, Sept. 7 [11] and heavy discussion (50-80 posts) at the talk page follows [12] and ends at 21:42 [13]. This example shows how people who want to change even a minor misattribution of a quote can get dragged into a heavy, 5 hour discussion, before something small is changed appropriately. This effectively leads to editors backing of and results in a de facto ownership of the article by some editors.
  3. Along this line, they push users to their limits which was nicely summarized by User:Cyde: You and Jayjg harrass a user repeatedly until they reach the breaking point, then you exclaim, "Oh look, you're being incivil! And you're totally ignorant of the issues!" Don't you ever get tired of the sheer hypocrisy of saying stuff like, "Don't be incivil; you're making personal attacks and you don't know anything."[14].
Statement length: ~450 words -- Kim van der Linde at venus 16:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have striken my statement, as I do not want to be part of the case but want to be on my way out of wikipedia as I think that wikipedia is way to much process oriented (at the expense of content quality), to much anti-expert and filled with way to many POV-pushers, even among Admins, to ever become something that could be called an encyclopedia. -- Kim van der Linde at venus 00:41, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Question [and answer] to Tony by El_C

Have you attempted to discuss the "extermely" concerns with the respective parties anywhere? If so, where? Have you attempted to facilitate an RfC (not an article one, about a single image as cited above, but a conduct one)? If so, where? Have you tried, or have there been an attempt to, persuade the contesting parties to accept Mediation (not mediation cabal, but formal mediation headed by approved members of the Mediation Committee)? If so, where? This leads to the question of why you feel that you, yourself, can abstain from the normal steps of dispute resolution that other editors are expected to follow. I havne't edited the article or read it closely, so this RfAr strikes me as messy, desprately lacking coherence and organization. I challenge that the onus is on the filer, Tony Sidaway, to do much more to provide some sort of a basis. El_C 20:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I want to commend Tony for the honest introspection. Tis certainly to his credit. But with tongue partially in cheek, I will remind him that intern positions on the Association of Member Investigations are currently suspended, indefinitely, as I have tagged it {{historical}} last week. ;) But beyond Tony's own mediational efforts (or lack thereof), I'd like to stress on the need for establishing a sufficient investigatory and evidentiary basis that later on can lead to a more coherent overview, prior to filing an RfAr. That is, with such a formula in mind, contacting one of "life's mediators" (*waves*) to try to advance the dispute toward mediation and/or RfC, as the next logical step. Thus, if those efforts are exhausted, then, an RfAr can be filed, with the Arbitration Committee thereby enjoying the benefits of the original overview, plus whatever additions and modifications that follow from mediation/RfC (i.e. a more substantive account, even and despite failed results). Otherwise, it reminds me of the old legend where the horse was put on the cart, and then it had to be carried around by people (this was in the olden days before rocket-powered horse carts), with great effort, much to the confusion although quite posaibly enjoyment of said horse. I'd like to also note my surprise at how quickly Fred accepted the request. Perhaps he knows something I don't, but I always known him to be rather strict about exhuasting other dispute resolution steps in general, and mediation, in particular, prior to accepting requests. El_C 01:47, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from probably uninvolved party ChrisO

(Disclaimer: I've contributed a short historical section to the article but otherwise have not been involved in the controversy; I'm approaching this as an outside observer.)

I second El_C's comments above and agree that mediation would be a better intermediate step. Having said that, I also feel that there are real problems with editor interaction on this article. I've noticed some unnecessarily aggressive and confrontational comments from experienced editors which can't have helped to defuse tensions between editors. I'm also concerned that we seem to repeatedly hear similar complaints involving many of the same editors in a range of articles on Middle Eastern topics, suggesting that perhaps there's a broader problem here. I wonder if part of the problem might be that some editors feel that they have to "defend" certain articles. This could well give rise to a perception among other editors that "ownership" was being claimed. I'm not sure that's an arbitrable issue, though - it would seem more appropriate to refer it to a conduct RfC as El_C suggests. -- ChrisO 23:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from Leifern

I drop into this article from time to time, and my impression is that there are constant content disputes, frequent bickering, and some nastiness. But if the Arbcomm decides to get into this, it will require a lot of forensic analysis to sort out who did what to whom, for what reason, and on what basis. To be credible, an arbitration decision has to be very well substantiated, and that's going to take a lot of work for everyone involved. Some of the involved individuals are very active and productive editors, and this may distract them from doing much more productive things. There may be specific issues - e.g., use of images - that call for clarification and/or arbitration, but my advice would be to let the argument run its course. --Leifern 23:38, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from Andjam

I heard about this RFAr via one of the users' talk pages. While recognising that wikipedia is not censored for minors, I would appreciate it if Ben Houston could remove the profanity from his statement. Profanity is generally unnecessarily incivil and reflects poorly on wikipedia. I also feel that other parts of the statement are worded a bit harshly, but at least they're expressing concerns. Andjam 03:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Comment from Briangotts

It is entirely unclear to me what the dispute is here, or exactly what is being "arbitrated". Most of the parties offering comments have little or no involvement with the article, or state that they are not sure that they are involved. There do not appear to me to have been any violations of specific WP policy.

There have been no attempts to resolve this issue in other more appropriate fora or to go through the required procedures of mediation, RfC, etc. The issues at dispute here appear to be entirely content-based, and my understanding is that the ArbCom is not in the business of mediating content. Many of those who raise issues appear to be unfamiliar with the topic and the research and scholarly literature relating thereto. It seems the real objection is to the existence of an article on this topic in any form, and it looks like the dispute is at its heart one between those who want to present the ongoing discussion of this issue in society (i.e. Jay and SV) and those who would prefer, for personal and subjective reasons, to ridicule and denigrate the concepts without regard for the real underlying issues.

This dispute is entirely inappropriate for the Arbitration Committee and should be rejected outright, or referred to mediation. The almost immediate acceptance of this vague, poorly defined case, explicitly based on the desire to sort out content issues within the article, is inappropriate and seems to me to violate the manner in which the ArbCom is supposed to function.

--Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 14:48, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by User:Rednblu

The causative defect here is that Wikipedia policy is written in such self-contradictory text that it incites and intensifies the kinds of turf battles and personal attacks in the complaint. I illustrate the defect of self-contradictory policy text with the following unattributed exchange from another but similar turf possession and personal attack page.

Alpha: When I check your cite, I see that you quote only the portion that supports your POV. Then I add more of that cite for context and for NPOV. Why do you delete it?
Beta: First I insert a quote in a way that is entirely accurate. The section was on critical response, not popularity, and I quoted the part that concerned the former. I initially tried to use the whole quote, but it was awkward to insert into this context, as shown by your own attempt, which led to a false claim. In fact, some of her works were popular, but not all of them were bestsellers. Seeing your error, I gently corrected it so that it used almost the whole quote, yet did not leave a misconception in the reader's mind.

Beta above has read the wrongly worded statement in the WP:NPOV page "When bias towards one particular point of view can be detected, the article needs to be fixed" literally--that is, that she is supposed to remove "misconceptions" from the statements of the scholars she quotes. In contrast, Alpha above has applied the NPOV mandate to "represent all significant views fairly and without bias" correctly--that is, that she is supposed to present what the published writer actually said, neither adding to nor deleting from the POV that the scholar actually conveyed in the writing. That is, the WP:NPOV page lacks self-consistent and useable definitions for "bias," POV, and NPOV.

Let us all consider our human plight with compassion. In the absence of clear policy definitions our default negotiation of conflict is 1) turf possession and as much 2) personal attack as the surrounding community will tolerate. We inherited this default and instinctive language of consensus negotiation from the ancestors of the chimpanzees, and I refer you to any standard text on chimpanzee politics for the genetic explanations and mechanisms.

What we need here are clear definitions of Wikipedia policy that can build a culture that is compassionate for our inherited nature but controls it rather than incites and enflames conflict as the current unclear Wikipedia policy text does now in the New anti-semitism page and the myriad other Wikipedia instances of 1) turf possession and as much 2) personal attack as the community will tolerate.

(Statement less than 450 words including this statistics line.) --Rednblu 19:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved User:IronDuke

Although I agree that this RfAr is very much out of process, I don’t think that should be a barrier to its acceptance. If it helps WP, it’s worth having. However, I think this is simply a fishing expedition meant as some sort of policy test case. Although I think curtailing POV in all its glorious forms on WP articles is worth doing, it isn’t worth doing at the expense of the wikistress it inflicts on valuable editors. And Jay and Slim have just been dragged through this very recently, and to what purpose? Wasting hours and hours of how many people’s time?

There are always going to be POV wars on WP as long as it remains a wiki. And in this case, as these wars go, this all seems quite mild. Yes, there can be heated words, but if Arbcom wishes to make it their business to clamp down on heated words, I suggest expanding the committee fairly substantially. You’ll have dozens, if not hundreds, of cases a day to deal with.

I hope that this case is dismissed before much more time is wasted. Fighting POV on WP is a huge task; it cannot be done from a top-down approach, only a critical mass of editors acting in good faith can do this. We must all convince each other of the utility of this.

I have contributed approximately zero edits to the article in question. IronDuke 00:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/0/0/0)

  • Accept. We need to find who is maintaining the article in its present sorry state, way too long and POV. Fred Bauder 15:35, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Emil Kraepelin

Initiated by londheart (Etaonsh) at 06:14, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Etaonsh (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Ebbinghaus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Editor seeks to update take on outdated early psychatrist, only to face revert war by angry opponent lacking clear ID.

Statement by londheart (Etaonsh)

84.174.220.23 Ebbinghaus defends and protects the reputation of scary, outdated psychiatrist Kraepelin as if his inheritance depended on it. He hides behind a lack of clear ID which he justifies by saying something to the effect of 'a weirdo like you might come and get me otherwise.' He appears to have eternity to get involved in revert war and discussion of this largely forgotten but still influential historical figure, resulting in a biased article where the critical perspective is eliminated. --londheart 06:51, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by 84.174.214.35 Ebbinghaus

Emil Kraepelin was an eminent figure in the history of psychiatry and psychology as medical and scholarly disciplines, as a brief glance at the common sources, even those critical of Kraepelin, show: German Wikipedia entry, Kraepelin Society (based in the US; English website), biography (pdf), [15].

This page was changed (I would say vandalized) by londheart in an exclusively malicious and defamatory way, going so far as to blame the Holocaust on him. I have, since then, reverted his extremely POV entries - nothing more; I have not added anything, and I had also not been involved in this entry before. Commenting on my very first edit, londhart called me repeatedly a Nazi for doing so and has engaged in confused hate speech on a level that strongly implies mental problems. Because this was clear from the beginning (see also his track record of vandalizing other psychiatry entries, especially those associated with schizophrenia), I am not using an account here other than the IP number, because I genuinely believe that londheart has serious e-stalking potential. (I know that this is not the preferred wiki way of doing things, but so far it is still legitimate per policy.) I think londheart's statement above is ample proof of that; if not, check out the Kraepelin discussion (in which I also got carried away, but who wouldn't be under these circumstances?) and his own talk page.

As for the facts of the article, I have frequently offered to let londheart's changes stand if he would produce any references or scholarly proof for his claims, and naturally I am still willing to do so, but he has completely ignored that and refused to provide any evidence - it is just that he "feels" that Kraepelin is "sinister", "evil" etc. Even here in the Statement, he calls him "outdated early psychatrist," "scary, outdated psychiatrist", "largely forgotten but still influential historical figure" (what now? either or). I think that londheart genuinely hates Kraepelin (probably for imagined reasons) and should desist, or be made desist, from further dealing with this article. 84.174.214.35 Ebbinghaus 08:54, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved User:MacGyverMagic

(moved from clerk notes section because this comment was not made in my position as a clerk)
I would like to ask the arbitration committee to accept this case in order to investigate violations of WP:NPOV by londheart (instead of the underlying content dispute). Clearly calling someone a "scary, outdated psychiatrist Kraepelin" as he did above isn't inline with policy. Refusing to provide reliable sources also violates the verifiability policy. He said User:84.174.220.23 Ebbinghaus was trying to overwhelm the talk page with long responses but that should be no reason to not respond to the simple query 84.174.220.23 Ebbinghaus made during this arbitration. I find it especially inappropriate that his behavior apparently deterred 84.174.220.23 Ebbinghaus from keeping an article neutral.

If you do not wish to accept, I would like the arbcom to strongly recommend londheart to adhere to WP:NPOV and WP:V. - Mgm|(talk) 12:18, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved User:JzG

I agree with Mgm here, that although this is a lame edit war it is one in which Etaonsh (talk • contribs • page moves • block user • block log), aka Londhart has clearly failed to grasp the principles of our policies on neutrality, verifiability and original research. A review of the edit history of the article under dispute shows a succession of edits which turn an encyclopaedia article into a soapbox:

  • with [16], Etaonshintroduces the unsupported assertion that Kraeplin while arguably succeeding in raising the profile and status of psychiatric science, abused his status as a natural scientist to introduce unscientific, circular theories of a kind endemic in his day into a vulnerable young science still suffering, to this day, from his influence at least as much as benefiting by it.
  • [17] sees 84.174.214.35 Ebbinghaus reverting just that paragraph
  • [18] sees Etaonsh reinserting the POV statement with the grossly offensive edit summary "Reverting POV rvt by anonymous Nazi and other POV garbage"
  • [19], the next edit, has Etaonsh's edit summary "Pursuing revert war against anonymous Nazi"
  • [20] Etaonsh introduces the idea that the subject might be held responsible for the Holocaust.
  • [21] shows similarly tendentious editing to Eugen Bleuler (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
  • Charls Butler (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) is a monograph by Etaonsh and shows his style: it is laudatory in tone, makes extravagant claims but lacks any sources. This may be due to the highly restricted availability of Butler's books, at least one of which was a private printing for the author and exists only in very small numbers in university libraries (this does not necessarily indicate a problem with the subject, Robert Gunther also had his magnum opus privately printed).
  • [22] shows a discussion with some very curious assertions of some kind of conspiracy over problems adding (uncited) content to another article
  • [23] demonstrates a classic response of the frutrated to WP:NOR - namely, disputing its validity. Since this predates the incident at this article, it cannot be said that Etaonsh is or was unaware of policy in this regard.

Overall, Etaonsh / Londhart gives every appearance of strong opinions and shows no obvious signs of accepting admonitions to moderate his approach - a textbook case of tendentious editing. Guy 15:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Addition by Mgm

After perusing Etaonsh's talkpage I also found this edit which I believe JzG hasn't listed yet. I consider describing a user as a "Welsh practising homosexual", when it is done with the intent to discredit their credibility or judgement, a personal attack even when the words are taken from their own userpage. - Mgm|(talk) 21:59, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved User:Newyorkbrad

The last comments on the user talk page (now blanked) of Etaonsh/Londhart, the party requesting arbitration, were to the effect that he wanted nothing further to do with Wikipedia, so I think it can be taken that this RfAr is de facto withdrawn as well as moot. Newyorkbrad 20:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Addendum
Pardon my stating the obvious, but this morning's comment by User:Continueddonations below is his first edit, and his next edit was correcting a typo by Etaonsh/Londhart. Clearly a reappearance of the same user. Newyorkbrad 14:46, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
More peremptory prejudice?
Hard for thee to conceptualise a devotee's discipleship, admittedly. Continueddonations 17:04, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
(Threaded dialog being inappropriate here, I assume this should be refactored to this user's section. Newyorkbrad 19:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC))[reply]
Res ipsa loquitur, but an Arbitrator can verify via Checkuser if that's deemed necessary. No new editor finds RfAr before editing an article. In any event, even apart from the puppetry, sanctions are necessary against Continueddonations for what appears to be a blatantly anti-Semitic allusion in his comment below. Newyorkbrad 19:22, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved User:continueddonations

It seems a very poor recommendation for Wiki arbitration that the party seeking arbitration here has been so one-sidedly silenced by what appear to be a rather one-sided bunch of ethnic non-impartials and authority figures. There is no doubt in my mind that Londheart's basic assertion that Kraepelin's psychiatry is, by modern standards, 'scary and outdated' has to be consensual, even tho (s)he appears to have broken a taboo by stating it 'out loud.' --Continueddonations 08:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)
I have removed extensive threaded discussion from this application. Please feel free to restore relevant non-threaded material in a suitable (non-threaded) format. Summarise discussions. --Tony Sidaway 13:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/2/0/0)

*Accepted, to deal at least with this Fred Bauder 20:33, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Splash's unsemiprotects

Initiated by Cyde Weys at 01:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Splash notified
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried
This is too urgent to wait for two or three weeks at RFC.

Splash has been repeatedly unsemiprotecting high-profile articles and then forgetting about them, resulting in repeated vandalism that other people have had to clean up.

Statement by Cyde Weys

Steve Irwin recently died. Since then, his article and the related article stingray, which have been linked from the front page, have been repeatedly and viciously vandalized by anonymous users, to the point that vandalism to Steve Irwin was picked up by the largest media outlet in Australia. In the span of 31 hours Splash unsemiprotected both Steve Irwin and Stingray four times. Each time he simply unsemiprotected and walked away, not bothering to monitor to ensure that the vandalism wasn't returning (it was). By the fourth time you're unsemiprotecting an article that has been repeatedly vandalized every previous time it was unsemiprotected, you had better be watching it like a hawk to quickly remove vandalism and be prepared to reprotect it if necessary. But Splash wasn't. Here, we see Stingray being vandalized anonymously soon after Splash's unsemiprotection, but apparently Splash had already turned his attention elsewhere. Here we see penis insertion and other miscellaneous vandalism following Splash's unsemiprotection. Splash's only edits to the articles were repeatedly removing the {{sprotected}} tag after he repeatedly unsemiprotected them. This behavior is utterly inappropriate and places Wikipedia's reputation in real harm, as the news story from ABC indicates. I tried to get Splash to understand, but his responses on his talk page have just been combative and have displayed no cognizance of why over half a dozen other admins think what he is doing is reckless and wrong.

It wouldn't bother me so much if Splash was actually being responsible with his admin tools and carefully watching the pages he had just unsemiprotected to guard against vandalism, but he appears to simply not care. Splash was also informed about many OTRS complaints about penis vandalism on Steve Irwin, but he shrugged them off too. The article on Steve Irwin is our number one article right now and it is getting 1,000 views per minute on a 24 hour average (according to Greg, who has access to such sampling data). Thousands of readers have turned to that article only to see a penis or other vandalism, solely because of Splash. It's time for this administrator to face the responsibility that comes with the position. Splash is engaging in wheel warring, and to boot, he is effectively aiding and abetting vandalism by repeatedly stripping Wikipedia of necessary protections on the article of a man who just died and allowing in high-profile, vicious vandalism that demonstrably puts Wikipedia in disrepute. Many of us have lost faith in Splash's ability to exercise proper judgement in his use of admin tools, especially unprotection. Also, I would ask for a temporary injunction to prevent Splash from unprotecting any pages during the duration of this arbitration. --Cyde Weys 01:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Splash

Cyde seems over-excited here. El_C has helpfully documented the series of talk page messages; those messages to me were Cyde's only edits during that period: apparently he was logging in specifically to make threats without actually checking to see if I was actually doing anything. In between those edits, I suppose he must have been working up the rage that led him here. Seems a little bit vociferious to me. I thought his final message was interesting: "Per your continuing lack of any cognizance...", as if there is any remedy for my hypothetical idiocy. Even the desysopping he craves wouldn't make me any cleverer, but it would make me markedly less useful (or maybe it would give me some article-writing time).

The notion that I am the sole cause of the vandalism is really pretty overblown, since it wasn't me doing any of it. Sure, I allowed people to edit the article. Vandalism is part of that deal. The statistics posted on my talk page show that 54% of semi-protectable edits to the page were allowed to stand; I'll take the credit for making sure we got them if I'm to take the blame for the bad ones too. There is no counterweight to the terrifying scrolling of the list of questionable edits in IRC; the bots and vandalfighters only see half (or, specifically, 46%) of the story.

It's not a wheel war. Protection naturally has cycles, and on Main Paged articles it is naturally shorter than in the depths of the encyclopedia. Indeed, this is evidenced by the fact that (count 'em [24]) 7 other admins did unprotects on Steve Irwin, not counting those that look accidental. It wasn't a war, it was natural cyclicity. I for one can tell the difference.

Those who think I ran away after unprotecting are speculating. In fact, try as I might (for only a few minutes, granted) I was beaten to the reverts on both articles: I don't have access to the IRC channels (I refuse to ask permission to vandal fight) and there's simply no matching it with diff watching, or Special:Recentchanges. I didn't persist in an unnecessary operation; it was under control.

There's the key: under control. OTRS beholds the project to the most complaining sector of the internet population, even assuming all 36 emails were actually complaints, and whacking semi-protection on anything someone vandalises from the Main Page beholds the project to the lowest common denominator rather than the high ideals that underlie the project. I'll take the latter; Cyde can play with the former. The project is big enough and ugly enough and popular enough and good enough to face down any negative press (and anyway, the article Cyde is in some awe of is pretty good for us, I thought, saying how quickly everything was repaired).

Ansell's comment here is interesting: that he doesn't remember such vandalism in his time is because he doesn't remember a time when George W. Bush was freely editable, either. -Splash - tk 14:44, 6 September 2006 (UTC) (Excluding these parentheses, MS Word tells me my count is 498.)[reply]

Statement by (mostly) uninvolved party, Konstable

First of all I would like to say that my only involvement in this was being the first user to suggest to Splash that the page should be re-protected due to the heavy number of edits including a heavy number of vandal edits. He replied on my talk page and I made no futher attempts to argue with him or persuade him. And of course I am not an admin so I was not involved in the wheel wars. So I consider myself to be uninvolved.

The vandalism was heavy with unprotection, and the high edit rate making it hard to revert without edit conflicts or accidentally overriding other editors. I personally think semi-protection is quite important for extreme cases like these, whether it is on the main page or not. I did find Splash's unprotection disruptive to users trying to keep the page from turning into an unreadable mess, or worse into a penis gallery instead of an article on a respected man whose fans have been flocking to the site to read about him. In fact vandalism of this page has been featured in the media. I do find it concerning that while Splash was keen enough to unprotect pages against the will of other admins he was not so keen to help with the vandalism. For Stingray Splash has unprotected the page 3 times but has not reverted a single vandalist edit on that page! Same goes for Steve Irwin - 3 unprotectes and NO help with reverting vandalism.

However, even though I think Splash has made some mistakes of judgement here I don't see how this warrants a Request for Arbitration, rather than an RfC, nor do I see why this is an urgent issue as Cyde has put it. I think more effort could have been put into other, more peaceful, solutions to this problem.--Konstable 04:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quick addendum. I thought I should eloborate on my final paragraph a bit more. Though he's made bad errors, I think Splash has acted in a civil way throughout this afair; he has never yelled at anyone and has always explained his reasoning - so I don't see him as being an unreasonable person at all. Perhaps brash, maybe a bit stubborn, but not unreasonable. I honestly think an RfC, or another debate other than Arbitration, would get more oppinions and perhaps give Splash a better picture of what the community thinks of his actions. I personally don't think any punitive actions are needed against him.--Konstable 04:19, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Kelly Martin

We have received, at OTRS, not fewer than 36 complaints regarding vandalism to either Steve Irwin or Stingray in the past two days. Given that Steve Irwin is getting at least 240 views per minute and Stingray at least 100 views per minute averaged over the past five days (a very conservative estimate based on data from Wikicharts), even a short period of vandalism exposes large numbers of unsuspecting readers to inappropriate content. Semiprotection of these articles is essential to ensure that our readers are not subjected to useless or offensive content. Splash's repeated unprotections of these articles are plainly contrary to our primary goal of providing a useful encyclopedic reference. His actions are irresponsible and must stop. If he refuses to voluntarily stop unprotecting high-traffic articles which are actively attracting vandalism, the Committee has no choice but to remove his ability to unprotect articles. I join Cyde in the call for a temporary injunction, and urge that that injunction be worded such that any violation will result in immediate desysoping. Kelly Martin (talk) 02:17, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by El_C

Splash un-protected Steve Irwin three times and protected it once. The last two un/protection actions are as follows: On Sept. 4, at 17:54, he un-protects the entry; on Sept. 5, at 14:06, he protects it. [25] On Sept. 5, at 14:48, Cyde writes on Splash's talk page to cease and desist unprotecting Steve Irwin at once. [26] Splash's second reply, at 20:07, reads: you seem confused. I haven't used my unprotect button since your last visit here. [27] Cyde's next edit on Splash's talk page, at 21:51, is the filing of this RfAr [28] El_C 07:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Haukur

Quoth Cyde: "Thousands of readers have turned to that article only to see a penis or other vandalism, solely because of Splash." I think you have to assume that the vandals play some roll in causing this too :) More seriously, Splash has worked for a long time on making sure articles aren't unnecessarily protected. Protection and semi-protection is often applied prematurely or left to linger too long and very few admins are active in cleaning that up. It's also worth noting that Splash basically wrote the semi-protection policy. [29] Sure, maybe he got slightly overzealous in the case under question but it must be viewed in the context of his overall work on this issue. Haukur 09:37, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved MacGyverMagic

As can be seen in Splash's protection log, he did these unprotections because he believes articles should be editable as per wiki ideology. However, doing this to high-profile articles that are subject to repeat vandalism to the point it gets picked up in the media is a serious lapse of judgement. If the Arbcom decides to take punitive action, I would suggest using a suspended sentence. - Mgm|(talk) 09:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Followup to MgM and Kelly Martin, by El_C

I urge against punitive action anywhere on Wikipedia, whose enforecment ideals should be based upon preventative measures. I also urge to tone down needlessly polemical, aggressive, and generally prosecutorial comments, such as the ones evoked by Kelly Martin's comment (my own impression), especially if the basis for the concerns are as isolated as they currently appear to be. El_C 11:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sjakkalle

The Irwin article was linked to from the Main Page, and that is more a reason to not protect than to protect. That the article was dealing with a current event and might need a number of updates during the day also suggests that protection has some very real negatives. To compare, the daily featured article is not supposed to be protected, something I learned about a year ago. (My apologies to Raul if I'm using his post to argue for something he disagrees with.) An article like this is naturally going to be subject to a lot of vandalism, along with a lot of other high-profile articles, but RC-patrollers usually catch and revert attacks against these articles pretty quickly. All in all, I support Splash's desire and endeavours to keep these articles as unprotected as possible and certainly would not call them irresponsible. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:00, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ansell

As I have been involved in this on Splash's talk page I feel I should comment on the matter. [30] [31] [32] [33] I feel that the user was acting in good faith, although possibly not fully understanding the consequences of their actions. The article was experiencing the highest sustained level of viewing and editing that I have ever seen on Wikipedia. To unprotect it, and instantly bring multiple vandalism edits per minute, mixed up with good faith efforts to improve the article, was misguided to say the best of the action. My suggestion for full protection to enable cleanup during the worst period was strongly dismissed, and in hindsight it may not have been the best idea. Also, I had been against protecting due to an edit war on Stingray at a similar time.[34] So I am guilty of a similar viewpoint in relation to at least the Stingray article. In summary I would say that if in doubt go with reality, not a wiki-philosophy. Ansell 12:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Statement by not-that-involved The Land

I think this is mainly an issue about semiprotection policy and the balance to be struck between damage from protection and damage from vandalism. Splash seems to have acted against a consensus of other admins (which, on IRC, I was vocally calling for) that those pages should remain sprotected for a while but i nthe circumstances this is more RfC material than RfAr. The Land 21:10, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reply
If you'll forgive me a small amount of threading (I prefer threading to keep things with their context):
  • I wasn't on IRC and had no idea, until this very moment, that the mythical consensus beast had magically appeared there. Being vociferous is merely modish; it's the only way to get your LOLs and /me toos, and the more vociferous a user is, the more people tend to big them up.
  • Seven (7) other admins, at a pessimistic minimum, have also unprotected Steve Irwin. So there were plenty of people unprotecting it as well; which fact rather dissolves the mythical consensus beast back to whence it came. -Splash - tk 21:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree about the dangers of groupthink on IRC - however there is quite a lot of discussion about Sprotection on the talk page, including various users and IPs saying 'please keep this page protected', and at least one section mainly provided by a group of admins saying 'we all think this page should stay sprotected'. I can't see anyone contributing to the discussion from the other side of the argument on the talk page. I know the matter was raised on your talk page as well.
In any case, I'm saying this because I think it's important we have a clearer semiprotection policy, not because I'm silly enough to think you or anyone else should be put to any further trouble because of their actions surrounding the article. The Land 09:50, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved Rx StrangeLove

Uninvolved, but this ArbCom request seems pretty thin. During the time that Splash was active on Steve Irwin (11:21, 4 September-18:06, 5 September) it was unprotected 10 times. Splash was responsible for 3 of those unprotections. Six other admins unprotected the page a total of seven times during that same time period, for exactly the same reason that Splash did. Splash's only action on Steve Irwin after Cyde's first message on Splash's talk page was to protect it. a single unprotection.

When Cyde wrote "Cease and desist unprotecting Steve Irwin at once." at 18:48, 5 September, Splash had protected Steve Irwin at 18:06, 5 September...42 minutes before Cyde wrote that message. In fact, it had been nearly a full day since Splash had unprotected the page. Cyde quite correctly points out below that Splash unprotected the page at this point in time, I was misled by the log entry (Splash (Talk | contribs | block) protected Steve Irwin). I think though that the point is still valid since by that point it had been 20 hours since Splash had performed any (un)protection action on the page.

Requests for Arbitration are the last step of dispute resolution. There are certainly times when that process needs to be short circuited but this isn't one of them. Splash is a long time productive editor, and an admin in good standing acting in good faith. Accusations that Splash is solely responsible for the vandalism is absurd, as is the claim that he is wheel warring. Plenty of other admins were acting in a similar way. Whatever actions that caused this filing had ended before the request was even written up, and have not been repeated. I'm especially concerned about the bare-knuckled calls from several editors here for de-sysopping, I think that is wildly inappropriate and I ask that this request be rejected. Rx StrangeLove 09:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC) [reply]

Response

Your claim of "Splash had protected Steve Irwin at 18:06, 5 September..." is factually incorrect. Actually, he did indeed unprotect it; you just aren't reading the logs correctly. He changed it from (semi|full) to (none|full), which is unprotecting by any definition of the word. --Cyde Weys 18:15, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved Nlu

The ability to semi-protect an article exists for a reason. If an admin is obsessed about lifting semi-protection a very brief time after semi-protection was put in place properly on an article, the capability might as well not exist. Remember that arbitration is not meant to punish, and I think in this case the ArbCom should step in to get some order back into when/how an admin should lift semi-protection. --Nlu (talk) 10:04, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved abakharev

There was obviously no bad faith in Splash un-semiprotection, he was just upholding our policies. The policy of not protecting any article linked to the main page maybe outdated and indeed something like this may be desired. I do not think that WP:RfAR is the best place to discuss such a policy . Thus, I propose to reject the request and transfer the policy discussions elsewhere abakharev 08:32, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by uninvolved Woohookitty

I publicly disagreed with Splash on this case (even though I'm usually on his side re: Semi protection), but this is just ridiculous. He made the decision to unprotect with good faith. Did I agree with him in this case? No. But you know what? You can always then reprotect the article. And that's what happened. So Splash let what...maybe 100 vandalism edits it by doing this? And what? The entire encyclopedia is going to crash because of it?? I don't see the big deal. I think it's overblown. Dispute resolution wasn't even really attempted here. Reject this case. Please. --Woohookitty(meow) 13:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Zzyzx11

I do not see a need for ArbCom to get involved in this case. As one of the admins who unprotected and semiprotected the Steve Irwin article during that period (I unprotected it at 15:39, 4 September 2006 (UTC) then semi-protected it 10 minutes later), I feel that this issue has do more with revising and clarifing the protection policies itself. There are two items regarding high visibility pages on WP:PPOL that seem to conflict: On the one hand, WP:PPOL#A permanent or semi-permanent protection is used for: says protection should be applied to high visibility pages such as the Main Page from vandalism. But on the other hand, WP:PPOL#A temporary protection is used for: says that it is not appropriate to protect pages linked off the main page, or those that have recently received a prominent link from offsite. Therefore, it is every easy for I, Splash, or other admins to only have one of the points in mind but not the other. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 19:07, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Titoxd

The problem here is not about the actions of a particular admin, but rather about overall protection policy. User:Raul654/protection indicates that we should not protect Today's Featured Article, which is continuously the most visited page on Wikipedia, under anything but the most dire of circumstances. As a result, admins should be wary of protecting high-visibility articles completely. The Semi-protection policy, as originally crafted (with Splash as one of the main proponents, I might add), clearly indicated that a current event should not be treated with caution, but rather as an opportunity to showcase the "edit this page" button, and it counted with quasi-unanimous support, as it contained that restrictive language, intended for these kinds of situations. If there really were a need for protection of high-visibility pages, try starting by trying to change policy, not by initiating ArbCom action. I urge the Committee to reject this request. Titoxd(?!?) 16:37, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

 Clerk note: Please avoid posting responses directly to statements by other users as this may be confusing. --Ryan Delaney talk 20:17, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/3/0/0)

  • This is a difficult issue. I respect the balance that Splash is seeking to bring to the use of semiprotection, which is in and of itself undesirable. Conversely, I respect other users' attempts to prevent vandalism and damage to Wikipedia's reputation. All in all, I see no evidence of bad faith here: all parties are seeking the best for Wikipedia. I suggest personally to Splash that it would probably be best to let the incident lessen in prominence before desemiprotecting, but that is only my opinion :-). Reject. Sam Korn (smoddy) 11:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept Fred Bauder 17:46, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject. There is a problem here, but I believe Splash was acting in good faith and does not need to be censured. This has much to do with the newness and vagueness of the semiprotection rules. Adding some guidance as to how long one should wait before unprotecting a high-profile page and something about an obligation to monitor the subsequent amount of vandalism to Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy seems like the best solution. - SimonP 02:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject. I see here a difference of opinion as regards semi-protection held by admins in good faith. Sounds like we need to achieve a better consensus or understanding on that. I'd advise Splash to take account of the opinions presented here that sometimes semi-protection of an article linked from the front page may be necessary due to heavy vandalism, even if it is not normally required. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 21:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ghirlandajo

Initiated by Cowman109Talk at 16:52, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Cowman109

Ghirlandajo has been consistently incivil towards other editors in his time here on Wikipedia and has made personal attacks as shown in the above RFC, has engaged in tendentious editing per the above Mediation Cabal cases and has recently trolled and provoked editors as shown by WP:ANI#Ghirlandajo. Also, another accusation is that he is making use of meatpuppets, such that many users come to defend him and support him in content disputes and other arguments. It also seems that wherever he goes, a certain group of users always supports him in content and user disputes, of note being Ghirlandajo's interactions with Polish users, as shown by the last ANI archive link, in particular Piotrus.

As an addendum, it seems that Ghirlandajo has failed to assume good faith of other editors he comes in conflict with, which promotes a negative environment between him and other editors. The responses to the recent ANI report also appear consistent with his behavior - if anything, it would have been better to simply leave the situation alone instead of further patronising other editors with the attitude that he is above them for his article contributions. If he would have liked to contest this block, it could have been much more civil to calmly ask for a review of the block instead of trolling with comments such as "When a stranger comes to WP:ANI and asks to block a well-established contributor... and he gets instantly blocked by a person whom that contributor criticised an hour ago... well, it is called... Wiki-justice, apparently. --Ghirla -трёп- 22:55, 5 September 2006 (UTC). I stand by my beliefs that his interactions with users are highly innapropriate for the encyclopedia, and while a block may not be in order, it needs to be made clear that his attitude towards other editors is innapropriate. Cowman109Talk 20:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Piotrus

This arbitration is a suprise to me. To the best of my recollection I am not currently involved with any edit disputes with either Ghirlandajo or Cowman109, although for the record I had been involved in some major disputes with Ghirlandajo in the past. I can offer my comments in the current Ghirlandajo-Cowman dispute, as well as discuss my past experiences with Ghirla, and on the possible solution (I have thought about ArbRequest against Ghirla in the past) but as there is no current Ghirlandajo-Piotrus dispute I am not sure if I classify as an 'involved party'.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  17:06, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party Grafikm_fr

I find this arbitration a bit quick, surprising and intempestive. Ghirla and Piotrus have been involved in a lot of disputes in the past, but the trend is clearly cooling down (as confirmed by Piotrus himself). For instance, Piotrus recently praised Ghirla for a well-written article on a Russo-Polish war, which is something rather new[35]. In any case, conflicts now follow a rather well-established DR scheme and there is no reasons to take it further. As for the recent thread on WP:ANI, it does not even remotely qualify for ArbCom.

In the light of what I and Piotrus said, I suggest that our Arbitrators dismiss this case and return the respective parties to already existing DR processes. After almost a year of quite lengthy and often disruptive processes (which incidentally saw some of the main protagonists blocked) things are finally return to normal. Let's not start the fire again please. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 17:15, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Addenum 1: You will note that on ANI WP:ANI#Ghirlandajo, very few users find his remarks to be incivil. Angry, yes, but not incivil. Only Tony and Dmc find them so. By the way, both should recuse themselves from the case... -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 01:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response to Ideogram: "Ghirlandajo has driven many editors away from Wikipedia"? Do you have any proof of that? -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 12:30, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Response to Ideogram #2: "Are you now going to argue that Ghirlandajo is kind and welcoming towards those he disagrees with, that he attracts more and better editors to the project?" First Ideogram, I find your phrase is bordering on procès d'intention and is quite disturbing. Second, Piotrus is witness, I warned Ghirla many times about his behavior. Point is, things are cooling down (well, they were before that sordid RFA affair) and that's why this Arbitration is intempestive. Putting more gaz in the fire won't solve things. -- Grafikm (AutoGRAF) 13:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party Giano

Ghirlandajo can be abrupt and curt. He does not mince his words. He is however a huge asset to this encyclopedia, and the links provided by Cowman 109 at WP:ANI#Ghirlandajo as reason to bring this case, do not in my view prove anything

  • [36] A comment on a very contentious piece of Wikipedia history.
  • [37] A comment on my talk page mentioning no names just his view of a situation
  • [38] Again a view and a recommendation
  • [39] Yet again his view, no insults or obscenities.
  • [40] Some people may even call this wise advice.
  • [41] No one is singled out, again he states a view - no more.
  • [42] He expresses his view
  • [43] He concurs on a contentious matter with another editor, in this case me.
  • [44] And yet again he concurs with other editors.
  • [45] I cannot imagine why this dif is even listed. It is his view in a legitimate forum for expressing it.

In all the above links, Ghirlandajo has done no more than robustly express his opinion, which he is at liberty to do. That he does not do so in the language of an 18th century courtier at Versailles may be regretted by some, but there is no Wiki-law that says this has to be so. He uses no insults, or obscenities overall he seems to feel the system is at fault, and the overriding message is that of a good wikipedian anxious to do what he considers his best for the project

I submit that on the evidence provided by Cowman 109, Ghirlandajo has no case to answer. Cowman's statement "It also seems that wherever he goes, a certain group of users always supports him in content and user disputes" is meaningless - and has, I think, no business here. The reasons for bringing this case have been given, it would be wrong to keep digging and trying to find others. Evidence for bringing the case has been brought and it is in my view inconclusive unless to be a little brusqe is a crime Giano | talk 10:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Further to my statement I would like to make the following observations. This is a preliminary hearing to see if the charges brought by Cowman 109 are worth following. The arbcom may or may not feel the evidence he has presented worth further investigation.

However, not since the days of the inquisition have others then been allowed to turn up with further charges. This is contrary to every judicial system in the civilized world. People cannot just pop into a court room where a man is being tried for an murder and say "Oh yes, by the way, on his holiday in Minsk in 1989 he stole a policeman's whistle".

Some people may feel Tony Sidaway, Ideogram, and Renata should confine their comment to the evidence presented, and that they have had ample opportunity to begin a case themselves, but for their own reasons have decided not to. Some people may construe their actions to be jumping on the bandwagon, or even kicking a man when he is down. What ever their agenda it could smack of medieval justice. Such behaviour would not be allowed in any modern western court room.

The interchanges between Ideogram and those defending Ghirlandajo in a modern court of law, would be regarded as prosecuting council, a role he has assumed, badgering a witness before commencement of trial. This would cause the trial to be abandoned and Ideogram to be held in contempt of court.

The above is merely an observation of how Wikipedia justice differs from that in Europe and North America. Giano | talk 18:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And this leads me to beleive [46] further comment is futile. The expression "For God;s sake" springs to mind. Giano | talk 07:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • To answer Mackensen's query the case concerns the points brought her by Cowman, see links above. However the case now seems to have been hijacked by Tony Sidaway who is going off on tangents unconnected to the case. His points should be dismissed in order that Ghilandajo can be judged fairly here. They are unconnected to this case. Giano | talk 07:30, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Ghirlandajo

I don't recall to have ever interacted with User:Cowman109. I don't remember him expressing any specific concerns on my talk. He never applied for mediation or comments of my behaviour which seemed questionable to him, to the best of my knowledge. In short, I fail to see in what am I being accused and by who. Unless it is explained what this case is about, I will not contribute to this arbitration. Please don't bother me, I have articles to write and not to discuss something of which I have no idea with someone who I don't know. Thanks, Ghirla -трёп- 18:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Since I posted the above statement, User:Tony Sidaway came up with a statement against myself. It is instructive that when the issue was discussed on WP:ANI yesterday, no commentator except Tony Sidaway identified my comments as "inflammatory and grossly incivil". Others qualified them as "to the point", "slightly angry", and "just". Furthermore, the first time I mentioned him in my about 50,000 edits was an hour before that, when I posted this comment about the controversial re-promotion of Carnildo. Two hours later Tony Sidaway blocked me, citing that very edit as a pretext. Exhilarating, isn't it? After that, he returned to the RfA page and noted with satisfaction that "the noisy opponents of the RfA are now in the minority". Of course, Tony Sidaway didn't discuss the matter with me because he just came and blocked me immediately after reading my criticism. Did it never occur to him that gratuitous blocks of well-established contributors serve no other rational purpose than radicalizing them? It is notheworthy that in the same diffs I expressed criticism of ArbCom and Kelly Martin over Carnildo's re-promotion. The same day, Kelly Martin was quick to express her unconditional support for Tony's actions, while someone who I don't know launched an arbitration case. Well, I'm forced to give up the subject, as I was threatened with further blocks if I continue to question the validity of his behaviour. The whole affair seems to me like an attempt at revenge for my dissident opinions, which is also a nice pretext for User:Halibutt and other established ghirlaphobes from all quarters to add their 2 cents here. --Ghirla -трёп- 07:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I feel obliged to respond to Renata's statement. As a member of the Lithuanian community, she is entitled to protect it from inroads made by Russian editors. I cannot help thinking that her statement was motivated by my yesterday's edit, which led to some rewriting of Grand Duchy of Lithuania, an article about a predominantly Slavic and Orthodox medieval state. This is a purely content dispute which has been caused by the fact that articles about Lithuanian history contain some extreme statements concerning Russian history. We have been over this mined ground over and over again. I'm sorry that Renata uses this page as an equivalent of an RfC. It is not fair to deny me an opportunity to explain my own edits in detail, especially as many diffs pertain to the articles written by myself. It would have been more helpful if she had discussed what she feels problematic about my behaviour on my talk page or on the article's talk page or on RfC, rather than bringing it up for the first time on this page. --Ghirla -трёп- 07:13, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The latest accusations are so wildly different, that I fail to see anything in common between them. These are two separate cases. I remember to have had a content dispute with User:Mzajac last year, but I don't think that I have interacted with him after the ArbCom's decision concerning the subject matter of that old RfC. If we had some disputes recently or I was incivil towards Mzajac this year, I await diffs to refresh my memory. I may say for myself that I have avoided pages edited by Mzajac, knowing him for an exceedingly delicate editor who tends to overre-act to my edits. The difference of our characters is no basis for arbitration. Fred's accusation that User:Wiglaf left Wikipedia last year because of my disagreement with some of his more extreme views struck me speechless. I strongly advise to review the history of his relations with User:Molobo and his joint actions with User:Shauri, with whom I had never met in Wikipedia (cf. this and this), before making such sweeping accusations. I think that Wiglaf, with all his shortcomings, is irreplacable as an editor. I was involved in one slowly dragging content dispute with him (as User:Dbachmann may testify) but I don't recall any evidence of incivility or personal attacks there.

I was urged to trim my statement and therefore commented out my lengthy response to User:Ideogram, as the issue seems to have been settled, anyway. Since I can't see a common denominator between so many unsubstantiated accusations on seemingly unrelated matters and since I don't know which one is the main basis for this case, I follow the example of Pecher, Geogre, ALoan, and R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine), among others, and take a break until the next week in order to sort out my attitudes towards the project and all the bad blood that has characterized it of late. I shall return to this page when I understand what's going on here. --Ghirla -трёп- 21:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Tony Sidaway

In response to Mackensen's plea for clarity, I'll put this case into a nutshell.

Ghirlandajo's ongoing behavior casts Wikipedia in divisive terms. Pole against Russian [47], himself against "aberrant" bureaucrats [48], himself (again) against "Carnildo's [bureaucrat] buds" [49], editors against administrators [50]. The problematic behavior seems to have a long history and is not strictly related to any one incident. I think there is a behavioral problem that needs to be remedied in the interests of the encyclopedia.
Similar cases of a disruptive rabble-rousing polemicist who is also widely regarded as a good editor have come before the arbitration committee before, most notably in the Alienus case.
"Wikipedia is not a place to hold grudges, import personal conflicts, or nurture hatred or fear. Making personal battles out of Wikipedia discussions goes directly against our policies and goals." (What Wikipedia is not) --Tony Sidaway 01:58, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Ideogram

I first encountered Ghirlandajo in the course of mediating cases for Medcabal. He was edit-warring on two articles and refusing to discuss. My first attempt to get him to discuss was deleted as "trolling". When I tried to contact friends of Ghirlandajo to get some kind of communication he accused me of "wikistalking". He has also accused me of "revert-warring" and "sockpuppetry"

This is only my personal experience with Ghirlandajo, there are literally hundreds of similar instances. Ghirlandajo is paranoid, incivil, and incapable of assuming good faith. But the biggest problem is that Ghirlandajo believes that Wikipedia needs him more than he needs Wikipedia. As long as he has this holier-than-thou attitude he will treat the entire community with contempt. I don't know what rule this breaks, but I hope it is clear this attitude cannot be tolerated. --Ideogram 05:52, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Paranoia: calls the English Wikipedia "sinister" and "totalitarian" claims he was blocked for opposing an RFA implies bureaucrats are not to be trusted edit summary accusation of sockpuppetry

Failure to assume good faith: attacks another editor and his ancestors claims his opponent is a nationalist accuses an editor of being deliberately inflammatory and recommends he be banned edit summary calls previous editor a "stalking troll"

Incivility: sarcastically asks if his opponent has any arguments

Personal attacks: edit summary

Revert warring: [51]; [52], [53], [54];

Ghirlandajo continues to claim he is being persecuted over individual events and refuses to understand that he has a long pattern of unacceptable behavior that needs to be addressed. --Ideogram 09:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"I'm sorry." Ghirla, I am not trying to belittle your awesome contributions here in any way, but those two words of yours mean more to me than all the rest. I have indeed noted that you have been more accommodating of late, but it took comments by Grafikm fr and others to make me realize this was a conscious effort. I am truly sorry that this RFAr got filed in the middle of all this but it was hard for us outsiders to see what was going on.

I am now prepared to recommend this RFAr be dropped as being obsolete, or that if it is accepted, Ghirla be given the lightest possible punishment, some kind of warning I suppose. The problem appears to have solved itself. --Ideogram 07:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Alex Bakharev

As an established meatpuppet user guilty in occasional support of User:Ghirlandajo I have to remind you that with all respect the task of this project is writing an enciclopedia. Without writing the articles all our wonderful social and administrative activities are just an empty mastrubation. On this page I heared a phrase Ghirlandajo is a valuable editor but.... I am not sure everybody here understands just how valuable he is for the project.

I consider myself to be a sort of content creator, having written around 150 articles some to WP:DYK level and over 15K edits with around 10K in the mainspace. Many of my mainspace are products of AWB and Vandalism reversion, so they are not that valuable. Despite a not particular impressive results it took a significant amount of effort. I think most of people here can say something like this about your own contributions. In the case of Ghirlandajo we have more than 1000 new articles, quite a number of them of a very high standards, more than 50K edits - most of them are actually content creation, not automatic tools, very little vandalism reversion, little revert warring and empty talk - 90% is what Wikipedia is for - the content creation. I am monitoring P:RUS/NEW and more or less aware of all new articles related to Russia. Ukraine and Belarus. The quality and quantity of Ghirlandajo's work there is equal to the total of next five..ten best users (me included). Without Ghirlandajo there would be huge holes in the Wikipedia's coverage of the 1/6 the Earth. Besides this I constantly find that Ghirlandajo making valuable contributions to the spheres completely outside the Eastern European realm. Anyway I will estimate that Ghirlandajo is approximately five to ten time more valuable than an average established user or admin like me.

Yes, he has strong opinions on some problems and occasionally not very civil. Sometimes he is stubborn. Still I am finding that it is an absolute disgrace for our project that we assemble here not to praise his great efforts but to shame him or even ban him. In my own opinion such great contributors like Ghirlandajo or for example User:Halibutt who is also often a target of criticism deserve from us, people of the project, that we do our best to establish the most comfortable conditions for their work with the minimal misuse of this valuable resources on wikilawyering. Obviously it does not mean to give them a free hand in inserting their POV into the articles or biting new users, or putting really venomous attacks on established users. But otherwise I would think that in our own interests to live such people alone and let them work for our project. abakharev 12:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC) Rspns to User:Ideogram. I am not aware of any productive user diven away by Ghirlandajo. Who are you talking about? abakharev 13:05, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by non-involved party User:Pan Gerwazy

First I would like to beg administrators' indulgence, as this is my first attempt at involvement in such matters.

This whole affair is an aftermath of the dispute over the Russo-Turkish War. That User:Ghirlandajo does not remember that User:Cowman109 was involved there too ([[55]]) does not testify to bad memory, but to the fact that he is working so hard at this project that he simply could not possibly remember all brief encounters of that kind. The problem with mediation there was that User:Ideogram insisted that everyone deleting the reference to a book by an Armenian genocide denier (some Turkish editors were using the article to introduce the book as a trustable academic source into Wikipedia) should explain why (s)he did that, whereas the problem with that book and its author had been discussed at length on the talk page already.

I did not exactly see eye to eye with Ghirlandajo at that page ([[56]] , but as the attempts at "mediation" were obviously only exacerbating the situation with Ghirlandajo claiming User:Ideogram to be a troll or a sockpuppet, I did some digging into past encounters between Ghirlandajo and Ideogram and told Ghirlandajo on his talk page what I had found (evidence of possible stalking) and advised him not to react to a rather ambiguous comment by Ideogram before, which sounded like an invitation to a revert war. ([[57]] and subsequently [[58]]) Apart from the stalking (see further evidence [[59]]), Ghirlandajo also accused Ideogram of sockpuppeting. The point being that before Ideogram arrived on the scene as mediator, an anonymous IP, the Ghirla stalker, had been working in unison with Turkish editors in a revert war against Ghirlandajo: [[60]] and [[61]]. After Ideogram arrived, this anonymous IP more or less left the Russo-Turkish scene, thinking he had done enough damage there, and went on to other pages.

Now User:Piotrus is flabbergasted to see himself presented as an interested party. I am not. He was dragged into this conflict because no one else could be found who may better damn Ghirlandajo. In fact, this "affair" as I called it at the beginning of my statement, has been going on for some time, since the end of June: [[62]]. Why do I get the impression that this is a cabal of two who have waited for Ghirlandajo to be trivially blocked on incivility to present a Request for Arbitration? In any case, including User:Piotrus indicates how weak this case was from the beginning and that it was started as a fishing operation – it was believed someone else was bound to report further evidence of annoying language from Ghirlandajo to this Request. A request that is rather untimely, because Ghirlandajo has recently decided to keep to writing and improving articles and leave the bickering to those who are not so good at writing an encyclopaedia - and is trying to keep himself to that proposition.--Pan Gerwazy 23:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC) (trimmed to 490 words according to MS Word)[reply]

Statement by non-involved party User:Renata3

I completely agree with User:Ideogram. Ghirlandajo is uncivil and insulting with very strong Russian POV. The incidents are not isolated cases, but overarching patters of behavior developed through years and months. Just no one got the guts do anything about it because, as Alex Bakharev nicely explains, Ghirlandajo did write 1000 articles.

Some examples of Ghirlandajo incivility:

  • [63] putting in a nice pink box on top of his talk page that "The edits of established ghirlaphobes from Poland and former Polish dominions will be promptly removed, unless their proconsular leader is defrocked"
  • [64] threatening to enforce the disclaimer described above in reply to a good faith questions on his recent edits, and accusing editor of trolling and nationalism
  • [65] keeping up with his promise above
  • [66] keeping up with his promise above.
  • [67] accusing User:M.K of "Russophobic hand" when that particular sentence in the article came from 2004.
  • [68] edit warring over his personal opinion on "reconstructed" or "recently built" castle

Some examples of POV edits:

  • [69] defending POV phrasing: "These brilliant feats of arms — utterly unprecedented in Russo-Polish relations..."
  • [70] removing external link and image that supports architect not being Russian
  • [71] removing categories not to show he was French-Russian
  • [72] describing Red Army military campaign as "walked across Polish borders"
  • [73] and finally, recognizing his own POV on user page

He even thinks that he owns articles:

  • [74] reverting "unexplained" edits, but this is Wikipedia where people are encouraged to edit freely, no?
  • [75] revert warring on image placement (yes, he got blocked for that)
  • [76] again, image layout
  • [77] demanding to cite policy on changing image caption

While browsing through contributions, I did not seem to catch a single attempt to compromise, alter his original stand, to meet somewhere in between. He seems to have this "my way or the high way" notion. I urge ArbCom to see this case not as Ghirla vs Piotrus as originally presented, but Ghirla vs community. He has been a problem user for a very long time. I doubt anyone could argue that he is incivil. Yes, some like Alex, can and will point out to his numerous contributions, but is that a license to be a dick? Renata 17:42, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Quick reply to Ghirla: I did ask you on your talk about one of the diffs I supplied. No response so far. As to "revenge" for Grand Duchy of Lithuania: I made not a single edit to that article and not a single diff I provided is about you editing that article. Here, again, Ghirla thinks he is being "hunted" for isolated incidents, when really these are patterns of behavour repeating again, and again, and again on different articles and Wikipedia namespace. Renata 15:11, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party Bishonen

I'm certainly not part of any group of users habitually defending Ghirlandajo; in fact in the only dialogue I've had with him, in April of this year, he was wounding and inconsiderate, and I've given him a wide berth ever since. Nevertheless, I urge arbcom to reject this case. In fact I urge Cowman109 to withdraw it. I believe, after a sampling of Ghirlandajo's more recent contributions, that he is already well on the way to communicating on-wiki with more consideration for others. (Or that he was, as the circumstances around his recent 3-hour block and around this RFAr will surely tend to the opposite effect.) The recent diffs posted by Cowman on ANI are IMO by no means personal attacks or incivilities, they're mere expressions of opinion in appropriate venues. I clicked on them lazily, expecting to have my preconceptions confirmed—"oh, yeah, Ghirlandajo, rude bugger"—and was astonished to see what kinds of edits are now being called "incivility and trolling". Please just look at them, Giano lays them out above. In the ANI discussion following on Cowman's list of diffs, some strong protests were lodged against the treatment of Ghirlandajo, and incomprehension was expressed of why these diffs were even being posted (a puzzlement I share). See especially the fully argued comment by Irpen on Tony Sidaway's actions ("dangereous, unwarranted and harmful", as italicized by Irpen). What Tony did was post a warning on User talk:Ghirlandajo that referred to the edits in question as "gross incivility and what appear to be trolling or deliberately inflammatory comments"[78] (IMO a provocative description) and then he blocked Ghirlandajo for this response. The block reason given is "Unreasonable and defiant response to request to tone down after multiple instances of gross incivility"[79] I'm flabbergasted by this. "Unreasonable" might equally well be applied to Tony's insistence that these edits are grossly incivil, and as for defiant, WTF? (That stands for "What The Flap-doodle".) Users don't get to defy admins now—that's a block reason? What are we, 19th-century headmasters at a really strict public school? If this kind of treatment "encourages" Ghirlandajo to be more civil, I'll eat my cascading style sheets—where's the realistic psychology? There is too much blocking for putative, subjectively defined (as there is no other way of defining them), "NPA violations", and it only seems to be getting worse. The idea of blocking an editor one finds abrasive in order to give him/her "time to cool down" or an "opportunity" for introspection or whatever (a notion also mooted in the recent User:Giano debacle) seems to me to be mere Newspeak, and just about equally patronizing as planting officious warning templates on established users. Did anybody ever improve in civility, let alone introspection, by being talked down to in this way?
The most important point I want to make is that I think Ghirlandajo had already seen the light and was being more congenial. That's the impression I've formed from a sampling of his recent contribs. Of course I may have missed stuff, but better-informed editors are saying the same thing above, I see. (See statement by Grafikm_fr). I believe that the complaints made at the old RFC which is listed as evidence above and which was brought in December 2005, are essentially obsolete. I would fully endorse Ghirlandajo's request for more recent evidence. Finally, it's not an admin job, or even an arbcom task, to fix people. Yes, Ghirlandajo probably does think the project needs him more than he needs it; yes, he goes on a lot about his contributions; yes, it's annoying; so? I'm annoying, you're annoying. Wikipedia is not the bed of Procrustes for reworking people's personalities all into the same approved mold. For instance, and this is just one minor example, we're not all Americans. There needs to be room in the project for a fiery Sicilian like Giano, a rancorous Swede like me, an... annoying Russian like Ghirla. To some of us, the dominant American/British wiki discourse (which I'll refrain from offering any stereotype of) can even be annoying in and of itself. More headroom, please. Bishonen | talk 19:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC).[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party user:Geogre

This is an absurdity wrapped in travesty. Unpleasant people are normal. People who are arrogant, abrasive, imperious, intemperate, and even malicious in their hearts are normal, and Wikipedia is not a project only for saints. There is no policy against being curt or even nasty. There are multiple policies against disruption of Wikipedia, and in this case the disruption is being caused by Tony Sidaway. It is not that I endorse any particular nastygram by Ghirla, but rather that the idea that dissenters are to be blocked and then arbitrated when they "don't get the message." The message is to be nice, effectively, since an honest statement of dissent is incivil. Those against Carnildo's reappointment are in "the minority," but RFA was never 50/50. The moving goal posts on his RFA have gotten several people to either leave or express outrage. If outrage is now a blockable offense, then leaving is the only option. There is a policy that says we don't attack each others' persons. That is all it says. Failure to please the administrators is no crime. Seeing administrators as being in a conspiracy is no crime. Only when we try to run with jackboots do we justify every malicious thing that our detractors can say, and this case gives every wild eyed opponent of Wikipedia's administration the perfect justification because it is absolute evidence. Geogre 20:55, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party user:Mzajac

Perhaps there is no way to know that Ghirlandajo's behaviour has driven any editors away from Wikipedia, but for several months I have chosen to edit in topics where he is not active, and actively avoid participating in any discussion where conflict with him is likely. His extremely unpleasant manner of participating in disputes is hard to take, and I could certainly see how it could cause other editors to withhold contributions. I'm glad to see things have been improving. —Michael Z. 2006-09-08 18:48 Z

Statement by uninvolved party Fred-Chess

I hesitated to post this, becase I feel that people leave Wikipedia on their own behalf, and not because of others.

But since it is repeatedly questioned whether anyone has left Wikipedia because of Ghirla, I will point my finger towards User:Wiglaf -- an administrator with 10k+ edits -- who left Wikipedia in December 2005. His Special:Contributions/Wiglaf makes it obvious why he left.

Statement by uninvolved party by User:R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine)

Normally, I try to stay as far away from the meat-grinder known as Arbcomm as humanly possible. But the defendant known as Ghirla, has invoked not only my name but that of my departed friend and one of my wiki-mentors, Wiglaf. Fred Chess' above comments are correct, Ghirla was in no way responsible for Wiglaf's departure nor was Molobo. While they certainly did not give him reason to stick around, neither did they drive him off.

  • Second point, Ghirla and I are not friends. Like many here, he and I have had our differences in the past. Sometimes unpleasant, heated exchanges in which certain derrogatory terms have been traded. I blame him no more than myself (afterall it takes two to Tango, right?). I quite frankly find him a boorish Russian nationalist. He doubtless views myself as an Ugly American redneck. But so what?! At the end of the day we don't hate eachother...we tolerate eachother, we agree to disagree and we respect eachother as editors, scholars and gentlemen. We see beyond our differences of opinion, personality and nationality and put up with eachother because we realize that having us both here makes this place and this project better than if one of us departs on account of the other. Which leads to my-
  • Third point, Ghirla does damn good work, and he does A LOT of it. Even his foes must acknowledge this. Overlooking, downplaying or ignoring this fact, is shortsighted and (in my POV) foolish. The defendant's personality should not be allowed to overshadow this fact. in fact, many of the best writers,both here and out there on earth where it really matters, are opinionated, outspoken, contentious, cranky, ill-tempered assholes. Bishonen makes this point quite well above.
  • Point the Forth, "You can't take away peoples' right to be assholes". If you don't know where that quote is from, I suggest you go see Demolition Man (film)...go ahead I'll wait till you're done. And when you try to take that right away you only make things worse.
  • Point Number Five, is more of a question really, why is Ghirla really here? Because he is a churlish Russian Bear? Or because, like Karmafist, he's an outspoken opponent of the increasingly authoritarian , heavy handed and (dare I say) arbitrary power structure here on Wiki:en? Surely if edit warring and disruption are the charges, why isn't User:Molobo here? If having, as someone (not me, unfortunately) once described, A "temper like a harvest combine inside an orphanage", is a crime, then why isn't User:Kelly Martin here (again)? Both are just as guilty, but are far less productive contributors than Ghirla, which to my mind makes them more expendable for the good of the project and the community. If you must have a witch hunt, try going after the real witches for a change.
  • Point (not a number!) Six, this project really does need Ghirla and his like more than they need it. That he is here now, represents a failure of all the normal channels of mediation, dispute resolution and community building. Taking punitive action against him for any of the above "sins", would only further compound these failures.

But, if Wikipedia desires to shoot itself in the foot once more, who are we to stand in the way. Trying to roll this here growing boulder upside an increasingly steep and rocky mountain is getting tiresome. There is enough knowledge and talent involved in this Arbcomm case alone to start our own Wiki. And we will learn from the mistakes and maybe get it right this time, by creating a community and project where knowledge and good writing are welcomed and rewarded (Wow what a concept!). So either learn to put up with us, as we put up with you, or bid farewell to "an annoying Russian", "a fiery Sicilian", "a rancorous Swede" and "a lazy, mildly dyslexic AADD afflicted bastard, with a Scots/Irish temper, courtesy of my ancestors which has been deep fried by a Southern climate and upbringing Y'all." Hmm maybe if we do start our own Wiki, we should call ourselves the Disgruntled Wikipedians' Breakfast Club BTW, I'm only half joking...but which half?--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) 08:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A query from Mackensen

It's unclear from the above if this request concerns Piotrius and the Russo-Turkish War or Tony Sidaway and Carnildo's RfA. I'm having real difficulty imagining a case that includes both. Could someone wiser than I explain what the hell is going on? Thanks, Mackensen (talk) 01:12, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party by Dbachmann

as per Bish above, I urge arbcom members to reject this request. No coherent case is built. Ghirla is an extremely productive editor (40,000 edits?); yes, his behaviour has been problematic in the past; for all I know, it has improved significantly. A stale rfc from last December does not build an arbcom case, and I take it the arbcom has more pressing duties than generally reviewing and judging the sum of a user's 40,000 edits. If there is any recent, urgent matter, let Cowman submit another to-the-point rfc first. Presenting diffs such as these [80] [81] as "evicence", as Cowman does, seems to indicate wikistalking on Cowman's part rather than any misbehaviour (let alone RfAr-able offences) on Ghirla's. dab (ᛏ) 09:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved party Peripatetic

I've had very little interaction with Ghirlandajo, maybe a couple of times back in February when I worked on a couple of Russian articles. But as far as Wikipedia is concerned, this man is worth his weight in gold. Whether it's quality of articles or quantity of edits, it's hard to beat what he has contributed to WP. What we need is more editors like Ghirlandajo and less of the ponderous bureaucracy that seems to have mushroomed in WP over time. More creators of high-quality content and fewer chatterboxes and hangers-on would be a positive for the project. It'll be a sad day if Ghirla ever decides to pack up here and go off to RU:WP. --Peripatetic 17:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Halibutt

Firstly, having been conflicted with Ghirlandajo over a variety of issues in the past I'm not that uninvolved, but I believe hardly anyone is. And especially people who have ever came in touch with Ghirlandajo. Anyway, as has been pointed during the Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ghirlandajo, he is a good editor, with great knowledge and ability to share it. I can recall hundreds of his articles on Russia's historical landmarks, towns or people, and most of them were good at the very least.

However, he has a huge problem with dealing with people and especially so if anyone disagrees with him. It seems to me that when in conflict over some issue, the most natural reaction for him is to jump to personal remarks, offences, accusations, name-calling and other such uncivil remarks. Typically, his reaction to anything he disagrees with is somewhere between soflty unpleasant and downright offensive, even to new editors new to Wikipedia. It seems to me that he's seen the light, which in his own eyes justifies any kind of behaviour and any kind of vocabulary. //Halibutt 06:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. As to people leaving Wikipedia because of Ghirlandajo's incivility, I guess this comment might shed some light on why did User:Rydel leave. //Halibutt P.S. II As to what R.D.H. wrote above in his point (not a number) six, I'm not sure that the failure of processes that were meant to change Ghirlandajo's ways could be blamed entirely on the processes themselves. Imagine a criminal going out of jail and then committing the very same crime again. Sure, it is a failure of the entire process of re-education, but it's the guy to go to jail again, not the chief warden. //Halibutt

Statement by ALoan

I was not involved in the alleged historical issues with Ghirlandajo. However, I believe these should stay where they are, in the past. The question is how he behaves now and in the future.

From what I can see, the worst that can be said of his behaviour now is that he does not mince his words, and he does not suffer fools gladly. If that requires an ArmCom case, then so be it, but I would invite the ArbCom to also investigate the surrounding circumstances, and, in particular, the recent block by Tony Sidaway (ignoring a block at the end of July that was quickly reversed, his second block this year). Do any of the cited links show any evidence of the alleged "gross incivility" complained of? Does an "unreasonable and defiant response" to an admin (while not accepting that that was an accurate characterisation of his response: indignant, I would call it) justify a block for 3 hours?

I have written before that "Wikipedia is not maiden aunts' tea party. We debate issues fully, frankly and robustly; and we should not be afraid to express our views (within the accepted policies) for fear that others may get attacks of the vapours. Wikipedia may contain content that some readers consider objectionable or offensive, and that goes just as much, if not more, for talk page and user talk pages." This was in reponse to a suggestion that Giano should be blocked for one month, not because of anything he had done, but pour encourager les autres. I hope this is not a similar case. -- ALoan (Talk) 14:41, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)
  • Threaded dialog removed: wait for the case to be accepted and you'll have all the rebuttal opportunities you ever might want. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 09:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC) (acting as assistant clerk)[reply]
  • removed threaded dialog from Renata's statement. Each party comments go into their own statements. -- Drini 18:27, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (2/0/1/1)

  • Recuse, but urge acceptance per my statement on ANI. Dmcdevit·t 00:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept Fred Bauder 17:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Accept. - SimonP 19:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • A comment, for now. I am unsure whether or not to accept. I do believe a case could be made; the phrase I keep hearing as noted above is "he is a prolific and valuable editor but..." The "but" happens to be a large one; I have seen from Ghirlandajo, consistently, comments that make me wince at their abrasiveness, and no one, no matter how otherwise good an editor, should be making them. And yet this is a somewhat incoherent case and not a strong one, with no real specific incident to pin down. In light of comments that he has been making conscious efforts to tone it down, no vote for now; if this is truly the case I would far rather see it continue than set these wheels in motion. Perhaps an alternative to arbcom could be considered, with a reconsideration of the request if this is not sufficient? Mindspillage (spill yours?) 17:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kven

Initiated by Fred-Chess at 16:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Fred-Chess

A user with many sock-puppets has for 10 months pushing unsupported POV on articles related to the Kvens.

addendum to Tony Sidaway
  • I was adviced by administrator user:Bishonen to take this to arbitration. Administrator user:Mikkalai also told me that the Kven-User did not technically committ anything warranting a hardblock. But yes, the wish to block the user indefinite has been made by several users. If you think this is the correct action, please tell me. / Fred-Chess 16:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
response to user:Labongo
  • There has been no previous arbitration about Kven-users, but I did bring it up to Mediation a couple of months ago. Kven-users did not want to participate in that either. He claimed that all that was necessary was for certain users (such as me) to stop vandalizing. / Fred-Chess 19:01, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Tony Sidaway

If this is such an open and shut case, why not just take it to WP:ANI with a proposal for a community ban on the nuisance editor? --Tony Sidaway 16:19, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion withdrawn. I'm satisfied with Fred Chess's response. --Tony Sidaway 17:02, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Leifern

I can only confirm Fred Chess's account of the situation. This editor has made a habit of making a mess out of an article about a distinct, non-controversial topic (the minority in Norway known as Kvens), accompanied by rather pathetic attempts at intimidation with sockpuppets, e.g., : [89] [90] [91]. This editor does not appear to be interested in any kind of reasonable resolution to the disputes he has. The result is that an article - about this particulary minority - is compromised from time to time, not to mention my talk page and probably others. --Leifern 17:07, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Drieakko

Reasonable discussions have been rather difficult recently in Kvens of the past and Kvens because the user fills the discussion forums with meaningless rants and personal remarks. Vandalism in those articles as well as in Kings of Kvenland and Kven language are of less nuisance, but of course annoying. There is something to admire in his almost religious determination to mess those articles, but at the end of the day his place is not in Wikipedia to do that. --Drieakko 17:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Labongo

My impression is that the user has given up any attempts to discuss or cooperate with other editors several months ago. Currently, he uses his many sock-puppets to revert the Kven articles to versions (s)he wrote several months ago, and to post long personal attacks on the talk pages. However, my biggest concern is that his long comments, lately posted on multiple talk pages, will discourage new editors from improving the Kven articles. Labongo 06:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the message below posted by an anonymous user signing as Steve Wondering in Talk:Kvens of the past is relevant for this case (Steve Wondering often post as an anonymous user). Labongo 07:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"To user Fred-Chess: We tried the route you suggest [request for arbitration] already before, remember. You indeed have been one of the major causes of chaos here - please check the archive. Despite of numerous requests, you kept pushing false information, and - of course - you were persistant in not providing sources. Then you sort of apologized for your behavior only a couple of months ago, for which we salute you. - - Steve Wondering"
Just to make it clear. The purpose of the comment above was to show that the Kven user is aware of this request for arbitration, but have chosen not to participate yet.Labongo 20:20, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party 6

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by uninvolved party User:Ghirlandajo

I'm not sure whether I am a party to this case, as well as the preceding one. Actually, there are some parallels between the two. Last year I was one of the first to encounter the Kven editor, as these diffs illustrate. My first rection was to delete lengthy and obvious original research without further discussion. Such was my strategy when a similar nonsense was pasted in Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878. Since User:Ideogram thought it appropriate to file an arbitration case against me on this account, I suggest these two cases should be merged. --Ghirla -трёп- 11:10, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Ghirlandajo by User:Ideogram

This statement by Ghirlandajo is utterly bizarre. I cannot see what this case has to do with the one above. I did not file the arbitration case against Ghirlandajo, and the case against Ghirlandajo is not about a particular content dispute but about Ghirlandajo's conduct in general over a period of many months. This statement by Ghirlandajo is simply a waste of time. --Ideogram 11:36, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The material behind the diff links provided by Ghirlandajo are undeniably from the "Kven-user". Otherwise I'd see best these cases handled separately. --Drieakko 11:57, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]


Response to Ghirlandajo by uninvolved User:Pan Gerwazy

First I want to apologize to User:Ideogram if this comes over as stalking.

My first thought was also that these were completely unconnected. Now, since in the preceding discussion Fred has brought up the Varangian edit war to claim User:Wiglaf may have left Wikipedia because of User:Ghirlandajo's contributions there - note that that claim was made after User:Ideogram and User:Piotrus withdrew from the Ghirlandajo Request - I feel I must now suggest that, if possible, the part of the accusation against User:Ghirlandajo connected with Varangians be merged with this arbitration case, since it is clear from the discussion there that User:Wiglaf confused Ghirlandajo with the Kven user. Have a good look at User:Adam Bishop's contributions there- they explain it all.

Ghirlandajo is basically right to claim that the anonymous IP Ghirla stalker who since registered as User:Truthseeker 85.5 created the same havoc in Russo-Turkish War, 1877–1878 causing Ghirlandajo to think that ... User:Ideogram was the Ghirla stalker.

As for this particular case, real justice requires equal treatment under equal circumstances. We cannot reward one user (User:Truthseeker 85.5) and give him an account like all un-annoying people here because we cannot block him anyway (without blocking one sixth of Poland that is) and punish the Kven User(s). --Pan Gerwazy 09:48, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

Vivaldi

Initiated by Arbusto at 08:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Vivaldi (talk · contribs) [92] Contacted on user talk page
Arbustoo (talk · contribs) I as bringer of the RfA

Vivaldi has been uncivil, has wikistalked, tedious editted, harassed, broke POV, and edit warred after agreeing not to in a RfC.

Statement by Arbustoo

In May 2006 the disputes began at the Jack Hyles article when Vivaldi began removing cited criticism from the article. My interest in the article began solely because people were removing documented facts about a pastor and a molestation at his church (most recently was white washed the other day[93]). This progressed into edit problems in related articles Hyles Anderson College, Jack Schaap, Preying from the Pulpit(ongoing view history[94]), and First Baptist Church of Hammond.

I opened Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vivaldi in May hoping to settle the disputes. I closed the RfC with basic agreements about editing warring, harassment, breaking civil, and other wikipedia rules. This user signed[95] agreeing to cease this behavior. Yet, the harassment and wikistalking has continued. When this user knows I've edited he visits something I have editted and offers POV and/or uncivil. Examples in the last few days: [96] [97][98] [99] [100][101][102] [103] [104][105] and keeps claiming I am pushing a POV and Vivaldi removes material in those edits[106][107][108][109][110] Vivaldi uses wikilawyering tactics (see many on the RfC)[111][112][113][114] citing policy in obtuse incorrect, POV, and illogical ways[115] (again see the RfC for details[116]).

User also lies/misleads to the community about me to attack me. Most recent example was today: An anon. IP voted and made comments on only four AfDs (all mine). I removed this comments noting "rv this IP that has hit every single one of my AfDs" (which I believed to be the banned user who created the articles and Use Your Naugin (talk · contribs) [a sock of Gastrich see his hit of Lousiana Baptist University] went to AfD the day before) and Vivaldi put the comments back and claimed, the IP "has participated in a number of AfDs not nominated by Arbustoo, so that accusation is baseless and without merit."[117] However, the only AfD votes made in the last five days (the day in question is Sept 4th), are ONLY my four AfDs see: history205.157.110.11 (talk · contribs) the last previous vote the IP made was 30 August 2006.

Wikistalking is not acceptable, and the adminstrators I've contacted[118][119][120] can't do anything. For further evidence see: Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Vivaldi Arbusto 08:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by party 2

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Statement by now involved User:205.157.110.11

Since Arbusto has brought me into this matter, maybe I can leave a comment without him blanking it. I am an anon-by-choice former user who tickles his wiki-itch from time to time mostly in AfD. I happen to leach off a public IP that is shared by employees of Office Depot. Early this morning I was intrigued by the AfD of several well known envangelicals (David Jeremiah, Darrell Bock, John Hannah, and Andy Stanley) I posted my support to keep them. The theme of the AfD and the obvious pattern their nomination had intrigued me.
On all the AfDs, Arbusto subsequently deleted my comments. He would later go back and insert strike marks through my votes. On two of the AfD, Vivaldi reverted back my comments and noted my history of commenting on other AfDs. I thanked Vivaldi for his actions and noticed the Rfc and mentioning of the AfD so I made a comment here to give some background. Arbusto also took it upon himself to blank that comment.
While I can not offer insight into the heart of the disagreement between Vivaldi and Arbusto, I consider Arbusto's actions of blanking my comments and manipulating them with strike mark vandalism of my comments and wholly inappropriate and uncivil. As an anon-user, I understand that in items like AfD discussions that my comment may carry less weight and even be viewed with suspicion. It is appropriate for other users to voice those supicions and even, if they wish, choose to tag the IP with a suspected sockpuppet tag. While I personally would say that's wiki-paranoia, it is still appropriate. What is not appropriate is to vandalize other user's comments and to treat them in an uncivil matter. While Arbusto's actions are not bannable, I do request a warning reprimand for him and believe that his comments and actions in relation to this RfA should be evalulated in light of his demonstrated behavior. Thank you. 205.157.110.11 11:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Response

205.157.110.11 (talk · contribs) voted on only four AfD, which included edit summaries that said "strawberries"[121]. Prior to this the IP's last AfD votes that were not Gastrich-my AfDs was on August 30, 2006 (five days before). These articles created by Gastrich 1 anon Gastrch 2user who made 5 edits. Jason_Gastrich (talk · contribs) was caught pushing POV and is banned from wikipedia.

The previous day my AfDs also go hit by a sock: Use_Your_Naugin (talk · contribs) whose first and only edits were on my AfDs and were Gastrich related (note user's edits on Lousiana Baptist University--the basis of the banning). This was brought to an adminstrators attention [122] and those votes were lined out my me.

With that in mind from the previous day and that banned Jason_Gastrich (talk · contribs) watches some of his articles still, I warned an admin to expect[123] socks. This was before this anon appeared. Then this IP directly came to my four AfDs, and being an IP I removed the material with a edit summary explaining that he only voted on 4 AfDs, which are all interrelated by the same user. The last previous edit at this IP was nearly a day before, last AfD vote was 5 days before, and his AfD vote summary said "Strawberries"[124](whatever that meant?). I removed the vote with notation of why, and Vivaldi clearly was looking at my edit history, and felt compelled to revert it (and as of now a day later; Vivaldi has not editted since). Arbusto 17:40, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, the anon. has removed my comments explaining.[125] The IP also made personal attacks on the AfD after removing my comments. More puppets.[126] Arbusto 19:18, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:JzG

The articles at the centre of this dispute have a long and inglorious history of Gastroturfing. I have been around these articles for some time and I find it very hard to come down unambiguously on one side or the other. I'd like to make a couple of comments:
  • Arbustoo performs valuable work policing a large number of articles against aggressive POV pushing by certain Christian fundamentalists, as we saw in the Gastrich case, and this has included long-term monitoring of articles on some unaccredited universities and their alumni and founders. In most cases the principal focus of each new or anonymous editor has been to remove any criticism, however well cited, or to try to neutralise it through special pleading.
  • Arbustoo's personal views are hostile to this particular strand of fundamentalist Christianity, and as far as I can see to Christianity in general. This has not impeded a productive working relationship with other editors such as myself and others who are self-identified Christians.
  • Vivaldi is a contributor clearly sympathetic to these subjects. He is familiar with policy and guidelines and I cannot recall offhand any examples of his adding content which seriously fails on that score. His early edits removed a great deal of what I can only characterise as cruft from the articles.
  • One recurring source of conflict between Arbustoo and Vivaldi, and one where I tend to side more with Arbustoo than with Vivaldi, is the removal of cited critical material from the biography of Jack Hyles. Much of this criticism is quite singular, in that I am not aware of similar criticism of other Christian figures of equivalent standing. This may, however, be a reaction to the actions of Gastrich and his cronies, or it may be my own personal bias as an Anglican and former Methodist, with an innate suspicion for the lavish displays and aggressive certainties on offer from independent Baptist megachurches. The last time I was a parishoner of a megachurch, the building had been on the verge of falling down due to neglect at several points in its history.
  • Nonetheless, I am not persuaded yet that Vivaldi is actively stalking Arbustoo, although there is little doubt each automatically takes a contrary position to the other, whether due to past bad blood or innate differences is hard to say. Anyone who watches AfD will see new AfD nominations, and if two editors are interested in the same set of articles then they are going to run across each other a lot. That said, it is sometimes stretching assumption of good faith a little hard when the same voice pops up quite so quickly; but then, it is arguably legitimate to watch a user's contributions if he has a history of making comments about you, which Arbustoo undoubtedly does in this case, albeit not without justification.
  • Arbustoo is, in my view, somewhat over-inclined to diagnose Gastroturfing when the more likely explanation is simply hive-mind mentality by people associated with the individuals and groups concerned. I have seen plenty of evidence that members of these churches and most especially graduates of the unaccredited universities take any implied criticism of their insititutions very personally indeed.
Due to various other events I have been less active on these articles for some time. I believe Arbustoo has been distinctly isolated, fighting a war against determined POV pushing, has felt that others have ganged up on him, and has at least sometimes been entirely justified in that view, at least in my opinion.
As far as I am concerned, Vivaldi needs to tone down the rhetoric and stop winding Arbustoo up. And Arbustoo needs to - well, I'm not sure. I think he needs more support from me and others like me.
I have no idea what ArbCom can do here, I am not even sure if my own view on the matter is neutral, valid or valuable in any way. As far as I can tell, both Arbustoo and Vivaldi are editors with a history of valuable contributions. If Arbustoo is driven off then a number of articles on institutions and individuals will be at risk of sliding into uncritical admiration and special pleading. If Vivaldi is driven off we lose one of the more reasonable of the "pro" contributors, in that he is at least amenable to argument from policy. I think both need to back off and stop personalising things, but I can certainly see why Arbustoo would personalise things since there is no doubt in my mind that he has been aggressiovely trolled in the past. I am not good at ignoring trolls, and I don't think Arbustoo is either.
For the avoidance of doubt, althoguh both Vivaldi and Arbustoo have clearly exhibited a strong bias in respect of these subjects, and have both been at times uncivil towards each other and others, it is my view that of the two Vivaldi is both the more tendentious, and the more problematic, because his bias is less in line with what I perceive as the mainstream view. Also Vivaldi has been in my view the more aggressive and uncivil. Whether you want to accept my opinion on that is up to you, I guess. Guy 17:04, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Minor note: Hyles wasn't a Southern Baptist, he was an Independant Fundamental Baptist, and the institutions which were associated with him still are. A.J.A. 18:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you're right. All these fundamentalists look the same to me :-)
A detailed comparison of Vivaldi's history on the Talk pages of articles whose subjects he admires (Bill Gothard, Jack Schaap, Jack Hyles) and those he does not (e.g. Barbara Schwarz) is instructive. Guy 19:00, 8 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify: 1) I am not hostile to Christianity or any religion. (I dare anyone to cite a diff of me saying anything negative about Christianity, Scientology, Islam, Hindu, etc.) I am hostile to fake/misleading credentials, white washing someone's past, and using wikipedia for the purpose of promotion. (Example, my interest in the Hyles article started from this POV fork that was getting white washed.) 2) There are numerous other editors that are self-identified Christians that I edit/work with. (Example, AJA is a Baptist.) 3) My religion and education are of no business though it might be suprising to most here if I did tell. While some people feel the need to share their beliefs and credentials I don't. I use sources to doing the talking about the subject, not for me to "win" a side by claiming to be something or not. But I will say to become a respected and notable minister and academic, it takes more than a few vanity books, an unaccredited "school," and a group of fringe followers.
Wikipedia does not exist for people to feel better about their POV. It is to give facts in NPOV. It means avoiding this at Jack Hyles a few months back and avoiding this at Jack Hyles two weeks ago. Arbusto 04:33, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One more comment: Vivaldi's Talk page currently includes some pretty blatant trolling and attacks on two other admins who may have useful perspective to offer, User:FeloniousMonk and User:Guettarda. Guy 23:02, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

Requests for clarification

Requests for clarification from the Committee on matters related to the Arbitration process. Place new requests at the top.

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Irishpunktom

Admins are discussing here whether they will be enforcing Remedy 7.3.1, "Irishpunktom and Dbiv are banned from editing Peter Tatchell for one year" with respect to Dbiv. Admin and ArbCom clerk Tony Sidaway has, in fact, said outright that he would "stop trying to enforce this remedy", saying that Ignore all rules applies here. [127] Is non-enforcement optional or dependent on the quality of the edits, or is this a bright-line ruling? --Calton | Talk 01:52, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's my personal opinion, made as a Wikipedia editor. My role as an arbitration committee clerk means that sometimes things I say may be misinterpreted, and I apologise for unintentionally misleading anybody into thinking that my opinion is worth more than anybody else's. I only meant (and I said as much) that I had decided that I myself would cease attempting to enforce the remedy. I object to no other administrator who enforces it and I will take no action to challenge enforcement (I also said as much). As far as I'm concerned this remedy is a fully enforceable arbitration ruling, equal to any other arbitration ruling in its legitimacy. --Tony Sidaway 02:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If there is no trouble, I really don't care either. Fred Bauder 17:40, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sathya Sai Baba

Statement by Andries

  1. Does not linking to purportedly unreliable websites also include the homepages of critics with their own articles of Sathya Sai Baba e.g. Robert Priddy (see [128]), Basava Premanand, M. Alan Kazlev (see here [129] one of the webpages on the website authored, owned, and maintaind by Kazlev, linked to in his Wikipedia article), Sanal Edamaruku, Babu Gogineni, the late Abraham Kovoor, and the late H._Narasimhaiah. SeeWikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/#Robert_Priddy for a description of this dispute.
  2. Does not linking to unreliable website also include wikipedia user pages such as user:Andries See [130]
  3. Do unreliable websites also include the websites created and maintained by user:SSS108 especially for Wikipedia. In certain cases such as this one [131] the webpages on this website are simply copies that SSS108 took from the webpages of exbaba.com [132]
  4. Is it okay to use webpages with copies of reputable sources on purportedly unreliable websites as convenenience links in the references. See e.g. here [133]
  5. User:SSS108 removed a lot of information from the article talk page [134] that I had moved from the article [135] to the talk page [136]. In spite of my request to do so he did not justify in specifics why this removal was either justified by WP:BLP or the arbcom decision regarding posting external links. I object to mass removals of information from the talk page that are not motivated in specific terms if and where it violates WP:BLP or the arbcom decision. SSS108 stated the intention to remove more of my future comments from the talk page [137] Is SSS108’s or my behaviour a violation of talk page etiquette?

Andries 13:40, 9 September 2006 (UTC) added one more clarification request 17:03, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SSS108

Regarding Points 1-4:

I would like to point out that the Geocities site that Andries is now complaining about was created, with his consent and agreement, in mediation with BostonMA: Reference. In the past 6 months, Andries has never complained about the content (or ownership) on the Geocities site although the Geocities site is completely neutral, cannot be traced to either Pro/Anti Sathya Sai Baba Sites and whose content has never been disputed by Andries for the past 6 months.
Andries is now having a change of heart and is wishing to link references to his and other Anti-Sathya-Sai-Baba sites in violation of a clearly stated ruling by ArbCom that forbids this: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sathya Sai Baba. It is also important to point out that since all these references come from reliable sources (newspapers, documentaries or magazines) they are not "owned" or copyright protected to Anti-Sai Sites. The material in question cannot be claimed by Andries as his own and was never originally published on Anti-Sai sites.
Andries entire argument is moot in light of the ArbCom ruling. Andries is unremittingly attempting to link to his Anti-Sai site so he can push his Anti-Sathya-Sai-Baba agenda. Why is he so insistent that the links go to his personal, critical, partison and controversial website when there is a neutral one that does not push anyone's agenda? That is the question that is at the heart of this matter. To further illustrate this point, Andries feels that slanderous pages are entirely appropriate on Wikipedia. See Reference where Andries stated, "re-insert homepage of the subject in question robert priddy can slander on his own article whoever he likes". It is disturbing comments like these that prove that Andries has a keen agenda to push on Wikipedia.
Even today (Sept. 9th), Andries made a highly questionable edit where media articles (which were determined to violate WP:NOT) were moved from the Article to the Talk Page: Reference. This was discussed in arbitration (Reference), in which I stated that Andries was using the talk pages to promote his Anti-Sai agenda.
I have also agreed to hand the Geocities site over to a neutral 3rd party. If anyone is willing to take over this Geocities site and assume responsibility for its upkeep (and update it accordingly, as needed), I will gladly hand the site over. I stated this when the site was created.
Andries has been trying to change Wikipedia policy on the Wikipedia:Citing_sources (see history) page so that he can push links to Anti-Sai websites (including his own) on Wikipedia: Reference. I posted on the thread on September 7th: Reference. Andries conceded that this argument preceded the ArbCom ruling and was unrelated to the ArbCom case (Reference). What is strange about this is that despite his former comments, Andries was attempting to cite this very same argument (from the Wikipedia:Citing_sources page) that he was using to defend the inclusion of links to his Anti-Sai Sites: See FloNight's Thread. Also see Tony Sidaway's Thread.

Regarding Point 5: :See Thread on my talk page where I gave reasons for removing this information.

Finally, the policy might be different on pages that have not had an ArbCom ruling, however, it is my contention that since ArbCom made a ruling specific to the Sathya Sai Baba articles, the general policy must be interpreted in association with the ArbCom ruling. Thank you. SSS108 talk-email 14:57, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Tony Sidaway

I want to comment here on my dual role in this matter. My first response on this was that it seemed to be a matter for administrators to resolve, and I investigated as an administrator and warned Andries politely in my role as an administrator that in my view and that of other admins he was contravening the ruling in the arbitration case.

Andries has come back politely with what amount, in my view, to clear signals that he requires much closer direction on this matter. I suggested that clarification from the arbitrators might be a good way of resolving this matter, and his query here is the response. Andries has shown by his responses and actions that he is eager and willing to comply with the arbitration and in my role as a clerk I commend his queries to the Committee, While this is clearly a dispute that could have become very rancorous, it seems to me that Andries is doing his best to avoid that path and seek clarification. I also commend SSS108 for his civility in the course of expressing a difference of opinion in a forthright and honest manner.

I hope that this is not "crossing the streams". I hope it's clear that my views as an administrator and as a clerk are quite distinct. My regard for both participants here is very high. Their honesty and civility is impressive. --Tony Sidaway 02:45, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Highways

Wikipedia:State route naming conventions poll may have been set up as a majority-wins poll, but the ArbCom clearly encouraged consensus on the matter. There is a clear lack of consensus on the poll, and yet so far three of the "admin judges" are treating it as a majority-wins poll. --SPUI (T - C) 06:10, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Your side has 41%, which is definitely not consensus for your side. Also, we have to have some convention. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 06:22, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
There's no consensus, thus no convention. --SPUI (T - C) 06:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Back to self-law. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 06:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
This a case which failed, specifically failed to adequately deal with the problem of SPUI's behavior. It should probably be reopened. Fred Bauder 13:36, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that we've just avoided nuclear war. There is relative peace at highways for now, but if SPUI's behavior does not change, a further arbcom case could be inevitable. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 18:21, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Specific Highways clarification request

I would like to ask the arbcom for clarification. Specifically, I would like explicit endorsement or repudiation of the following principles (which form the basis for how I have been operating since I got involved in trying to shepherd the process along:

  • ArbCom does not normally get involved in content disputes, but chose to in this case to try to get to closure on what had been a source of much contention and ill will.
  • ArbCom in their finding said "consensus is encouraged"... I interpret that as "== consensus is NOT REQUIRED" meaning that if consensus cannot be achieved, othre means should be used. IS this a correct interpretation of ArbCom's wishes in this matter
  • There has been a long process of evaluation of alternatives and after some discussion, a majority vote was held on principles. one principle won, with 59%. It is not our norm to accept majority votes as binding (see Polling is evil).
  • I perceive The majority of participants seem to have arrived at a consensus to accept the majority, this once, without necessarily being happy about it, or thinking that this means we are changing general principles. IS this perception correct? If so, does ArbCom endorse it as a principle in this matter?
    • It is rather clear that the main troublemaker, SPUI, is not of this view and wishes to continue his campaign of disruption. I would focus on those who view failure to achieve consensus as a victory. Fred Bauder 16:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • There have been a minority of participants who have continued to argue that there is not a normal consensus here and who have ignored the above consensus to accept majority. Their actions have, in my view, been disruptive. DOES arbcom agree that arguing against this principle constitute disruption of the process?
  • The forum participants have developed a process in which everyone votes to determine opinion, and then a set of (admin) judges interprets the vote and decides what the outcome (what principle shall hold) shall be I adjudge consensus for that process. DOES ArbCom agree? Is agitating against the process disruptive?
    • disagreeing, no. agitating , yes Fred Bauder 16:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some participants are saying that any objection by anyone to any judge knocks them out. I view there is not consensus for that viewpoint. DOES ArbCom agree?
  • This discussion has spilled over to many other places. That is not a good thing in my view. In some cases it smacks of forum shopping to me. It would be best if it remained in one place DOES ArbCom agree that it should remain in one place and that bringing it to new places (here and ANI perhaps excluded) is forum shopping and should be viewed as disruptive?

I have made some statements that not everyone agrees with. The following references may be of some use.

I have handed out a block to SPUI in this matter for what I viewed as disruption. It was reduced but not overturned. I feel SPUI returned to his disruptive ways last night but perhaps has settled down today. I would nevertheless welcome review of my actions and I seek clarification in the form of yes/no answers to the questions I pose above. I was counseled by some to let this go, to let someone else implement but i am one of the 6 "judges". Comment on whether I should leave enforcement to a non judge admin welcomed as well. ++Lar: t/c 16:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There is a split in the Arbitration Committee on this question. Only one arbitrator, me, supports coming down heavy on SPUI. It will take a few more months of disruption before the rest will come around. Fred Bauder 16:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your effort, Lar. Please note that the opinions I expressed above are my own, not those of the Committee. Fred Bauder 16:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of points in response. First, I think it would be best if I got a unified response from the whole committee, although I value your input! But if I get mixed yes/nos it may not be as helpful as a more definitive answer. Second, I'm not anti SPUI. And I'm not advocating that we "come down heavy on SPUI". Or anyone else. I just want to get to a resolution. Third, to the points raised elsewhere about new spirits of consensus, and does that contravene what I said about more new proposals being not helpful... well if everyone previously blocking working to a solution shifts, and with some compromise, everyone comes to a consensual acceptance of whatever state of affairs works for most everyone... great! That would be awesome, trust me when I say I would love to see that more than anyone. But if this lull goes back to disruptive behaviour, then I will seek to apply remedies. Hence my seeking clarification, even if the lull apparently continues, I don't want to (or whoever shouldn't have to) come back here later because I (or whoever) don't have what is needed. OK that was three things. :) ++Lar: t/c 18:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the proponents of Principle II in the recent Highway naming poll are trying to comeup with a Manual of Style that addresses most of the concerns of Principle II supporters while keeping in line with the decision by the majorit to use the style of Principle I in the article title. This is being done at WP:USSH. I am under the impression that Lar and a few others think this is disruption. We are trying to gain real consensus by addressing specific problems with the chosen Principle without overturning it. I strongly believe that is not disruption. I hope most of thr ArbCom agrees. --Polaron | Talk 16:33, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I do not view creating a style guide to help people edit, and that helps them apply the accepted principle rationally, as "disruption", rather I find it highly useful. What I find disruptive is tagging an early stage proposal as a guide rather than a proposal. I think that's fixed though. Once the highway people reach clear consensus that it's accepted and that it's the way that people should edit I'd welcome it moving to style guide in state and getting added to the list of style guides in effect. ++Lar: t/c 19:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The state of affairs on Wikipedia is such that when we say consensus, we can't mean complete agreement among all parties. Our processes like AfD, RfA, and others, instead, have lowered the standard to a norm that the community sees as acceptable. Therefore, a bureaucrat can promote an administrator or an administrator can delete a page even with dissenters, provided that the amount of dissent is within that community standard. This is not the strict definition of consensus, but Wikipedia-brand consensus. Under that system, it is possible to identify this 59% vote as "consensus" provided that the community (especially administrators) is willing to enforce it. Especially in light of the fact that arbitrary decisions are better than indecision, I believe that we ought to do so; if we enforce it, it's as god as done. While there is no reason to stifle productive discussion and comprommise, I'm fairly certain that the community, as well, is at the point of enforcing the result of the poll as the less disruptive of the available options, in an effort to end the agony of this debate. Dmcdevit·t 22:48, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding highway participants' brand-new cooperative spirit

Would it be acceptable to the ArbCom if the members of this entire debate just sat down and had a civil conversation, and reached a virtually unanimous agreement on a compromise? They seem to be on track to do this now, but some are raising concerns about being outside of the process of the naming conventions poll, and that the judges of said poll have already ruled that there is a consensus. Personally, I don't think that matters, because it's always good to have more people agree, so there's no harm in having more discussion. At worst, it's just more incivil discussion and you won't be able to tell it apart from the rest anyway, but it doesn't seem to be heading that way, and is currently being rather productive. What does the ArbCom think? --Rory096 16:38, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Would it be acceptable to the ArbCom if the members of this entire debate just sat down and had a civil conversation, and reached a virtually unanimous agreement on a compromise? This is exactly what should happen. It is exactly what should happen for decision making on Wikipedia. Sam Korn (smoddy) 16:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Fine with me too Fred Bauder 16:58, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Specifically, we made a few concessions in exchange for their support of Principle I. --Rschen7754 (talk - contribs) 18:16, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, I don't think any of the 'judging admins' object to sanity either. :] --CBD 11:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]





Eternal Equinox limited to one account

This was originally posted under motions in prior cases, but only arbitrators can make such motions. I guess this amounts to be a request for clarification or further action in the Eternal Equinox case. --Tony Sidaway 14:18, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:Eternal Equinox came back a few days ago, editing her favorite articles as an anon, from her trademark range. She has already amassed a fairly impressive log of blocks and bans The user is editing by ArbCom permission, she's not banned; so could that permission be made conditional on her creating an account and being limited to using that only? I think I saw her claim a while back that she has munged the Eternal Equinox password--IIRC--but she could obviously easily create a new name account. The floating cloud of IPs she's using makes it very difficult to keep track of her edits and infractions, to block her (I got collateral damage on the brief range block I imposed last night) and to communicate with her. Bishonen | talk 14:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC).[reply]

I am fairly sick and tired of all this. I returned on September 5, 2006. It's now September 10, 2006 and I've amassed five bans/blocks. Pretty ridiculous-sounding for six days of editing. There seems to be a problem here, which is that the Arbitration ruling has gotten to those users who still won't leave me alone (Bishonen, Bunchofrapes, etc.). They are abusing the ruling as an excuse to block me whenever they feel it appropriate. In these five cases:
  1. Bunchofgrapes blocked me for edit-warring with another user and refers to my edits of debate and discussion as "disruptive". Extraordinary Machine and I have been trying to achieve consensus — which is working — but Bunchofgrapes interfered with the excuse that I was being disruptive. Where am I disrupting?
  2. Second ban/block: I declined the ban because it was obnoxious and ridiculous. Bishonen comes along and begins abusing the ruling by banning me because of my comments and why I thought it was unfair. This suggests to me that whatever they say is going to happen; that won't be.
  3. Third ban/block: I stated that the ban at Cool (song) was insincere and I would continue editing it since I was trying to resolve issues that have been coming along pleasantly. (See the process on the talk page.) Of course, Bunchofgrapes bans the IP for "violating" his "ban".
  4. Fourth ban/block: Extraordinary Machine, the user in question of the discussion at Cool (song) resets the ban, perhaps presumably to avoid discussing and achieving consensus. This suggests that he wants his edits to remain when I found some of them questionable. But the process is going well, like I've said.
  5. Fifth ban/block: The most abusive actions taken of the ArbCom ruling was this one. I was trying to post a response on Talk:Cool (song), when suddenly I've been blocked. When I see that it's Bishonen, I cussed a lot at her, especially since this "ban" was absolutely notorious. What she claims here is almost entirely false.
  • She says that I "repeatedly piddled" with the images on Simon Byrne. Utter nonsense; I edited twice here and here. Editing twice is not "repeatedly piddling" with an article. I was first reverted by Sagaciousuk for not providing an edit summary (which I'd forgotten). I said okay and went back and provided an edit summary. Bishonen then "magically" appears two minutes later and claims that I was toying with the image and claims I was "trolling". My browser indeed does have an image-display problem, and decreasing it by a single pixel would have made it the appropriate size for my monitor. She ignored this, but my main concern is that she is 100% convinced that I edited the article because it was authored by Giano. I detest Giano and had no idea that he'd edited this article. A few days before Belton House was on the main page; I knew he'd edited this article and didn't bother with it because I knew Bishonen would come up with an excuse. So when Simon Byrne appeared on the main page only a few days later, I didn't think twice that an article authored by the same user would appear soon after (this is something that should become official on Wikipedia). I didn't even make a major edit to the article and she says I was trolling. Two edits is not trolling, especially since I was first reverted for not providing an edit summary and because the user who reverted me does not have any affiliation to me. I had no idea Giano wrote most of the article until afterwards checking the history. Here is the "fifth ban", which is very misleading.

There is a problem with this ArbCom ruling and adjustments will have to be made in order to ensure that these users do not abuse it the way they have been. Also, I will absolutely not create an account since I'm only editing Wikipedia on occasion now. This is Hollow Wilerding, which you have been told (and obviously received the e-mail for since you wrote my name in one of the "bans"). I'll be sure to tell E.E. that you're failing to respond to him. Hollow Wilerding 17:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • I second Bishonen's request to limit this person or persons to one account, and would request that an Arbitrator propose such a motion as an additional remedy. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 18:31, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have made the motion, thanks for bringing this to our attention. Dmcdevit·t 18:36, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think I've made myself quite clear: I will not access accounts. Also, don't abuse the ArbCom ruling. 64.231.113.136 22:53, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying that rather than choose a logged-in account and stick to it you intend to use a variety of IPs? --Tony Sidaway 00:15, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Because I edit a few times per day now, unlike beforehand (which was very many), I choose to edit from an IP-only account. 64.231.154.178 21:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That reasoning is not sufficient. In fact, it does not even logically follow that editing anonymously is more useful for lower level of activity. However, it is a lot easier to violate article bans when you are a changing IP. Dmcdevit·t 22:35, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It may not be sufficient to you, but it certainly is to me. 64.231.153.78 20:58, 12 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe you guys believe us now, huh? Here you have the Hollow Wilerding demeanour in a nutshell. I request permission to ban her for more than a week from pages she disrupts. "Up to a week" is a feeble remedy for this editor. Bishonen | talk 21:36, 12 September 2006 (UTC).[reply]
This is not for you to determine or request; since the RFAr is effective, you are to operate it as stated. Abusing it, as you currently have been (blocking for trolling? What trolling?) is disruptive enough. Most of my edits since September 5 have been neutral and what you establish as "disruptive" has been far less than that. My last edit has nothing to do with "the others believing you now"; I stated that editing anonymously is sufficient to me because I'm not editing as much anymore (which was stated in an edit a bit further up); this is my second edit today. 64.231.153.78 02:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Given the above I suggest that any IP editor from Canada (especially but not restricted to Sympatico in the Toronto area) that disrupts articles in a recognizable manner should get a one-week anon-only block. Thatcher131 14:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Motions in prior cases

(Only Arbitrators may make such motions)


Eternal Equinox limited to one account

Eternal Equinox continues to edit anonymously, both disrupting articles and continuing to violate bans received under probation for the disruption. Eternal Equinox is hereby limited to one publicly known account, preferably Eternal Equinox. All edits by Eternal Equinox under another account or an IP address shall be treated as edits by a banned user.

  • Support. Dmcdevit·t 18:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Fred Bauder 18:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support ➥the Epopt 19:06, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I am not disrupting articles; did you bother to read my evidence? Plus, the E.E. account is not accessible anymore. I changed the password to something random — I think a bunch of numbers — copied and pasted it, and no longer remember it. 64.231.113.136 22:56, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • Create an account and use it. Fred Bauder 00:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
        • I choose not to. Look at the edits from the IP accounts; there are very few. I only devote my time to updating chart positions now. 64.231.154.178 21:01, 11 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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