User:Tóraí/Reply to Phil Sandifer

Phil,

Thanks for the heads up and for allowing me to review your post ahead of publishing it. Obviously, we don't see eye-to-eye on this issue — at least at this stage, maybe that will change if the issue is taken up by ArbCom and that process gets underway. Obviously too, I find some of your comments hurtful. An unfortunate element to this dispute has been the casual way in which arguments against moving so quickly to Chelsea Manning has been equated with bigotry and hate speech.

I think the way the discussion was framed is partially responsible for that. If things had been left be and a move discussion opened. I'd probably have !voted "wait" and in a week or two would probably have !voted for a move to Chelsea Manning. I appreciate that that might not satisfy the immediacy of action that some believe is necessary - but it would certainly have been better for the community to have seen a whole bunch of people !voting to move the article Chelsea Manning and a whole bunch of people simply saying "wait" and then move to supporting a move.

Now, directly because of the way the process was forced, the article is locked at Bradley Manning for 30 days and a future move requests are probably going to be marked by ill-feelings. As someone who would be normally sympathetic to moving the article to Chelsea Manning, that is what I have called the real tragedy of this fiasco.

I think you're right to raise questions about transphobia. TParis's request for ArbCom deals heavily with that question. But don't paint everyone who said the article should be moved back to Bradley Manning as a bigot.

You wrote, "It is impossible to wholly separate this vitriol from the threats and hate speech that Brady was subjected to." First, I'm not sure what threats or hate speech you are referring to. Can you link to them, so I know what you're talking about? But certainly, I did not subject her to any threats or hate speech. Don't lump me with anyone else just because I and they may — possibly for completely different reasons — believe some article on Wikipedia should be at the same title. That's as crazy as someone saying that the Manning case demonstrates why homosexuals shouldn't be in the army.

Anyway, you asked me to check your post for factual accuracy, I can't be sure I've spotted everything but here are some things I spotted.



The article was IP protected.



Not straight forward at all. Pages aren't procedurally move locked (never mind fully move locked) simply because they are linked to from the main page. And there had been no history history of warring over the title at that point. From my point of view, David's move locking of the article is unexplainable in Wikipedia process, policy or common sense.

If David feared vandalism, why not edit protect the page also? That's a more likely source of vandalism. Why did the move protection level of the page have to jump from no protection to being full protection, when the edit protection level remained at IP-only. Indeed, David even reversed Mark Arsten's upping of the edit protection level to fully protection after he locked the title at Chelsea Manning, saying: "Changed protection level of Chelsea Manning [to IP-only: the moves were all admins; actual vandalism to the text hasn't been a problem so far".

No vandalism to the text and moves were so far only by admins. So why the lock?

Have you seen the Twitter exchanges between David and Morwen at the time?

This is very disingenuous. Technical moves are also requested to reverse moves that are controversial and which were performed without consensus. That was the situation in this case.

There were 122 edits to the article in between Mark Arsten fully protecting the article and Timrollpickering restoring the protection level to IP protection. Indeed, there was an incident during this period where numerous admins were blocked temporarily from Wikipedia because of changes they were making to the article.

Also, this was also a three-day period, not seven days.

Do you mean Mark Arsten? You should also mention in this section that Gerard initially reversed Mark's change of the page protection level (on the basis that "the moves were all admins; actual vandalism to the text hasn't been a problem so far"). Mark later re-apply full page protection.

You should indicate here that "naturalness" in this case is a concept from policy on Article Titles.

Is there a word missing here?



I have no past experience that I can recall with Morwen and I have no idea of what issues she has previously been involved in. I don't know where or how you are drawing that conclusion from that comment.

Furthermore, I raised it as a possibility. I do not advocate any such sanction against Morwen.

For example, see my comments to Morwen here. In particular: "...she [Morwen] didn't 'war' with anyone. I think her actions were ill-advised, excited and impulsive. I don't appreciate her press correspondences that cast aspersions on contributors here that followed. I think those are things she needs to reflect upon. But I don't doubt the good faith and best intentions of Morwen's move, however ill-advised."

Additionally, see my proposed sanctions here. The only sanction I propose against Morwen is a traditional mock slap in the face with a tout. She knew the move would be controversial (her tweets immediately afterwards evidence that). As an admin, she should have had more sense and opened a move discussion per norm.

For clarity, my reasons for believing sanctions need to be taken against David have nothing to do with the nub of the move discussion. It was his conduct throughout the issue that has me concerned. Unfortunately, these concerns have been as you say "blended" with other questions and suspicions.



In this section you don't mention that the closing admins were unequivocal about Wikipedia's policy and guideline position:

"'BLP does not require having 'Chelsea Manning' as the title. It is not a BLP violation to maintain the title at 'Bradley Manning'... Therefore, BLP is not a basis to move the article in the clear absence of a consensus in favor of titling the article, 'Chelsea Manning'.'"

"'MOS:IDENTITY is not expressly applicable to article titles, and is therefore not a basis to move the article in the clear absence of a consensus...'"

--RA ( &#x270D; )