Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence/Review/Mathsci-initial-submission


 * This page was created for an arbcom review

Response of Mathsci
Initial response

Captain Occam was site banned by Risker for one year under ArbCom discretionary sanctions for "having returned to the disruptive behaviour and battlefield mentality that was sanctioned in the Race and intelligence arbitration case." My understanding is that, as far as matters related to WP:ARBR&I are concerned, per WP:SHARE, Ferahgo the Assassin's account is considered to be indistinguishable from that of Captain Occam. It would therefore appear that Captain Occam is continuing exactly the same kind of disruption in WP:ARBR&I related issues for which he has just been site banned. It would also appear that he has had this kind of disruption in mind for some time. In the circumstances I cannot see how any proposals formulated by Captain Occam can be discussed on wikipedia, no matter who his proxy is or how they seek to justify themselves.

As far as privacy is concerned, both Ferahgo the Assassin and TrevelyanL85A2 have chosen to place external links and personally identifying information on wikipedia and/or commons. However, as Shell Kinney has confirmed and has given me permission to repeat on-wiki, a real life association between their accounts can easily be determined without any of that information (or "sleuthing"). Shell Kinney kept the rest of ArbCom informed about this in 2010 and contacted Captain Occam by email, reporting his response here.

Jclemens' request would be reasonable if Ferahgo the Assassin had not included Captain Occam in her proposed amendment and if Captain Occam did not happen to be site banned for one year. There was an almost identical request in early September 2011 by Captain Occam during which he lobbied Jclemens extensively on his talk page (cf diffs above). Please could other arbitrators clarify how WP:SHARE applies in these extraordinary circumstances, where an editor has been site banned and their partner then appears to be continuing the same old campaign as a proxy.

More detailed response
 * Outing? I'm not quite sure what Captain Occam and Ferahgo have in mind. As others have said here, to check that Ferahgo and TrevelyanL85A2 are friends does not require any further information. Ferahgo does not appear to be concerned with privacy: she has placed links on her user page to an external website; and she has signed her uploaded images on Commons (contrary to WP:WATERMARK) or added her name to the file descriptions. None of this is relevant here. Similarly on his user page, TrevelyanL85A2 lists many pseudonyms he uses on the web as well as his name. Again that is not relevant here.


 * Ferahgo's extended topic ban Ferahgo has framed her own report as if some topic ban was still in force on me. That seems to be the view shared by Captain Occam, Ferahgo the Assassin and their friends. Having only briefly edited as an exercise in the area, it was very easy not to make any further edits there. However, since WP:ARBR&I the set of articles has been plagued with issues of sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry, so I keep a watch out for problems. Mikemikev has been one of the worst cases. He is a genuine harasser. Here for example is what his latest sock wrote on the SPI page just a day or two ago. He has written much worse than that, but that has been removed by oversighters. Here's another more recent one—Excuse Me I'm ON LSD—which I reported in a different way. soon afterwards picked up and indefinitely blocked by a checkuser.


 * Ferahgo the Assassin is subject to the the following extended topic ban:


 * In this particular instance, since TrevelyanL85A2's talk page is on my watch list, I noticed this edit of Aprock to User talk:TrevelyanL85A2.  In that edit Aprock wrote, "I realize you're probably aware of this as you know editors who've been topic banned, but if you're interested in actively editing in the topic area, you might wish to review the WP:ARBR&I case, as well as the amendments to the discretionary sanctions: . Constructive editing is always welcome."  I looked at TrevelyanL85A2's edits and noticed that had moved back full swing into editing in R&I. Ther ehad been a similar burst of editing In R&I in November and December 2010, when it had been determined with Shell Kinney that he was a friend of Ferahgo. I gave him a further warning.  He responded that that was against some form of ArbCom ban. He then immediately went to the talk page of Ferahgo requesting help. She then appeared on his talk page and in the intervening time of about 10-15 minutes had already compiled a kind of topic ban to present to me. That appears to have been part of a case that Captain Occam had already prepared about me. I assume there had also been off-wiki communication in the interim.  However, by responding in this way to TrevelyanL85A2, Ferahgo was in fact violating the terms of her extended topic ban by coming to TrevelyanL85A2's talk page and making statements concerning WP:ARBR&I. She is presumably therefore liable for sanctions under WP:ARBR&I. I have therefore now filed such a request at WP:AE.


 * This request for amendment With Captain Occam she then rapidly prepared this request for amendment. The heading is as inaccurate as Captain Occam's 3 September submission, since I am under no ArbCom sanctions. I'm not sure what their purpose is, but one consequence would be that editing in R&I would be easier for sockpuppets or proxies. In general, Captain Occam and Ferahgo seem upset that I have been involved in various AE discussions that have resulted in topic bans. Those requests for enforcement have nothing to do with them.


 * Common editing Ferahgo the Assassin has edited mostly articles to do with dinosaurs. At one point however by accident (I watch the BLP noticeboard) we both ended up editing Orson Scott Card, and worked together with others in forming a consensus to produce a neutral but accurate formulation of the lede.


 * Grudges Ferahgo's catalogue of grievances is not very different from the list provided by Captain Occam, and presumably they worked on it together. Only on rare occasions do we interact. When interaction occurs it has been initiated by either Captain Occam or, as recently, Ferahgo. On one occasion in 2010 I reported her for violating her topic ban and she was blocked for 3 days. Most of her statements seem exaggerated. All the problems she has had on wikipedia so far are of her own making: trying to act as proxy for Captain Occam and then in turn having her friends act as proxies for them both.


 * WP:SHARE The connection between Captain Occam and Ferahgo was determined by a similar process, but was only properly confirmed when a checkuser report had been requested. Many of the statements that Ferahgo has made about me are not reliable and are not very different from the suggestions Captain Occam made repeatedly about me just over a year ago, where he claimed that members of ArbCom were old friends of mine. Those claims had no foundation.


 * Echigo mole / A. K. Nole These problems are well known to ArbCom, clerks, checkusers and oversighters who have followed the serial wikistalking / outing issues connected with this problematic user that date back several years. I am surprised that Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin have tried to use this as evidence against me. Arbitrators should take this as another sign that this is an extremely bad faith submission placed by a site-banned user through a compromised proxy. The request is in any case not for a mutual interaction ban. It is that I not mention the names of Captain Occam and his partner anywhere on wikipedia ever again. The last time I mentioned Captain Occam at any length was in the discussion at ANI which in the end led to his site ban (although that was at no stage ever on the cards in the discussion). Is it because of this that Ferahgo the Assassin and Captain Occam have now thrown in the "Echigo mole / A.K.Nole" kitchen sink? AGK kindly protected the WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Echigo mole because of abusive and trolling edits. Ferhago the Assassin has objected to me removing the personal attacks by the IP socks of Echigo mole / A.K.Nole on her talk page. That request was unreasonable and is a further indication of the bad faith approach she has adopted as a proxy for another banned user, Captain Occam.


 * Personal attack by Vecrumba Presumably an ArbCom clerk can remove this.


 * Personal attack by Xxanthippe Having been approached by Ferahgo the Assassin/Captain Occam, Xxanthippe has now referred back to her opening statement of WP:ARBR&I from June 2010. That case was resolved and closed in August 2010. Perhaps it did not go the way Xxanthippe suggested, but that is no reason for her to use a public noticrboard to make unjustified personal attacks on me. Mathsci (talk) 03:15, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Continued disruption by proxy


 * Please see Mathsci (talk) 20:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

has been confirmed by checkuser as a sockpuppet account of who has already tried to post on this page as an IP. 


 * The edit summary where I removed a trolling edit by an ipsock of Mikemikev was oversighted at my request through an OTRS ticket and separate emails sent to oversighters, including at least two arbitrators. The IP account was blocked for one month. Captain Occam, already by then in his WP:BATTLEFIELD period, had seen the edit summary before it was removed and made these postings on User talk:Fred Bauder. He sent emails about this to Fred Bauder and Charles Matthews. He also contacted  about this, having noted a COIN issue in which I had commented. From my point of view, the only possible explanation for this irrelevant and closed issue being raised now is that Ferahgo the Assassin has discussed this with Captain Occam and that he is directing her to edit on his behalf during his site-ban. WP:SHARE does not permit editors to evade site-bans in this blatant way and normally there should be consequences for the proxy. Both Captain Occam and Ferahgo the Assassin appear to misrepresent almost everything that any administrator or arbitrator has told them. Ferahgo was told by Roger Davies to email him about WP:SHARE. No response. Jonathan Clemens told her to chill out. Her response was combative.  She haggled  with EdJohnston about the notification to Trevlyan006L85A1. Mathsci (talk) 09:00, 23 January 2012 (UTC)


 * If Ferahgo the Assassin / Captain Occam cannot stop their WP:BATTLEFIELD campaign of continually pestering arbitrators, could they please be instructed to stop? Ferahgo seems to be doing very little else on wikipedia except for militating against me on behalf of her site-banned partner. Mathsci (talk) 04:09, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Ferahgo has had a spurt of activity since I wrote this, but that content has been templated as a WP:COPYVIO after a routine run of User:CorenSearchBot Mathsci (talk) 20:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The amendment page is not a general complaints page for topic-banned editors or proxies to air their grudges. Boothello, a single-purpose account, was recently topic-banned indefinitely at WP:AE. Several editors commented there and I commented about one logged-off edit he had made recently. If he wanted to appeal his ban, he could have done so at the time, but he did not. Nobody has even mentioned him here, so why is he commenting? Do the terms of his topic ban allow him to comment here? Why is he mentioning WP:ARBR&I if it preceded his time as an editor on wikipedia? That case is closed and has no relevance now. The issues concerning proliferating proxies or suspected proxies are new since the case closed. Professor marginalia has given a description of the effect that has had on active editors. Mathsci (talk) 00:44, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Ferahgo the Assassin is pulling out all the stops now with a notification on User talk:Yfever, but in what way is he related to Captain Occam or Ferahgo herself? (I requested checkuser to see whether he was another sock of Mimikemikev, just like the problematic editor = .) Perhaps Ferahgo could explain why she has not left a similar message on  User talk:TrevelyanL85A2. Mathsci (talk) 14:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Further response prior to posting of motion

This report was made two months ago after TrevelyanL85A2 resumed editing in the area of Ferahgo-the-Assassin's topic ban. I have taken this opportunity to rewrite my response to her report. TrevelyanL85A2 has in the meantime received a logged notification of arbcom sanctions. In the two months this request to modify non-existing sanctions on me has been placed here, four sockpuppets of Echigo mole and one ipsock have been blocked for posting here. (That IP range was also used to submit evidence during the original arbcom case.) The topic area has been plagued by other sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry issues since the case closed. The nature of the subject matter (which I no longer edit) together with accompanying lengthy discussions on external websites (sometimes with advice on how to edit on wikipedia) no doubt is partially resposible for some of the problematic single-purpose accounts which often disappear as quickly as they appear (the editing of prior to his block is a typical example, but there are more recent ones). As far as Captain Occam is concerned, I was one of many editors commenting, prior to his block, in an ANI thread concerning Orangemarlin. No issues concerning WP:ARBR&I were involved there.

I have not directly interacted with Ferahgo-the-Assassin on wikipedia, except for one occasion mentioned below. I am aware, as former arbitrator Shell Kinney agreed and has written on-wiki, that friends of Ferahgo-the-Assassin have been editing wikipedia on behalf of herself and her boyfriend to circumvent their topic bans. After retiring from wikipedia, Shell wrote privately to me, and gave me permission to repeat, "I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why this group of folks haven't been politely asked to take their "group" and write about their opinions elsewhere. They certainly have shown time and time again they have no interest in respecting Wikipedia's rules and are here to push an agenda." Google leaves very little doubt when it comes to the pseudonym Trevlyan006L85A1 that appears on the userpage of TrevelyanL85A2. I don't think that off-wiki attack/joke pages like this (a historic copy) are fine. In that off-wiki posting involving false accounts for myself and Muntuwandi on FurAffinity, as Ferhago later confirmed, there was a posting from Muntuwandi saying: "Hi there Mathsci. Last night was a lot of fun. We should have fursuit parties more often! Next time, though, please take a shower before I suck your dick. I know you like cheese, but come on." She added her own comments there, "Hahaha, you are SUCH a butthole. Nice faves btw." A similar kind of attack page was added on my talk page here by, a sockpuppet of Mikemikev. It was later speedily deleted, with Maggie Denis's help, by Philippe Beaudette on Commons. In addition Mikemikev has posted on Stormfront,[ http://www.stormfront.org /forum/t800062/] inviting readers there to edit wikipedia. (A more recent posting on Stormfront of a similar kind was made by him in January.) Details of some of these incidents were already communicated to arbitrators when they were discovered (the FurAffinity posts were discovered by accident), This kind of posting on the web, linked to wikipedia, is part of the whole problem here. Vigilance seems to be the only solution. Ferhago-the-Assassin and Captain Occam have a history of trying to circumvent topic bans; in this case the framing of the request appears to be a method of circumventing Captain Occam's site-ban. Certainly if Ferahgo-the-Assassin considers herself a separate entity, she should not have made a request as a proxy on his behalf.

The same issues apply to the letter which Captain Occam had published in the Economist under his real name that he discussed extensively on User talk:Jimbo Wales. There was a segment that he described there that was never published: as he explained on-wiki, it accused me of driving a named editor (Varoon Arya) from wikipedia, Again this just echos the statements of Shell Kinney. Captain Occam wrote the letter of his own accord and chose to discuss it and the excised content on one of the more public places on wikipedia. I should point out to arbitrators that I edit in quite different areas, all of which fall within the mainstream arts and sciences. I do not have friends editing on my behalf. I have not posted on unrelated external websites concerning wikipedia, or created joke accounts or attack pages. Ferahgo and Captain Occam would not have any problems if they had stayed away from this topic area and had not tried to influence it by using the loophole offered by meatpuppetry. Since this request was made, Mikemikev has edited using 4 ipsocks and one sockpuppet account. Mathsci (talk) 01:19, 26 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Amalthea just blocked yet another ipsock of Echigo mole for leaving trolling edits on User talk:Ferahgo the Assassin connected with this page and me. Two other ipsocks of Echigo mole later made trolling edits to Amalthea's talk page. Both Captain Occam/Ferahgo the Assassin have given or linked to their real life identities on WP as well as their pseudonyms on DeviantArt. There is no evidence that privacy has ever been a concern with either of them, since Ferahgo put her signature on an uploaded image that is on sale elsewhere and Captain Occam linked very publicly to his real life name on User talk:Jimbo Wales. AGK has recently suggested that the disruptive edits of Echigo mole are somehow my fault. Is that what he is now suggesting is true more generally? Was TrevelyanLA5A2 wrongly cautioned by WGFinley and have multiple editors that have independently confirmed the identification of TrevelyanL85A2 made a terrible mistake? Again this is a user who consciously chose to write his real life name on his user page. Mathsci (talk) 20:04, 26 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Toolserver:

After August 2010, apart from Orson Scott Card and its talk page, I see no srticles Ferahgo the Assassin and I edit in common. (I do edit quite a lot of articles and have created quite a few.) At one point I told Ferahgo the Assasin of an online source for a Danish manuscript with bird illustrations. Otherwise I think our edits have intersected hardly at all. (It could be that the toolserver software is not working properly and I have missed a whole series of edits. Can PhilKnight or Jclemens please check that for me?) The meatpuppetry is a matter of record and that information was passed on by Shell Kinney to all members of arbcom. The motion below might conceivably send out a general message that if you are topic banned, you should do all your editing through geographically dispersed cyberfriends, even if they might be identifiable. Having them act as a tag team is also fine. Using the same logic, it would seem best now to ignore WP:SHARE and allow Ferahgo to edit freely with her friends; that way Captain Occam can give her a helping hand if she needs it and Ferahgo's enjoyment of wikipedia will not be upset.

Although the proposed motion implies that I have previously interacted with Ferahgo the Assassin on wikipedia many times this does not seem to be the case. Although I cannot check this with the toolserver, I have probably only mentioned her name once or twice outside an arbitration page or arbitrator's talk page. Arbcom were informed in May 2011 about the off-wiki attack/joke page. If anything the harassment has been indirectly from Ferahgo the Assassin. This report was made on User talk:Risker. In that case I reponded by email to Risker and wrote this on her talk page. Apart from comments on arbcom enforcement/amendment pages in response to Captain Occam's multiple postings, now being continued by Ferahgo, I do not believe that I have mentioned her name except in this diff on User talk:TrevelyanL85A2. Although no arbitrator has stated this explicitly on-wiki, Roger Davies in private in September 2011 expressed his concern that the identification of TrevelyanL85A2 might involve off-wiki investigations ("sleuthing") which could be characterized as wikihounding/stalking. However, in the case of TrevelyanL85A2, as others have noted on this page and as arbitrators have known for a long time through Shell Kinney, no sleuthing is involved in establishing that Ferahgo and TrevelyanL85A2 are connected in real life. As Shell Kinney disclosed on-wiki, she had herself contacted Captain Occam directly by email to ask him to clarify matters in December 2010. Perhaps an arbitrator should now similarly seek private clarification from Ferahgo the Assassin, irrespective of me and the proposal I make below. Most recently Ferahgo the Assassin has lobbyied three arbitrators to ensure that the motion below applies to Captain Occam. She has received a warning from Roger Davies about this. The inescapable conclusion is that the request, like her lobbying, was continuing proxy editing for a site-banned user. She has no previous history of lobbying in this way, whereas Captain Occam does. Some sense of proportion has been lost here. (My last 500 content edits, which go back to 28 January 2012 ; Ferahgo's, which go back to 16 March 2011 ; my last 100 edits to talk pages, no lobbying, mostly problems created by ipsocks and socks of Echigo mole ; Ferahgo's.)

As on a previous occasion I am ready to offer by mutual consent that I will make no further edits at all to wikipedia in the future on any page at all. (I have given separate private explanations to two arbitrators.) That would solve all these problems in a very neat and tidy way. That could happen right away and avoid any delays caused by late voting. Regarding articles left incomplete, I nominate Jclemens to finish Oscillator semigroup and Grunsky matrix, AGK to complete Fatimid art and Edmund de Unger (I can send him the 2 source books by mail) and PhilKnight Orgelbüchlein (I've already added the 46 midi files). Mathsci (talk) 22:10, 26 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Concerning the last item, real life has intervened in the last two hours or so. At St-Jean-de-Malte, I have been playing BWV 622 and the sinfonias BWV 21/i and BWV 106/i. Now I have been asked to perform one of them in real life for the solemn purpose for which they are normally used. These things happen (:Mathsci (talk) 13:51, 27 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Could Ferahgo the Assassin please answer Newyorkbrad's question in a short sentence or two? Ferahgo and Occam are not involved in a New Religious Movement or even a cult: why even try to frame things in those terms? What COI? Ferahgo has requested an amendment that concerns me alone. She is asking—or more accurately lobbying aggressively—for an interaction ban where there has been no interaction to speak of. I have at no stage suggested that Ferahgo the Assassin be blocked or banned, yet she has repeatedly claimed this.  At the moment, she and her site-banned boyfriend have taken one diff (a warning) as a pretext for disrupting wikipedia for two months. Is there any more to see than that?  Mathsci (talk) 19:20, 27 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Note that Miradre, commenting below with their new account, was topic banned under discretionary sanctions for 3 months with a one month block for violating the ban. At an earlier stage, just before taking a wikibreak, Miradre was on the verge of receiving a community ban. Whether or not Miradre has modified their problematic editing in this area is up to other editors to decide. Mathsci (talk) 02:51, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Vecrumba's recent comments seem to apply to some imaginary user that he has dreamed up, since, as he must be well aware, there has been no interaction between us outside the actual arbcom case WP:ARBR&I. He has provided no diffs to justify his unsubstantiated personal attack. In these circumstances I would imagine his hyperbolic rant—the only way to describe what he has produced here—will be ignored by arbitrators. (Note: Vecrumba's edits are almost exclusively concerned with articles on Eastern Europe, where there is a lot of friction and where I have never edited. It is possible that Vecrumba has mistaken me for someone else with a similar username. Please could he double check?) Note also. Mathsci (talk) 21:50, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment As far as Mikemikev is concerned, in the last few hours he has disrupted wikipedia through three IPs from Imperial College London. I identified them immediately (nobody else had made the link) and explained to Favonian who this was, because he was unaware. I opened an SPI and added a comment to ANI, which resulted in a fourth being blocked by Dougweller. The underlying problem with this particular area has nothing whatsoever to do with me. Newyorkbrad probably put his finger on it when he referred to content with "disturbing overtones." This posting of Mikemikev on an external website in a related discussion gives a hint as to what that might be. (He has written comparable things on wikipedia which has been deleted.) Otherwise, in the absence of any diffs about my conduct and only the obsessive malaise of a site-banned editor expressed through a proxy, I am not keen to be dragged in for a further one month, two months or three months of further procedures precipitated by proxy editing.

I would rather arbcom communicated privately with Ferahgo the Assassin to clarify matters with her.

Shortly before the previous Arbcom case closed, Shell Kinney wrote on the PD talk page: "Ferahgo, given your clear relationship with Captain Occam, I would strongly suggest that you don't suddenly develop an interest in race and intelligence articles. Captain Occam, the notes you've been posting to various talk pages encouraging editors to take up your cause on these articles is really skirting the line; you need to drop the topic entirely rather than try to continue influencing it from behind a topic ban." It's hard to say how much has changed. There has been meatpuppetry, as Shell Kinney has confirmed publicly on-wiki; and there has been sockpuppetry. I have nothing to do with either the sockpuppetry, the meatpuppetry or any of the other strange editing that has not stopped since the case closed and is even continuing now, as others commenting here have described. Mathsci (talk) 13:50, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to a properly framed analysis, provided it also covers meatpuppetry (taking full account of Shell Kinney's statements as arbitrator) and provided it does not interfere with or destabilize my own content editing. The area that arbcom has to examine is a somewhat murky corner of wikipedia where I no longer edit. Any discussion on wikipedia should include the active participation of, whom other editors have identified as a proxy of Ferahgo the Assassin and who is evidently heavily involved here. He can presumably give some kind of account of his own editing history. That editing history in these circumstances would normally be described by WP:DUCK (with a very high volume, ear-numbing megaphone). Presumably SightWatcher, Woodsrock and Shell Kinney should also be added as named parties. Mathsci (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ferhago now seems to be lobbying arbitrators in private. My own personal wikistalker Echigo mole/A.K.Nole has intervened with various sockpuppets on this page (6 or 7 times so far, I've lost count by now).  The contributions here of Ferahgo the Assassin, campaigning now in her third month as a proxy for a site-banned user, do not seem to be very much different. Mathsci (talk) 23:30, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * As far as I am aware my main (indirect) interaction with Ferhago has been almost solely on this page. I have responded here, as requested, but otherwise my involvement here has been passive. Apart from pointing out the problem of the indistinguishability of edits by Ferahgo and Occam right at the outset, I have  not suggested any action concerning either of them. I have documented some of the more bizarre things that have happened since August 2010, but with no view to changing events that have already passed. Apart from Ferahgo, her boyfriend and their friends, no editors in good standing have made any complaints about my conduct. I don't operate meatpuppets or sockpuppets. I don't have a link on my user page to any off-wiki site where I post opinions about race and intelligence. I do keep a lookout for strange editing patterns, irrespective of content. And yes like anybody else I can type TrevelyanL85A2 into google. Mathsci (talk) 01:03, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have no wish to become involved in a case that includes a disruptive site-banned user as a party. Please block me indefinitely now and make things easier for yourself. Mathsci (talk) 02:25, 8 March 2012 (UTC)