Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/A Man In Black/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Create your own section and do not edit in anybody else's section. Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs and keep responses to other evidence as short as possible. A short, concise presentation will be more effective; posting evidence longer than 1000 words will not help you make your point. Over-long evidence that is not exceptionally easy to understand (like tables) will be trimmed to size or, in extreme cases, simply removed by the Clerks without warning - this could result in your important points being lost, so don't let it happen. Stay focused on the issues raised in the initial statements and on diffs which illustrate relevant behavior.

It is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff in question, or to a short page section; links to the page itself are insufficient. Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions, or a log for all actions of an editor (as those will have changed by the time people click on your links), although a link to a log for a specific article or a specific block log can be useful. Please make sure any page section links are permanent. See simple diff and link guide.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see the talk page. If you think another editor's evidence is a misrepresentation of the facts, cite the evidence and explain how it is incorrect within your own section. Please do not try to re-factor the page or remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, leave it for the Arbitrators or Clerks to move.

Arbitrators may analyze evidence and other assertions at /Workshop. /Workshop provides for comment by parties and others as well as Arbitrators. After arriving at proposed principles, findings of fact or remedies, Arbitrators vote at /Proposed decision. Only Arbitrators (and clerks, when clarification on votes is needed) may edit the proposed decision page.

Evidence presented by Rootology

 * Note: my various numbers on edit counts are from the baseline at User:Rootology/evidence/AMiB notes, where I detail how I got them.

A Man In Black has been blocked 12 times since he was an administrator
He has an extensive and long-term history of edit warring and blocks edit warring since his 2005 successful RFA, which is unbecoming of an administrator. Reviewing his block log, I count 12 valid blocks imposed by other administrators due to his ongoing misbehavior:
 * Block record

"1. July 17, 2006: 3RR; 2. December 30, 2006: 3RR; 3. February 9, 2007: 3RR; 4. February 28, 2007: 3RR; 5. March 5, 2007: 3RR; 6. March 9, 2007: 3RR; 7. March 12, 2007: 3RR; 8. March 30, 2007: 3RR; 9. November 19, 2007: edit warring; 10. September 13, 2008: 3RR; 11. February 5, 2009: 3RR; 12. May 20, 2009: 3RR."

He routinely does this (view his block log), and it is an ongoing pattern.

A Man In Black is deeply involved with Ikip
As of May 23, 2009, Ikip is one of the major contributors to various ARS pages, as is AMiB. There is no reasonable way it is even possible to ever assume that A Man In Black and Ikip are ever uninvolved towards each other, as far as any Administrative actions are concerned. Not even the most liberal rationale could reach that conclusion. The below is pulled directly from a dump of both contributor's total edit contributions with a flag of "25000" edits, so it's everything. This doesn't get into the hundreds (?) of various AFDs out there, which I'm not going to dig that far and deeply into. They cross and intersect constantly on those.


 * ARS statistics
 * Ikip's edit counts to various ARS pages:
 * 382   Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron
 * 67    Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_(4th_nomination)
 * 40    Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Hall_of_Fame
 * 18    Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/How_to
 * 12    Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/How_to
 * 10    Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/FAQ
 * 9     Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Hall_of_Fame
 * 8     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Members
 * 8     Template:Article_Rescue_Squadron_invite
 * 3     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Hall_of_Fame/New
 * 3     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Current_articles
 * 3     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
 * 1     Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_34
 * 1     Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_32
 * 1     Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_30
 * 1     Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Archive_29
 * Total edits: 567


 * AMiB's edit counts to various ARS pages:
 * 263   Wikipedia_talk:Article_Rescue_Squadron
 * 40    Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_(4th_nomination)
 * 20    Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/FAQ
 * 9     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron
 * 1     Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron_(3rd_nomination)
 * 1     Wikipedia:Article_Rescue_Squadron/Members
 * Total edits: 334


 * AMiB and Ikip's intersections
 * AMiB and Ikip per this study have intersected on a total of 199 edited pages as of May 23. As AMiB has edited 992 distinct pages as of that same date, that represents AMiB overlapping with Ikip on a total of 20% of all the distinct pages he has edited.


 * Other direct interactions
 * Additionally, AMiB has edits to these pages for discussion:
 * 26 User_talk:Ikip
 * 4 User:Ikip/AfD


 * Ikip also has as of May 23 a matching 26 edits to User talk:A Man In Black.

Review of AMiB's involvement with Ikip
Taken from the discussion of the block/unblock of Ikip by AMiB:
 * People in the discussion who describe AMiB as involved:
 * 1) Casliber: "AMiB - as a deletion-minded editor you are not unimpartial and not uninvolved."
 * 2) Black Kite: "...this isn't really a good block. Not so much because you're involved, but he hasn't really caused mass disruption."
 * 3) SoWhy: "Even if you are not biased against this editor, your past history and your actions may be seen as such - something you should have avoided by allowing the community to make that decision," and "You have to admit that you were involved with this editor in the past and that you occupy a philosophy on the other end of the spectrum."
 * 4) MattNad: "Like Casliber, I'm troubled that the admin my not be completely uninvolved in these articles. With that kind of power, AMIB should have deferred to another neutral admin for review or at least solicited comment before taking unilateral action."
 * 5) Colonel Warden: "Improper due to the previous involvement of User:A Man In Black who has been stirring up trouble about this for days now."
 * 6) Michael Q. Schmidt: "Although Ikip might have pushed the guidelines a bit in the past, in this case he did no such thing... only upset an editor who does not agree with his editing style."
 * 7) A Nobody: "This is not the first time A Man In Black has blocked someone with whom he was involved and which garnered the community's scrutiny."


 * People in the discussion who describe AMiB as uninvolved:

None. None of the Support editors disavow that AMiB was involved with Ikip.

A Man In Black made an attack page about Ikip
See: User:A Man In Black/Let's tape Ikip up in a box and mail him to the moon.

A Man In Black is deeply involved with the ARS & Notability debates

 * Overall involvement
 * Per Soxred's tools, AMiB's top 3 project talk areas as of May 23, 2009:


 * 417 - WikiProject_Video_games
 * 263 - Article_Rescue_Squadron
 * 176 - Notability_(fiction)


 * AMiB's involvement in other Notability related discussions
 * 116   Wikipedia_talk:Notability_(fiction)
 * 19    Wikipedia_talk:Notability/RFC:compromise
 * 14    Wikipedia:Notability_(fiction)
 * 3     Wikipedia_talk:Notability


 * Overall ARS involvement by AMiB
 * Full detailed in this section, directly above.


 * ARS FAQ
 * As of May 23, AMiB has 20 of 56 edits to Article Rescue Squadron/FAQ, 35.7% of the total.


 * ARS MFD
 * AMiB put the ARS up for MFD at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron (4th nomination).


 * AMiB's focus on Wikipedia is deletion, and related areas
 * As of May 23, AMiB has edited 992 non-deleted pages. 234 of them are various Articles for Deletion pages and ARS-related pages, or 23.6% of the total.

A Man In Black has used his admin tools inappropriately on Ikip
As detailed here, AMiB blocked Ikip for alleged canvassing about the Article Rescue Squadron. Template:AfD/Tagged, made again by Ikip, was deleted not once but twice in two days by AMiB, claiming WP:POINT. Based on all of this evidence, A Man In Black by no stretch of any policy interpretation nor imagination can be ever considered "uninvolved" in regards to Ikip, anything to do with the ARS, nor anything to do with Notability the policy.

A Man In Black grossly misrepresented his involved status
In spite of all this deep, ongoing involvement in the ARS, Ikip, and the metawars of Inclusionism vs. Deletionism, AMiB claimed and vigorously argued that he was uninvolved when he blocked Ikip from editing.

A Man In Black has engaged in abusive sockpuppetry
Per private evidence to the Arbitration Committee, A Man In Black has:
 * 1) Abusively edited Wikipedia with more than one identity.
 * 2) Has misused the IP-block exemption function that all Administrators share.

More specific information is not mine to give. Please check with the Arbs.

Scratched second part, which has been clarified by the AC. rootology /equality 21:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Historical Arbitration Committee views & findings on Involvement
Classic and typical Arbcom views on involvement:


 * 1) "...an administrator will be considered "uninvolved" if he or she has not previously participated in any content disputes on articles in the area of conflict." (search revealing many more findings along these lines from AC's history)
 * 2) Recent cases have echoed this view:

Outright rejection of AMIB's take on the sockpuppetry
In regards to AMIB's false claim that my logic in presenting his sockpuppet evidence is "circular", absolutely, utterly, 100% not true. You chose to edit and sock as your personal IP address then bypass the block on that as your Admin handle--you don't get to hide behind that for your "privacy" now. "Privacy" is never a veil to allow obfuscation of misbehavior, disruption, or policy violations. I (and anyone with any ounce of common sense) will reject out of hand your to be impolite "CYA" deflection there now. Yes, it's sourced back upon itself.

Would you care to disclose the IP address(es) so I can source this properly? Otherwise, you will have to live with the consequences of your actions as the Arbcom privately determines them. rootology /equality 14:58, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Rejection of AMiB's claim that he was never talked to about edit warring
This defense makes little to no sense. An Administrator shouldn't require a "talking to" about their edit warring that leads to 12 blocks after their successful RFA. Administrators are not children. The first 11 blocks for edit warring weren't enough of a clue that it's unacceptable? Has AMiB ever blocked an editor for edit warring, himself? rootology /equality 15:22, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Rejection of AMiB's claims in regards to Ikip/ARS uninvolved status
It is impossible to deny that AMiB meets every last single reasonable definition of "involved" status in regards to User:Ikip. When AMiB blocked Ikip, the overwhelming consensus was that AMiB met every criterion of "involved" status. Whether he was involved on March 1, April 1, or April 20 is meaningless; involved is involved, as I detailed here, here, and finally here. AMiB's involvement in the ARS is involvement as an editor and partisan, precluding him from use of admin tools in that arena. That alone would meet the qualifications for involvement with Ikip, as the ARS is one of the major areas of work by Ikip (see that evidence I posted above). Adding in all the other discussions and tussles between the users, and a blind man can see the involvement as clear as the noon sun. rootology /equality 15:29, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Claims of "my" involvement now by AMIB to further distract
Total farce and (I hate to say this) pretty obvious last-minute defence. rootology ( C )( T ) 13:12, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Private evidence
I emailed some private evidence to arbcom. They can post the email I sent here if they see fit or give me permission to post the private information. Their call.  MBisanz  talk 20:11, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

On mailing to the moon
There's a timeline, and a discussion context, here that isn't being presented. So here it is:
 * 2009-01-31T21 : 25:A Man In Black makes a user-space sub-page. It's sole content is "Note to self: buy stamps.".  Only this one edit is ever made to the page.
 * 2009-01-31T21 : 26:A Man In Black makes these two edits pointing to xyr user-space sub-page, explaining the point that xe was making by saying "I can make [the page] but it doesn't much affect anything, no matter how many stamps I buy.".
 * 2009-01-31T22 : 09:A Man In Black deletes the user-space sub-page, with the summary "Nah, not as funny as I'd like". From this point on, this page only exists as a redlink.
 * 2009-02-02T16 : 07:Ikip responds in these two edits. Observe in passing that A Man In Black did not call Ikip "delusional and dense".
 * 2009-02-02T16 : 54:Ikip modifes xyr previous response.
 * 2009-02-02T17 : 13:A Man In Black responds, explaining xyr point in another way by saying "Things people say in userspace pages don't necessarily have anything to do with reality".
 * 2009-04-27T02 : 04:A Nobody brings up the redlink, without piping, in a discussion on the Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents in this edit.
 * 2009-04-27T02 : 07:A Man In Black responds, explaining again that it was "a joke about the silliness of citing clearly ridiculous proposals and essays" and observing, tounge-in-cheek, that "Clearly, 'Note to self: Buy more stamps' was part of my plan to silence opposition.".
 * 2009-04-29T01 : 11:A Man In Black adds to the previous reply, pointing out with emphasis that xe is of the understanding that xe and Ikip were actually in agreement, in the discussion containing the earlier edits.
 * 2009-05-19T20 : 22:Pablomismo creates User:Pablomismo/Let's give A Man In Black a wedgie and put him in a sack and tow it through a cow pasture!
 * 2009-05-19T21 : 02:Pablomismo adds the same redlink to User:Pablomismo/Let's give A Man In Black a wedgie and put him in a sack and tow it through a cow pasture!
 * 2009-05-20T10 : 46:Jack Merridew links to Pablomismo's sub-page in a talk page edit to User talk:Jayvdb, using piping so that the linked text is ";)".
 * 2009-05-20T18 : 25:Ikip creates User:Ikip/block, containing the same redlink.

Note that User:Pablomismo/Let's give A Man In Black a wedgie and put him in a sack and tow it through a cow pasture! is still bluelinked, and contains 19 edits by Pablomismo and 3 by Jack Merridew.

A Man In Black makes a statement about perceived involvement and not re-blocking Ikip
Here it is:
 * 2009-04-28T02 : 41:A Man In Black writes "I don't feel that I was involved in some larger meta-dispute with Ikip (I cannot see any personal gain I make by blocking him, and nobody was able to show one to me), but I brought it here in the interest of having greater input on my actions (which turned out to have been in error, due to changes in guidelines). As for recusal, where do I sign up for the 'I know better than to wheel war guys, seriously' certification? I wouldn't reblock Ikip (or anyone, for that matter) without clear evidence of a compromised admin account or something."

AMIB single man WP:POINT campaign on the Gundam (mobile suit) article
AMIB is usually useful when he is not acting as an admin. Admins are supposed to be role models of others, not counter examples. In this unreported edit war, AMIB shows no role model action, but only purely disruptive point campaign just because he was reverted by others. Notice he asked for a source to support the source in the lower part of this edit, and the single man campaign against page consensus with 3 different users. He claims he tries to move on to more important things after 3RRs most of the time, in this situation, he moves to disrupt the article after 3 reverts(4th edit), not something an admin should do.

AMIB WP:POINT campaign and no consensus notability and unreasonable request of sources on the Real Robot article
In the article Real Robot. His first edit might be reasonable, since the page totally lacks of sources, he then starts on his strange sense of notability, instead of discussion, he determined that the article must not be notable. While he did show some respect on this edit, it is only a plan to introduce his strange sense of magazines not being third party sources. On This edit, he redirects a page with magazine sources and many other sources just to keep his WP:POINT on redirecting the page, nothing in the page resembles his edit comment, there are multiple sources that are outside of the Sunrise and SRW series. His disruptiveness continues in the next edit, while the article has been critically revamped, he maintains his position without even trying to read the sources. This is a well 4RR with only tagging the article in the middle instead of reverting it to avoid being reported.

MythSearchertalk 15:57, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Comment on AMIB reply
The problem is not if MalikCarr and/or J-trainor, the opposing party of AMIB's edit wars are corect or not, it is not to the judgement of AMIB, but other admins. AMIB never even try to stand on the side of thinking he might be wrong, and maintains the I am always correct self ego in all of these edit warrings.

Specifically on the Real Robot issue
For the last time, the citations contains well published and more, written sources, which are mostly copied and quoted into the ref when you revert them. You false claim of them being vague is simply incorrect. Live with it, you can be wrong, you might want to lessen it a bit in this case to show that There are only content disputes instead of It is all your point campaign. However, you actions at this particular page showed your ignorance in the quoted sources.

Summarizing my point
AMIB is usually civil when not involved too much into an issue, yet sometimes get really uncivil by ignoring others' comment in discussions, and keep on using already outdated arguments that totally not following the latest edits. My stand point is that AMIB is not a good role model as an admin, unless he can prove himself again like he implied he can that he had improved. I have good faith that he can, eventually, but not now.

Evidence presented by AMIB
This is a laundry list of complaints over separate disputes of varying degree and acrimony, none of which have been taken through any other dispute resolution venue. I waited my block out patiently to see if it would cohere, and it did not. There is no emergency, there is no wheel war, there is no referral from Jimbo. This has jumped from talk pages all the way down the ladder to RFAr, skipping all the rungs in between.

I'm not much of a fan of lawyering for lawyering's sake, but there's little need to ignore the rules. I'd previously expressed interest in the results of such dispute resolution even if it was censuring me here, the edit war I had been blocked for was a dispute I had already conceded here and here, and Ikip has gone and blocked himself for two and a half months. There's no exceptional emergency Arbcom must deal with now, and no evidence that I am uninterested in RFC or other dispute resolution where it pertains to analyzing and censuring my conduct. I'd be criticized, I'd respond, people would talk about it, and either I'd have the material to make my own changes in conduct or some new course of action would be suggested.

The premature nature of this case has meant that it isn't very tightly focused, because there's been no preliminary discussion to filter and refine it. As a result, my responses will necessarily be equally scattered, as I can't defend my pattern of conduct when no pattern has been established.

Also, for the record, I'm male. It's fine to refer to me with male pronouns, heh.

Edit warring
Given a lack of input on edit warring that didn't come at the point of a block, I've taken steps to moderate my own conduct. In particular, I've been doing my best to spot when I've gotten involved in these internecine fights over trivialities, and self-revert and reconsider a better plan of action, based on the assumption that my version will not and should not prevail by this means. In both of the blocks in the last six months, I had already done this, reverting to the "wrong" version and taking a different tack, or simply conceding the point entirely until I could form a better argument. Rootology even offers the evidence of this, above, buried in his diffs; well before I was blocked, I self-reverted here and reconsidered the cause of the problem rather than fighting over a symptom, and suggested that the project that had the attitude I was attempting to prevent from being enshrined in the FAQ needed to be dismantled and replaced with something else, which I proposed here.

Perhaps this is an appropriate solution to prevent further edit warring. Maybe it's not proactive enough or obvious enough. I don't know. What I do know is that I was never offered any chance to explain or defend or amend this before the RFAr, because nobody asked.

Ikip
Where's the evidence that I was significantly involved in a dispute with Ikip any time proximate to April 26? My involvement with him to that point (save for some months-old and since-resolved policy and deletion discussions, where we occasionally agreed and occasionally disagreed) was on WT:ARS, criticizing the canvassing conduct of Ikip and others, WT:CANVASS, criticizing the same, and WP:ANI, again criticizing the same conduct. The block was out of line of the rules of the time, which is again my fault for not keeping up with them. Without some dispute, blocking him doesn't give me the upper hand in any sort of situation other than preventing the conduct I've repeatedly described as disruptive. Obviously I'm involved in larger disputes with Ikip now (to my regret), but there is an intervening month in which I have become involved in those disputes (and the counterclaim that there was overwhelming consensus that I was involved in some sort of dispute is noticeably lacking any sort of evidence).

As for AfD/Tagged, I had reasonable reason to believe it was made to make a disruptive point in an argument, based on this comment (and this later comment confirmed it). Ikip left it lay deleted, but then recreated it for a stated alternate, good faith reason which I cannot now recall. I thought he was recreating it for the same reason above, he corrected me on my talk (or I saw it on his talk), and I quickly undeleted it. I'd like to highlight that this was created for the express purpose of canvassing (as one of an implied set of "automated tools to bring other partisans to AFDs"), and that, to date, it hasn't actually been used for anything.

The entirety of my "dispute" with Ikip up to April was my criticism of his canvassing conduct. (I had had other interactions with him, including closing a contentious straw poll in his favor at WT:EP and agreeing with him not to promote WP:FICT to a guideline. Some of these claims are outright mistruths.) If administrators are involved in a dispute with a user for criticizing and attempting to contain disruption with tools other than their administrative tools, to a degree that this jeopardizes their ability to use those administrative tools to resolve the situation if other means fail, then this seems to imply a "Block first, questions later" mandate for admins, lest they become involved in "disputes" that prevent enforced action due to their involvement in voluntary discussion of conduct. In fact, Ikip has made a personal practice of abusing this confusion of criticism of conduct with content/policy disputes; he has a page threatening any administrator who attempts to circumscribe his conduct or censure him, and up until February had a page with detailed instructions for gaming a number of different disputes, including particularly the 3RR (note that he described himself as a three-year veteran of edit wars in his disclaimer).

As for the ARS FAQ page evidence MalikCarr has copy-pasted from another one of Ikip's evidence listnings here, why not just look at the page's entire edit history? It's a big mess, with multiple users on each side, and many reverts coming from many people. All of this was caused by a FAQ page, created by Ikip, which had a "get lost" in the form of a frequently asked question: "Article Rescue Squadron is no different from any of the hundreds of wikiprojects, except for its scope. Some wikiprojects have a active delete agenda, you are welcome to search out these projects for support in your views." The rest is me removing Ikip actively advertising contentious debates to WP:ARS as a favorable audience (as this is inappropriate canvassing), and Ikip reverting them back.

There's a potpourri of other complaints in here, most of which assert the conclusion with no evidence. Uncle G addresses my "attack page" above. Ikip's examples are largely more products of the Gundam dispute and the copyvio mess there (with some factual errors like saying comments in 2007 were explaining a 2008 block), save for a WP:SCHOOL case that was a back-and-forth trying to find a middle (and two years old), and a template dispute where I was fully in the wrong so I backed off completely (again, two years ago). The arc of the actions in his evidence is June 2007 to August 2007, or later comments on the events of mid-2007.

Rootology and involvement
On the subject of involvement, I fiddled with the tool that Rootology linked above, out of boredom. Ikip, under his different username at the time, was a vocal supporter and ardent defender of Rootology at Rootology's own RFAr ordeal.

This vague standard of possibly having agreed or disagreed about something in the past is dangerous. Not because Rootology is in any sane way involved with Ikip (near as I can tell, he's not), but because such a broad, vague definition of involvement is paralyzing. Rootology can be perceived to be backing up someone who backed him up at a hard time, but as he has a stated good-faith reason for unblocking Ikip, unblocking Ikip gains him no advantage, and there's no current content dispute on which Rootology and Ikip were working in concert. By the same token, I had a stated good-faith reason for blocking Ikip, blocking him gained me no advantage, and there was no current content dispute in which Ikip and I were acting in opposition.

Ikip, edit warring, and sockpuppetry
It is not possible to identify simply from Ikip's edit history if he has ever edit warred (or conducted any other forms of misconduct), because he makes use of sockpuppets to make inappropriate edits: typical bad hand socks. I do not have the ability to discover these sockpuppets, but I came across one coincidentally:. Ikip would later accept ownership of this sockpuppet, but before that it was used as a bad hand sock.

An example edit war from Business Plot, an article Ikip has edited heavily.
 * 09:14, 4 April 2008 - Ikip - restored deleted paragraphs - Ikip is aware of and active of this article.
 * Span of uninterrupted edits by RWV, ending 13:36, 13 June 2008 - "large deletions restored" is one of the edit summaries, and is the gist of the edits in my opinion
 * 01:21, 14 June 2008 - Lao Wai - rv POV revisions
 * 09:07, 16 June 2008 - RWV - revert deletion vandalism, see talk
 * 01:29, 19 June 2008 - Lao Wai - rv a wide range of irrelevant, unencyclopedic and off topic material
 * 09:09, 20 June 2008 - RWV - revert POV vandal
 * 01:23, 25 June 2008 - Lao Wai - removing, as stated on talk page, non-encyclopedic sources
 * 15:59, 25 June 2008 - RWV - revert vandal
 * 01:24, 4 July 2008 - Lao Wai - Reverting RWV's reverts as discussed on the talk page
 * 15:23, 8 July 2008 - RWV - revert vandal who has contributed nothing to this article
 * From then on, Ikip hops back onto Ikip to substantially rewrite the article, as is apparent here.

Ikip has also advised other users to make bad hand sockpuppets. From here:

"Make controversial edits such as page deletions with socks accounts, but always make sure to never edit the page as an anon, and when using your anon account always use spell check to avoid detection (Firefox has the feature automatically). Every few months the edit cache is dumped so there will be no IP evidence that you were a sock after a few months."

I don't know if he has any others or if he took this advice beyond the sockpuppet.

Ikip and selfblocks
also often requests self-blocks shortly after being confronted with inappropriate behavior. This has happened repeatedly, and is disruptive to dispute resolution. All of his self-requested blocks in the last year (save for the very most recent, on June 9) conform to this pattern.


 * This ANI thread, with Protonk, is one case. Protonk collects a number of examples of Ikip harassing him (a situation that was described as likely to head to a block) and Ikip immediately requests indefinite blocking of himself and his RWV sockpuppet. Since, at the time, such blocks were against policy, he threatens to copy-paste copyvio to get an indefinite block.
 * Flatscan proposes an RFC on February 25; Ikip requests a self-block March 4.
 * Themfromspace drafts an RFCU in userspace here on May 21; Ikip requests a self-block the same day.

Anonymous comment
I made a tetchy comment while not signed in, then made the bad decision to disown the IP instead of simply accepting it. Not my wisest idea. It was nothing more than a tetchy comment followed by some on-point criticism on the IP's talk (so not any of the typical abusive uses of a sockpuppet), and then the IP was blocked as anon-only with an admonition to stop making tetchy comments anonymously. There was no abuse of the ability to edit through blocks (admins can edit through blocks? Not entirely sure I knew that) because any auto-confirmed user could have done the same, and indeed the block summary implied that this was the blocking admin's intent. It was a rather cowardly thing to do, all told, but it was less sockpuppetry and more cowardice.

Rootology's workshop comments along these lines are circular; he cites a Workshop post as evidence, then uses his evidence post citing a workshop post to propose remedies on the workshop. It's not so much evidence as his opinion about what he knows about the situation. He doesn't have all the facts, so his conclusions are necessarily colored by supposition.

Gundam, etc.
Mythsearcher and I have been involved in some content disputes. He needs to understand that citation of a source doesn't mean vague attribution to a speaker, but specific attribution to a published claim. I need to make a better argument than the one I had at Real Robot to accomplish anything, which is why I haven't touched the page in seven months. Both of them are long-stale content disputes, in which Mythsearcher has seen his preferred version implemented.

I edit warred a lot with MalikCarr and Jtrainor in 2007. That sort of prolonged and ultimately unproductive and disruptive edit warring is long behind me. It taught me that sometimes it's not worth fighting with entrenched editors over unimportant things. Their conduct also taught me not to get so busy reverting that I miss larger points, as MalikCarr did when he was reverting an image that violated WP:NFCC into an article or reverting copyvio text into an article, with no effort made to address these copyvio issues. I don't think any reasonable person would say I wasn't involved there; I didn't and wouldn't. I took what I felt were the appropriate steps: I removed the copyvio, took administrative actions to prevent the copyvio from being replaced (protecting the page or blocking the replacer, then undoing my own interested edits. The final result was a page that was on the wrong version except without the copyvio. In the first instance of this, in July 2007, I walked away from the page for two weeks, in the hope that my talk page comments would see some response. (They did not.) In 2008 and beyond, the entirety of my involvement on the page was removing copyvio. Copyright violations and fair-use policy violations are considered by pretty much everyone to be radioactive, and need to be dealt with quickly and decisively. My main regret here was getting into any sort of revert war at all in 2007, but I feel I handled 2008 exactly as I should: removed copyvio, warned replacers, removed copyvio again and blocked replacers, and went to ANI with the details (admittedly after a night's sleep).

As for File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg, MalikCarr refuses to this day to deal with fair use issues and WP:NFCC. File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg is a perfect example; it's one of three non-free images in MSN-02 Zeong all illustrating the same thing (including a game cover for an article that isn't about the game, something called out specifically in WP:NFCC!) and two of which have exactly identical fair-use rationales. MalikCarr repeatedly reuploaded after the image was deleted by. As for how I dealt with it, at the time there weren't many good tools to deal with fair-use issues; bear in mind that mid-late 2007 was the first real enforcement of WP:NFCC, so all of the tools and procedures were still sketchy. I escalated along what I felt was a reasonable course at the time; tag and speedy (our then-policy), then tag and leave for another admin (protecting when MalikCarr obstructed that review), then simply deleting the page whenever MalikCarr willfully reuploaded a page that two admins had deleted as not meeting copyright policy. I wouldn't do the same today, but today I'd be using procedures like WP:NFCR which weren't as well-developed at the time. I was doing my best to deal with someone who was willfully disregarding copyright policy in the name of defending articles which are effectively his from the "Orwellian regimes" of the "anti-content movement".

There are some factual errors in MalikCarr's list (which is copied from here, which SoWhy deleted during this case at Ikip's e-mailed request). I didn't protect the page in November 2007; East718 did. As for protecting the page in 2008, I did do so here, then immediately removed the primarysources template (which I had replaced in a previous edit) here, so as to protect the version closest to MalikCarr's/Jtrainor's desires save for the copyvio. "The wrong version" has long been understood to mean "the version the speaker doesn't like"; generally, editing a protected page to change it to "the wrong version" (specifically to prevent administrative action from being even a de facto enforcement of the administrator's preferences) has been considered acceptable.

tl;dr version
I gained no advantage by blocking MalikCarr and Jtrainor, because I swiftly reverted to their preferred version, sans NFCC/copyright violations. (The articles sit on their preferred version to this day, and have been such for more than a year.) I took the best course of action I could think of given my knowledge at the time, and the blocks accomplished their specific goal of prevent them from further attempting to force copyright-inappropriate material. My edit warring was inexcusable, and that's why I stopped such edit warring a year and a half ago. This is a stale dispute exhumed because of the broad, vague nature of this RFAr.

Later update
After some not so fruitful (but at least civil) discussion at NFCR, MalikCarr and I agreed that the game cover wasn't appropriate, but as for the other two images I was a bit stumped again. Stifle brought one of the images up at FFD here. MalikCarr, Jtrainor, Mythsearcher, and I kibitzed a bit, covering the old territory (but civilly and non-disruptively, a vast improvement over 2007). Mythsearcher suggested one single image that included both designs, and that image replaced both in the article. I may fiddle with that image to crop it so that it can be larger in the article page, but this issue has finally been amicably resolved.

ARS
ARS is a project that has long been used as a canvassing tools and mutual-support sounding board, and the project as a whole has been insular and hostile to any suggestion that it may have drifted from its original course. Banjeboi has long tried to marginalize these concerns as "disruption", without any diffs of actual disruption (his comments here are a great example), and the project is bound for an RFC on its creeping scope and diminishing utility. Unless he has some specific evidence of disruption, it's more conflation of discussion and criticism of conduct as disruption.

The FAQ is an excellent example of its problems: it was originally a comment describing a much larger scope than the project had had previously, and "Some wikiprojects have a active delete agenda, you are welcome to search out these projects for support in your views." Banjeboi was one of the chief edit warriors in making sure that these claims remained in the FAQ over opposition; he has the third most edits to the FAQ page, all but one of them reverts. Not true, struck as such

Barring specific evidence of disruptive conduct, I really, really don't want to get into whether the ARS needs fixing or not. This is a horrible venue to do so; community input on scope, not conduct dictates, are the necessary balm.

Miscellany
The whole bilateral relations kerfluffle and the idea of a stand-still is being discussed further here, so no productive discussion was closed down at DRV. Beyond that, the DRV, one of umpteen million DRVs that are brought up by the same people (not always overturn deletion, and not always RAN) and generate the same comments and end the same way, was an obvious (usually snow) endorse close. The DRV is full of comments saying that the DRV was pointless and unnecessary, and there is lengthy thread on DRV talk (which DGG was aware of, since he commented there in lieu of speaking to me at any point) to the effect that these DRVs are unproductive at best and disruptive at worst. If I have a strong feeling, it's that too much energy is being used in bureaucratic fights over these bilateral articles instead of on centralized discussions of them (a point where I agree strongly with Ikip, of all people).

I'm not going to be responding to Ikip's constantly-changing kitchen sink of poorly-organized random diffs from all over the place. I would be open to legible requests for clarifications of my actions at any point, but I just don't have the energy to deal with argument by exhaustion.

This is another random disagreement that is here at arbcom instead of the preceding steps of dispute resolution. It would have trivially been solved by making a comment on my talk page, where I could've pointed out the AN thread for further discussion, or even added a link to the AN thread in my close if DGG wanted.

Ikip's attitude towards people with whom he disagrees leaves a lot to be desired

 * Snarky attacks towards AMIB:"If this eventually winds its way to arbitration, I don't know what will happen to me, but there will be one less admin on wikipedia, I guarantee it. 08:33, 7 May 2009 (UTC)""It is typical for an editor to comment directly below a deletion nomination. Are you going for another edit war? You already broke 3RR earlier today/yesterday. Since your last block was for a week, how long will it be this time? Ikip (talk) 19:33, 19 May 2009 (UTC)"


 * Aside from being a really bad analogy, this shows the utter contempt Ikip has for the "other side" of the debate:"Comment I think it is important to note that the editors thus far who have voted to delete this page or take it to RfC are editors who historically delete pages, and whose efforts to delete other editors contributions has been slowed by ARS. This is like spammers deciding what the Wikipedia:Wikiproject:Spam should or should not do. Ikip (talk) 11:07, 19 May 2009 (UTC)"


 * "Battleground" attitude and accusations of bad faith. Further, the last line looks a lot like an attempt to turn people against AMIB with cheap rhetoric: "The vast, vast majority of disruption has come from you AMIB. With 4 edit wars on the page in the past 12 days. Members of the ARS have to take up arms because of your repeated bad faith attacks. If we didn't complain, a template would have been deleted forever and ARS would be an extension of your nuke and pave essay. An admin with a history of edit warring and deleting other editors contributions creates the problem, then complains when editors take up arms to the disruption and annomosity which AMIB is central to causing. Interest in an RFC was waning on the ARS talk page, and so since you didn't get your way their, you created yet another crisis, putting this wikiproject up for deletion. Is this the behavior of an admin? Ikip (talk) 10:59, 19 May 2009 (UTC)"


 * More accusations of bad faith: "I also removed your bad faith comment. Ikip (talk) 23:47, 16 May 2009 (UTC)""My response was directed to Stifle, who uses the tired example of 'what if there was a deletion group and we did the same thing'. I refered him to WikiProject Deletion, which is just that group. I didn't make the same suggestion to you Fram. Your views are quite set. I don't think anyone neutral will be fooled that you have the best interest of ARS in mind. Ikip (talk) 15:14, 19 May 2009 (UTC)"

Ikip is an edit warrior
It should be obvious that, like the above, this is not an exhaustive list. But three examples from this month:


 * 7th May 2009: AMIB Ikip AMIB Ikip Ikip leaves 3RR warning


 * 15/16th May 2009: AMIB Ikip (other users make edits) AMIB Ikip (other users make edits) AMIB Ikip AMIB Ikip leaves 3RR warning


 * 19th May 2009: AMIB (other users make edits) Ikip AMIB Ikip

The reverts by Ikip on the 19th were at ARS MfD to keep some of his comments inside the nominator's section and above everyone else's comments.

Ikip has an extensive block log, including blocks for edit warring: block log Note: some of these blocks are quite old, but so are many of AMIB's used in evidence further up this page, so I bring up Ikip's to be fair.

Update
In response to Rootology on /Workshop, 15 minutes of searching found these:


 * 19/20th January 2009: Bignole Ikip Masem Ikip Bignole Ikip Collectonian Ikip & assumption of bad faith Collectonian Ikip & assumption of bad faith Collectonian page protected by Tanthalas39 (This appears to have resulted in Ikip's most recent edit warring block)


 * 21/22 February 2009: Collect Ikip Collect Ikip Collect Ikip Collect Ikip Collect (other edits) page protected by Rootology


 * 26/27th February 2009: THF Ikip THF (other edits) Ikip THF Ikip Sephiroth BCR

I'm not going back through any more history, but it's clear that the edit warring isn't restricted to the AMIB conflict.

Canvassing
Clearing up one last thing. Despite what some people are saying implicitly, it is not the case that AMIB is the only person to call out Ikip about his canvassing: Flatscan Fritzpoll

Responses
This is not really evidence as such, and since the page is getting long, I've collapsed this section because it's really just an aside. Also this is probably the only thing I'm going to say in response to people, because the discussion is veering away from the issue at hand.


 * Dream Focus (here)
 * Arb cases typically review the behavour of all involves parties. The primary reason this case is here is because of the ARS conflict in which Ikip was certainly involved. He was recently added as a named party to the case for this reason. There have been many larger cases than this one, so I don't think looking at one extra person here is going to be a problem.


 * Ikip (here)
 * I don't think "demanded" is the right word for my Workshop proposal(s), but anyway. The 1RR proposal isn't based on one block, that's just a straw man. It's was based on the months-long pattern of edit warring I presented above. WP:3RR isn't an entitlement to three reverts so adhering to the letter of that, or any rule to be honest, doesn't mean you were an angel the whole time. You know this.
 * I'm not really that interested in defending AMIB, mainly because he can do a much better job at it than me. As I mentioned to someone else on my talk page last week - my main concern is that every disruptive party has their behaviour looked at, not just one.
 * I'm also not that interested in the reasons for your wikibreak. If it was for bar exams, then I genuinely wish you luck. But it's not an assumption of bad faith to be a little sceptical of someone suddenly taking a wikibreak the day after an Arb case involving them is filed. Besides, this wikibreak thing is mostly irrelevant to the case.
 * More generally, I don't think the two comments you mention by me rise nearly to the level of some you made last month. I'm not sure why this is suddenly about me anyway.

Evidence presented by MalikCarr
From 2007-2008 A Man In Black has systematically engaged in content disputes with a few articles I've worked on; all of them were fiction-related stuffs that Mythsearcher (see above) either directed me to or was otherwise involved in, and all barely survived an AfD due to being garbage. A few months after cleaning them up, A Man In Black makes the executive decision that my edits are "awful" and proceeds to revert me for a year. On the article Jagd Doga, which I haven't really tried to add to for fear I'll have to deal with another year-long edit war, A Man In Black reverts myself, Jtrainor, and other members of WP:Gundam no less than 52 times, protects the page (on his "version", explicitly), blocks Jtrainor once and myself three times.


 * "This is probably the best of the bunch, but we can live without the awful infobox and it still needs work"

Reversions:
 * 13:54, 29 June 2007
 * 16:19, 29 June 2007
 * "hate to revert thrice, but Jtrainor removed a ton of style edits, replaced an unfree image, and replaced a WP:WAF-violating infobox, all without reasons on this talk, his talk, or edit summary" 20:25, 29 June 2007reverts. 00:10, 1 July 2007.
 * 01:42, 1 July 2007
 * 07:58, 1 July 2007
 * 23:42, 2 July 2007
 * 23:07, 6 July 2007
 * 06:21, 7 July 2007
 * 08:28, 7 July 2007
 * 02:40, 9 July 2007
 * 10:14, 9 July 2007
 * 17:52, 9 July 2007
 * 06:54, 11 July 2007 "rm deleted image"
 * 18:06, 12 July 2007
 * 07:05, 23 July 2007
 * 22:32, 24 July 2007
 * 01:29, 25 July 2007
 * 10:10, 25 July 2007
 * 22:46, 26 July 2007
 * 06:48, 27 July 2007
 * 08:58, 28 July 2007
 * 13:29, 24 August 2007
 * 21:56, 29 August 2007
 * 20:55, 30 August 2007
 * 02:48, 31 August 2007
 * 23:14, 31 August 2007
 * 03:31, 2 September 2007
 * 07:43, 10 October 2007
 * 05:10, 20 October 2007
 * 10:20, 20 October 2007
 * 19:42, 20 October 2007
 * 03:53, 28 October 2007
 * 14:10, 30 October 2007
 * 07:07, 1 November 2007
 * 13:55, 2 November 2007
 * 08:13, 3 November 2007
 * 00:12, 4 November 2007
 * 00:23, 4 November 2007
 * 00:43, 4 November 2007

Page protected by A Man In Black
 * 02:33, 17 November 2007


 * 02:42, 17 November 2007
 * 03:07, 17 November 2007
 * 05:19, 17 November 2007
 * 05:22, 29 October 2008
 * 23:51, 30 October 2008

Blocks


 * 22:55, November 2, 2008 A Man In Black (talk | contribs) blocked MalikCarr (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours ‎ (Trying to force copyvio into MSN-03 Jagd Doga)
 * 18:07, July 12, 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs) blocked MalikCarr (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours ‎ (Copyright infringement)
 * 06:52, July 11, 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs) blocked MalikCarr (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours ‎ (Copyright infringement)

Five blocks in 3 years - not the best record of an editor by far, but three of them were by A Man In Black and on the same page no less. The fourth was from an editor who blocked A Man In Black, Jtrainor, myself and another editor for edit warring with one another, so I guess that's like "half-related" or something.

More reversions:
 * 08:47, 1 November 2008
 * 11:14, 2 November 2008
 * 22:53, 2 November 2008
 * 03:06, 4 November 2008
 * 07:56, 4 November 2008

Page protected by A Man In Black
 * 08:08, 4 November 2008 A Man In Black protects the page he has been having a content dispute on yet again.
 * 08:09, 4 November 2008 reverts to another version while page protected, quote: ""wrong version, etc"

A similar pattern of edits exists on Sazabi, Zeong, Gundam Mk. II and Psyco Gundam, the latter of which I believe he AfD'd (it might have been Moreschi, it's been a long time) and I voted in favor of due to it being complete crap with the promise of recreating it later. I did so, with sources and inline citations and so forth, and was then rewarded with A Man In Black having another content dispute. Fortunately this one was much shorter, but nevertheless, I haven't really aggressively edited fiction articles on Wikipedia since - it's not worth the effort.

EDIT: An addendum: I dislike "contribution trawling", since I've frequently accused A Man In Black of doing it to me, but if it'll provide more impetus to the arbitrators, I've compiled a few other choice odds-and-ends.


 * 23:26, 18 May 2009 A Man In Black puts the ARS up for deletion again.

After this dispute A Man In Black got blocked.
 * 21:52, 18 May 2009, reverts Dream Focus
 * 20:34, 18 May 2009, reverts Colonel Warden
 * 10:03, 18 May 2009, reverts Colonel Warden
 * 09:40, 18 May 2009, reverts MichaelQSchmidt

23:47, 16 May 2009 A 3RR warning:


 * For:
 * 07:36, 15 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * 21:16, 15 May 2009, reverts MichaelQSchmidt
 * 21:28, 15 May 2009, reverts Benjiboi
 * 21:56, 16 May 2009, reverts Benjiboi
 * 23:09, 16 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * 23:40, 16 May 2009, reverts Benjiboi
 * 00:03, 17 May 2009 A Man In Black then deletes the tag from the page itself:

07:12, 7 May 2009 3RR warning:
 * For:
 * 05:20, 7 May 2009, reverts Skomorokh
 * 06:28, 7 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * 07:01, 7 May 2009, reverts Ikip

14:56, 5 May 2009 Another 3RR warning:
 * For:
 * 14:52, 5 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * 12:44, 5 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * 09:36, 5 May 2009, reverts Ikip
 * Decides to delete an unrelated section: 14:51, 5 May 2009
 * Deleted other editors' comments on the Article Rescue Squad talk:
 * 09:07, 5 May 2009
 * 19:37, 6 May 2009

EDIT AGAIN: Used some fancy hat syntax to keep the information on this page while not turning it into a giant laundry list.

ANOTHER EDIT: Decided to go ahead and pre-empt the 3RR thing since that appears to be somewhat controversial. Firstly, I must redact my claim of 4 reports against A Man In Black - I've only reported 3 3RRVs against him. That's my bad.


 * 02:35, 4 November 2007 (UTC) User:A_Man_In_Black reported by User:MalikCarr (Result: pages protected)
 * 02:52, 17 November 2007 (UTC) User:A Man In Black reported by User:MalikCarr (Result: Page Protected)

One was for two pages, hence my claim of 3 3RRVs. There are other 3RRVs lodged against A Man In Black, but I don't feel like itemizing them here - doing syntax is hard, and some of them were filed incorrectly when A Man In Black hadn't actually done anything at all. One can review these here, along with 3RRVs that A Man In Black has himself filed:

My Assertion
I don't claim to be a model editor, and can be provoked into edit warring sometimes. However, I'd like to think that the majority of my contributions benefit the project in some manner or other, so I'd like to think I'm not a bad editor either, and I'd certainly like to think I don't go around wantonly inserting copyright violation content into articles for some inscrutable purpose. I'd always assumed - though I never knew it was commonly accepted until now - that admins are supposed to be model editors for the rest of us plebians to follow. Ergo, when A Man In Black engages in the same kind of editing - and then some - as a "vandal" and "copyvio editor" like myself, as well as breaking his own share of policies (I've reported him at least four times for 3RR violations - I'd have to call him up on the archives for diffs, which I will do on request), I'm really not seeing the model editing pattern here.

At least I've been willing to compromise on the matters of what he disliked about the articles - the only conclusion we ever reached in that content dispute was him going off to redirect and otherwise marginalize other fiction articles, with another week-or-two-long spat from time to time. MalikCarr (talk) 21:51, 29 May 2009 (UTC)


 * A Comment: I'm not much of a fan of Ikip, but I'm kind of curious as to why a substantial minority of postings here seem to be about how he's a bad person. I'm not sure how that's relevant to this Arbcom case in the first place, unless the qualities of an involved editor who is not the subject of the case can be evidence to the latter's defense or something.


 * Why not toss Ikip in front of his own Arbcom hearing on how he's a jerk or whatever and let that go where it goes? It would help keep this particular case on topic if nothing else. Of course, I'm not too familiar with the nuts and bolts of how Wiki works behind the scenes, so I might be barking up the wrong tree here. Oh well. MalikCarr (talk) 07:46, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

A Man In Black understands Wikipedia and what it demands
I don't have the time to dredge up a host of edits, and I don't think I need to. A Man In Black's revision of his comment here suggests this is a user who is willing to learn and who is willing to build and reflect consensus. I may disagree with the user on many, many levels, but I have the utmost respect for the user, and I guess I'm here more to stand as a character reference as much as anything. If I really need to dredge up the many edits where AMIB demonstrates an understanding of the way Wikipedia works, let me know, I'll point you to a lengthy grouping of archives. Hiding T 13:46, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

A Man In Black misused protection and deleting tools
Over on File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg, back in 2007, AMIB protected the page to prevent "the other side" from removing the fair use disputed template. ^demon then deleted it and there was a brief "uploading/deleting war" that went on for a few rounds before ending. This is related to the evidence that MalikCarr presented.


 * 07:14, 7 July 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg" ‎(No rationale for a week) (view/restore)
 * 20:39, 17 July 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) protected File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg ‎(MalikCarr won't leave this for a third party to review [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 20:39, 24 July 2007 (UTC))) (hist | change)
 * 07:14, 27 July 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) protected File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg ‎(Apparently nobody has gotten to the queue yet, so this needs longer [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 07:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC))) (hist | change)
 * 04:32, 25 October 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg" ‎(redundant, no possible fair-use rationale) (view/restore)
 * 10:30, 27 October 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg" ‎(redundant, no possible fair-use rationale) (view/restore)
 * 03:33, 28 October 2007 A Man In Black (talk | contribs | block) deleted "File:Msn-02 Perfect Zeong.jpg" ‎(same reason as usual) (view/restore)

Timeline of the Gundam edit war


This started in June 2007, when AMIB did some work that Jtrainor called vandalism. It then moved onto Talk:MSN-02_Zeong, where Jtrainor told AMIB to go away. The debate was over the sourcing of information in the article; AMIB said it was badly sourced and in-universe, while MalikCarr and Jtrainor said it was sourced with the best information possible.

In late July, the three of them engaged in discussion on WikiProject Gundam but this ended by 30 July and they were still edit warring as late as October. 

The edit war was going on for so long that a WP:RFPP I filed only lasted for a week and didn't do much to stop them from reverting each other. 

On 21 October 2007, I filed Requests for mediation/Gundam, listing the articles in question and the steps of dispute resolution that had been taken. Although all parties agreed to it, by this time the edit war had mostly died down and so I requested that it be closed.

On 27 October, Jtrainor and AMIB started discussions on the talk page of MSN-04 Sazabi.

Response to Jtrainor
Re-marking the images for fair use review is not retaliation against MalikCarr. It follows AMIB's usual modus operandi: argue the points for awhile and eventually leave the article on the other parties' preferred version, in this case, letting the images stand. Now that I've brought it to his attention again, he's re-examining the images. He does this for all articles and issues that he's concerned about.

I don't have the time to search, but he's returned to various issues over and over again, such as dicussion on the Pokemon articles and possibly the TV call identification images debate. He's focused on the issue, not the specific user.

Evidence presented by Jtrainor
As requested on the talk page, I figure I should talk about how the mess with the Gundam articles got started.

Okay, flashback to June '07. Around that time, there had been a recent massive concerted effort to remove most material related to the Gundam fictional series from Wikipedia. This concerned me, as I am a fan, but I'm not much for writing articles, so I poked my friend MalikCarr, who is a most excellent writer, to come and see what he could do to bring some of the articles up to spec. He did a bunch of work on MSN-02 Zeong originally, improving it from to  (this particular version is messed up since some templates have been changed since then). AMIB came along and chopped out the entire infobox; a small revert war ensued. I assumed bad faith at the time, since there was an ongoing issue with people doing driveby tagging and doing nothing to improve articles. Anyways, AMIB's first edits to the article were, where, as stated, he removed the infobox. Cue a small revert war between me and him on the 28th; MalikCarr came along presently and removed the unwarranted templates and restored the infobox.

First communication with AMIB was here:. I was rather irate at the time: someone made an effort to clean up a Gundam article, improving it to the point where it was far better than the vast majority out there, and now someone comes by, chops out large chunks and tags it?

Anyways, as you can see from the talk page and from the article itself, shitstorm ensues, if you will pardon my french. The page ended up being protected a number of times, and AMIB eventually resorted to going after images used in the article (as noted above, I won't bother to detail that as it's been adequately covered). AMIB eventually gave up, and MalikCarr did some final work and the article remained largely in it's current state as you see it today.

There was another, much larger kerfluffle over the article MSN-03 Jagd Doga; the particulars are mostly the same as with the Zeong article, except AMIB was far more persistent and the edit war was much longer. Alongside this dispute, AMIB became more aggressive in trying to get an infobox to be "his way"; he wanted the infobox in these articles to be one way, all of WP:GUNDAM wanted it to be a different way, as per established consensus. There were no policy reasons to change the infobox, and a number of alternate proposals were put forth, but AMIB pretty much just ignored all of them in favor of his own.

To give some further background on the infobox thing, for a long time in many articles, people had a habit of listing specifications for these fictional items in a section of their own; this tended to be ugly, and thus, articles were slowly being converted to the infobox standard (they still are, but WP:GUNDAM is rather small...) An example of this can be seen in the Zeong article as noted above. The edition before MalikCarr started working on it featured such a section, and the improved version had an infobox instead.

This page Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anime_and_manga/Gundam/Archive_2 also has a couple of threads on WP:GUNDAM concerning the AMIB issue. The strident tone at the time reflects the animosity felt by the various people involved in the dispute.

Anyways, yeah. The general thing that happened was AMIB showing up and taking a hacksaw to articles, reversions, arguments, more reversions, and so on and so forth. This also happened on MSN-04 Sazabi. I note that matters were inflamed significantly by an Earthlink user (whom eventually registered as GundamsRus) who caused significant disruption to these articles (and, for a time afterwards, followed Malik around to futz with articles he was editing).

Further disputes occured at Gundam Mk-II, but after that, eventually AMIB gave up and there wasn't further trouble with him.

Sorry if this is kind of rambling. I consider most of it old history, though I have noted with distaste AMIB's conduct concerning Ikip and ARS. AMIB has complained a couple of times that we seem to show up in any thread about him on WP:ANI, but I would like to stress that there's no canvassing involved; I for one read WP:ANI since it's a good way on keeping up with ongoing issues, and I believe MalikCarr does the same.

Also, I realize I've built a case for edit warring against myself, but, in my defense, I have not engaged in such behaviour in some time and do not intend to again; I'm more knowledgeable of Wikipedia procedures now and know there's better ways to handle things.

Brief addition: I note that AMIB has started messing with the images used in the Zeong article again as of the 1st. This is fairly obvious retaliation on his part against User:MalikCarr.

Jtrainor (talk) 17:07, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Flatscan
My evidence was mainly collected for a twice-postponed user conduct RfC on Ikip. If any editor (arbitrators especially) finds my evidence to be out-of-scope, please contact me directly, and I will consider reducing or removing it. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Ikip has a history of gray area canvassing
By "gray area", I mean notices that are not clearly inappropriate according to the WP:Canvassing guideline, but which have attracted complaints from other users.

WT:FICT mass posting, Jan/Feb 2009
After asking two admins (User:Ezhiki, User talk:Ezhiki/2009; User:Piotrus, User talk:Piotrus/Archive 27) for input, Ikip posted up to 326 notices (I have not checked them all, but they pass spot-checks) on article Talk pages. Although Ikip specified Category:Lists of television series episodes, Category:American comedy television series, and Category:American drama television series, articles covering webcomics such as xkcddiff and films such as The Terminatordiff were included. Ikip had been approached by User:LeaveSleaves and me, but he continued, stopping just before User:Kww threatened AN/I.

ARS recruiting mass posting, Feb 2009

 * AN/I: WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive517

Ikip posted up to 406 ARS invitations (again, I have not checked them all, but they pass spot-checks) to users with inclusionist userboxes. This is a list of consecutive edits and is likely to be incomplete per Themfromspace's description of a pause. annotated 04:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC) He was reported to AN/I by User:Themfromspace and to AN (soon merged) by AMIB. There was no consensus for administrator action, and Rootology referred the dispute to RfC with his closing comment.

Ikip/AMIB canvassing block, Apr 2009

 * AN/I: WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive533; dispute extended, WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive534

In an attempt to salvage a productive discussion, I started WT:Canvassing#AfD notifications at related articles. As a result of the discussion, the text "directly-related to the topic under discussion" was added to WP:Canvassing.

Ikip has posted AfD notifications to pages that seem relevant, perhaps indicating a lack of due care:
 * The disambiguation page Talk:Law and Order (diff; 7 April 2009, prior to discussion and revision)
 * Talk:The Walt Disney Company (diff) and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disney (diff), despite Anastasia (1997 film) being a non-Disney film (21 May 2009)

Ikip has a history of disruption related to ARS
I have no strong opinion on self-requested blocks in general, but I believe that the timing of those requested by Ikip (block log) and mentioned below is relevant.

Attempted merge, Jul 2008
Ikip (then named User:Inclusionist) attempted to merge WP:Article Rescue Squadron, WP:Intensive Care Unit, and WP:WikiProject Inclusion, resulting in two AN/I discussions: AMIB had no involvement in either of the AN/I discussions. Ikip requested an indefinite block: 15:23, 28 July 2008 Duk (talk | contribs) blocked Ikip (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ (Long time made this special request)
 * WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive455
 * WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive457 (retracted comment)

Recruiting drive, Feb 2009

 * Linked and introduced above

After Rootology's referral to RfC, I contacted Themfromspace and AMIB (User talk:A Man In Black#RfC). Around a week later, Ikip requested a 14 day block: 23:34, 3 March 2009 Xaosflux (talk | contribs) blocked Ikip (talk | contribs) (autoblock disabled) with an expiry time of 1 fortnight ‎ (user requested block) While the proximate dispute appears to be a content dispute on Business Plot with User:Collect and User:THF, Themfromspace and I put our RfC research on hold as a result of the enforced wikibreak.

The recruitment of self-described inclusionists would become a core issue in the May ARS dispute.

Recent dispute, May 2009
I assume that the arbitrators will review the recent dispute thoroughly, so I will provide only convenience links here:
 * WP:Deletion review/Log/2009 May 2, RCH; canvassing concerns after being linked from WT:ARS
 * WT:ARS archives: 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
 * WP:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron (4th nomination)

After participating in this RFAR pre-acceptance, but before the MfD closed, Ikip requested a 72-day block: 12:32, 21 May 2009 WilyD (talk | contribs) blocked Ikip (talk | contribs) (autoblock disabled) with an expiry time of 72 days ‎ (user request (by email))

Flatscan
Soon after the FICT mass-posting, I approached Ikip with GFDL concerns. After waiting nearly 5 days without a response, I started an AN discussion. User:Fritzpoll marked it as resolved and answered Ikip's questions. I overreacted to Ikip's accusations, requesting that Fritzpoll investigate me despite the complaint's retraction.

I have addressed Ikip directly only a few times since (e.g. ARS recruiting AN/I, civil discussion at WT:Canvassing#AfD notifications at related articles and User talk:Flatscan#Added diff). On 21 May 2009, I approached Ikip with two concerns and received this answer. Note that AMIB does not have email enabled and I have not edited User talk:A Man In Black since immediately after the RfC proposal.


 * Personal attacks

In addition to the accusations of WP:Harassment linked above, Ikip has continued to write similar comments on the Workshop page. Ikip complains of "5 months of continued harrassment by this trio", then removes "by this trio" 22 minutes later. Ikip later identifies the trio explicitly: "WP:BATTLE warrior trio, Themfromspace, Flatscan, and AMIB".


 * 1) WP:No personal attacks: "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence."
 * 2) WP:Arbitration/Index/Principles: "Personal attacks which occur during the course of Arbitration either on the Arbitration pages or on the talk pages of the arbitrators fall within the jurisdiction of the Arbitration."

For precision, this subsection covers Flatscan (me) only, and AMIB and Themfromspace if applicable; I have not thoroughly examined the evidence regarding their behavior. added 03:46, 13 June 2009 (UTC), moved and revised 05:14, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Randomran at WT:ARS
At WT:Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 34 (example diff) added 04:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC) and WT:Article Rescue Squadron/Archive 37 (example diff), Ikip implies that Randomran's participation is motivated by a months-old grudge from FICT.

Ikip modifies his existing comments
While editing comments is allowed by WP:Civility and WP:Talk page guidelines, care is recommended. Despite complaints, Ikip frequently edits his comments, including replacing large comments with simply "(refactored)". To illustrate an extended history, this 23 February 2009 edit was discussed at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive516.

Ikip also urges other users to refactor.

To Ikip

 * 

I feel that my evidence has not misrepresented the current state of the WP:Canvassing guideline or the reactions to your notifications. There are good numbers of users either criticizing or supporting those notifications; the situation is more nuanced than the letter of the rules. Flatscan (talk) 05:18, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * 

Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * My initial evidence includes that you asked two admins for comments, linking the archived discussions. I missed Piotrus's response at User talk:Ikip, but his approval may be inferred from your thank-you note.
 * I would not characterize my notification as exactly the same. I have posted article Talk notifications for no more than a few AfDs – only two that I remember (Taser controversy and Quilem Registre Taser incident), both for articles that I had edited prior to the AfDs.


 * 

Point of clarification: I was not involved with Themfromspace's note to AMIB on 7 May. I abstained from direct collaboration until later, after Themfromspace contacted me directly on 21 May. Flatscan (talk) 05:14, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Regarding the MfD of ARS

 * , generally

I disagree that the MfD nomination of ARS was a blatant WP:POINT violation. Wrong forum could be argued, but it was successful in attracting a large number of users, many of whom had not commented previously. There was substantial support for outcomes other than keep. This tally recorded partway through is a good quick reference. Flatscan (talk) 05:18, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Ikip's involvement

 * , (MalikCarr), WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/A Man In Black/Workshop (A Nobody)

Ikip has been added to this case as a named party, and his conduct will be examined accordingly. Ikip was a central participant in the ARS dispute – a reader may simply skim the discussions to verify this – and Benjiboi even wrote, "There are but two editors at the core of the problems", Ikip and AMIB. Just as AMIB's history is presented to demonstrate a pattern, not an isolated incident, Ikip's history is relevant. Flatscan (talk) 04:37, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

Why drag Ikip into this? It just distracts from the issue.
There is enough information to focus on already without being distracted by one of the many editors that A Man in Black came into conflict with. And mentioning that some editors didn't like Ikip, and accussed him of canvassing, is rather pointless. He did not canvass, as defined by the wp:canvass page. No rule was broken, or he would've been blocked for it. Having someone accuss you of something with evidence, is rather meaningless, and should not be considered.

Editing comments
Instead of just drawing a line through his comments, he wrote the word "refactored" when he changed his view on something, or found a better wording. He wasn't trying to slip one past you, since he clearly labeled his change. Was any rule broken there?  D r e a m Focus  00:21, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Richard Arthur Norton
I have worked with Ikip for about a year at ARS flagged articles. He has always been polite, has excellent research skills, and possesses a clear and concise editing style, and mind that grasps the underlying logic of what can appear to be arcane and often conflicting rules and guidelines. Trying to get more people involved in research is a good thing for Wikipedia, and reviewing the evidence I see no violation of wp:canvass, every instance shown meets the requirement of not being a violation, it is limited, and worded neutrally. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:37, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Since joining the Article Rescue Squad, what articles has AMIB rescued?
The entire idea behind the ARS is to attempt rescues of worthy articles that might otherwise be sent to the shredder. So why would someone join if they do not actually help? It seems AMIB's greatest contributions to the ARS has been to slow down or distract from the rescue processes. Was his joining simply made to counter the efforts of other editors actually trying to improve articles? Even to the point of nominating the entire project for deletion? I see far too much disruption from an Admin who should have the experience to know better. That's not what being an admin is supposed to be about.

AMIB's recent concern about the ARS started on Feb 3, in an AFD which he voted "strong delete", he was concerned about "WP:ARS's inclusion efforts" and called for a "review whether that project is in danger of becoming Yet Another VFD Canvassing Project." 

As an editor said in November when AMIB blocked two editors he was involved with: "This is nothing more than a content dispute hiding behind a claim of copyright violation.” the edit warring on ARS and the blocking of Ikip was simply a "content dispute hiding behind a canvassing violation"

Tools not being used are tools not needed
This discussion has become full of misdirection and fingerpointing at others. Time to refocus on the heart of the matter: An admin has certain responsibilities that come with being handed the mop. Since the mop is not being used properly, if at all, pass it along to someone will make use of it.  Schmidt,  MICHAEL Q. 03:19, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

AMIB's Ongoing pattern of edit warring and abusing administrative powers
AMIB has an abusive pattern stretching from AMIB's earliest days on Wikipedia... a pattern and demeanor that has not been reduced even after repeated blocks and sanctions

I can appreciate the diligence with which editors are digging through my own edits in order to somehow explain AMIB's repeated blockings and continued uncivil behavior. While I am willing to put myself under a microscope in an RFC, this particular one is not about me... its about AMIB... and AMIB's continued pattern of problem behavior that far predated his ever crossing my path...

Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part I) AMIB Removed large portion of article: with no discussion before hand.
 * 05:55, 7 September 2008
 * 02:43, 7 September 2008
 * 00:26, 7 September 2008
 * 22:05, 6 September 2008

The Lepidopterists
 * No discussion beforehand.  (Has since been redirected so edit differences not available to me)

World War Z
 * 02:25, 11 July 2007
 * 02:25, 11 July 2007
 * 04:25, 11 July 2007
 * 17:14, 11 July 2007[ http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_War_Z&diff=143999448&oldid=143998037]
 * 20:18, 11 July 2007

AMIB's original deletions, starting on 9 June, with no conversation before on talk page:
 * 13:29, 24 June 2008 "Dynamiting some low-quality trivia lists"
 * 13:47, 24 June 2008
 * 13:59, 24 June 2008
 * 14:00, 24 June 2008
 * 14:03, 24 June 2008
 * 14:06, 24 June 2008
 * 14:09, 24 June 2008
 * 14:11, 24 June 2008
 * 14:14, 24 June 2008
 * 14:18, 24 June 2008
 * 14:20, 24 June 2008


 * 1) During a two year edit war, starting in 29 June 2007 with AMIB charcateristically deleting large sections with no conversation beforehand, in which AMIB reverts over 50 times, he blocks Jtrainor and MalikCarr who he is involved in an edit dispute with. In response to the block Baseball Bugs states: “This is nothing more than a content dispute hiding behind a claim of copyright violation.” AMIB justifies the block as: "Jtrainor was blocked for stating that he was completely uninterested in discussing further, but continuing to revert." Even today, two years later (edit war started 29 June 2007) as this arbitration is ongoing, AMIB continues the same edit war: File:Msn-02_Perfect_Zeong.jpgAMIB deletes image repeatedlyJune 1st, 2009, adds review tagJune 4, 2009 removes image from article (alleges that Malik Carr agreed to this deletion) Non-free content review
 * 2) In a year and a half edit war, AMIB protects a page he is editing on, "Repeated attempts to force copyvio, will be undoing my other edits " An editor said in response: "This is nothing more than a content dispute hiding behind a claim of copyright violation.”
 * 3) AMIB protects Horus Heresy, a page he had been edit warring on.
 * 4) AMIB closes a deletion review he is heavily involved in.

... a pattern that continues even after his being repeatedly warned and repeatedly blocked for this continued behavior. How many times has an admin will he be allowed to say "Oops... I got carried away... I have modified my behavior... it won't happen again"... and then have it indeed happen again...

Of AMIB 13 blocks all of the blocks involve AMIB being in edit wars deleting other editors contributions. These 13 blocks likely make AMIB the most blocked administrator on wikipedia.

A little background on three of these edit wars and the page protection:


 * 14:55, 13 September 2008 Spartaz (talk | contribs) blocked A Man In Black (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours ‎ (Edit warring: violation of 3RR) ''Note:
 * Notes: Deleting material in Now Museum, Now You Don't no discussion on talk page beforehand or during edit war'' Editors discuss other edit wars on ANI AMIB was involved with


 * 03:07, 19 November 2007 Mr.Z-man (talk | contribs) blocked A Man In Black (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 72 hours ‎ (Edit warring)
 * 09:04, 30 March 2007 Dominic (talk | contribs) blocked A Man In Black (talk | contribs) (anon. only) with an expiry time of 48 hours ‎ (3RR at Template:Grand Theft Auto games, prior history of blocks for edit warring (see user talk page))
 * Notes:
 * AMIB then protects the page he is edit warring on.
 * Admin Dominic unprotects page:
 * "Do not protect pages you are edit warring on"
 * Dominic writes:
 * "You seem to be assuming the worst of these editors."
 * "I have unprotected the article and would like to remind you in the strongest terms possible not to use your adminship to gain the upper hand in an edit war, whether it be protection or rollback, and not to edit war at all." I can't see any reason that article needed protection other than for you to gain the advantage in the edit war.
 * I am going to block you for the clear 3RR violation, compounded by 1) no attempt at discussion, 2) continuing the same edit war at that page from weeks ago, 3) using the admin rollback button and protecting for what was clearly not vandalism, 4) prior history of many blocks and this continues, and 5) five reverts in 24 hours. Either you are being intentionally obtuse or you truly don't understand that edit warring is not acceptable even if it was with anons (though 2 of your 5 reverts were of established users as well), and protecting a page to gain the advantage in an edit war is also not acceptable even if it is to gain an advantage or an anonymous editor.
 * "Frankly the fact that an editor is anonymous does not give you carte blanche to rollback edits you disagree with beyond 3RR or to protect the pages when involved"
 * AMIB writes "go away", deleting his Admin Dominic's strong criticisms.

Edit wars which were reported but are not listed: and again...
 * Page protected, AMIB should have been blocked, but an admin protected the page instead.
 * Page protected again, AMIB should have been blocked, but an admin protected the page instead.
 * AMIB blocked himself for an edit war. Begins edit warring again after the self block.
 * Actual 3RR, but “A block now who be completely punitive”
 * AMIB warned, after admitting he broke 3RR


 * 1) Third party comment about AMIB’s edit warring on ANI.
 * 2) Mediation cabals AMIB has been involved with about his edit warring.

and again…
 * 1) User: EVula to AMIB: I highly respect your efforts to eliminate cruft, but after seeing you attempt to be a one-man consensus army (like on Mortal Kombat series, where you were edit warring with four or so different editors) to be comfortable with allowing you being a 'crat.
 * 2) User:JJay: Long-term edit warring and admitted abuse of admin tools in support of ideological conflict. Referring to Schools/Arguments
 * 3) User:Camaron1: 3RR violation blocks and edit warring with admin rollback (such as that logged at ) do not give me confidence with trustworthiness.

and again…
 * This is the weakest example of the "Don't touch our shit" Wikiproject mentality that I've seen in a long time...there's a project desperately trying to protect low-quality and inappropriate content from any sort of improvement or cleanup, harassing and driving off anyone who tries to clean up the mess...This wouldn't be nearly so pathetic if someone of the articles didn't genuinely have potential for improvement...Now, you can edit war and bloc vote keep and be obstructionist, and keep some really crappy articles, while continuing to be the laughing stock of Wikipedia…This is pathetic trolling. It's trolling for sympathy...Let me know when you're done deluding yourself...I suggest getting past paranoid fantasies and dealing with reality.


 * How AMIB describes other editor's contributions
 * How AMIB describes other editors contributions, showing an extreme WP:BATTLE mentality and inability to work with others:
 * ""On cruft: When referring to unreferenced plot detail, made up nonsense, fanon, speculation, and the like, make sure you call it crap. This is much clearer, without the emotional baggage of the word "cruft". This quote from AMIB talk page embodies AMIB entire historical WP:BATTLE edit warring attitude towards other editors contributions for years.
 * "We don't do this crap for living people, we certainly don't need it for fictional ones"
 * "Still ridiculous, still useless, still no"
 * "True or false: you have stopped beating your wife."
 * "Removing unsourced garbage" "removing all the crap again" "Dynamiting some low-quality trivia lists" "None of this is worth saving. Hell, none of it is prose; it's leads for paragraphs we don't need." Edit war with User:Fairfieldfencer, User:Dylanlip and User:Kurowoofwoof111
 * "Take the plot summary to a fansite"
 * "Well, it's unencyclopedic crap..."
 * If your contributions are called crap by an editor, how would you react?

etc., etc., etc... For AMIB or others divert attention away from him by saying AMIB 'was provoked', and then 'point' a finger at either me or any of the many others with whom AMIB had conflicts might be conscionable were he an inexperienced editor... but AMIB has been editing since (30 March 2005) and is by no means 'inexperienced'. Quite the opposite. AMIB knows the system. Administrators are held to a higher standard.... of not by themselves, at least by other admins... and definitely by ArbCom. So sure.. come back to me later if you wish... but his problem behavior did not begin with me. I am simply the latest editor to be in AMIB’s cross hairs... "

Steel and Flatscan's edit diffs
With respects, these edits can be almost entirely summed up as: "Ikip didn't break any rules".

The one block that Steel mentions, the page was protected, yet I was blocked anyway. If these rules were to have been applied consistently, AMIB whould have been blocked for a total of 15 times, not 13, because the page he was edit warring on was also protected. So Steel, since you are demanding a 6 month 1RR restriction for me for my one block, how many years should AMIB be blocked for his 13+?

Flatscan and AMIB themselves continue to grudgingly acknowledge that my behavior is within the rules. Flatscan quibbles and calls my notifications a "Gray area" "borderline canvassing" AMIB defines my notifications as: "push[ed] the boundaries of WP:CANVASS", "various probes of the limit of WP:CANVASS",  "Ikip has made a practice of pushing the limits of WP:CANVASSING...following only the letter of the rules", "continues to walk the line any way he can" At least I do follow the rules.

Keep in mind that I was blocked by AMIB for something that Flatscan readily admits that he does himself.

In addition, Steel acknowledges that I "adher[ed] to the letter of WP:3RR" above.

I have repeatedly told AMIB and Flatscan, if you do not like currently wikipedia rules, change them, but don't selectively punish editors who you disagree with for following the rules. The rules are there as guidelines and there are bright lines editors (WP:IAR) can and [[WP:POLICY) cannot cross... guideposts for what editors can and cannot do. When editors start to get punished for following the rules, as I have been by AMIB, then respect for the rules suffers and the entire project suffers.

I don't think the comments I have made are any worse that Steel in this very same arbcom:
 * 1) "utter contempt Ikip has for the "other side" (above) and
 * 2) Showing a lack of good faith, in response to saying that me not having time to edit here is because I had to study for the bar, is a "Nice coincidence".

However, I do my best to stay within the rules set out for all wikipedians...and I am not an Admin. Does being one set AMIB above the rules and apart from other editors?

Omissions in Flatscan evidence Themfromspace's extremely low threshold for what is canvassing
There are some omissions in Flatscan's evidence. He omits that TWO admins approved my WP:FICT notification, and that Flatscan himself posted the exact same kind of notification on AfDs for which AMIB blocked me.

For several months, AMIB, Flatscan, and Themfromspace have continued to dig at past actions that were repeatedly found to not be in violation. And now here they are here in another forum.

Here are two examples showing Themfromspace's low threshold of what Themfromspace considers canvassing:
 * 1) Themfromspace accused Ikip of canvassing here Articles for deletion/BVE Trainsim (2nd nomination) and even Flatscan himself said that this notification is allowed and "generally accepted". (This is the same low threshold arguments which AMIB made against ARS members)
 * 2) On Articles for deletion/Virginia Lewis (10th Kingdom). Themfromspace ignores the three "canvassing" links of editors who voted delete in the AFD, yet highlights them so that AMIB might use the edit diffs to block tardily block Ikip... a block which even Themfromspace now says above was "not justified", even though he himself seemed to specifically encouraged it.

Themfromspace's attitude towards people with whom he disagrees leaves a lot to be desired
The bar for 6 months sanctions has become incredibly low. Steel's original section, posted on 15:31, 29 May 2009. was the evidence which he based the proposed sanctions against me, 11:25, 3 June 2009.

Lest any of AMIB supporters cry foul as steel did, "I'm not sure why this is suddenly about me anyway." These same AMIB supporters have fervently supported including me be in this arbcom repeatedly. Themfromspace said himself:
 * "All parties are subject to investigation and sanctions; the title means nothing."

After each disruption edit warring by AMIB, Flatscan and Themfromspace encourage AMIB to help them with a RFC.

Should we propose sanctions on Themfromspace too?


 * Themfromspace's Snarky attacks towards Ikip:
 * "Ikip has been a troublemaker for months"


 * This shows the utter contempt Themfromspace has for other editors:
 * Themfromspace calling another editors move "vandalism".
 * Accusing another editor of being a troll and canvassing: "I'm not sure if MS is a troll or just has a backwards interpretation of Wikipedia policies such as canvassing"
 * "I need not get into your tendentious editing style or your infatuation with drama."
 * "Yes, that guy is a long-term vandal here"
 * "Per your recent contempt for me on IRC I'm not waiting any longer"
 * "his bad-faith accusations...was nothing but thinly-veiled sarcasm and a violation of WP:AGF...constitutes badgering which violates WP:CIVIL...refrain from assuming bad faith when editors disagree with his ideas."


 * Themfromspace's "Battleground" attitude and accusations of bad faith:
 * Themfromspace accuses Ikip of bad faith.
 * Themfromspace again accuses Ikip of bad faith.
 * More accusations of bad faith.
 * Even more accusations of bad faith.
 * More accusations of bad faith.


 * More accusations of bad faith by Themfromspace:
 * Posted to this very case, again defending AMIB continued harrassment: "Because of this vigilance he has suffered numerous bad-faith accusations by Ikip and other members of the group."
 * This despite Themfromspace admiting that the block against me was "not justified" (on this page), and that he felt "AMIB's current block to be just".
 * Posted to this very case: "Ikip responded with a sharply worded reply loaded with bad-faith accusations"
 * Posted to this very case: "When Flatscan questioned his actions, Ikip responded with a sharply worded reply loaded with bad-faith accusations"


 * Themfromspace's extreme deletionist wikiphilosophy is similar if not even more extreme than A Man In Black's:
 * "Unverified articles have no place [on Wikipedia] and they should be eliminated." In which Themfromspace argues that anything which is not verified, should be immediatly deleted.
 * "extremism in the defense of WP:V IS a virtue."
 * "To me, "In popular culture" = trivia. They are both miscellaneous sections that fall under WP:TRIVIA more often than not"
 * Ipatrol writes: "We need a stance of "If you don't source it, it doesn't belong here."" Themfromspace responds: "I fully agree with you."
 * "With all the warning we give article creators to abide by WP:V, there is no excuse for creating an article that isn't verified, WP:BITE or no WP:BITE."
 * Themfromspace dismisses all arguments against his failed canvassing charges as "fellow inclusionists".
 * Uses AMIB violent deletionist essay Wikipedia:Blow it up and start over to delete Article Squadron.
 * Like AMIB, the majority of Themfromspace's edits are deleting other editors contributions.


 * Themfromspace harrasses Ikip about perfectly allowable notification.
 * (See above)

Regardless of whether Themfromspace behavior is sanctioned in this arbcom, "This is also good as a document in case he continues this line of behaviour" and this "presentation [will] be ready to copy to a future RfC."

Do uninvolved editors create attack pages?
AMIB has continued to say he is an uninvolved editor.

Clear back in January AMIB created an attack page against me: User:A Man In Black/Let's tape Ikip up in a box and mail him to the moon This page is basically saying, "lets get rid of Ikip" This joking essay I feel shows AMIB real intent, as shown in his behavior later.

Uninvolved editors don't create attack pages about editors who they are uninvolved with.

In addition to Rootology's extensive evidence, there is: Ikip (talk) 14:42, 8 June 2009 (UTC)
 * AFDs we interactted together in. February 2009.
 * Policy arguments with me and AMIB on WP:PRESERVE,
 * Policy arguments with me and AMIB on WP:CANVAS,
 * WP:LAME I added Article Rescue Squadron to WP:LAME on 26 July 2008 which Ben brought up on ARS, A Man in Black deleted it on the 6th of March.

Evidence presented by Buster7
An administrator must be fair and balanced, able to put out fires rather than fan the embers of dispute. Aggresion lives at the expense of co-operation. AMIB does battle on too many fronts and, from the above comments, he does not forget those that slight him. The persitant history of problems is a sign that this administrator/editor can not, or will not, change. The administrators mop is to be used as a tool, not a weapon. Administrators are chosen because, at the time of election, they seem just and wise, impartial and considerate, knowledgeable and open-minded. Can we still say that about AMIB?--Buster7 (talk) 03:40, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by -- Banj e b oi
I've found the majority of my dealings with AMIB energy depleting and as such had avoided this entire case as I already have spent an inordinante amount of energy trying to reason with someone who I later found out was an admin. The majority of my involvement with AMIB has been limited to the Article Rescue Squad Wikiproject (ARS) which arguably I'm the lead editor on simply by volume at the project pages and willingness to do the maintenance work. Below are some of my generalized opinions and thoughts and if Arb members need diffs on a particular set of items I can do so but please leave a note on my talkpage as I have a low threshold lately.

AMIB has at times been unable to dial down the heat even when asked to
AMIB has been able to constructively and civilly present their concerns but this is been more of a rarity. Instead they have repeatedly characterized the entire project of inclusionism, canvassing and trying to subvert policy discussions which has ultimately turned the talkpage of the project into a battleground of sorts. In mnay respects they have acted as a self-appointed sherriff pouncing on comments in many shades of incivility.

Several folks posted to the project some rather unbias threads including ones on policy discussions like "policy ___ is good and should be saved from deletion, please help". Although this is problematic AMIB would edit-war and otherwise cause more problems than the actual original post.

If someone has WP:Canvassing concerns they need to be handled civilly but the project even went to the lengths to create Article Rescue Squadron/FAQ which AMIB employed sarcasm and, IMHO, more edit-warring and anti-ARS POV pushing. The culmination can be seen a week or so later at AMIB's attempt to have the entire project deleted Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron (4th nomination) which seems an awfully pointy move no matter how you stack it up. Because of those recent actions they were blocked resulting in the most peaceful the talkpage has been in months, a night and day difference.

I had previously counseled not to work on banning AMIB from ARS but feel that was a mistake. Since their block lifted they came back, while this case was in process, and again started rather snarky comments intead of a more humble discussion would which have resulted in the same end result but at least felt in keeping with our civility policies. That they continuously insert themselves in this way suggests a revisit to a ban awaits in the wings. Frankly I wouldn't like to ban anyone but their actions have repelled editors who just want to help and really don't care for the drama. In short I would like to not dread their involvement. ARS specializes in AfD which has enough tension already.

Comparing Ikip and AMIB at ARS
Both users have caused some issues at the project and with patience the project has weathered them all. Ikip has a heightened passion for inclusionism and boldly tries many ideas out with varying success. The earliest attempts were generally rejected and more recently they have modified to finding some wonderful ideas that benefit ARS directly or AfD and newer users generally. I'd admire their passion and they have changed their approach to work collegially and taken in criticism which is what we hope all Wikipedians will do. They also have a staggering wealth of knowledge on Wikipedia's sometimes byzantine policies so even if one doesn't agree with them you're more likely than not to benfit from understanding where they're coming from. I've given thema few reality checks and they seemed to accept them at face value.

In contrast, AMIB has often acted as if civility was a suggestion and we delete first talk later. They even threatened to block folks who posted on the project page which seemed rather chilling. When they edit warred against myself I started an RfC to end it. I remain unconvinced that any other course of action would have done so.

Again with the canvassing, block voting, irreparable damage and more unsubstantiated "ARS is evil", etc. assertions
Despite repeated requests no credible evidence to suggest ARS has encouraged or endorsed in any way violating community guidelines or policies has been presented. Are there some editors who likely should conduct themselves more in keeping with consensus building, of course. But extrapolating that to a Wikiproject of 200+ editors is disturbing and remains disruptive. The "mass canvassing" was done by Ikip independent of the group, they were brought up at the admin board and the chanrges summarily dismissed. The invite template they created wasn't discussed at or approved by ARS but in response we created a neutral invite template for anyone to use.

This is a good example of not being able to let something go. The MfD certainly had little hope of suceeding and seemed to be, yet another, in a string of disruptive actions against the project. It followed a RfD regarding TfDs which also didn't go against ARS and I felt the need to bring in impartial editors to help close. Then a lengthy discussion to launch another RfC started up repeating, generally these very same accusations by the same group of folks. Again with nothing but inflated "concern". I hereby extend the exact same invite to anyone who feels ARS is somehow in the wrong. User issues are handled at the user level, with civility. Rules that prohibit or restrict a Wikiproject in some way should be discussed at the WikiCouncil, which is the logical place to start a discussion that projects henceforth cannot be notified of discussions or policies, etc etc. ARS is not interested in being a battleground for deletion vs inclusion, never has been and still isn't. Anyone willing to constructively contribute to the encyclopedia is welcome to help.

The Article Rescue Squadrom is a vehicle for tagteaming
In theory and in practice the Article Rescue Squadron (ARS) encourages its editors to vote in blocks. The ARS is supposedly a non-partisan organization built out of adding sources to articles to show that they are notable. Unfortunately, from "heads-up" postings on the talk page about policy discussions like this to one-sided postings about deletion discussions and DRVs like this, the group is often used to further individual editors' personal interests.

Ikip has misused the Article Rescue Squadron to further his own wikiphilosophy
Ikip has an unabashedly inclusionist philosophy which no editor can deny (he has even claimed that he would do everything in his power to undermine notability(guidelines) here on Wikipedia. This isn't bad until it causes conduct issues.  As far as I can tell this trouble began in July of 2008 when he boldly merged WikiProject Inclusion with the ARS, creating much drama    He has directly equated the ARS with inclusionism at other times ( (while advising "If you want to thrive on wikipedia, you need to be more Passive Aggressive"). Ikip has also advocated linking to the ARS as a means of spreading support for his views. His battleground mentality is evident here as it is obvious he has tried to systematically organize the group to promote his views on inclusionism.

Ikip has engaged in mass-scale canvassing of the ARS
Ikip's actions with the mass-posting Flatscan has brought up have transgressed the boundaries from civil notification into inappropriate canvassing of messages similiar to this. I warned Ikip personally   that I felt this to be canvassing but he deleted my warnings, signaling that he read them while simultaneously refusing to discuss the matter. Ikip took a two day break from this mass-posting and finished it up when the discussion was well underway. The edits appear to be automated, as he messaged nine people during one minute in alphabetical order Through these hundreds of postings he has created a fait accompoli and short of disbanding the ARS it will be hard for the project to go back to its pre-canvassed state.

To dispel the notion that this behaviour was not canvassing, I'll compare it with the table in WP:CANVASS. Ikip has engaged in hundreds of solicitation messages, not isolated posting to editors whom he interacted with before. The audience was biased as only editors with inclusionism-related templates got the message. The message itself was biased as it read "I think you will find our project matches your vision (inclusionism) of Wikipedia." Because of these qualities, Ikip's actions fit in with 3 of the 4 criteria for inappropriate canvassing. These actions indicate that, much like before, Ikip seeks to turn the ARS into Wikiproject Inclusion.

AMIB and the ARS
Looking through his contributions, AMIB had been supportive of the ARS for a while. He voted to keep it when it was up for MfD #3 and he had a neutral comment at the template's deletion discussion. His history of conflict with the project first appears at this discussion about the ARS tag being used for canvassing purposes. In essence, his "involvement" with the ARS comes down to being concerned about the group overstepping the canvassing guidelines. During his discussion with Ikip at the ANI thread (here in its entirety), AMIB seemed concerned about Ikip's behaviour yet was not incivil to him at all. His first edits to the ARS talk page were done in the spirit of defending the canvassing guideline. Naturally this watchdog effort would land him into conflict with an editor like Ikip who, as we have since seen, has used mass-postings to further his own agenda. With more edits to the ARS talk page, AMIB became more involved with the project and started questioning the rescuability of some of the pages with the rescue tag but until May most of his edits there concerned the nature of the project in relation to our canvassing guidelines. All of the edits he made to this page that I have checked from his contributions appear to be constructive to the whole of the encyclopedia and appear to aim at trying to integrate the project's values with those of the encyclopedia's; in essence, he has tried hard to eliminate the hive mind of the group. Being vigilant of the ARS activities, and one of the few editors to frequent that page with constructive criticism, it is no suprise that he would be the first admin to see and block what he felt was canvassing.

AMIB's block of Ikip was good-faith, but not justified
Although he never started out as being involved with the project, it appears to me that AMIB was lured in by the group's borderline (and as I pointed out, sometimes blatant) canvassing techniques and the tendentious editing of its most vocal proponent, Ikip. AMIB became more involved the more he felt that the group was violating Wikipedia's guidelines. Because of this vigilance he has suffered numerous bad-faith accusations by Ikip and other members of the group.

AMIB is involved with Ikip not in the way that an admin is blocking an editor with a long-standing dispute but only in the way an admin blocking an editor who vandalises his userpage is involved with him. After being provoked for months it is not suprising that he let the comments get at him enough to implement a block instead of taking it to community review first. I do commend him for immediately recognizing that he was too close to Ikip by bringing the action to a noticeboard for community review, but it definitely wasn't the best way to handle the situation.

Response to Ikip
After looking through the diffs of Ikip's lengthy examination of my views I have to say I'm quite proud of the contributions I have been making to this encyclopedia in defense of our policies and guidelines.

Evidence presented by DGG
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

I'm not here to defend Ikip or the ARS
When I need to defend the ARS I will do it in full, but it is my impression from the comments here and elsewhere that the root of the real objection to the ARS is that it has been effective in finding material for articles at AfD. It has certainly not from the evidence led to the pile-on block voting for keeps in the absence of material. there is pile-on voting, as there has always been, but at least recently this seems to be more a problem with people who blindly support every deletion with the least regard to the merits of the article. In a certain way I suppose it is possible to "blame" this on the ARS--it is no longer as easy to delete articles without following BEFORE, and this leaves much less of in the way of logical objections and more need of idontlike it pileons. .

As for Ikip, he has stretched the boundaries of canvassing, rather than letting the debates speak for themselves; I am not sure he realises yet that people need to only have attention called, not to receive hints about what to say. He also in my opinion does tend to support articles that really shouldn't be supported, and try to improve some that aren;t reasonably improvable. But on the whole, though I hope I do things differently, I consider what he does as a reasonably understandable and forgivable counter to those working in the opposite direction.

the problem with AMIB
is his persistent pushing every matter in which he engages, his overall hostility to other users, and his tendency to pick on those he thinks he can pick on. I'm not going to select diffs from the ones above, they have all been sufficiently documented. He doesn't do it with me: I am not particularly prone to get upset at sharp questioning. I am not sure he actually intend to be offensive. Unfortunately, he is, and the weight of being an admin makes what he says particularly hurtful to those it can hurt. This is the reason why admins are expect to be to some degree exemplary--not necessarily conspicuous for being perfect beyond the rest of us, but certainly not conspicuous for taking things up to and sometimes beyond the limit. If an admin gets blocked once a year, it's a bad example, but not a terribly bad example. But as it is, it sends the wrong message entirely. If he could be persuaded to do less combat, and rely on his frequently good arguments rather than on trying to reinforce them against all objections, it would not be so much a problem. I'm not all that sure its possible--the community has tried long enough without effect. The only other resort is to remove that which gives his pressure undue influence.

And if he can only be defended by trying to blacken his opponents, then there isn't much real defense for the way he does things. DGG (talk) 05:09, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * additional information: While this was pending, AMIB closed a deletion review after only two days on a topic in which he is himself of a definite view, and where an interesting discussion on the advisability of freezing deletions of the topic in general was taken place, a proposal supported by those with the most opposite views. (a joint proposal in fact, by Stifle and me, supported by A Nobody).  He can not be trusted to use admin powers properly, when he uses them to foreclose discussion--and when he does it during a pending arb com case, he clearly shows that no remedy but desysop is likely to have an effect. .  . DGG (talk) 00:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * On the basis of his comments--I continue to think it unwise but appreciate the good intentions. DGG (talk) 01:58, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {jc37}
Much of what I would say/note has been already by those above.

Though, please see the talk pages of the evidence and the workshop pages for additional thoughts/concerns.

I mostly agree with the statements by User:Benjiboi, User:DGG, User:Hiding, and User:Themfromspace though with two exceptions.

1.) While I've seen lively debate at AfD and elsewhere, I'm not sure that I've seen comments by AMiB that are more flagrant than what can normally be seen at AfD (in quantity or quality). So I'm hesitant to suggest singling out a single individual for engaging in what appears to be common practice in debating at AfD. That said, AfD debates often have extreme civility issues, and perhaps that should be dealt with. But taking quotes/diffs out of the broader context may not fairly represent anyone.

2.) While I think WP:ARS does indeed do good work, I also think that, due to their stated goals, they often tend to become a forum (or even a nursery) for WP:BATTLEGROUND tendencies. As I noted above, while this can be seen as an extension of common practice at AfD, I don't think that it's something which should be encouraged, and definitely not given a centralised forum. WP:POINT and WP:BEANS aside, if there was a serious attempt to have an WP:Article Deletion Squadron, I somehow don't think that that would be acceptable. For the same problems: WP:BATTLEGROUND being key among them.

- jc37 21:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.