User talk:Coren/Archives/2010/November

You know...
...what I want to remind you about; I'll just add that the amendment request now tells me it is over a month old... :> Is it that complex, really? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:43, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Ping? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:22, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Chatter on the mailing list sez "will propose amendment in a day or two". &mdash; Coren (talk) 01:44, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear that :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

CorenSearch bot ...
I tried to add http://yomi.mobi/egate/ to the list of mirrors of Wikipedia but I have no idea if it took or not (see http://yomi.mobi/egate/Chicado_V for why, since Chicado V's going on the main page Nov 7, I wanna make sure that we don't cause more drama ... You can see at the bottom that it mirrors Wikipedia). Help! Ealdgyth - Talk 13:37, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Almost. You had a leading \. which would have prevented it from matching unless the url had another part to the domain name like "wap.yomi.mobi" and not just for "yomi.mobi".  I've fixed that.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 16:19, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I always figure one try and then yelp for help! Ealdgyth - Talk 16:50, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

WP copyvio bots and Google books
Somewhere, sometime, the issue of in-house copyvio bots searching Gbooks was brought up but then, I think, dismissed. If you know anything about that, could you please post it at one of the many venues currently discussing it. It probably doesn't happen as often as copy-pastes from websites, since it's not as easy, but it has occurred. Novickas (talk) 17:52, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

User:CorenSearchBot/manual
If more mirrors are whitelisted as you suggested here, wouldn't that just mean CSBot would miss more cut/paste moves since those sometimes match to mirrors (e.g., this tagging)? I thought the only real problem with mirrors was when they're fast enough to show up on Yahoo search and so CSBot tags an article as a possible copyvio of itself. VernoWhitney (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is, and they do, (those are only the ones that popped up in the past). But in-wiki cut-n-copies are checked separately (hits from the domain the bot knows it's running on are put on a separate queue).  &mdash; Coren (talk) 02:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

what to do in the event of a page being tagged as a possible copyright violation
Hi Coren, The CorenSearchBot's page states "There are instructions on the bot's talk page explaining what to do if this bot tagged your article as a probable copyright violation." However, there are no steps on the discussion page. Apologies if I'm missing something. Where are these instructions?

Thanks

Jbro0428 (talk) 15:39, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * There are instructions located on the actual tag which CorenSearchBot placed on your article. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Hm. I probably should edit this to be clearer.  When you edit the talk page you get the large, big blue box with detailed step-by-step, but it was removed from the talk page itself as there were too many complaints that it was almost impossible to communicate with me because my talk page was overloaded to the point of silliness (which was not entirely inaccurate).  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

good faith heads-up...
39 months ago you and I exchanged some comments on cruft cleaning, and the future of the wikipedia, in general. You moved the discussion from your talk page to User talk:Coren/Brahim Yadel. I thought it was interesting enough that I kept a copy. I told you I was going to make a copy at that time.

Recently my copy was nominated at mfd. One of the nominator's justifications for deletion was that I had not provided a full set of diffs. I've taken care of that now.

Thank you for your time and courtesy 39 months ago!

Cheers! Geo Swan (talk) 21:50, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I have no feeling either way regarding the substantive matter. I wouldn't think the page needed deletion, but I agree there is little point in keeping it given the original conversation is readily available?  I don't think it's worth getting into a spat about, certainly.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 18:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks + question
Thank you for the motion, and I do appreciate the apology. I have a follow-up question: Here's the list of my 10 last DYKs before the topic ban, and how they can be seen as related to "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute" (mind you, none of them was controversial or disputed then or since...). I could go on, but I think you get my drift; almost anything one edits can be argued to be related to a "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute" :( If the current amendment passes, I will probably not change my current editing patterns, but I will - in a month or so - have to file another request (and I am sure we are all tired with those). Thus I would ask if it would be possible to consider a motion that (for EE topics) would ban me from voting and institute 1RR instead of banning me from content areas? Thanks, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:24, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * why is the motion narrowed ("topic banned from articles about national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe") instead of simply rescinded, like was done in three out of four previous cases? It is my understanding that my content editing was never an issue, the canvassing/edit warring was (and hence I propose to abstain from all votes and such for the duration of the topic ban and adopt 1RR policy). I have in the past written a number of articles on "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute" subjects, they have never been a problem, instead they have been recognized by the community as neutral (Katyn massacre FA, Holocaust in Lithuania DYK) and often ended conflict in those articles (as proper, reliable sources and neutral wording was added). Isn't this proof enough that I can be trusted in that area?
 * IIRC, the narrow topic ban was proposed during the case and not supported as it was argued that it would be too hard to define which articles are affected by it, and I do agree with this argument. I don't want to be seen as testing the topic ban boundaries, and I do intend to follow the advice "if in doubt, stay away from them"; however doing so means I will stay away from all the EE-related articles, as anything, in theory, can be made controversial - hence the proposed change is not going to change much. I am not exaggerating; please consider:
 * I wrote numerous articles about Eastern Front battles and other EE-related MILHIST articles; yet articles war; all war are "national, cultural, or ethnic disputes".
 * I wrote numerous articles about the Holocaust (such as on individual ghettos). Of course, Holocaust is a gigantic "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute"
 * I wrote numerous articles on Polish culture (such as most of the articles in the culture of Poland series, including my latest FA, Polish culture in WWII. But Polish culture is related to "national, cultural, or ethnic disputes" due to issues such as polonization.
 * I wrote numerous articles on Polish history, yet history of all countries is very related to "national, cultural, or ethnic disputes"; point me to a Polish history article and I'll point you to a related "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute"...
 * Jakub Wujek Bible - related to Protestant/Catholic (reformation) "cultural dispute"
 * Duchy of Belz - Polish/Ruthenian shared history, military conflicts, etc. "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute"
 * Puławy Legion - war related
 * Lithuanian–Polish–Ukrainian Brigade - war, foreign relations related
 * Władysław Oporowski - probably hard to stretch to any "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute"
 * Sosnowiec Ghetto - Holocaust related
 * Zamojski Academy - Polish culture related, also mentions the town of Vilnius, the naming of which has been known to stir controversies on Wikipedia
 * Battle of Kaniów - war related
 * Wronki Prison - history quite related to "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute" (used for political prisoners, by Nazis, by communist regime...)
 * Nicolaus Copernicus Monument in Warsaw - Copernicus nationality is always a "national, cultural, or ethnic dispute"
 * PS. A question about line-drawing in a topic ban was raised by several other editors, for example Heimstern. And to show you how wide-ranging some people's idea of a topic ban are, consider that an editor complained that I shouldn't have added an assessment template to an article on Second Northern War (a conflict Poland was slightly involved in). While no admin or arbitrator commented on whether this was a violation or not, per "when in doubt..." policy, and considering that I previously thought this edit was fine, I don't trust my judgment on whether something is or isn't affected by the topic ban (and hence, I will stay away from all EE subjects, even if the current amendment passess). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 17:32, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The short of it, Piotrus, is that even granting behavior above reproach, you are a "controversial" personality in the area and it's wiser to ease you back in at this time. As for "where to draw the line", I would recommend that you proceed with this simple gauge: how likely is it that someone not involved in the past disputes would see this as a violation?  You'll find that most would not, and if you withdraw at the first sign of trouble, you'll be okay. The other thing to keep in mind is that if you end up being in the middle of an enforcement request, seek help from an arb to help clarify this.  If you trip over something in good faith, nobody's going to hold it against you as long as you are diligent in accepting that you may have erred and step away.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 18:28, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I see. Is it reasonable to seek clarification before I edit (to save us all from a potential stressing AE appearance)? As in, if I am not sure, can I ask you here to get a feeling of how this works (or would you suggest another venue)? For example (once the amendment passes), I would like to go back to creating missing articles in the List of Nazi-era ghettos - would this be ok? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:21, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is, in general, but is best served by asking for uninvolved opinions rather than try to seek a formal clarification each time (which would just exhaust everybody's patience really fast). As for seeking my opinion, I'm probably not the best choice.  I have only minimal knowledge and understanding of the details of the disputes in and around Eastern and Central Europe, and while I can certainly give you a good idea on the obvious stuff, I might not be as helpful for the less clear questions; and those are probably where you want the most help with. For instance, in the case of your chosen example, I would tentatively say that it should be okay at first glance, but without a very high level of confidence &mdash; I'd need to look into it with more depth than I can honestly claim to have the time for.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 20:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand, but then, there is really no good place (or single person) to ask such questions, is there? Would a solution, perhaps, be if I announced my intent to do certain edits on WT:POLAND, and if no objection comes within a few days (let's say, three), carry them out? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's certainly a reasonable approach; or so would finding an editor that would be willing to serve as a point of contact. The point is, if you take reasonable steps to make sure and don't willfully try to skim the edge, it's the people trying to beat you over the head with an overreaching interpretation that would be looked at.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 22:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Corensearchbot and CC-BY-SA
I've just been having a discussion on Moonriddengirl's user page about how the bot deals with copyrights coming from the CC-BY-SA section of the whitelist. I have a concern that, as it ignores these sites, we could by allowing copyright infringements to go unnoticed when copying is done from these sites but not properly attributed. VernoWhitney states that the bot already search for certain tags (e.g. 1911) so I was wondering whether rather than ignoring these sites, the bot could tag the article in question (with a different template) unless it also detected attribution - maybe it could also see if there was a URL in the relevant edit log entry and assume attribution if there is. Just some random thoughts of mine and I'm certainly not expecting you just to do it but I did think it was worth discussing. Dpmuk (talk) 01:44, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

raising or lowering the bar
Hi Coren. I saw the thread you  started on  Sandy's tp. I don't  know if she has addressed your question yet,  but  I'm  happy  to  give you  my  thoughts.

The current form of the RfA process is discouraging  the right  kind of candidate from  coming  forward. Of those who do, it lets through unqualified people, and it also prevents qualified editors from getting the bit. In the first case, it's often because people have large fan clubs, or are already  well  known, or there has been some offWiki canvassing. This happens mainly (I assume) among  the younger and newer users. In the second case, experienced, and  more mature users  with  higher edit counts, have  have had time to  make a few innocent errors of the kind  that  cause pile-on  opposes when they  come to  light. In the middle, there are occasional borderline cases that  can go  either way -  such  as 'nice' candidates with  not enough  edits to  have made any mistakes, but who  are  trustworthy and not  likely  to be fools with  the tools.

Whether the RfA sets the bar to high  or two  low is not  a specific factor. There is a small core of regular RfA !voters that includes experienced users, some admins, and some users who  are very  new to  Wikipedia and inexperienced. However, not all  the editors who  vote reasonably regularly on  RfA vote on  every  RfA, The level  is therefore auto-determined case by  case by  the participants, and thus the barometer is based on  a different  set  of criteria each  time.

The bottom line is, we can't raise or lower the bar for candidates, because there isn't one to  raise or lower -  there are no minimum qualifications (apart  from autoconfirmed) for adminship. In my   opinion, which  not  everyone will agree with, the solution  is to set the level and  raise the quality  of the participation in  the RfA debate.

--Kudpung (talk) 08:08, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

User talk:Thesevenseas
Kind of unusual to delete a user talk page, isn't it? --MZMcBride (talk) 06:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It is, which is why it doesn't happen often. Please direct further inquiries by email to the committee.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 14:12, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Is that why all of the history has gone? I thought it would be restored if a page was made again =/ - S ophie  ( Talk ) 19:54, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

George Breen article
Was surprised to see the article on my uncle blocked but pursued the reason. While I cannot pinpoint the article, I have read this before (should be able to track it down if that is required). What can I do to help with providing information? Dishep (talk) 18:29, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I don't have sufficient context to understand your question. Do you have an exact article title you can point me at?  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:06, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * He sees the copyvio template at George Breen and wants to know how he can help (i.e. get the template removed and/or improve the article itself.) Sven Manguard  Talk  21:22, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah. Please read the guide to requesting and formalizing permission to use copyrighted works on Wikipedia.  Note that, in addition to copyright requirements, the article must still comply with notability guidelines, advertising prohibition and avoid conflicts of interest.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 23:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Trolls
Whatever happened to DNFTT? Kittybrewster  &#9742;  19:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It remains important to try to determine whether, under apparent bluster or shrillness, whether there is substance. At any rate, I'd rather this be played out on the talk page of a satirical user page where it has little potential to disrupt.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You have mail :)
.    S ophie  ( Talk ) 20:24, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

problem with entry for Louie Pacheco Saenz
The content on the www.labrothers.org was written by me as the President of that club/organization. As the current President and author of that content I give full permission and approval to Wikipedia to publish and use the content as is. The content on the LABrothers.org site is not copy righted and is 100% ok to use here and as mention before as the Original creator, author and president of that organization I have full discretion on how to use the information. here is my email if any further questions need answers. thank you so much and please feel free to contact me...

Louie Pacheco Saenz AmericanLeatherman2010@labrothers.org Sfpegasus (talk) 10:02, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Please read the guide to donating your own copyrighted material to Wikipedia. Note that, in addition to copyright requirements, the article must still comply with notability guidelines, advertising prohibition and avoid conflicts of interest. &mdash; Coren (talk) 12:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:CHECK request
User:Kaverijha16 seems to be the same person as the blocked editor User:6feetheight, along with anons User:61.2.209.68 and User:61.2.209.94. Similar edit pattern and edit summary, as well as overlapping interests, are somewhat suspicious. Aditya (talk • contribs) 12:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Personal attacks
Coren, please re-read this edit of yours, slowly if you will. Now that you have (presumably) slept on it, aren't you ashamed of it? Impugning a user's mental health, suggesting they have delusions and need to "go and discuss things with a health professional" is a classic and very nasty personal attack. As an arbitrator you are indeed more likely to get away with it; but that fact actually makes courtesy more, not less, incumbent on you. I would have supposed you'd know that. Further personal attacks of a similar nature will result in blocks. Bishonen | talk 14:19, 10 November 2010 (UTC).
 * I had already decided against posting it as unlikely to be as helpful as intended and reverted within the minute. If you examine the history, however, you will note that Giano chose to restore it. Either way, if you intend to revive this brief, if showy, flashing of rapiers which has long since petered out, you might want to start by assuming good faith and consider the possibility that I am genuinely worried about someone's health.  Put another way:  there might be better things for you to do right now than beholding the mote that is in thy brother's eye.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:35, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying. I'm glad to hear it has petered out; then presumably I won't have to see any more such attacks, or make any blocks. (I haven't historically had much luck with arb blocks and similar actions. Strange, that.) But I'm sorry to see you so uninterested in engaging with my point about an arbitrator's responsibility. Genuinely worried about someone's health? Nonsense, Coren. Sorry, but if I were to assume good faith about that, I'd have to think you either fool or knave. For it would be either foolish or wicked to post, in all seriousness, that kind of (extremely private and sensitive) concern on a public page. Wouldn't it? And only after you pressed Save did it occur to you that it was unlikely to be helpful..? Oh, come on! Not sure about the mote in my brother's eye. It might be genuinely helpful if you explained what the beam in my eye is. Whether or not, I'm done here. Bishonen | talk 16:17, 10 November 2010 (UTC).
 * Whether you chose to believe it or not, I do have serious concerns that he is obsessing over imagined wrongs in a manner that is very unhealthy. I did not reconsider whether what I told him was accurate or borne out of genuine concern, but whether the venue or manner was appropriate to make that point (it wasn't).  I chose instead to concentrate on my simile with Qixotte.  At any rate (and it is not clear from that talk page), the discussion moved to email where it was considerably more seriously debated.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 16:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Possible COI on articles covered by R&I case
Coren,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you about this. I know that I’m currently topic banned from these articles, but you’ve said in the request for clarification about this case that topic banned editors should still be allowed access to dispute resolution related to the arbitration ruling, and this is an issue that I think really needs attention.

Around two weeks ago, the user WeijiBaikeBianji nominated the article High IQ society for deletion based on a lack of available sources, after having previously removed several of the existing sources from the article. During the course of the AFD, it was determined that WeijiBaikeBianji is affiliated with Mensa, and had previously requested the deletion of several articles about high IQ societies that are Mensa’s rivals. (Examples of articles about Mensa’s rivals that he nominated for deletion are Top One Percent Society, Cerebrals Society, Intertel (group), and International High IQ Society.) Four different editors commenting in the AFD for High IQ society agreed that WeijiBaikeBianji has a conflict of interest on these articles and should not be editing them or nominating them for deletion.

At around the same time, another editor (who wasn’t involved in the AFDs) posted an AE thread about some of WeijiBaikeBianji’s editing behavior on other articles covered by the R&I case. However, the only thing which uninvolved administrators discussed in response to this thread was whether the editor posting the report had permission to do so. When it was eventually decided that she did, the thread was closed as “no action” without any discussion about the behavior which was the thread’s intended topic. During the time since the thread was closed, I and a few other editors involved in the AE thread and AFDs have made attempts to get administrators to examine this issue, but none have been willing to.

WeijiBaikeBianji is currently engaged in low-level edit warring against multiple users on several articles and templates covered by the recent case, particularly High IQ society and Template:Human intelligence. The apparent COI-related problems with his behavior have gradually grown worse over time, as it’s become apparent that administrators don’t seem willing to examine this issue. I think it really needs to be examined, but neither I nor anyone else has been able to get attention from an admin about this. Can you offer any advice on what to do about an editor who appears to have a conflict of interest on these articles, and who’s had this pointed out to him by multiple editors, but is persisting in the behavior that he was advised against? --Captain Occam (talk) 03:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, there are two points to consider here: whether the reason no admin action has been taken might be because they simply disagree that the behavior is problematic, and whether you are the right person to raise the issue.  I offer no opinion on the first because I haven't examined the situation in detail, but as for the second: there are certainly other users who have noticed this behavior and who could certify an RfC?  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:51, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Every time this behavior has been brought up with admins in the past, there’s always been a very strong impression that the issue was simply too complex for them to be willing to look at it. This attempt to get attention from Georgewilliamherbert was a typical example.  The first time the issue was brought up with him he didn’t reply at all, and then when the editor contacting him commented again with a new example of the same problem, he said he was too busy to look at it right away.  Then when Ferahgo asked him if he had any suggestions about another admin to discuss this with, he never replied again.


 * By the way, thanks for getting back to me about this. I was kind of worried that when I brought this up with you, you might brush me off in a similar manner, but I guess I can expect better than that from members of ArbCom.


 * I agree that whatever’s going to eventually be done about this issue, I’m not the best person to do it. The reason I decided to ask you about it is because most of the editors who’ve been concerned about this possible COI are editors who weren’t involved in the arbitration case, so none of them seemed to be considering the idea of bringing it up with one of the arbitrators.  Since trying to resolve it by discussing it with normal admins hasn’t been productive, the problem was staying unresolved and gradually getting worse, and I didn’t think I should just let this continue indefinitely.  Now that you’re willing to offer some advice about this, would you consider it acceptable if I were to contact some of the other editors who’ve been concerned about it and let them know about this discussion, so they can hopefully find out from you how to deal with it? --Captain Occam (talk) 17:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The conflict of interest in question seems rather underwhelming. As best I can tell from looking at WeijiBaikeBianji's userpage and the AFD in question, WBB is active in working with gifted children, and among many other such activities he "present workshops at National Association for Gifted Children-affiliated state organization meetings, at occasional meetings of Mensa, and at meetings of other nonprofit organizations on the topics of mathematics education, organizing support networks for parents, and IQ testing." That's the smoking gun. I'm not sure there's much there there, and moreover it doesn't seem healthy for ArbCom litigants to continually and closely monitor their adversaries in this fashion (as Coren alluded to in his second point). It seems likely that this issue has been ignored not because of its complexity (it's not especially complex), but because there isn't really a meaningful COI here, and because people may have a bit of fatigue when they hear you litigating against the same people again and again. MastCell Talk 17:07, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Without necessarily being as categorical as Mastcell, I think the best way for you to proceed is to raise the suggestion of an RfC to those other editors and take a step back yourself. It may help air out the issue and fix it, but you need to accept the possibility that you're being oversensitive to the issue and that there is too little going on to justify intervention.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 17:17, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * MastCell: I’m not sure if I made this clear, but I’m not the only person who’s been trying and failing to get attention from admins about this.  For example, the thread I linked to in GWH’s user talk was posted by Ferahgo.  (Ferahgo was eventually topic banned from these articles based on the WP:SHARE policy, but there were no active sanctions against her at the time when she was attempting to get GWH’s attention.)  The issue she was trying to get attention about also was not the possible conflict of interest, although it was an instance of POV-pushing which might have been a result of a COI.  So I think it’s an oversimplification to say that the reason issues involving WeijiBaikeBianji have been ignored by admins is just because the evidence for a COI isn’t convincing, and because people think that I specifically should not be bringing it up.


 * Anyway, I’ve contacted the other editors who’ve expressed concern about the COI issue. One other thing I think I should mention here is that since the purpose of an RFC/U is to provide an editor with feedback about their editing behavior, and WeijiBaikeBianji has already received a fair amount of that in the AFD (and has chosen to ignore it), I’m kind of pessimistic about whether an RFC would accomplish anything in this case.  But either way, I wouldn’t be the person posting the RFC, so it’ll be up to the other editors who’ve been involved in this issue to decide whether that’s the most appropriate solution. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:26, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * The main issue here, beyond COI is that WeijiBaikeBianji is removing references continuously all over the place on articles that have anything to do with high iq societies. That kills the will to really contribute anything, when you know he will come in and delete any effort you put in. StevanMD (talk) 20:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * WeijiBaikeBianji is a destructive editor. WeijiBaikeBianji is dishonest and sly. He is possibly ideologically motivated, because he's certainly not logical. I support any sanction given to WBB. (He should be in Shawshank) Woodsrock (talk) 00:35, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The posting above of Woodsrock had the edit summary, "Please indict & imprison WBB for crimes against logic". is a recently arrived editor . This is the third personal attack  they have made of this nature on this editor. Mathsci (talk) 04:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Disgraceful! Serious business in wiki-world... Woodsrock (talk) 04:57, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Please redact the comment of 00:35 above. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 05:00, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * A conflict of interest, too? I guess it doesn't surprise me. I've been trying to clean up some of his messes on these articles, but it's hard to do much when he's been so active. The things I see him edit or revert make little to no sense, at least from my perspective. I don't know much about how dispute resolution works at Wikipedia, so I would appreciate any advice from arbitrators about the long-term solution to this issue. Having people always needing to clean up behind WeijiBaikeBianji doesn't seem like a good permanent plan.-SightWatcher (talk) 05:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
 * is another recently arrived editor who edits almost entirely in the area covered by WP:ARBR&I and appears, like Woodsrock, to be following and reverting the edits of a targeted editor. There have been a number of sockpuppet accounts active since the arbitration case closed, many operated by . The appearance of recently arrived users out of the blue with a similar agenda against particular editors somehow does suggest that something like this might be happening now. Mathsci (talk) 06:08, 12 November 2010 (UTC)


 * If you think these accounts are sockpuppets, you’re welcome to start an SPI. (I think that’s probably allowed under your topic ban, although I’m not sure.)  But in a discussion that’s supposed to be about how to deal with WeijiBaikeBianji’s possible conflict of interest, it isn’t appropriate for a topic-banned editor to be bringing up this accusation of sockpuppetry when the only thing it will accomplish is to distract Coren from giving advice to the editors who are asking for it. --Captain Occam (talk) 09:55, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

(undent) I think this thread has pretty much played out by now, actually. It's a matter that should be examined in an RfC, and not debated by sniping and counter accusation in inappropriate fora. Besides, regardless of where this is taken, some of the language displayed above isn't acceptable from any editor. &mdash; Coren (talk) 12:06, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

You've been mentioned in an arbitration amendment
Courtesy notification: Gigs (talk) 22:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

one confused bot
Hi Coren, just got a message from your bot regarding my article red encrusting sponge.

Since I have just written it myself using the reference I give in the article, have never before seen the web page the bot has produced, and in addition find it difficult in the extreme to see how the bot got a copyvio on a South African sponge from a page about test blocks in California (from what I can gather from a quick skim of the web page); I think your bot is confused and needs some help. I'm removing the tag as of now, but do feel free to review the article anyway.

regards Seascapeza (talk) 09:15, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Coren, I just got a message from your bot regarding my article Sofia International Film Festival. Since the text in the article is part of the official presentation of the festival, which was included in the main press-release, introducing this years' edition of the SIFF. The text I published is the originated source. I'll be glad if you advise me on that matter! Thank you very much! Best, Svetly (talk) 15:20, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Re: Sofia International Film Fest_info
Hello, Coren, thank you for hte information, I'm sending mail to permissions-en@wikimedia.org as it's described in instructions. I could forward my mail if you give me an address appropriated to use. Please advise on eligibility of my further actions. Thank you for your time :) Svetly (talk) 08:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Your advice please
Thank you very much for the advice you offered User:Fram. You are correct. I do feel the target of stunning malice and wikibullying. The distress this is causing me is leaving me incapable of doing more than scratch the surface of responding to the recent flood of xfd from Fram, and someone who has chosen to follow her example.

Responding to Fram's comments, and her nominations, is imposing an enormous strain on me, because I know how important it is not to "respond in kind" when one feels the target of a personal attack.

Several other administrators have also suggested to Fram that she should quit focusing on me. She is unwilling to do so, she say she can't see that she is doing anything wrong.

I have never initiated an rfc. I was the target of one, but it had been initiated by User:KI, a sockpuppet of a rogue administrator, who had made their administrator powers removed. They were angry because I had asked tough questions in the 2nd rfa for that sockpuppet. So that experience isn't very helpful.

If I have understood WP:RFC, it says, at least two contributors have to have tried to resolve the dispute, and at least two of the contributors who tried to resolve the dispute have to certify the rfc?

Do you think it would be fair to characterize your advice as an attempt to resolve this situation? Given how Fram seems unwilling to consider the possibility that they made any mistakes, and that she continues in the problematic behavior, do you think rfc is an appropriate next step? Do you think there is a better next step?

Can I ask whether you would agree, in principle, to certify a moderately worded rfc? FWIW I am not sure what certification means in this context.

FWIW, I believe any good faith contributor can get tunnel vision, can lose sight of the big picture, and unknowingly drift into lapses from our policies, guidelines and conventions. Consequently I don't believe any contributor with a record of good faith contributions should be the target of explicit or implied accusations of bad faith. Fram shouldn't, and neither should I.

Thanks for taking the time to read this request for advice. Geo Swan (talk) 19:48, 16 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Geo Swan informed me of this post, so that's why I am here. You are free to start an RfC, but be aware that your own behaviour may come under scrutiny as well, and that people's attention may be drawn to the dozens (hundresds?) of articles that have so far been deleted, redirected or userfied. Note also, more importantly, that your own ad hominem remarks, like this one from today, may get noticed as well. Fake assurances of believing in the good faith of editors are worse than a fair notice that I no longer AGF with you (but neither do I ABF, despite what you seem to have read in my posts or actions). Finally, if you want to post an RfC, make sure that you have your facts straight. I am not aware of anyone following my example, I am aware of one person who gives your contributions the same long-deserved scrutiny, and who started doing this before me and independent from me. Fram (talk) 20:42, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

MBCA Bank
Coren, your bot tagged an article I wrote about MBCA Bank, using the references cited in the article. The possible newspaper article whose copyright I am supposed to have violated was written in 2006 and is no longer listed at http://www.allafrica.com. Only the first two lines of the article are available and they do not resemble anything that I just wrote. Please take a look at the article yourself and see what I can change or improve to stay compliant with current law and regulations. ThanksFsmatovu (talk) 00:54, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

For you :)

 * Thanks! &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Requests for comment/Jimbo Wales 2
Hi. I was particpating in a Good Article Reassessment involving User:Noloop that ulitmately led to his quitting Wikipedia. I am trying to examine all of what happened, and I see that he started a speedily deleted RfC as one of his last acts. May I look at the content of the RfC? You could create it in my user space, if you like. After I am done examining it, I'll let you know and you can remove it. Best. Diderot's  dreams  (talk) 16:39, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It was nothing but an attack on Jimbo using the current fundraising banners as pretext. It's not a good idea to recreate an attack page, even in userspace, but the only substance was "heavily photoshopped ugly face" and "you stole Sanger's credit" or somesuch.  It only had the single rant as "dispute" and none of the other fields filled.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 16:53, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Question
I don't really understand why you blocked User:Thesevenseas, was he a bot or was it something else? Cheers. Usb10 Connected? 16:17, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but this is a privacy matter and cannot be discussed on-wiki. &mdash; Coren (talk) 17:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Copy-vio by CorenSearchBot
Just created a page, which CSB tagged possible copyvio in this edit. The link from which I copied it (at least according to the bot, I didn't) is however not visible. I have left the template for your info until now... Could you explain what is going on?
 * Just looked at the tagging of this link of an engineering company as plagiarism in the completely unrelated company Rap Engineers (rappers); I guess the decision on similarities is made a bit too easy. L.tak (talk) 21:35, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Notice by the bot
Secondly, I was a bit surprised to see a very lengthy notice, however i) no link to this talkpage and ii) no info on who will be evaluating this page (backlog link again). How would you think about adding that? L.tak (talk) 18:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Possible Wikipedia mirror
The bot added a copyvio tag to this article, stating it was a copyvio from http://www.wikiwak.com/texis/wcolz?red=1&q=Guinean+presidential+election%2C+1982. I can't access this site, but I assume it is a wiki mirror, so perhaps should be added to the list. Cheers, Number   5  7  13:18, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yep, the cache shows it's a mirror &mdash; but a very unreliable one. I've added it to the list of known mirrors.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 13:44, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Bot blocked
I have just blocked the bot after it added wrongly a copyvio notice to Thomas Parry (b. 1818). (see diff)

This is an utterly inexplicable error: the webpage which it suggests the copyvio is from is http://www.willowvalefire.org/about.html ... but that page doesn't exist, and is not in the wayback machine (see http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.willowvalefire.org/about.html )

This is not a simple false positive. It's something badly broken in the bot, so I have blocked it to allow you to fix the bot.

I will happily unblock the bot once you say you have fixed the problem. If I am slow to respond, please ask any other admin to unblock you.

But please don't let the bot loose again while it's doing this sort of nonsense. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs)


 * That is a rather weird false positive regarding the content, but the webpage does exist so CSBot hasn't gone off the deep end. I can see it personally and it's also in Google's cache and Yahoo's cache. Even if the webpage was deleted, CorenSearchBot relies on Yahoo search so if Yahoo turns up a listing for a deleted website the article will be tagged for that now-deleted webpage. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:33, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for those pointers, Verno.
 * Maybe I should have checked those caches myself, but after two nulls I stopped. Anyway, since the webpage did or does exist, this is merely a false positive, rather than a bot-gone-mad .... so I will now unblock the bot.
 * However, it would be good to know what on earth gives the bot any hint that these two complete disparate pages could imply a copyvio. I expect that a bot such as this should generate a few false positives in marginal cases, but that one seems bizarre. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I have a backup copy of the code running under VWBot so I can see if there's any helpful reports when I get home tonight, but Coren may be the only one who has a useful log, since when I ran a manual check after seeing the block it came back negative. Once every few months there seems to be a really odd false positive like this one, but I haven't delved into the matching algorithm to try and figure out what's going on yet (and one really random tagging out of a few thousand tagged articles doesn't strike me as that bad personally, but I'm probably biased). VernoWhitney (talk) 22:19, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I got nothing. My logs say it wasn't a copy. VernoWhitney (talk) 14:47, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

A possible phenomenon: there are a number of web sites that "lie" to what it thinks are search engine spiders (generally in the hopes of attracting unwarranted traffic on "wrong" search terms &mdash; it used to be a fairly common SEO slimy tactic until search engines adjusted) by giving different contents depending what what the user agent is. I've had a handful of false positives in the past that were caused by shady websites giving out copies of Wikipedia pages to robots while serving some dubious contents to humans. Dunno if that's what happened here, but it's a possible avenue of investigation. &mdash; Coren (talk) 18:13, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Would looking at Talk:Nicholas Wood (MP) help at all? Carcharoth (talk) 04:52, 20 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No, that's a different (known) weakness. At the time the page was tagged, it was a small stub and hit upon a page that was also very light on actual contents.  The bot does fairly poorly at very small pages (its false positive rate increases when the pages are both very small), but when I asked the people at WP:CP whether I should increase the threshold, the consensus was that it was an annoyance but worth the trouble because it did catch a fair number of stubs which were outright cut and pastes of statements taken from webpages.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 05:30, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I have just had another of these daft false positives, re Edward Heneage (1802–1880) and http://www.edwardheneage.com This is geting ridiculous. There must be some way of persuading the bot not to issue silly warnings in cases such as this. -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:28, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, consensus is that those warnings are useful despite the inconvenience, but I can certainly tell the bot to not warn you. Done.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 12:47, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Coren. I can understand the difficult choices involved in setting the right sensitivities for the bot, but the false alerts on my talk page are a waste of everyone's time. This looks like a good way of cutting out some of the excess noise. :) -- Brown HairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 20:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Fernando Bastos de Avila
I had started an article about Fernando Bastos de Avila sent a notice that it was a violation about Five Africa. A false reading-mirror image. The citation involved was from Radio Vatican in Portuguese not Five Africa. I hope eventually that an article about Fr. de Avila will be sent from one of the foreign WikiProjects to be translated. This has happen a few times lately. Very frustrating especially since the article is just a stub. Thank you=RFD (talk) 01:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I came here noticing the same problem. Can the bot be programmed to exclude search results from the Mirrors and forks without breaking the code?  Royal broil  03:35, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It does, as long as it's a known mirror. You can add them to User:CorenSearchBot/exclude.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 03:51, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I added it. Perhaps you should consider adding all of the website listed at Mirrors and forks/All.  Royal broil  01:23, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

(https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/User:SE962582C ) 83.100.228.71 (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
I would be very grateful if you, Sir, could at least help in my "cleaning up" of, i.e. that is the removal of my older replies POST the "Block" at, my Talk Page. Got something NEW I would like to say, and to write. Thank you. 83.100.228.71 (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2010 (UTC)


 * You may wish to read up the guide to appealing blocks; the committee only hears appeals in cases where normal community processes have been exhausted (or are unavailable due to privacy concerns), and individual arbitrators almost never intervene directly. &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:38, 24 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Did not realise that you are an "Arbitrator". I see. Nothing Further for Now. 83.100.228.71 (talk) 15:48, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

British Mid-Heavyweight Championship
Could we close this nonsense about British Mid-Heavyweight Championship being a copyvio as quickly as possible please? As I explained on the new article's talk page the website that it is supposed to have ripped off cannot even be viewed so I fail to see how any plagiarism is even possible let alone provable. I realise that this is the Bot and not you personally saying this but this is the second time recently that your bot has wrongly tagged articles I have created for this (Werner Willikens being the other time) and both times it has been websites that I cannot even access. Keresaspa (talk) 02:43, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Bot blocked
Hi, I've blocked the bot for now because it is completely useless. It gave an absolute rubbish accusation of copyright violation against Moondyne earlier today, and just now it accused me of violating http://www.chah.gov.au/images/photo_cd/5124BJ012LH1/023.html. Sorry, but that's just beyond the pale. It is not acceptable for a bot to be going around accusing people of serious misconduct if it is going to get it that badly wrong. Hesperian 13:14, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've bumped the threshold for small articles up, which was the cause of small positives (and removed the block). I'm not sure what you mean about "accusing people of serious misconduct", though, the messages have been carefully crafted to make no such accusation.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 13:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Lol, don't give me that. You work for an hour on an article and the very minute you post it you get tagged and messaged that "it appears to include material copied directly from" some website. People are going to feel aggrieved, dude. There's a social cost in getting this wrong. It's one thing to weigh up the cost versus the benefit and accept the tradeoff. But don't pretend the cost isn't there. It is. It's real. Hesperian 13:50, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Coren, given the recent hue and cry about copyvios, it is a very difficult area to navigate with automated bots at present. I do think that doing all we can to find copyvios is a good thing (including automated searches), but I think my feathers would be a little ruffled if one of those notices landed on my talk page too. Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:17, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Allright, then, explain to me what you see is a solution. Not tagging or giving notice?  (Look back in the archives around 2007 of my talk page to see the hue and cry of editors who didn't get notice).  Stop the bot?  Look at its deleted contributions to see how many clear copyvios it caught &mdash; and that doesn't count how many were fixed rather than just deleted.  I've raised the barrier for small articles, which have a much higher rate of false positives, but the people at WP:CP said it still caught a lot of cut and pastes in small articles; so that's probably not a good long-term solution.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:30, 22 November 2010 (UTC)
 * (sigh) I don't know - I do think the minimum governance does call for some automated bot searching for copyvios, and AFAIK Corensearchbot is the only one (?) - I haven't looked into how buggy it's been to date, and this came up late last night as I was just about to turn in. Clearly this is a difficult subject to navigate, and the numbers of articles checked do mean we veer either into false positive or false negative territory....Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Is the above example saying your bot made a match based on just two words? The principle of what you're doing is fine but perhaps you just need to adjust the scoring which may be at the cost of more false negatives—we don't expect the bot to pick up 100% of copyvios, nor do we have to automate every process. I also think you need to record, and make visible, the matched phrases somewhere - either in the message or in a log file.  You can do better—false accusations of copyright fraud are extremely hurtful. –Moondyne 00:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Uncaught copyright violations are also extremely hurtful. VernoWhitney (talk) 02:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

On the technical issue, you keep saying the problem manifests with short articles but I think it's pretty clear that the problem is with short web pages. Adenanthos oreophilus is nearly 7kB. That's not particularly short. But the web page I was alleged to have copied from contained nothing but an image and the text
 * Adenanthos oreophilus Photographer: Unknown ANBG Photo No.: a.4015

Of that text my article contained the strings "Adenanthos oreophilus", "no" and "a". There are plenty of other web pages out there that contain these three strings. The difference is that those other web pages contain lots of other text that doesn't match. This one matches my article at about 50% simply because it is so short.

I think your metric is wrong. You can't just say "this article reproduces X% of this web page", and treat that X as a meaningful measure. You need to test against the null hypothesis: calculate the probability that an article of a given length would reproduce X% of a web page of a given length by chance, and use that probability as your metric.

Hesperian 02:44, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * ... I've just been looking through your code and reading up on Levenshtein distance. Obviously you don't have fine-grained control, which is a shame because I think this situation fairly clearly demonstrates that Levenshtein distance is not an ideal metric for plagiarism/copyvio. Will get back to you if I have anything sensible to say, but otherwise I guess disregard my comment above. Hesperian 03:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, you're correct, but halfway there. I match both ways, so the problem manifests itself with both short articles and short webpages &mdash; the latter is much less frequent than the former, however.  The problem remains that the sample size is too small (which is why I bumped it up).  &mdash; Coren (talk) 03:13, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I think the problem is that conceptually you want to find substring pairs with low edit distance, but in practice you're simply computing the edit distance between the entire article text and the entire webpage text. You expect this to work because your insertion/deletion weight is low. But low or not, it still registers. If I rip a twenty-word paragraph off a webpage and post it verbatim into an article, the edit distance between those substrings ought to be the same regardless of whether the source texts are large or small. But in practice there is a higher deletion cost in winnowing large texts down to one or two problematic substrings. Ideally you need a two-step process. Run it once (without reduced deletion cost) to find the best alignment. Ignore the score. Where your alignment contains very long deletion sequences, delete those bits from your source texts, since those are the vast swathes of text that clearly weren't copied. What you're left with just the suspicious bits—a collection of suspicious substring pairs. Run it again on each suspicious substring pair, and use those scores to decide whether you have a copyright violation or not. Hesperian 03:41, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's an interesting approach. Worth trying, certainly.  Imma going to try something along those lines come weekend when I have a bit of coding time.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 03:53, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * In addition to possible code tweaking, would it make sense to change from a binary OK/Not OK to a trinary OK/maybe/not OK, and post the middle group to a notice file where humans can double check? I realize you are trying to use a softly worded notice to cover the false positives, but there's some evidence that even that wording is creating some angst. -- SPhilbrick  T  17:35, 23 November 2010 (UTC)
 * See WP:SCV, where every single report is manually checked. And for the record, I personally feel that blocking a bot that catches between 30 and 40 copy / pasted articles a day with on average 3 false positives, solely based on those three false positives, verges on WP:DE. MLauba (Talk) 11:12, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * How you personally feel is duly noted... for the record. Hesperian 11:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I think the number of false positives is worth the risk. I don't think  I've ever come across a false positive, but  I  do  double check every  Copyvio template I  see and add either a CSD, some other tag, or cut  out  the offending  passage if possible, before leaving it  to  a trigger happy  admin. CSB is important -  it  leads us not  only  to  copyvios, but  also to the  mass producers of hundreds of uBLP stubs, and to a lot  of CCI. I  dread the thought  of CSB being  down even for an hour!Kudpung (talk) 11:34, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think that softening the notice is warranted, or a good idea. One of its functions is to ring an alarm bell to the contributor, after all:  if you peruse the history of the bot, you'll note that a good 30-40% of copyvios are corrected (or at least removed) by the original contributor themselves minutes after receiving the notice.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:46, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Personally I think it would make a huge difference if you just changed
 * "I have performed a web search with the contents of Adenanthos oreophilus, and it appears to include material copied directly from http://www.chah.gov.au/images/photo_cd/5124BJ012LH1/023.html. It will soon be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues."
 * to
 * "I have performed a web search with the contents of Adenanthos oreophilus, and detected textual similarities with http://www.chah.gov.au/images/photo_cd/5124BJ012LH1/023.html. It will soon be reviewed to determine if there are any copyright issues."
 * After all, all the bot does is notice similarities. The inference that text has been "copied" is laden with social complexities that a bot cannot and should not tackle. Hesperian 03:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I like the suggestion. I don't think it softens the message to the point it would be ignored, while simply noting what it has reported. -- SPhilbrick  T  14:47, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Works for me. I'm in low-edit mode right now because my right hand is in a brace so I'll not do it myself, but the change does seem very positive.  Three templates to possibly tweak, then:  csb-pageincludes, csb-pageincluded and possibly csb-wikipage.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 15:09, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Marc Pedraza
I don't know how or why your Bot has tagged this page as copyvio - please see Talk:Marc Pedraza for my reasonings. Regards, GiantSnowman 15:51, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's a bug, and doubly shouldn't have happened since the webpage should have been too short to have been considered at all. Looking into it as soon as I can. &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2010 (UTC)
 * That's great, thanks very much, I'll monitor developments. Thanks and regards, GiantSnowman 14:03, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Weird false positive
This. I can't figure out howe the bot could've managed this in normal operation. Reverted for now, but could probably stand investigation with an eye to retuning the comparison engine. - TB (talk) 18:33, 25 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Coren, looks like whatever tweak you made in answer to the unwarranted blocks have apparently caused more issues. I'd suggest reverting to the last known good config until you get a chance to rewrite the algorithm. MLauba (Talk) 01:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)


 * This error could not possibly be a result of Coren having "bumped the threshold for small articles up". The "last known good config" (lol) would also have made this error. Hesperian 02:03, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Chances are, it's not. Looking back at the reports from the past couple of weeks it seems that there is an increasing proportion of bad reports when the page returned by the search are gone; I suspect it's a bug that has always been there but generally infrequent enough that it isn't much noticeable.  I'm investigating the matter now.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 02:54, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Appeals process for discretionary sanctions
Coren, I wanted to do some work on the matter we discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration last month. As you will remember, the AE appeals process is supposed to comprise three steps: (1) appeal to the administrator who has imposed the sanction, (2) appeal to the AE board, presumably using Arbitration enforcement appeal, (3) appeal to arbcom. I would like to ask you for some advice:


 * 1) One immediate problem I've come across in drafting this is that the sanction imposed at AE may well be a block. In that case, how does the sanctionee appeal to the admin who imposed the block? It's obviously not a problem if it's only a topic ban, but if they are blocked, they cannot contact the admin.
 * 2) Anyway, where a user has been blocked, isn't it more normal for the blocked user to ask for a block review / to be unblocked on their user talk page?
 * 3) Frequently, the decsion to impose a sanction follows a consensus established in AE discussion. In that sense, the actual admin imposing the sanction is just the messenger implementing the consensus arrived at at AE. That too seems to make it less sensible to direct the user to appeal to said admin; the admin's hands are tied, if all they did was implement a community consensus.
 * 4) Assuming that there is a way to overcome the difficulties associated with step (1), does step (2), i.e. appealing to AE, really make that much sense? AE is usually sparsely populated. A block or topic ban is often preceded by a discussion involving most or all of the active admins at AE. Appealing to them after being sanctioned strikes me as akin to appealing to a judge who has just sentenced you. Do you see this differently?

Would be grateful for any pointers. Best, -- JN 466  19:48, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:AEBLOCK provides some more detail, saying the blocked editor should contact the blocking admin by e-mail. However, it also seems to contradicts some of the basic principles we had agreed on in that it does not list a discussion at AE as an option; in fact it says that users "are not entitled to a community review of [their] block." and states "The reviewing administrator may decline to initiate a community discussion if you do not prepare a convincing appeal before making your unblock request".

It all seems a little confusing. I will copy the above to the Arbitration talk page; it is probably best to carry the conversation on there. Cheers, -- JN 466  09:13, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Reduced activity
A note: I am going to have much reduced activity for the next 10 days or so because I'm stuck with a nasty tendinitis that requires me to wear a brace and drugs that keep me groggy. Given that I can mostly only type with one hand, I'm only going to edit sporadically. I'll keep an eye on this page, but arbitration matters requiring urgent attention are best directed to the some other member of the committee. 22:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry to hear that. Hope you get well soon. Regards, -- JN 466  06:17, 28 November 2010 (UTC)