Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment/Archive 48

Request to amend prior case: Franco-Mongol alliance (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  Per Honor et Gloria ✍  at 04:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Case affected : Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance, Requests for arbitration/PHG


 * Clauses to which an amendment is requested
 * 1) Motion 1 "PHG's topic ban is renewed"


 * List of users affected by or involved in this amendment
 * (initiator)


 * Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request
 * Angusmclellan
 * Srnec
 * Elonka

Amendment 1

 * 
 * Lifting of editorial restrictions

Statement by Per Honor et Gloria

 * Continued contributions
 * Since February 2008, when my editorial restrictions started (on the Mongols and the Indo-Greeks...) I have been contributing as many as 800 new articles on a variety of subjects (see Created articles), through about 20,000 additional edits, for a total of 50,000 edits to date, without major issues. I have received 6 Barnstars and Awards in the meantime (see here). I have also completed about 100 DYKs in the same period (see User talk:Per Honor et Gloria for a sampling).


 * Existence of a Franco-Mongol alliance
 * Since all started in 2007 with a dispute about the way the Franco-Mongol alliance is described in the historical literature, I have reviewed about 70 authors, and found that many authors, probably most, acutally do write about the actual occurence of an alliance, which was based on written epistolary agreements, with military cooperation, lasting years at a time, although authors generally differ about its precise nature and timing. I found however that it is inexact to describe it generally as "only attempts at an alliance". For a precise analysis of the sources wih online references, see Historians on the Franco-Mongol alliance.


 * I believe a balanced presentation of the variety of views on the subject would be best. Clearly, it cannot be said that there was a full-scale, overarching alliance with a major, continuous military commitments. It was much more however than just "failed attempts at an alliance". What occured was something in between, a series of epistolary and diplomatic agreements resulting in a fleeting Franco-Mongol alliance, leading to attempts at large military combinations, but ending with rather small scale, ineffective, military operations. I would have no issue with the usage of qualifiers such as "A fleeting Franco-Mongol alliance", as often used in the literature, and am open to discussions about how to qualify it. Overall, I wish to be cleared of the accusations that I would have made up the existence of an alliance between the Franks and the Mongols: "alliance" is indeed the way it is described by most historians, the question is more the degree and the limited results of this alliance (Historians on the Franco-Mongol alliance).


 * Mongol occupation of Jerusalem
 * A major point of contention was also whether the Mongols occupied or not Jerusalem in 1299-1300. It was claimed that this did not happen, that I had made it up, that it was a hoax etc... (see Articles for deletion/Mongol conquests and Jerusalem: I was copiously attacked for describing this event!!). I again researched the sources, and it is clear that this event indeed happened and that the historical concensus confirms it. See sandbox article with online sources for the details: Mongol occupation of Jerusalem. In the meantime, an independent contributor of high standing User:Srnec has also researched the subject, and explained that basically all historians agree that Jerusalem was occupied by the Mongols in 1299-1300, explaining that "the modern, reliable sources say unequivocally that the Mongols were in Jerusalem": see Mongol conquest of Jerusalem. To quote Srnec's own words, I am requesting that we stop "inventing a dispute where there isn't one" . For my sake, and for the sake of historical truth on Wikipedia, I wish to be cleared of the accusations that I would have made up the story of the Mongols occupying Jerusalem in 1299-1300.


 * Sources
 * Since it was claimed I misrepresented sources to describe the above subjects, I made a detailed analysis and response to a quite faulty and partial "Report on the use of sources" that was apparently used as a basis for my restrictions: see Response to report on the use of sources. I believe that my usage of sources, although it may not be perfect, is generally correct. It is always my intention at least to be as exact as possible.

Hopefully things are being clarified with time. I am again bringing up this point because I believe it is a disservice to Wikipedia and to history fans in general to hide or dismiss these historical events, and attack those who describe them. I am requesting that my reputation be cleared, and that my normal editorial status be returned. Per Honor et Gloria ✍  04:01, 2 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Responses
 * Questions are being raised regarding my "acknowledgement" of "past behavioural issues". The latest case in date (Requests for arbitration/PHG) invoked the two following issues with my editing: "Prior damage in topics related to Mongol alliances with European nations" and "Continued likelihood of POV-pushing".
 * 1) I do not believe documenting Mongol operations in the Levant between 1260-1303 to be "damage in topics related to Mongol alliances with European nations". I may certainly have been over-enthusiastic on the subject as I researched it for Wikipedia (I created the Franco-Mongol alliance article and most of its content...), and may for sure have over-mentioned it in some peripheral articles (for example one or several paragraphs, where a sentence might have been enough). It was always done with good intentions, but I understand it may be viewed as giving too much weight to these events, depending on the context. That's a pitfall I am clearly willing to avoid in future contributions.
 * 2) I do not believe that writing about these events and describing the various views of historians on the subject of the Franco-Mongol alliance to be "POV-pushing". The variety of views is evident when looking at the sources (Historians on the Franco-Mongol alliance). On the contrary, I believe it is very POV to limit the interpretion of these events to simply "attempts at an alliance" as Elonka has been doing. I am only asking that all major views be given their fair share of representation, and that the description of these events be balanced. It is also downright false to claim that the Mongols did not occupy Jerusalem (Articles for deletion/Mongol conquests and Jerusalem) when the vast majority of historians declare that they did (Mongol occupation of Jerusalem). I believe it is our responsibility to make sure historical facts are properly represented on Wikipedia. I am willing to do so in collaboration with others, as I gladly do in my other contributions on Wikipedia. <Font color="#FF0000">Per </Font><Font color="#FF8000">Honor </Font><Font color="Orange">et </Font><Font color="#FFC000">Gloria</Font> ✍  14:14, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Response to Elonka: Looking up on Google for references to the "Mongol occupation of Jerusalem" might not be the best solution... Scholarly references can rather be found on Google Books. See Mongol+occupation+of+Jerusalem or Mongol+Jerusalem+1299: it is indeed a subject of scholarly inquiry, certainly not a "non-topic" as you claim. For more references see Occupation of Jerusalem in 1299-1300. May I remind that User:Srnec has also researched the subject extensively and disputed your version of the events, as he determined that "the modern, reliable sources say unequivocally that the Mongols were in Jerusalem": see Mongol conquest of Jerusalem. Noted historian, and specialist of the matter, Reuven Amitai concludes the subject in 2007: "The Mongol forces rode as far as Gaza, looting and killing as they went, and they entered several towns, including Jerusalem" . "Finally, it is quite clear that the Mongols did enter, and terrorize, Jerusalem" . Let's just be truthful to what historians say, please. <Font color="#FF0000">Per </Font><Font color="#FF8000">Honor </Font><Font color="Orange">et </Font><Font color="#FFC000">Gloria</Font> ✍  00:37, 9 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Clarification. I asked Arbitrator Coren for clarification about what he meant "the problem is" that I would be "unwilling or unable to understand", as it was indeed quite unclear and cryptic to me ? He answered that the problem was that I "fail to accept consensus", and that on Wikipedia editorial consensus has to be followed, "even if you are correct" . Well, thank you, this is much clearer. But I must say I am OK to follow the rule of editorial consensus, even if it is not always a garantee of "truth". But if I remember well, "consensus is not immutable": it is also perfectly accepted on Wikipedia that Consensus can change. This means, I think, that I can, from time to time, bring new evidence to the subject to check if the consensus is still the same or not. Regarding the Mongol occupation of Jerusalem etc..., the situation is much clearer and much more documented than it was 3 years ago, and I think it would be worthwhile to consider the matter anew between editors interested by the subject. If it can help, I can formally promiss I will follow editorial consensus. If I don't, it would be easy to restrict my editing again. Best regards. <Font color="#FF0000">Per </Font><Font color="#FF8000">Honor </Font><Font color="Orange">et </Font><Font color="#FFC000">Gloria</Font> ✍  22:01, 12 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Motion If such a motion is to move forward, I would like to ask for a narrowing of restrictions to simply the relations between the Mongols and the Crusaders. I do a lot of work on the Middle-Ages, the Renaissance and Asian subjects (literally 100s of articles ), and often the simple appearance of the word "Crusade" or "Mongol" in an article blocks me from contributing to it (like... History of Japan, History of China etc...). I feel it would be legitimate to adjust the restrictions to precisely "articles related to interraction between the Crusaders and the Mongols", which is really the crux of the matter we've been discussing. Thank you <Font color="#FF0000">Per </Font><Font color="#FF8000">Honor </Font><Font color="Orange">et </Font><Font color="#FFC000">Gloria</Font> ✍  03:20, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Georgewilliamherbert
PHG - you are addressing issues of historical research and completely bypassing findings regarding your behavior, which is what actually led to the topic ban being renewed six months ago.

What do you believe is different regarding your behavior and attitude compared to six months ago? Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 04:23, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Shell Kinney
This seems to be the perennial request and looks no different than the last time it is declined. Rather than provide evidence that he recognized the problems and has moved on, PHG once again tries to justify his behavior because he's "right". Same silly content claims aside, he doesn't seem to understand that it's not about content, it's about behavior. Sadly, until he's able to understand the issue, I won't be able to support lifting the restrictions. Shell  babelfish 15:58, 6 October 2010 (UTC)
 * PHG's responses were somewhat as expected; no understanding of the actual problems here and minimalization of serious issues as "overzealousness". Elonka makes a good point, rather than have to reinstate the restrictions when they run out again shortly, perhaps they should be made indefinite so that we don't have to keep revisiting the same dispute and they can of course be lifted if PHG demonstrates an understanding of the problems. Shell   babelfish 17:17, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

@Groomtech: It's important to read the case and to understand the context here; the major problem is the "sources" PHG provides don't support his conclusion and he has repeatedly misrepresented those sources even to the point of claiming the exact opposite of what a source really says. Despite many editors pointing out these problems, to date he continues to misrepresent those same sources and mislead other editors, like yourself, who are unfamiliar with the source material. This is the failure to respect consensus that everyone is referring to; it's not about the article content, it's about that exact list of sources and the way he understands them. Shell  babelfish 08:26, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Elonka
I have seen nothing from (PHG) to indicate that he understands the reason for his topic ban. Indeed, he appears to be continuing to collect grossly biased information in his userspace (See his sandbox article "Mongol occupation of Jerusalem" which cherrypicks a few footnotes here and there to rewrite history that in no way adapts to mainstream historical consensus). So it is obvious that if his ban were to be lifted, he would immediately resume his previous practice of creating biased WP:COATRACK articles pushing his pet POVs in the Mongol topic area. I strongly encourage the Arbitration Committee to not only deny PHG's request for amendment, but even to extend the ban indefinitely. Right now his ban is set to simply expire at the end of one year's time, meaning in March 2011. Considering that the problems with PHG's editing have been continuing since 2007 (see Requests for arbitration/Franco-Mongol alliance), I do not believe that it is reasonable to assume that by March of next year, PHG's editing will have magically improved. Better, I think, would be for ArbCom to authorize an indefinite ban, that can only be lifted once PHG demonstrates that he understands the community's prior concerns and is willing to modify his behavior in the future. Ideally this could be done in concert with a mentor, though I am unclear if PHG even still has a mentor (his last one was User:Angusmclellan). At the very least though, I would say that a request to have PHG's ban lifted should come from some other editor than PHG himself. --Elonka 16:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Concerning PHG's sandbox article "Mongol occupation of Jerusalem", I feel that this could be considered a violation of his topic ban. As an FYI to those who are unfamiliar with the subject matter, the fact that the page is POV is pretty clearly proven by simply going to Google and searching on the concept of "Mongol occupation of Jerusalem". It's a non-topic, and, of additional concern, the few links that are there are mostly traceable back to PHG's userspace. We as Wikipedians know that a userpage is not in main article space, but to those outside of the project, seeing the "wikipedia.org" domain is often all they recognize.  Or in other words, the draft page should be deleted, and PHG should be instructed not to use his userspace as a way to get around his topic ban and continue to push his pet theories. --Elonka 14:37, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Jehochman
I requested the original case. When an editor cites for the sake of historical truth as a reason for doing something, there is a strong possibility of tendentious editing. If the Mongols were in Jerusalem, somebody else will discover this fact and add it to our articles in due course. There is no need for PHG to make that particular edit. Please leave the topic ban in place. Jehochman Talk 17:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I do not believe User:Groomtech's assertions of objectivity. That account is somehow related to User:The Wiki House, User:A.K.Nole, and at least one other account.  For the cryptographically challenged, A.K.Nole is "Elonka" backwards. Something is amiss. Jehochman Talk 13:35, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your explanations, Groomtech. I am going to blank User:The Wiki House and put up a  template.  That should help resolve any future concerns, Groomtech.  The fact that you seem to agree with Shell's careful analysis is good sign.  I don't think we ever got an explanation to resolve the concerns about the username of User:A.K.Nole.  Is that just a weird coincidence?  Jehochman Talk 17:43, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Groomtech
I have never been involved in this case, so thought it might be interesting to give an outsider's and a newcomer's view. It seems to me that PHG has a point of view about a certain historical event and can bring forward sources to support it. Presumably there is another POV and sources to support that, and this is perfectly normal for Wikipedia. Since PHG has agreed to abide by consensus, there seems no reason not to allow him to demonstrate that he is willing and able to do so. Confident predictions that he will be certain not to seem unduly pessimistic and there is no obvious foundation for them. Groomtech (talk) 06:45, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Shell Kinney has explained the matter clearly and I withdraw my comment. Jehochman should do the same.  Groomtech (talk) 06:22, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Amendment 2

 * Link to principle, finding of fact, or remedy to which this amendment is requested
 * Details of desired modification

Statement by your username (2)
{Statement by editor filing request for amendment. Contained herein should be an explanation and evidence detailing why the amendment is necessary.}

Statement by other editor (2)
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Further discussion

 * Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Clerk notes

 * This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * Waiting for any further statements, but I am not currently inclined to lift and or/loosen the sanctions. SirFozzie (talk) 11:27, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm willing to entertain a motion to make the sanctions indefinite, if my fellow Arbs have no issues with it. SirFozzie (talk) 17:30, 8 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I see no reason, a priori, to believe that the behavioral problems that have let to the ban being renewed have been addressed. PHG, do you have something to say on that matter (as opposed to the content issues)?  &mdash; Coren (talk) 20:49, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Given that PHG is unwilling or unable to understand what the problem even is, I see little that can be done except extend the restriction indefinitely to prevent the issue from resurfacing repeatedly to the detriment of all (including PHG's). &mdash; Coren (talk) 02:25, 11 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Decline Per Coren. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 15:54, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Decline per the above. Carcharoth (talk) 05:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Motion for Amendment
The existing topic ban imposed in the PHG arbitration on is extended indefinitely. Accordingly, this user is prohibited from editing articles relating to the Mongol Empire, the Crusades, intersections between Crusader states and the Mongol Empire, all broadly defined. He is permitted to make suggestions on talk pages, provided that he interacts with other editors in a civil fashion. Per Honor et Gloria may appeal this sanction no more than once every six months, starting six months from the passing of this motion.
 * As there are 11 active arbitrators, 1 of whom is recused, the majority to pass is 6.

Support
 * Feel free to edit the motion, I just decided to get the ball rolling. ((removed Hellenistic India per the parties request.)) SirFozzie (talk) 16:57, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Risker (talk) 17:39, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * With minor copy edit   Roger  talk 19:25, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * (A few more minor copyedits.) I regret that this extension is necessary, but it does appear to be so. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:43, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Per Newyorkbrad. Carcharoth (talk) 22:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * &mdash; Coren (talk) 13:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose

Recuse

Request for clarification: Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  Ludwigs 2  at 21:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Directly involved Others are involved in the conversation and will be notified, but I don't want to commit anyone outside the direct discussion. (General notifications at the two below-noted discussions of this issue -, .)
 * (initiator)
 * (notified)

Statement by Ludwigs2
Clarification is needed on the use of skeptical sources in general, and the use of Stephen Barrett and QuackWatch as sources in particular. The current dispute centers around assertions of 'expertise' in skepticism. The pseudoscience decision does consider expert editors, but does not deal with similar assertions of expertise by editors about sources.

See the discussions at:
 * Fringe_theories/Noticeboard
 * Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard

Barrett in specific
In the specific case, ScienceApologist (and others) argue that Barrett can be used to critique the work of a minor historic scientist Weston Price as pseudoscience, despite the facts that: The argument being used is that Barrett is considered an expert in the "field of quackbusting" ( assumedly by virtue of running QuackWatch), and this is defended by reference to the wording of Self-published sources, through the assertion that the following phrase:"Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." implies that Barrett is an expert because he has been published in reliable third-party publications.
 * Price's work would not have been considered pseudoscience at the time he was a publishing scientist.
 * Barrett's critique is actually aimed at the Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization ostensibly formed around Price's (in current times) discarded theories, but which Price was never to my knowledge directly associated with.
 * Barrett himself has no special training in the philosophy of science or the history of science, but is primarily notable for running the website QuackWatch.

The obvious problems with this arguments (from my perspective) are: Barrett is certainly notable (though his notability is largely due to self-promotion and self-publication through his website), and certainly reliable as a noteworthy proponent of the skeptical point of view, but (IMO) should not be defended as an authoritative expert in a non-existent field for which he has no specific training.
 * 1) There is no scholarly or academic 'field' of 'quackbusting'
 * 2) There are no objective criteria for determining expertise in quackbusting, even if such a field could be argued to exist.
 * 3) Publication is reliable sources does not automatically confer the status of 'expert'
 * 4) There is no reason to assume that Barrett (a retired psychologist) has any particular training or skills that qualify him as an expert at scientific practice or methodology, aside from having once been a practicing scientist.

Skeptical sources more generally
This type of problem occurs to a greater or lesser degree across a broad number of articles. A variety of skeptical sources - including individuals such as Barrett and collected materials or journals such as The Skeptic's Dictionary or the Skeptical Inquirer - are used as though they were authoritative experts on all fringe topics. I'd like to propose that the following clarifications be made to address this problem: In general, this would mean that editors who use skeptical sources would have a raised bar with respect to clear attribution, specific quoting and verification of claims, neutral and balanced language, and in other ways be obliged to stick more closely to proper encyclopedic methods and style. This should result in a general improvement of the quality of fringe articles across the project. -- Ludwigs 2 21:54, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Skeptical sources can be defined as follows:
 * 2) * They are sources which advocate against pseudoscience, fringe theories, alternate theories or other viewpoints that they considered unscientific.
 * 3) ** Different sources may use any of several definitions of the term 'scientific'.
 * 4) * They are comprised of people, usually with scientific backgrounds, working as generalists rather than working in a particular field for which they are trained.
 * 5) * They use scientific arguments for refutation and often compile and use scientific research from other sources, but do not generally do research of their own and are not subject to peer review, accreditation, or the other systems that assure accuracy and objectivity in mainstream scientific research.
 * 6) Skeptical sources should not be taken to be scientific experts, but should be treated (depending on context) as:
 * 7) * Equivalent to informed journalistic sources.
 * 8) * As primary sources advocating for a particular viewpoint.

Addendum
Just as a response to ScienceApologist's claim that this is beyond ArbCom's remit... A few points: ArbCom had the remit to deal with sourcing issues in the original ruling, therefore it has the remit (and I would argue the obligation) to clarify its ruling. -- Ludwigs 2 01:05, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This is not a mere content dispute on a single article - Barrett's is mentioned in 120+ mainspace articles, QuackWatch in 220+, and The Skeptic's Dictionary in 181. Almost all of those are examples where these sources are used as supposed experts.
 * The use of these sources is always defended under the ArbCom pseudoscience ruling, citing the need to present mainstream sources as prominent, and then using the specious claims of expertise to argue that a skeptical source represents the mainstream viewpoint.

Statement by ScienceApologist
This seems to me to be a content dispute: mainly beyond arbcom's remit. I include, below, a rationale for why Ludwigs2 is incorrect in specific claims he made above only for completeness as I do not expect arbcom to actually agree to post any clarification on the issue except maybe to clarify that they are not permitted to adjudicate sources (c.f. this amendment to the Barrett v. Rosenthal arbitration case).

WP:SPS gives us a guide as to how to determine whether certain sources can or cannot be used. In particular, primary source documents of experts can be excepted when they are commenting on their area of expertise. Expertise is determined, according to the self-same policy, by publication record and evaluations of the status of the author by external reviewers. In the particular dispute referenced by Ludwigs, I noted that Stephen Barrett could be considered an expert on alternative medicine claims since he has a publication record in the field:, , , and a record of accolades from other experts who have evaluated his work: , [. These are only illustrative examples. A more complete evaluation can be read at his Wikipedia biography.

ScienceApologist (talk) 23:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by BruceGrubb
In this specific case, the claims of Barrett regarding Price can be shown to be incorrect or out of date using reliable sources.
 * 1) Barrett's claims regarding what Price ignored are contradicted by Price's own book (published by Paul B. Hoeber, Inc; Medical Book Department of Harper & Brothers) (see Talk:Weston_Price as well as in a 1923 publication by Price called Dental Infections, Oral and Systemic
 * 2) Barrett's claims regarding focal infection theory are shown to possibly out of date by
 * Saraf (2006) Textbook of Oral Pathology Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers; pg 188
 * Bergenholtz, Gunnar; Preben Hørsted-Bindslev, Claes Reit (2009) Textbook of Endodontology; Wiley page 135-136
 * Henderson, Brian; Michael Curtis, Robert Seymour (2009) Periodontal Medicine and Systems Biology, Wiley; Page 33


 * 1) With the exception of the focal infection none of Berrett's claims regarding Price have a reference.

This for me raises a lot of WP:RS issues regarding the use of Berrett in a biography of a man who died in 1948 when the understanding and state of dentistry and nutrition was much different than it is now. Price's work might have been perfectly good for his time but later research may have showed underlying premises common to his time were flawed or simply wrong. The problem is with no references we can't tell if these claims regarding Price are just Berrett's opinion, were the view of Price's contemporaries, or were the view of later researchers critiquing Price. Coupled with the idea the focal infection statement may be out of date, lack of information as where most of the claims are coming from, and apparent contradiction with Price brings up the issue of "if this is flawed then what else in this article is flawed?" putting WP:RS in the ICU.--BruceGrubb (talk) 23:50, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Addendum by BruceGrubb
I would like to add another reason for ArbCom to reconsider its remit; one editor seems to be using WP:BLP as a Censorship hammer to squelch meaningful challenges to Stephen Barrett's expertise.
 * 1) It has been used to call another editor a drunk
 * 2) It in conjunction with WP:BLP has resulted in apparent WikiBullying (see Ludwigs2, Hans Adler, The Founders Intent, Griswaldo and BruceGrubb)
 * 3) It has been used to claim that Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_1, Talk:Stephen_Barrett/Archive_9, Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive19 are off topic in the BLP noticeboard (an archive of the BLP Noticeboard is not on topic for the BLP Noticeboard? SAY WHAT?!?)

In short because of a lack of the requested clarification we effectively have possible conduct issues going on and will likely see this kins of problem in the future; I seriously doubt ArbCom had this mess in mind when it made its ruling. We really need to have clarification on how sites like can be used and if owner is the author how WP:BLP applies to them in the talk pages.--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:37, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Now that Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents has decided there was a conduct issue (with administrator User:Looie496 saying and I quote "It's a textbook case of IDIDNTHEARTHAT, taken to an extreme.") I must again again ask for ArbCom their position.

If it is still ruled that it was only a content issue then we MUST also say if a statement by a living person is shown vis reliable sources to be grossly inaccurate then it cannot be used per WP:V and people cannot throw up WP:OR to keep inaccurate information in an article. Similarly cannot have WP:CRYBLP being used as a amazing magical censorship hammer.--BruceGrubb (talk) 11:46, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Ronz
This is purely a content dispute. --Ronz (talk) 01:35, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Itsmejudith
It seems to me that we reasonable people on FTN rapidly reached a realistic consensus about Barrett/Quackwatch: a useful source in some circumstances but with limitations that need to be respected. That's true of any source, really. Although SA continues to demur from this, we can discuss such sources case by case like grown-ups. I can't see much that ArbCom can add. I agree with Ludwigs that "Quackbusting" isn't an area of expertise. The UK writers like Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh develop the phenomenon beyond Barrett's starting point. They make a point of referring to recognised experts, so we can use them as starting points and follow the cite trail to excellent sources. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by The Founders Intent
It appears to me from sources in the Price article that Price was quite respected during his time. In fact he occupied a chairmanship position in research with the ADA, is the credit with several major technological breakthrough for his time. Furthermore his research in nutrition among aboriginal tribes in several regions is consider unique and rare due to the fact is could not be reproduced today, simply due to demographic changes. No one has been able to successfully determine that his work is flawed. At the time of his work, two opposing views in dentistry were being debated that of nutrition based the concept that caries were caused by system disease, and due to local infection from bacteria. Caried caused by local infection won the argument, and has guided dentistry for the most part since. Barrett's critique does not account for the context (time) of Price's research, and compares it to modern criteria. -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  PRAISE GOOD WORKS 01:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Bruce, I may have a potential breakthrough/course of action to discuss with you. -- T HE F OUNDERS I NTENT  PRAISE GOOD WORKS 14:01, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Griswaldo
User:Itsmejudith summarizes the situation well from my point of view. It is also unfortunate that it has needlessly escalated to this point. While Quackwatch is probably a good critical source for determining how some contemporary medical practices deviate from the current mainstream scientific consensus, Stephen Barrett is not a reliable source on the history of dentistry, nor is he a reliable source on the cross-cultural history of nutrition (and these facts have been well established in the various discussions of the topic over the last few days). It appears to me that some editors are unwilling to parse the reliability issues of Quackwatch on a case by case basis in line with relevant policies like WP:SPS, and instead choose simply to defend the publication in its entirety at all times. In the end this is a reliability issue which can be settled on the relevant talk pages and noticeboards. I welcome Newyorkbrad and anyone else's input as editors in any of those venues.Griswaldo (talk) 15:33, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * We're not going to rule on what is essentially a content dispute here, I see no conduct issues that need to be looked at. SirFozzie (talk) 01:41, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Per Fozzie.<span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 18:14, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The good news is that I don't see any significant misconduct in the history of this disagreement so far. The bad news is that does leave the matter in the category of "content dispute, ArbCom can't help you." If you want my individual thoughts as an editor, feel free to ask me on my talkpage after this request is closed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:08, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * As everyone's said, this is something that needs to be handled via the usual community discussions. Shell  babelfish 20:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * This is indeed a content dispute, though reading the comments made here may help. While not commenting directly on this specific content dispute, I will say that it should be obvious that any person's work needs to be considered in the context of the times and places in which they lived, worked and published. There are numerous examples of this in the history of science. Ideally, if it exists, find a published and reliable assessment made by a historian of science (or medicine, in this case), rather than relying on those who write mainly on contemporary issues. Care is also needed to avoid Wikipedians engaging in original research and giving their own opinions on what the verdict of history should be here. But please don't mix up historical issues with contemporary ones. Carcharoth (talk) 05:48, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Clearly a content dispute, and I agree with my colleagues here. On an editorial note, however, I do see a rather significant reliance on this particular reference source over a wide range of topics, and editors might want to consider whether the absence of similar information from other sources is or is not significant to individual subjects; if there are indeed other sources (as I suspect there are) then constant use of one reference source may be creating a perception of over-reliance on that source. Risker (talk) 02:01, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Requests_for_arbitration/Climate change (1) (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  TS at 00:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
 * (initiator)
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * Has exercised right to vanish
 * Has closed talk page and announced retirement
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

(All notifications linked above)

Statement by Tony Sidaway
The "Remedy 3" comprehensive topic bans are an important part of the case. As I understand it they are intended to give valuable editors a rest from the topic so that they can find ways of improving their collaborative skills and picking up once again the joy of editing.

But that isn't what's happening. I know the arbitrators are aware of the bickering and "toeing the line" that continues and some of them have opined on this. I won't go into my own abortive attempt to have this dealt with by the community, only to see it provide yet another forum for bickering by topic banned editors. Even this request is a gambit that may backfire, but I think arbcom and the clerks could deal with that.

At this point I think it would be useful to have arbitrators revisit this issue and clarify that behavior like this is unlikely to help Wikipedia and that it will be a consideration in any future appeal. This must sound obvious, but obvious it is not to some of these editors (though I hasten to add that most topic banned editors have not continued to obsess). The Committee has spoken, but apparently not firmly enough for some editors. --TS 00:15, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

This is a request for clarification, not an attempt to relegislate the arbitration. No evidence will be given or is required. Just a clarification. But as there is an ongoing case perhaps it might help to solidify the issue. --TS 13:42, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Roger. I do feel quite strongly that an excess of "process" is what led to the polarization in the probation. That measure too was intended to strengthen the admin's discretion, but was quite quickly tamed into a discussion-heavy process that bred the warfare we still see cropping up even now. --TS 20:23, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't think the enforcing admins are listening. Perhaps a new motion is needed. Wikipedia must make it plain to all that all topic banned editors, every single one, should just back away if the topic of climate change appears. They have nothing to gain from it, and Wikipedia has nothing to gain from it. Other Wikipedians exist. --TS 01:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm pleased to say that the community is finally speaking, and the message seems to be that those who continue to search for loopholes in their topic bans had better find a new hobby or risk quite draconian blocks. --TS 00:28, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

If I created this request for clarification again, knowing what I know now, I would not make any personal notifications, but would ask the clerks to use their discretion in notifying in this delicate situation. I don't think the comments of the topic banned editors have been entirely unhelpful, but in some cases a failure to understand that this was a request for clarification and not for further litigation led to some of them indulging in inappropriate interactions. They are still invested in the disputes that went on on the proposed decision discussion, and it spills out here. --TS 14:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved roux
I don't see why ArbCom needs to clarify anything here. A topicban is a topicban. That means stay away from the topic. If people are pushing the envelope, warn them, once. If they keep pushing the envelope, use the block mechanisms included in the decision. → ROUX   ₪  00:19, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Yopienso
I very much appreciate Tony's work toward creating a good working environment and his impartiality in dealing with William M. Connelley. William, however, persists in behavior he's been instructed to avoid. When Coren made a kind, constructive suggestion that he work on a maths page, William took offense. It seems he honestly doesn't get the point. Since it cannot be made more clear to him, he simply needs to be banned from the pages where he has been contentious in the past and from other related pages even if he has not caused trouble there. Posting comments on his talk page about points he disagrees with, whether or not he intends for watchers to run "fix" them, should be strictly prohibited.

My understanding is that editors who refuse to comply with administrative decisions lose their accounts. It would be much better if William would accept correction and eventually be able to edit in those areas in which he is so knowledgeable and so passionately interested. --Yopienso (talk) 06:02, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * The following was addressed to Count Iblis and was originally posted as threaded discussion. --TS 20:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Before posting my uninvolved statement above, I deleted a comment saying that imo William should be allowed to snark to his heart's content on his own user page, and that while it reveals his attitude, if anyone finds it offensive they can simply stay away. I didn't post it because it disagrees with WP rules. I'm certainly not "against" him or wishing him any ill. His behavior, though, has been disruptive to the larger community.
 * Wrt your statement, "Whether we like it or not, William's notifications on his talk page were necessary," I heartily disagree. First, as insinuated by others, you are confirming he was "editing" from what he and you consider a safe distance, while in actuality he was getting around a ban. More importantly, you are implying Wikipedia, at least in the CC area, cannot function without him. Even if he were a perfect editor, that would not be true. There may well be a temporary void now that so many editors were excluded, but the principle here is that after stress, equilibrium will be restored. WP articles never depend on one editor; that idea is contrary to our whole philosophy. --Yopienso (talk) 20:17, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by involved TheGoodLocust
I'm not sure why TS bothered to inform me of this, but I'm been watching things a little bit and here are my observations.

1) ScienceApologist (who should have been topic banned) put up a message on his talk page basically offering to meat puppet for topic banned users - and he knew full well who would ask him. IRRC William Connolley availed himself of this offer.

2) William Connolley has posted at least two diffs on his talk page to get his talk page watchers to meatpuppet for him. Apparently he didn't like the fact that an editor called climate models "estimates." He then proceeded to strike out the diffs (i.e. "done") when his watchers had done his work for him.

3) William Connolley made an edit to a climate related article. Not a climate change article, but it seems to be a pattern with him to push the limits in order to provoke others.

I recommend that William Connolley's main account be banned so he can use the WMC account that was setup to prevent the watchpage temptation.

Cheers. TheGoodLocust (talk) 00:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by previously involved LessHeard vanU
Is every single editor listed by TS involved in what I will term "envelope pushing"? If not, then it behooves TS (or another editor aware of such instances) to note who is doing so, and provide an example. Those who are not engaged in such practices should be shown good faith, assuming that they have taken ArbCom's comments to heart. Other editors, and here I agree with TS, may need a nudge or stronger from a Clerk. LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:49, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by heavily involved Polargeo 2
Remedy 3 encourages a battleground as did CC probation before it. I have argued right from the start that what is needed is a group of editors from differing views working together and encouraged to work together for their common goals, not banned by people who haven't got enough time to go into the intricacies of the case such as arbcom. Polargeo 2 (talk) 10:23, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The more you force editors to take sides the more this turns into an Israel-Palestine situation. Now you may think this is the case already, but it is not, many editors have respondend positively to one another on many occasions, but distilled through the revenge culture that appears to be facilitated by arbcom this becomes a get your enemies blocked and score goals impasse. It is sad that this is the case but it certainly is and will only be resolved when arbcom stops trying to force punitive resolutions and starts helping to get editors to work together. Polargeo 2 (talk) 10:48, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Cla68
It seems that much, if not all of WMC's entire Internet presence is centered on being an advocate battling to influence the content of Wikipedia's CC articles (also check the comments to that post and WMC's responses to them). It's up to you guys on how to proceed from here, I offer no suggestions. Cla68 (talk) 12:56, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * TenofAllTrades, me and the others you mention were invited here by the filing party, Tony Sidaway. If you feel the need to conduct a trial here, I think you're naming the wrong defendent(s).  You probably should be examining the actions of the editor who started this thread.  I think all of us are willing and able to stay away from discussions of the topic on arbitration pages.  I would suggest that the best way to do that is to completely leave us out of these discussions.  Cla68 (talk) 05:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Carcharoth, I respect your opinion and take your point. I will really do my best to make this the last time I allow Tony Sidaway to bait me into a response. Cla68 (talk) 10:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment by Count Iblis
Whether we like it or not, William's notifications on his talk page were necessary. A day after Scibaby-like edits on a CC page that apparantly isn't checked out by many editors regularly, William put a link on his talk page. AWickert fixed the problem. Some time later a similar problem happened on the same page, and this time it was me who first fixed the problem after seeing William's notification (I didn't have that page on my watchlist). I later saw that the problem had persisted after that and that others were dealing with it. The page was ultimately protected.

Clearly, if William cannot place notifications on his talk page about these sorts of issues (we're not talking about engaging in disputes here), then we also have to make sure all CC pages (not just the most popular ones) are checked out on a regular basis. This would then help William to disengage entirely from the CC area here on Wikipedia.

''This reminds me of the eternal dispute between parents and their children as they grow up. Children want to topic ban their parents from parenting on ever more issues. The reactions to William's postings are in fact exactly of the same nature as that of the typical teenager who is caught doing something naughty his mother. Mother: "What is this! Are you smoking pot!? "Son: "Why do you always have to poke your nose in my private affairs, we had agreed you wouldn't do that!"'' Count Iblis (talk) 15:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Clearly Wikipedia does not function properly right now as far as maintaining all the CC articles is concerned. As you mention, there is a void, but that will probably clear up in one or two weeks from now. It is better to fix the problem constructively by putting CC pages on our watchlists, rather than ignore this and WP:ABF about links posted by William. Count Iblis (talk) 16:42, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Reply to Yopienso

Comment by unindicted co-conspirator Short Brigade Harvester Boris
Section 3.1 of the remedies states that editors topic-banned by the Committee are prohibited "from participating in any Wikipedia process relating to those articles." Are the remarks here by topic-banned users User:Thegoodlocust, User:Cla68 and User:ZuluPapa5 consistent with this prohibition? Or was it arbcom's intent that topic-banned editors may continue lobbying for sanctions against one another just as before? Clarification would be helpful. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:47, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment by MONGO
Since Cla68 seems to think that we can/should be worried about what an editor is advocating off-wiki, then I suggest we also should have been worried about how Wikipedia Review has been used as a forum to arouse, collate, conspire and advocate for the attack on some of our editors on-wiki. I was angered by 9/11 conspiracy theory advocates using off-wiki forums to attack me or to plot on how to elminate the "official conspiracy theory" (meaning the "mainstream view") from our articles, but there was nothing I could do to stop it, nor did I assume that I could. So long as what goes on off-wiki is kept off-wiki and isn't something that would be brought here by a meatpuppet that would need to be oversighted due to various reasons, then what WMC posts elsewhere is surely beyond our control (it is anyhow). With that said, I encourage all topic banned editors to move on to new topics completely...but remind arbcom that it shouldn't be a surprise that there is going to be a lag time from when a decision is made and "defendents" move forward.--MONGO 18:53, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Comment by TenOfAllTrades
The ArbCom appeared to be extremely explicit in defining the scope of the topic bans in this arbitration. Here is the exact wording, from the unanimously-approved Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate change.


 * 3.1) Editors topic-banned by the Committee under this remedy are prohibited (1) from editing articles about Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; (2) from editing biographies of living people associated with Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; and (3) from participating in any Wikipedia process relating to those articles.


 * Passed 7 to 0, 14:10, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The bounds of this remedy are unusually clear. It appears that there are unsatisfied parties who wish to relitigate the arbitration to significantly widen a remedy less than two weeks after the case closed.

It should be noted that if there are editors who feel WMC should be further restricted from commenting – on his own talk page(?)(!) – about climate-change-related issues, then there are legitimate ways to go about it using the existing Arbitration remedies and framework. If WMC's conduct is deemed disruptive and he fails to respond to appropriate warnings, the case remedies permit uninvolved administrators to impose discretionary sanctions. However, those remedies require WMC to be engaged in disruptive or damaging conduct &mdash; a condition that hasn't been met. So far, he has identified and intelligently commented on a couple of sources likely to be of relevance and interest to climate change editors, and he has flagged some suspicious article edits (which led to the identification and blocking of sockpuppets working through Tor nodes).

Shifting gears, one thing that this request (and the associated noticeboard discussions) has highlighted is the value to Wikipeda of imposing a mutual MYOB restriction on both WMC and Lar &mdash; there's nothing good that has ever or will ever come from letting them pick at each other. Once again, that is a remedy that can be imposed under the extant sanctions. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:35, 24 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, I will note that the insertion of ZuluPapa5, Polargeo, Cla68, and Thegoodlocust into this request may be pushing the limits of their respective topic bans. (Cla68 has also seen fit to involve himself in a WP:AE request concerning Marknutley.)  Is this page properly considered a 'Wikipedia process relating to those articles'?  I also observe that most of the participants in this request for clarification – and in all the other little storms that have been ignited elsewhere – seem to be the same faces that were criticised or sanctioned in the CC arbitration (add Stephan Schulz to the other four editors I've identified, and note that Lar was the one who decided to open a can of worms about the decision's scope on the ArbCom Announcements talk page now that he is restricted from taking administrative action in this area).  If we were to subtract all the players who were responsible for the battlefield of the Arbitration, is there actually anything left that needs to be done here?  (That is, is there any ongoing harm to the project that would remain to be addressed?) The only reason, I suspect, that we keep seeing these new 'process' and 'clarification' requests is that these grizzled veterans can't find any other venue in which to keep poking at each other, and they are all restricted from directly seeking or applying sanctions on their own.  TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Collect
Perhaps the committee should consider a motion on the order of "The topic ban extends to the user pages of those named, and to posts concerning Climate Change or articles relating to Climate Change made on any other editor's user pages. Named editors are also reminded that discussing the Arbitration Committee decision regarding Climate Change, or seeking additional editors on the topic, outside Wikipedia may be regarded as violating the topic ban by any uninvolved administrator."  Thus removing the "suggested edit" loophole once and for all, and making clear that posts outside Wikipedia which serve to maintain the topic at the boiling point are sufficiently contrary to the legitimate interests of the project that such acts may be considered in determining further bans on such editors. Collect (talk) 10:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by ZuluPapa5
I've been away (enjoying the refuge) from the topic and other editors, so can't comment on what's happening. However, knowing the battle game players, then coaching and clarifying specific cases of pushing the line might help before a full out site ban. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 18:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * These articles may help guide the methods for dealing with a case of an abusive addict. Behavioral_addiction and Internet_addiction Prayers are about all I can offer, unless this case proceeds.   Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 18:30, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It would be unfair to arrive at a conclusion from this effort that could effect my future appeal,or current Topic Ban, while at the same time keeping me from participating here. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 14:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Short Brigade Harvester Boris are you playing battle games? Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 13:16, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Lar
Some clarification to TenOfAllTrades. To wit: My questions were legit, posed as either/ors, with no prejudgment attached, and were found to be useful by many. Further, WMC and I seem to have reached an accomodation. No other comments on this matter, I'm trying to walk away and stay away, and ToaT isn't helping (review his wording choices and see what you think). ++Lar: t/c 13:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Biophys
I think it was a bad idea to bring all these editors here again, as a group. They should be treated on the individual basis in AE. This should apply to all cases. Please do not re-litigate old cases. Biophys (talk) 13:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * I think it's common sense that in any appeal, we'd consider among other things whether the editor continued to engage in problematic behavior after the case was over. I would think that would go without saying, but since we've been asked, I'll say it. In particular, any continuation of bickering, name-calling, or other behavior of the types criticized in the decision should have stopped a long time ago, and certainly ought to stop now. (I am not opining on, or characterizing, anyone's specific behavior or comment; I hope it does not become necessary for the committee to do so.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:07, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The decision spells out a number of things that the sanctioned editors must not do; there are a number of things beyond that which common sense dictates they should not do. Certainly, remaining engaged in the topic area by "suggesting" edits to do is about as bad as it can get without breaking the letter of the ruling. The point of the ruling is to get those editors to disengage.  If they are unwilling or unable to do so, then we'll have no choice but to amend the decision to be more comprehensive and draconian for those editors.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 03:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In concurring with my colleagues, I restate that the purpose of the topic ban was not only to make editors disengage from the articles themselves but also to stamp out the interminable fires breaking out all over the encyclopedia. The discretionary sanctions regime in this case give administrators great leeway in restoring order and even gives guidance matching conduct to appropriate sanctions. These sanctions may be applied by any uninvolved administrators of their own volition, which means no prior process on any noticeboard is necessary. All that is required before an administrator acts is a "cease and desist" message on the editor's talk page. I expect the admin corps are as frustrated as the community at large by the conduct of some CC case editors. They now have the tools and the authorisation to deal with it summarily.  Roger  talk 19:57, 24 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the opinions of my colleagues above; they've pretty much covered this from all angles. Shell  babelfish 20:52, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Like Shell Kinney, I agree with the responses by Newyorkbrad, Coren and Roger Davies. I would add that the idea that articles will do just fine without those topic-banned also applies to contributions to administration and arbitration discussions. Those topic-banned may be tempted to participate in WP:AE, WP:AN, WP:ANI and arbitration clarification and amendment threads in the aftermath of the case, but unless sanctions are being directly proposed for a topic-banned editor, it would be better for that editor to stay out of such discussions as well, and let others have their say instead. Otherwise it just looks like said editors are unable to stay away. It is perfectly acceptable to limit responses to "no comment, I wish to disengage from this topic area" (or something similar). In response to Polargeo 2's point, while those topic banned cannot do this until they have spent some time away from the topic area and made a later successful appeal, it should be perfectly possible for some form of mediation to be started or undertaken by non-topic banned editors to resolve particularly intractable problems. Carcharoth (talk) 05:21, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I think this section has largely been taken over by events and the motions in the subsequent clarification, and thus this one should be closed. Risker (talk) 01:50, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Requests_for_arbitration/Climate change (2) (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  mark (talk) at 20:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)


 * List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
 * (initiator)


 * List of users subject to topic bans, notified by clerks of motions on 2 Nov 2010

Statement by Mark
Tony Sideaways has brought an enforcement request against me for commenting on a discussion at ANI. Although O2RR was blocked for editwarring on a CC related article the discussion at ANI encompassed his history from as far back as 09. I now have two admins seeking a two week block for my commenting on something which i honestly did not see as CC related. I withdrew about 6 weeks before the case even closed when it was requested of me. I would like to know if in fact i have broken the probation? mark (talk) 20:05, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Hipocrite
So, because others can't keep it in their pants I can't even make comments like this - a comment that your fellow arbitor expressly thought was ok here, when he said that my exiting the discussion was unnecessary? Perhaps you could extend this limitation only to individuals who are bending the rules, as opposed to those of us just trying to move on with our wikilives? Thanks. Hipocrite (talk) 16:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

PS: it would be nice if someone were to notify all of the other affected editors of this amendment request - I'm certain that banning us from huge swaths of vaguely related pages is going to annoy the rest of the contributors who are just trying to move on. Hipocrite (talk) 16:31, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I can tell this is another instance where bad behavior by people who I have agreed with about other things will, yet again, bite me in the ass. Hipocrite (talk) 19:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd beg you to look at Wikidemon's suggestion below, which prevents someone from banning me from any page or discussion by writing the magic words "Climate Change" on it. To use a recent example, I commented on the reliability of a source at WP:RSN. Could someone have shut me out of that discussion by merely saying "I'd also like to use this source's information on CLIMATE CHANGE BOOOGABOOGABOOGA!" Please don't make life any more difficult for those of us trying to gracefully exit. Hipocrite (talk) 21:38, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Who do I have to kill to get an arb to read this? Hipocrite (talk) 06:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

RD: Clearly, continuing to comment here is just going to make my request to have my personal topic ban amended in 5 months untenable. As such, do whatever you want - I'll just keep ignoring the topic area and hope that I don't fall afoul of some intricate whatever that you've put in place to deal with people that won't quit. Hipocrite (talk) 07:30, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Wikidemon
(uninvolved, thank goodness!)... this might be a good occasion to clarify that the topic ban does or does not apply to editors' own talk pages, to address the separate issue relating to WMC. Assuming the intent is that the topic ban does apply to user talk pages the fourth clause of Motion 1 could be expanded to read: "(iv) initiating or participating in any discussion substantially relating to these articles or the subject of climate change anywhere on Wikipedia, including user talk pages, even if the discussion also involves another issue or issues." Thanks, - Wikidemon (talk) 20:22, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by ScienceApologist
Topic ban.

ScienceApologist (talk) 20:36, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by JohnWBarber
I assume requests to modify the CC case decision are exempt from this, and discussing on Arb election pages actions by Arbitrators in this case is also exempt. I may do both (if I have the time and the stomach for it), but in recent days I haven't even had time to think about it. Those possible future posts would be discussing actions of arbitrators, but that might touch on behavior of other editors. If I make any statements, it will be clear that I'm focusing on arbitrators and their decision and not trying to coatrack some kind of attack on other editors. If that's disallowed, please tell me now. This case should be brought up in the upcoming elections, and that shouldn't be a part of any topic ban as long as editors aren't trying to use discussions to fight among themselves.

The page Science Apologist links to, above, shows how there could be sincere confusion about the extent of a topic ban. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 21:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Another thing: About Motion 2, I always thought Featured Article work was a suggestion, not some kind of requirement, but I'd prefer to see it out of the decision because that would make it clear -- JohnWBarber (talk) 21:50, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by ZuluPapa5
Clarification, can I comment here at ArbCom, or maybe I should assume all rights have been channeled to the set appeal time? Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 01:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

@TGL, correct there is a long pattern of borderline blocks for disruption, then further appeal disruption in WMC's case. Someone has to get the message. The illusion that Talk Pages are sovereign ground to further disrupt Wikipedia, does and must have boundaries. Just look at the intentions, which seem to be to circumvent a CC topic ban. Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 13:32, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

@WMC, what were your intentions in keeping things going on your talk page? Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 13:32, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Oh, SPI abuse ... wasn't that an issue in the original Climate Change case? (Mark N. ... On behalf of my single Wiki identity, I offer you an apology. On behalf of those who future socks that are accused to be me, I offer my topic ban.) Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 18:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

@Stephan Schulz, noticing the battle game word "attack", how would you describe dispute resolution? Zulu Papa 5 * (talk) 02:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Sphilbrick on Motion 1,2 & 3
With all due respect, the proposed motions have some problems. Note to clerk - I don't see where this belongs, feel free to move this if there is a more logical location
 * The actions of MN and WMC were not identical. It is hardly obvious that everyone will reach identical decisions on both editors. It would have been better to make them as separate motions. (Perhaps all arbs will reach the same decision on both, but it is clear to me that MN violated the wording of the ban, and WMC did not, so if I were an arb, I would not be able to vote cleanly).
 * Participating in a legitimate dispute resolution forum, such as an appeal of the ban, can be an exception to limited ban. However, this motion does not invoke the topic ban wording per Banning policy, thus it is not obvious that the exceptions still apply. Presumably, the reason for crafting specific wording, as opposed to simply referencing Banning policy, is because the wording there is deemed deficient. Why on earth should it be obvious that while the topic ban wording has been replaced, other provision still apply? In addition, the general page says "exceptions to article, topic and interaction bans are usually recognized:" (emphasis added). How do we know when they are or are not recognized? One possibility is that the exceptions are always recognized unless explicitly excluded, but why not spell it out? SPhilbrick  T  22:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Crohnie
All I would like to do is bring to the arbitrators attentions Marknutley user pages. He has slapped a retirement tag up because of a very apparent nasty SPI case going on. I know some of you are aware but I didn't know if all of you were so I am just making this information available to you and to put it on record here. -- Crohnie Gal Talk  17:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Question for arbitrators With the retirement of Rleves, does this make any difference to any arbitration case he was involved in? The reason I ask is that I am seeing comments in different locations about this and feel that maybe it should at least at a minimum be addressed for all the editors blocked under the Remedy 3.  Even though Rleves had dropped out of the case prior to the remedy 3, a lot of the PD was written originally by Rleves and it's felt that arbitrators should have started from scratch.  I just thought this needs to be clarified.  Thanks, -- Crohnie Gal  Talk  15:01, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by TheGoodLocust on Motion 1,2 & 3 - Amended 1.1
Motion 1: Yes, obviously, I believe I or others mentioned that not including talk pages would mean this would be gamed by wikilawyers.

Motion 2: I disagree with this for a couple reasons. For one I think some of the topic banned editors, if they really wanted to come back, should demonstrate their willingness ability to respect process and work with others - the FA system provides a framework for this. The other reason is more psychological and I think changing this just because a few of them got together and whined about it because they've never done FA work sends the wrong message - unless the message you want to send is that if you stomp your foot long enough and loudly enough then you get your way.

Motion 3: As Sphilbrick says these should probably be separate issues. In the case of WMC, overturning his block would simply continue the long pattern (look at his block log and read between the lines) of overturning his blocks and then later admins feigning shock when he continues with his behavior. As I said of the previous motion, it sends the wrong message, and he will consider himself and his behavior vindicated. In any case, if someone really wants to lift the block then they should simply ask him if what he did was wrong - if he doesn't think finding loopholes in his topic ban is a problem then he certainly shouldn't be unblocked.

Proposed Motion 4: This one should be obvious. The next time WMC is blocked you should protect his talk page. Otherwise him and his group will simply wind each other up and push the bounds of civility. I assume any arbs who've participated and watched his talk page in recent weeks understand the wisdom of this proposal and appreciate how much heartache and time would be saved.

Additional evidence for talk page protection: 1) Atmoz telling people exactly how to edit anonymously. 2) See next motion

Proposed Motion 5: Topic bans should include trying to influence processes related to users involved in global warming. I'm not sure if the current ban prohibits this, but it seems necessary since WMC has now used his talk page to attempt to stop Ling.nut from gaining adminship due to their differing views on global warming (his reason for opposing Ling's adminship is stated here) I note that this was discussed as canvassing here, but nobody has noticed how it relates to his topic ban.

Cheers. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Yopienso
Agree with Carcharoth's reasoning in Arb's comments on the use of talk pages. Sorry to be a bumbling Plain Jane here uncertain of where or how to post, but somewhere somehow I want to say that WMC's continued flouting of the spirit of WP is hard to justify. Seems to me, as I commented some time back on Jimbo's talk page, that he (Jimmy Wales) has created a monster that's out of control. WMC has not demonstrated that he understands what he's done wrong; just today he mentioned the "oh-so-unjust" block. Other editors are encouraging him to request an unblock, whereas the decision was he couldn't even ask for 6 months. His period of good behavior has not yet begun, and doesn't seem likely to ever start. Other editors support him as being too important to lose. How does this fit into WP philosophy? Seems to me if his lockhold on portions of the encyclopedia were released, other editors willing to abide by our conventions would take his place. See this, for example. How can his directives on his talk page not be understood as editing from a distance? Please advise if my comment is in the wrong place or spirit. --Yopienso (talk) 18:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Stephan Schulz
Is it acceptable for topic-banned editors to attack other participants under the guise of commenting on the proposal? I point out TGL's "Proposed Motion 4" and "Proposed Motion 5". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Collect
Note the "nasty SPI case" on Nutley was, in fact, a bit of a witch hunt at best, and has been expunged. Such aspersions on Nutley are inapt, especially on pages such as this. Collect (talk) 10:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by SirFozzie

 * @Various Editors: I'm recused, but have to agree with Stephen Schulz. This is NOT the place to ask for additional sanctions on others in this area, by those who fall under Remedy 3. Comment on how it affects yourself, don't try to make it apply more to others. SirFozzie (talk) 10:05, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Count Iblis
The result of all this is...

Global climate model was yet again targeted after it was unprotected and that was unnoticed for 6 days. I just reverted it with explanation. I had not put this on my watchlist, because I had expected that the Admins who had intervened and who all said that William should not use his talk page to give notifications, would be watching this page. So, I have added it to my watchlist now. Since I have now 212 pages on my watchlist, I'm not going to add all of these articles to my watchlist. Count Iblis (talk) 04:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Recommendation by Sandstein concerning motion 1
After discussion, the banning policy was today amended to provide for a more comprehensive explanation of topic bans. The Committee may find it more convenient to make reference to that policy instead of drafting its own topic ban wording. I do not see a material difference between the wording proposed in motion 1 and the policy as amended.  Sandstein  13:42, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by William M. Connolley
(1) Anyone watching; because I couldn't vote no myself being so cwuelly blocked (2) people have wide latitude on their talk pages; the only thing I can recall blocking talk page access for is absurd abuse. Of course, this was in the good old days before the totalitarian style in fashion now. For example: I did a lot of 3RR stuff. I would never even have considered blocking anyone for commenting on an article they had hit 3R for on their talk page. The current clampdown on talk page use, especially for clearly non-disruptive edits, is a symptom of fear and paranoia on the part of arbcomm.

It is also worth noting that some members of arbcomm at least appear to be hopelessly ill-informed about the situation they are voting on: Coren said engaging in battleground behavior on their talk page and it isn't clear to me whether that is deliberate disinformation on his part or simple ignorance. I'd tell him myself, except I am so cwuelly blocked: could you perhaps be nice and copy this into the comments section over there? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:39, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Transfer from WMC's talk page by  NW  ( Talk ) 17:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC) on the request of an arbitrator.

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * This is what WP:AE is for; the admins there can determine whether or not your edit was a violation of the restrictions. We do not preemptively overrule the decisions there. Shell  babelfish 20:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Premature. Wait for a decision at WP:AE first, then consider your options. Carcharoth (talk) 05:54, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Noting that I am still following what is happening here. It seems to have moved on to an appeal at WP:AE, with discussion on Marknutley's talk page (and a sideshow at SPI that is now resolved). I also note that Marknutley answered Brad's question, as indicated here. If the initial arbitration enforcement appeal fails, then the options are to wait out the block and/or ask for leave to appeal to ArbCom. Carcharoth (talk) 04:00, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Shell Kinney and Carcharoth are procedurally correct, but let me see if I can help anyway. In the interests of avoiding further arguments about the borderlines of the restrictions, I think it would be best if you avoided participating in discussions that substantially involve climate-change related disputes, even if the discussion also involves another issue or issues. Will you undertake to do this? Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Motion 1
Proposed: That Remedy 3.1 of the Climate change case be amended as follows:
 * Scope of topic bans (original text) : 3.1) Editors topic-banned by the Committee under this remedy are prohibited (1) from editing articles about Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; (2) from editing biographies of living people associated with Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; and (3) from participating in any Wikipedia process relating to those articles.
 * Scope of topic bans (amended text) : 3.1) Editors topic-banned by the Committee under this remedy are prohibited from (i) editing articles about Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; (ii) editing biographies of living people associated with Climate Change broadly construed and their talk pages; (iii) participating in any process broadly construed on Wikipedia particularly affecting these articles; and (iv) initiating or participating in any discussion substantially relating to these articles anywhere on Wikipedia, even if the discussion also involves another issue or issues.
 * Support:
 * Roger talk 16:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Motion tweaked per NYB's suggestion. Please revert if you object.  Roger  talk 19:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I am dismayed that this needed to be spelled out. I still cannot fathom how anyone could possibly think that engaging in battleground behavior on their talk page about the topic area they have been sanctionned away from because of that very behavior can possibly be a reasonable interpretation of a topic ban regardless of its exact wording!  I note the amended remedy also doesn't mention "deleting pages in the topic area", and "renaming pages in the topic area".  Would any consider those to be acceptable?  (They are hardly "edits").  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * This vote is provisional, pending statements from the editors notified of these motions (including those editors who are currently blocked), but this is what I had in mind when I voted on the original remedy (as I've stated elsewhere), so clearly I support this clarification by amendment, while noting that it really shouldn't have been necessary. User talk pages have a specific purpose (to enable communication with the editor whose user talk page it is), and they shouldn't be used as a noticeboard to communicate with an audience of talk page watchers or prompt them to make edits on behalf of a topic-banned editor. User talk pages should most certainly not be used to circumvent a topic ban. In passing, the reason I proposed that WMC request unblock to make a clarification request of this nature (which he refused to do) was so he could hear from the entire committee, not just one or two arbitrators. If WMC or anyone thinks the above is still unclear, I urge them to file a request for clarification before making edits that may be seen as testing the edge of their topic ban. Carcharoth (talk) 23:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid I'm with the others - is it really necessary to run down a list of every action that could possibly be prohibited here? Drop the topic area or anything that looks vaguely like the topic area, entirely.  If you think something might be related don't do it; if you feel strongly about doing it, come ask first. Shell   babelfish 01:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I generally agree with Carcharoth's comments on this motion. One proposed copyedit: in clause (iii), I would add "particularly" before "affecting". To illustrate, I do not believe an editor topic-banned editor from the climate-change area would be prohibited from commenting in a general discussion of the featured article process, even though global warming is one of the 2000 or so FAs. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed. Added,  Roger  talk 19:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Regrettable that this is necessary. Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * KnightLago (talk) 10:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been away and have missed most of the details of the original case and I am supporting this clarification regardless of remedies adjudicated. The point here is that Wikipedia talk pages –among others, in fact everywhere– are not venues for extending and propagating disputes after a case is closed. That should be discouraged. This applies to all cases of course. -- <font size="1px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">FayssalF  - <font style="background: gold">Wiki me up®  00:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Risker (talk) 01:45, 7 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose


 * Abstain:

Motion 2
Proposed: That Remedy 3.2.1 of the Climate change case be amended as follows:
 * Appeal of topic bans (original text) : 3.2.1) Editors topic banned under this decision may apply to have the topic ban lifted or modified after demonstrating their commitment to the goals of Wikipedia and their ability to work constructively with other editors. The Committee will consider each request individually, but will look favourably on participation in the featured content process, including both production of any type of featured content, as well as constructive participation in featured content candidacies and reviews. Applications will be considered no earlier than six months after the close of this case, and additional reviews will be done, unless the Committee directs otherwise in individual instances, no more frequently than every three months thereafter.
 * Appeal of topic bans (amended text) : 3.2.1) Editors topic banned under this decision may apply to the Committee to have the topic ban lifted or modified after demonstrating their commitment to the goals of Wikipedia and their ability to work constructively with other editors. Applications will be considered no earlier than six months after the close of this case, and additional reviews will be done, unless the Committee directs otherwise in individual instances, no more frequently than every three months thereafter.


 * Support:
 * Roger talk 16:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure why that provision was there to begin with. It's certainly a very good example of collaborative editing, but there's nothing magical about the FA process that makes it better than, say, categorizing articles or helping to flesh out stubs in areas of poor coverage.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:14, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * The new wording is better - it leaves room to consider content work, while not being too specific. Carcharoth (talk) 23:06, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Better explanation. Shell  babelfish 01:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:31, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * KnightLago (talk) 10:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Risker (talk) 01:45, 7 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose:


 * Abstain:
 * <font size="1px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">FayssalF  - <font style="background: gold">Wiki me up®  00:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Motion 3
Proposed: That provided they unequivocally accept the spirit and the letter of the amended terms above by message on their talk pages, User:Marknutley and User:William M. Connolley will be unblocked upon the passing of Motion 1 above.


 * Support:
 * Roger talk 16:10, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:47, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It's all about the spirit, I believe. The letter goes with. -- <font size="1px" face="Verdana"><font color="DarkSlateBlue">FayssalF  - <font style="background: gold">Wiki me up®  00:46, 5 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose:
 * I see no reason to overturn, in substance or in principle, the result of a reasonable enforcement request. It's not like it came as a genuine surprise to anyone; and they had been repeatedly warned away from that behavior.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No need to deal with these blocks here - that would accord them special treatment. A better approach would be to give both editors leave to submit a new appeal at arbitration enforcement upon the conclusion of voting on the motions above. Carcharoth (talk) 23:12, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * No need for us to interfere with enforcement. Kirill [talk] [prof] 05:32, 4 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Not the right time. KnightLago (talk) 10:27, 4 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Abstain:
 * I fully support the decisions of the admins working at AE and think they would go back and remove blocks if it was warranted, but at the same time, don't want to keep an editor blocked if we've resolved the issue. Shell  babelfish 01:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Per Shell Kinney. Risker (talk) 01:45, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Comments by arbitrators on motions

 * @Hipocrite: By clarifying boundaries, this helps you keep yourself on the right side of them.  Roger  talk 07:21, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * @Hipocrite: You have it there when you say "I'll just keep ignoring the topic area". If you are clearly making good faith efforts to do this, you shouldn't fall foul of the restriction.  Roger  talk 07:58, 3 November 2010 (UTC)
 * All: Please note This is not the right place for raising fresh matters or - if topic-banned - adding wishlists of proposed motions for other topic-banned editors. Please keep discussion strictly restricted to the motions. Roger  talk 11:01, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: WP:ARBR&I (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  Looie496 (talk) at 21:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
 * (initiator)
 * notice
 * notice
 * notice

Statement by Looie496
This arises from WP:AE, filed by Ferahgo the Assassin, who is currently subject to a topic ban in the R&I domain. I believe that the AE request is an attempt to lawyer around the topic ban, but other admins are divided on this, hence this request for clarification. To keep this simple, I would like to propose that ArbCom endorse the following statement: "An editor subject to a topic ban imposed by ArbCom or resulting from ArbCom discretionary sanctions may only file arbitration enforcement requests that fall into the domain of the topic ban, or comment on such requests, if there is a reasonable possibility that a resulting enforcement action will directly affect that editor." Such a statement would disallow this enforcement request, and it would also disallow the comments that Mathsci has made in the request. Note that the statement as framed would have a scope that goes beyond the R&I case.

Statement by WeijiBaikeBianji
Thanks to Looie496 for raising this issue and for the notice of this request to my talk page. One observation about the policy behind this request is that decisions in cases should generally allow for certainty of disposition and for repose of persons who were not parties to the case. (I have legal training and was once a judicial clerk for an appellate court and then a lawyer in private practice, so these sorts of policy considerations come to mind.) I certainly acknowledge the wikipedian's privilege of any other editor to ask me questions about my editing behavior and especially to insist that my edits and all article edits be verifiable and neutral in point of view. But once an editor is under a topic ban, it seems to me that there has already been a finding that that editor (we hope only temporarily) is misunderstanding what proper sourcing is or what neutral point of view is, so it seems best to hear primarily from editors who are not under such bans about fresh editing disputes on the same topic. Arbiter Carcharoth has pointed out that ArbCom decisions are meant to improve article text. It frustrates the purpose of the arbitration process to have content disputes continually relitigated in ArbCom rather than referred to article, user, and project talk pages for mutual discussion among editors who are not sanctioned. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 22:53, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Mathsci
I'm not quite sure why Looie496 has made this clarification request.

I will have to admit from the start that I am friendly with some members of ArbCom. I have twice communicated in private when irregularities have occurred connected with WP:ARBR&I. On both occasions the irregularities were not of my making, but I had what I perceived to be useful input to offer in discussions. Wikipedia processes are not covered by my voluntary but binding topic ban.

A member of ArbCom suggested I comment on the first occasion when the topic ban of Ferahgo the Assassin was under discussion (I made 3 postings). I have also had positive feedback about my comments this time, with no objection to what I wrote or the tone (I made only 2 postings).

My topic ban, by mutual consent, covers articles and their talk pages and any content discussion on wikipedia related to race and intelligence, broadly interpreted. It is not a ban that I will ever appeal. I would never remotely consider making any request on a noticeboard connected with this subject area.

But when irregularities in process are concerned that have nothing to do with content and are not of my making, I believe my input has been useful and is not discouraged by either administrators or arbitrators.

As a third example an administrator cautioned for making personal attacks in September. He had not noticed that the user name spelt "Juden Raus" backwards. I pointed this out on ANI and he was blocked indefinitely. He then reappeared as. Separately a CU confirmed him as a likely sockpuppet of here. He has also reappeared as, which, with its user page, was a not so nice reference to Slrubenstein.

In the immortal words of the great sage Aervanath: IF IT AIN'T BROKE DON'T FIX IT.

Statement by Ferahgo the Assassin
The way I understand this, every topic ban has a slightly different scope, and that scope is determined by the admin implementing the ban. In my case NuclearWarfare, the admin who topic banned me under the discretionary sanctions, did not intend for the scope of my topic ban to include preventing me from posting about this issue at AE. He has made this clear both when we were discussing his topic ban and in his comments in the AE thread. When he granted me this permission, he was aware of what conduct issues I intended to post about, since his suggestion that I post at AE was in response to me saying I wanted admin attention for these exact issues. Therefore, I don’t think I have violated my topic ban by posting about them there.

That said, if arbcom decides that from this point forward topic banned editors should never have the right to post AE threads like this, then I will accept that decision and will never do this again. However, if arbcom does decide this, this would be a new rule that didn’t exist before, so I don't think I should be punished for having not followed it.

In general, I’m also not sure it’s a good idea for individual admins to lose the power to choose the scope of topic bans they implement under discretionary sanctions. That is the effect that this proposal would have - it would mean that if at any point an admin wants to ban an editor from articles but not from AE, that would not be allowed because all topic bans automatically extend to AE also. This seems like it would go against the spirit of discretionary sanctions allowing admins to implement whatever type of sanction they think is appropriate.

Statement by Timotheus Canens
Topic bans are meant to get an editor to disengage from a topic area. I do not understand how allowing them to file reports related to the topic area serves that purpose. And I certainly do not see the "slew" of AE requests Shell is referring to. T. Canens (talk) 04:58, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Tijfo098
While the report on AE was not actionable in an administrative way, I for one did not find it entirely without justification. It is a little weird that FtA is not allowed to comment in other venues because a post on WBB's talk page or even a RfC/U would have been more appropriate.

Statement by Captain Occam
I would appreciate it if ArbCom could clarify whether Mathsci’s comments in the AE thread are allowed under his topic ban, because what the rule is about this is something that affects me also. I’ve generally avoided commenting in threads like that one, because I was under the assumption that if the thread didn’t directly concern me and I hadn’t been given explicit permission for it by whoever topic banned me (the way Ferahgo was), participating in it would be prohibited by my topic ban. But Mathsci and I were both given the exact same type of topic ban in the arbitration case, so if participating in these threads is permitted under his topic ban, it’s presumably permitted under mine also. I’d like to know whether that’s the case, or whether neither of should be participating there.


 * Since none of the arbitrators seem to object to Mathsci's comments in Ferahgo's AE thread, and according to him some of the arbitrators have actually invited him to comment in this thread or similar ones, I'm going to assume that commenting in these threads is allowed in my case also. Arbitrators, please tell me and Mathsci otherwise if this isn't the case.  At this point, I've done everything I can do to try and learn the answer to this:  I've asked ArbCom about it in a request for clarification, and haven't received an answer.

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * I don't think there's any need for such a sweeping statement. While this may have been a disappointing use of AE by Ferhago, we don't generally prohibit editors, even those that are topic banned, from reporting others; this would certainly invalidate a slew of the recent reports on AE.  Whether or not a report is productive, useful or "necessary" can be left up to the discretion of the admins responding. Especially in cases where discretionary sanctions are active, prohibiting an editor from making reports (if they prove to be disruptive) is well within the realm of administrator discretion. Shell   babelfish 23:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking again T. Canens is right - the ones I was thinking of were people who have been admonished, warned or otherwise involved and ask to disengage but not specifically topic-banned. However, this case is a topic ban set by an administrator rather than ArbCom and should probably be addressed the same way. Shell   babelfish 13:09, 26 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree with Shell. Give some latitude at first, and take steps if repeated WP:AE requests fail and are clearly becoming disruptive. See also my comment elsewhere that topic-banned editors should in general let others comment, and should feel free to politely decline requests to comment themselves, citing a wish to remain disengaged from the topic area. Carcharoth (talk) 05:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I am very reticent to curtail any editor's access to normal dispute resolution channels, even in the case where they would fall under an otherwise very wide topic ban. The rare cases of bad faith, or vexatious filings, can be handled as any other disruption without needing a sweeping statement that would prevent much genuinely needed appeals or enforcement.  &mdash; Coren (talk) 19:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Generally agree with my colleagues. SirFozzie (talk) 17:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Also generally agree with my colleagues. Risker (talk) 01:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Request for clarification: Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  TS at 21:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
 * Notifications of named users are linked after the names
 * (initiator)
 * , formerly Docglasgow
 * I would prefer that the clerks make all other notifications.
 * All admins are affected by this so perhaps the clerks should make a note at WP:AN
 * The Committee of 2007 should be informed as a matter of courtesy


 * Clerks please inform me if they would prefer me to perform all relevant notifications.

Statement by Tony Sidaway
A long time ago on an internet far away...


 * Requests_for_arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff

<!-- That was a different Arbitration Committee and there has been a lot of history since then, so I'd really like the Committee as it is now composed to revisit this. I think it's still true but I think it's fair to ask for a reappraisal. They said:

Summary deletion of BLPs
 * Any administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy. This deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy.

So, have things changed? Is it still the case that "[a]ny administrator, acting on their own judgment, may delete an article that is substantially a biography of a living person if they believe that it (and every previous version of it) significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy?"

I've been told repeatedly, in no uncertain terms, that this is bullshit.

Assuming the statement of the 2007 Committee is still substantially true, is this also true?


 * this deletion may be contested via the usual means; however, the article must not be restored, whether through undeletion or otherwise, without an actual consensus to do so. The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain the article to demonstrate that it is compliant with every aspect of the policy.

I thought we got a good result in the Badlydrawnjeff case, but here we are three years later, the unsourced BLP problem is far greater than it was then, even the fact of the case is being challenged, and the prospect of removing unsourced crap about living persons from Wikipedia seems to be very far away.

I want Wikipedia to celebrate its tenth anniversary with a clean conscience: no unsourced crap about living persons. But we need to get the interpretation of policy straight, first.

A clarification from the Committee of 2010 is required. Tell us, was the Committee of 2007 wrong? If the Committee of 2007 was substantially right, is there something else that the Committee of 2010 can add? Would the Committee of 2010 have any other clarifications to make on this topic? --TS 21:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm pleased that Thparkth agrees that "If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step." Obviously the determination of "contentious" is a matter for administrative discretion and so it can be stipulated that the administrator must make that determination which (as the Badlydrawnjeff case establishes) may be challenged by the usual methods before the article is restored. Arbitrators will appreciate that the principle of 2007 reverses the normal principle of "if in doubt, do not delete". --TS 22:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

From a discussion on my user talk page, clarifying my own interpretation of the Badlydrawnjeff principle:
 * I completely agree with the "due diligence" criterion. The deleting admin must know that the article is unsourced (by actually looking at all revisions) and believe that it is potentially damaging. That establishes a very low watermark from which I hope sensible discussion can proceed.

For what it's worth. --TS 22:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to see us clear the crap out by out tenth anniversary on January 15, 2011. To do that we need to have a basic agreement that admins can handle the mounds of crap en masse subject to basic principles that I thought had been laid down. When the BLP was created Wikipedia was less than five years old, now it's twice that age and the problem is much worse than it was then. The BLP will fail unless we can agree that it actually means that crap will be deleted. --TS 23:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

--> (I cut a load of superfluous mumbo jumbo that is better covered by Doc, who knows a lot about what has happened since 2007).
 * And what Doc says below, although as far as I can tell he's saying pretty much the same thing in 2010 language and is quoting a motion of the 2010 committee. But I was too busy failing to make the climate change probation work to notice it much. --TS 23:28, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I take the point Carcharoth makes about "tailing off" of enthusiasm in recent months. It's quite noticeable in a graph that has been plotted. Won't it always be a problem moving forward that we'll always have more BLPs than anybody can be bothered to watch over except to jump the hoops they're forced to jump to keep them alive? The answers to those questions must await the arrival of a strategic deletion policy. I wrote something about this about five years ago, must dig it out. --TS 05:03, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

I really love Uncle G's suggestion. It answers all of my concerns without upsetting anybody. --TS 13:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Here's the fruit of an idea I had about improving our day-to-day coverage of BLP edits:
 * User:Tony Sidaway/Living people/tranches

8 editors have volunteered already but we could always use more eyes on these sensitive edits. The system is quite simple but I promise that the targeting of the most vulnerable BLPs will improve in the course of time. --TS 19:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Thparkth
Contrary to the wording of this request, the issue at hand is not "was the Committee of 2007 wrong?" but rather "what did the Committee of 2007 mean?". Did they mean that any unsourced BLP could be summarily deleted by any admin who might choose to do so? Or did they mean that any unsourced BLP which was contentious or negative could be summarily deleted?

This is the key issue about which it would be helpful to obtain clarification.

The 2007 decision said that administrators might summarily delete a BLP "if they believe that it significantly violates any aspect of the relevant policy." The relevant policy is, I believe WP:BLP. Nowhere in this policy does it state that merely being unsourced is grounds for deletion of an article. It says that If the entire page is substantially of poor quality, primarily containing contentious material that is unsourced or poorly sourced, then it may be necessary to delete the entire page as an initial step (my emphasis). So my understanding is that unsourced BLPs may be (and should be) deleted summarily if they are signifantly contentious or contain negative material - but the great majority of unsourced BLPs do not.

Obviously I read this in conjunction with WP:BLPPROD which does specifically allow for the deletion of unsourced BLPs created after March 18th this year; but even then it is not a summary deletion.

It would be very helpful if we could have clarification on which interpretation is correct for unsourced BLPs created before March 18th; summary deletion on sight, or summary deletion for problematic articles only? To be fair to all the people involved in this discussion, a significant degree of interpretation is required to determine what the practical effect of the 2007 wording is, and there is room for good faith disagreement at present.

Statement by Scott MacDonald
Pertinent here is the more recent Summary motion regarding biographies of living people deletions.

I took this to mean that while speedy deleting unreferenced BLPs was consistent with policy, the community would be better served achieving the goal (not having unreferenced BLPs) by "less chaotic means". And that the hope was that this would be secured through a centralised discussion "on the most efficient way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy."

With that in view, speedy deletion were discontinued (indeed as soon as the case opened there was a moratorium - the speedy deletion ended as soon as their was some momentum to find a "less chaotic" way) and I an others worked for an agreed "way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy" ( here and elsewhere). After many months the best we got was stickyprod. Stickyprod only deals with new unreferenced BLPS (created since May) - and it took a lot of effort to get through.

It was suggested at that point that the backlog could be fixed. I can't find the diff, but I agreed that we should give this some time (months) to see whether that was realistic. I was not at all sure it would prove the "way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy" arbcom desired. It has turned out not to be.

Ten months later 24,000 articles are still tagged as unreferenced BLPs - that's 24,000 individuals who are written about in this encyclopedia with nothing checked and no quality control or evident maintenance. The rate of decrease has slowed. If the current rate continues, I estimate it will take three years to eliminate the backlog. (And this is only one of many aspects of the BLP problem.) I regularly scan these articles using Google metrics and find serious BLP violations. This is simply not a ""way to proceed with the effective enforcement of the policy".

I agree with arbcom that a "less chaotic" means is desirable - but it also has to be "effective enforcement". I have judged that there comes a point where some chaos may be a lesser evil than continued ineffective enforcement of the BLP policy. That is, after all, the spirit of "if the rules prevent you improving..." which I think arbcom was referencing.

I'm still earnestly, but not optimistically, hoping there can be a better way, which is why I have not resumed any speedy deletions. Any help you can give would be appreciated.--Scott Mac 22:51, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ways forward

 * Two fairly sane solutions have been offered, which ensure a certain end to unreferenced BLPs, but don't entail mass deletions.
 * 1) UncleG's proposal to blank (and I'd add {noidex}) the remainder. A category can be kept, and they can be unblanked by any user who references them. If more are discovered they can be instantly blanked too. No adim actions.
 * 2) Set deadline and use stickypod: My own suggestion was set (say) 30 weeks, stickyprod 1/30 of the backlog per week. End deadline, no backlog - but as many saved as possible. (Remember prods can be undeleted if anyone offer to fix them up.)
 * Both of these are better than mass-deletions (I'm marginally more excited by UncleG's). However, if mass deletions are taken off the table, the thing will stall with filibustering. That's why I suggested a deadline for an agreed process: it focuses minds and says "no" to an endless status-quo.--Scott Mac 13:30, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Milowent
TS stated on his talk page that, under this 2007 arbitration decision, "All admins are empowered, on their own cognizance, to kill unsourced articles about living persons." I asserted in response that such a claim was "bullshit," hence TS referenced that term in his statement. But its also true. TS also stated "I have absolutely no intention of ever sourcing an unsourced BLP." TS started this same ill-advised assertion at AN, and with consensus clearly against him, has now come here.--Milowent • <sup style="position:relative">talk<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-3.2ex;*left:-5.5ex;">blp-r 22:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC) Note: I revised my language slightly once smoke started coming out of my ears.--Milowent • <sup style="position:relative">talk<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-3.2ex;*left:-5.5ex;">blp-r  01:57, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to request for additional information from Kirill

 * How large of a problem are we faced with? In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?
 * I believe the backlog of uBLPs was about 50,000 in early 2010 and is now about 23,300. However, about 6,000 of the current number are uBLPs tagged since March 2010, so the original backlog would be down to about 16,000, but we have found more along the way (not surprising, as I am sure there are more to be found).


 * How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog?
 * Everyone can easily access backlog articles to source them (and can search by topic), or evaluate for prod, afd, or copyright problems, etc. New articles are subject to BLPPROD to prevent new unsourced BLPs for adding to the burden.
 * Projects which are doing the sourcing such as Unreferenced BLP Rescue have found very very few occurrences of defamatory material in the backlog.


 * Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?
 * see below

What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia's founding? Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles? Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?
 * Its a simple matter of work that has to be done, and can be done. More volunteers, and the backlog can easily be eliminated by that anniversary -- a centralized drive would be great, if that sort of thing even works.  We have 3.5 million articles, attending to 23,300 is a drop in the bucket.  Its a shame that those re-raising this debate aren't actually sourcing articles or know what the true landscape is like in the backlog.--Milowent • <sup style="position:relative">talk<span style="position:relative;bottom:-2.0ex;left:-3.2ex;*left:-5.5ex;">blp-r  15:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Snottywong
It is the responsibility of the article's creator(s) (and/or those who argue against the article's deletion) to ensure that reliable sources are cited. If they failed to do so, then the article clearly "significantly violates an aspect of the relevant policy", in particular WP:V. So, per the 2007 ruling, these articles are all fair game for deletion by an administrator. Any deleted BLP's which are actually about a notable person will eventually be recreated by an interested editor who will take the time to cite sources. However, in the interest of preserving some of the work that was put into creating these articles, I think it would be best to set a deadline and delete them in phases, per this proposal. <span style="font:13px 'Copperplate Gothic Light';border:#AAAACC 1px inset;background-color:#F2F9FA;color=#225DC8">Snotty<font color="#33CC33">Wong gab 23:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by The Pope
I'd disagree with a few statements made by others that overstate the problem. TS said " the unsourced BLP problem is far greater than it was then". I don't know how bad it was in 2006 or 2007, but we have brought the number down from over 50,000 at the beginning of the year to about 16,000 of them, plus we've found or had created or had tagged another 7000. We have allocated to WikiProjects over 10,000 articles. That is a lot of checking and cleaning that's been done this year.

Scott Mac said "that's 24,000 individuals who are written about in this encyclopedia with nothing checked and no quality control or evident maintenance" This is also plainly not true. The true number of individuals written about in the encyclopedia with no quality control is MUCH HIGHER than 24,000 and includes most referenced stubs and articles. Watchlist stats, other cleanup tags, "Newly created article still tagged from 2009", etc etc show that focussing only on UBLPs is, in a way, pretty stupid and misguided. And lots of the UBLPs do have some form of referencing in them - to IMDB, to related organisations (ie University faculties, sporting organisations) or offline or poorly formatted links. Not good enough, but higher than the "nothing checked and no quality control" that Scott refers to. I would guess that MOST people (not bots) who tag an article with the BLPUnref tag would give it a quick check for unreferenced negative comments.

The bottom line is that we are working on it, and what we need is more involvement from more editors, a better way to stop new articles being created without references (force new editors to edit before creating?) and more involvement from more editors. Deletion by "unusual means" isn't the solution. By all means attempt to delete them, but one at a time, AfD, PROD or BLPPROD please. The-Pope (talk) 23:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Will Beback
I don't see how this issue is within the mandate of the ArbCom. This decision sets policy. The community should develop policies through the traditional means. I suggest that the decision be withdrawn and parallel language be added to the BLP policy with community input and consent.  Will Beback   talk    23:41, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It isn't necessary to withdraw an old decision to de-emphasize it. What's needed here is more community action, not less ArbCom action. Rather than revisit an old decision it'd be better to update the policy itself. I agree to action on this topic, but this is the wrong venue for it.   Will Beback    talk    11:16, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement By WereSpielChequers
Deleting unsourced or poorly sourced uncontentious material on notable subjects is very controversial and disruptive to the community, especially when done insensitively and without informing the authors. The shift to a hierarchical and threat driven editing environment with priorities and targets set by deletionist admins has been disruptive and damaging to the whole project. It has also been counterproductive for the BLP project, as the uBLP debates and RFCs have been a major distraction that has diverted attention away from more contentious material elsewhere in mainspace. The drive to focus on articles identified as unreferenced BLPs ahead of various higher risk areas such as unreferenced BLPs not yet identified, and high risk words and phrases, is a classic example of the pitfalls of targeting that which is easily measured above that which is truly important. Arbcom should reaffirm that admins are to respect the work of goodfaith contributors, give a ruling that part of the deletion tagging process is the informing of goodfaith editors, and encourage those who wish to remove unsourced content because it has been tagged as unreferenced BLPs to prioritise unsourced controversial content instead.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Response to Kirill - how well is sticky prod working?
Arbcom want to know how effective the changes are that were made earlier this year. User:Epbr123 has now gone through several thousand of the uBLPS tagged in recent months and reports that: "'I've prodded about 210 and I think I'll be prodding about another 40 (although I should probably make an effort to source some instead). There are about a further 400 'unsourced BLPs' created after March which I'm hesitant to prod because they contain a source of some kind, usually a primary source or imdb. The number of old uBLPs I found was about 3,000. Epbr123 (talk) 01:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)'"

That broadly confirms my experience. BLPprod works fairly well at dealing with newly created uBLPs, but as with any new system some bedding in is necessary. Totally unsourced articles are now being deleted or sourced fairly quickly, we still have some work to do in re-educating some longterm editors about the new minimum requirement, I've deflagged 3 Autopatrollers and I suspect we will need to identify and deflag more. Of course a system where every month hundreds of goodfaith articles are tagged for deletion, and in many cases deleted is close to institutionalised newbie biting and we need to improve the way we communicate our article requirements to new contributors.

The vast majority of the articles being added to the backlog are actually old articles that are being found, and we have no idea how many there are still out there to find, though one can assume it is a small subset of the 2.9 million articles we have that are not currently tagged as living people. Setting a target for eradicating the unknown backlog of unreferenced BLPs that have yet to be identified is probably not helpful as it is a "known unknown" situation.

That still leaves an anomaly re articles that are tagged as uBLPs but have some sort of link that names the subject. These are still coming in and whilst some are simply tagging errors, poorly sourced articles are a bit of an anomaly re BLPprod. Some of them can simply be corrected/amended to BLP sources BLP IMDB-only refimprove or BLP IMDB refimprove, but there is a difference between the criteria for BLPprod and unreferencedBLP. In the last RFC I tried unsuccessfully to broaden the sticky prods to ignore articles where the only attribution was to MySpace, Utube, Facebook or LinkedIn, and I suspect that many of the 400 will be in that group.

The way forward
I would suggest to Arbcom that:

For the known backlog of 23,000 uBLPs the community should celebrate a successful major cleanup exercise, and encourage the team that has been working on this to continue doing so. A message from Jimbo to the 600 or so participating projects would be timely, and might well prompt people to see how much more of this could be cleared by the tenth anniversary. Replacing a successful and hardworking team with a different approach such as batch deletion or mass blanking would not in my view be the best way to improve the pedia.

For new articles my preference is that we tighten the BLPprod criteria as I've previously suggested, though I appreciate such a policy change is outside of Arbcom's remit.

If we were to launch a major initiative with the aim of completing it for the tenth anniversary, then I would suggest that we do so for one of the higher priority BLP problems. The known uBLPS are by definition a lower priority in BLP terms than the unknown uBLPs, so completing some sort of audit of our old articles to identify unspotted BLPs should be a higher priority than tackling the known uBLPs. However the work this year by various people has established that the old uBLPs are rarely our articles with problematic BLP material, so if we want to encourage editors towards a particular task for the tenth anniversary, there are more pressing problems elsewhere. Other much higher priorities include auditing all the articles containing certain troublesome words or phrases and blanking or referencing unsourced negative statements. Using reports generated by User:Botlaf from the whole of mainspace I've checked through "Douchebag" and am working through other high risk words and phrases at User:Botlaf/Abuse, and for less serious vandalism at User:Botlaf/Poop Patrol I've got a regular patrol for pubic and similar vandalism.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  23:56, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Resolute
As noted by others, parts of the statements by Scott is at best disingenuous and at worst deliberately deceptive. He seeks to portray his pet peeve in the worst possible light in the hopes that Arbcom will overrule community consensus to allow a resumption of the indiscriminate destruction of Wikipedia articles. Indeed, Scott will complain that there are still 24,000 articles in the backlog, but he'll never admit that at the start of the mess he helped create, it was over 50,000. Given the number or articles tagged this year, it means that over 35,000 articles have been sourced in some way in the last 10 months and argues that the process the community agreed upon is working.

For whatever reason, this is not good enough for some, and so they come here in the hopes that ArbCom will once again step outside of its scope and try to behave like a legislative body. ArbCom has no right to dictate policy, and ArbCom frequently makes it clear its mandate excludes content disputes. What to do about any class of article is related directly to content, and as such the 2007 ruling, the 2010 motion and this request are all outside of ArbCom's mandate. ArbCom needs to do the right thing here and vacate all existing decisions that attempt to set policy, and instead show its respect the work of the community, which has already proven that it can deal with the issue. As there is no issue brought forth related to user conduct, there is nothing ArbCom can do to satisfy the wishes of certain editors.

But since it has been raised, now would be an excellent time for ArbCom to fix its past mistakes. Resolute 01:14, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

@Kirill: "The BLP policy will be enforced, one way or another" The BLP policy is being enforced - unless you can show me that contentious unsourced material is consistently not being removed or sourced once identified. What purpose does your veiled threat serve? Resolute 14:56, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

@Scott MacDonald - either solution has potential, but this is not the proper forum to propose or decide upon either. A clean discussion in a centralized location that focuses on presenting ways to ensure the backlog continues to be cleared, done so in a positive rather than thretening way, should achieve a desired result. Certainly the first set of BLP RFCs resulted in good policy changes. Resolute 16:07, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Jclemens
I propose the following two findings of fact, each of which can be substantiated, and one conclusion: Conclusion: While the use of administrator discretion to deal with inappropriate or problematic BLPs on a case-by-case basis should continue unfettered, the use of wide-spread deletion without individual review of potentially problematic BLP articles is harmful to the encyclopedia's content and should be avoided. The Arbitration Committee should remand the processes involved in cleaning up the rest of the "BLP not meeting V" issue to the community, and specifically disallow mass deletions of unreferenced articles for which no specific assertion of a problem exists. Jclemens (talk) 01:18, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * "Unreferenced BLPs" and "problematic BLPs" are orthogonal classes. No evidence exists that Unreferenced BLPs are more likely to be defamatory than those which claim to have references.  Anecdotal evidence from Joe Decker and DGG suggests that the vast majority of unreferenced BLPs are  innocuous, sourceable, and appropriate encyclopedic content.
 * The community has developed a number of mechanisms for dealing with BLPs which do not meet V. The evidence that this has been working is the decline in unreferenced BLPs, despite their ongoing creation, since this issue was last brought up.

Statement by The Wordsmith
This is not just about libel. The question of whether or not unreferenced BLPs are demonstrably more problematic than sourced ones is irrelevant. This is about our basic commitment to verifiability, as well as our responsibility to living people in particular to get it right. Some people point out that the 23,000 unsourced BLPs is not our biggest problem. They are correct. However, that is not an excuse to do nothing. The unsourced BLPs are a good place to start, though. After that, we can work on improving the poorly sourced BLPs, of which there are more than 36,000. When you add the number of unsourced BLPs to the number of inadequately sourced BLPs (most of which were unsourced BLPs before this sourcing drive) the total is startlingly close to the 57,000 we originally had, with plenty of room for those BLPs that were discovered later. Just how much has been accomplished, then? I urge Arbcom to uphold the principles behind Badlydrawnjeff, and allow us to handle the problem where the community has failed. The Wordsmith Communicate 02:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Llywrch
There are a number of biographical articles on living people (referred to in Wikipedia jargon as "unreferenced BLPs") which lack sources. Many of these have been identified, although reportedly more exist. Over the last several months a small group of Wikipedians have worked to reduce the number of known unreferenced articles from roughly 52,000 to somewhere around 23,500. Now comes Tony Sidaway who, instead of complementing these Wikipedians for their diligence, declares this number is unacceptable & wants the remaining articles deleted. He had first gone to WP:AN/I with his demand, but apparently failed to find there a response he was satisfied with, so now he seeks from you his desired response. Based on these facts, I ask that the ArbCom decline Sidaway's request for the clarification he seeks, & ban him from further petitions to the ArbCom in any form relating to these articles, until he has provided sources for a specified number of these biographical articles on living people. I leave it to my fellow Wikipedians Milowent & Jclemens, who have been working on these articles & have participated in this petition, to specify this number -- or anyone they believe should help decide. -- llywrch (talk) 04:38, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Collect
The earlier discussions this year and the processes instituted to remove unreferenced BLPs make this now a "content dispute" where the underlying policy issues have been properly addressed already. Collect (talk) 12:27, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Casliber
I used to be strongly opposed to mass-deletion, however having some method of indexing removed ones makes it much more acceptable. Uncle G's proposal has merit in that regard.


 * To carcharoth 'maintenance of wikipedia' is such a non-concrete term as to defy description. To what level? Ask SandyGeorgia about watching medical articles or anyone in any one of many contentious areas. You simply can't assign an absolute and anyone looking for perfection or anywhere near that may as well leave now, as it won't happen. We just try and make the best 'pedia we can.

Statement by Joe Decker
''How large of a problem are we faced with? In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?''
 * As per Millowent, we've reduced the total backlog size by about 25K from about 50K to about 25K. There were a lot of articles newly tagged in this period, and it was my observation that many of those predated the BLPPROD cutoff date, so I think the actual rate of sourcing was somewhat higher than this. At the present rate, how long it's going to take to catch up is a matter of how much people are willing to put time and effort into it.  (I've done my thousand articles and more) I'd guess as little as six months, as much as three years, if nothing at all changes.
 * As per several folks, in my experience only a tiny tiny fraction of these articles are deeply problematic (BLP attacks, copyright violations, etc.)

How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog?
 * Sourcing articles continues to make progress every month. I suspect BLPPROD has helped, although that's difficult to measure. There was an increase in newly-tagged-as-unsourced-but-unsourced-for-longer articles, or seemed to be, this Summer, which confounds making precise guesses. Would I like the process to be easier and faster? Sure.  But it's still making relatively consistent progress, with occasional plateaus but not... yet... .consistently stalled. Still, I understand impatience, I feel impatient too. I think the critical variable for solving this problem is "the number of hands on deck."

Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?
 * I suppose this depends on what one means by efficiency. As I don't support mass deletion, I won't recommend that option but would have to admit that it's highly efficient. It also probably bites ten thousand relatively unfrequent, many "new" editors, of course, and throws out a lot of content, some of which (by my observation) has been worked on pretty well. There's nothing "efficient" to my mind about throwing out an hour of editing work because someone hasn't spent five minutes searching in Google News. Similarly, there's nothing to my mind efficient about mass BITEing.

''What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia's founding? Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles? Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?''
 * We have some wikiprojects, I'm not great at marketing so I don't know how we can get people actually excited about doing the "work" that's required to source articles. But, Shell asks:

''I strongly suggest everyone commenting here re-read Uncle G's highly relevant comments in the recent AN thread. There are ways to resolve this situation without drama.''
 * I've been enormously impressed by the copyright cleanup effort Uncle G refers to. Enormously impressed.  As an initial impression, and realizing I haven't thought out every possible unintended consequence, it seems to me that such an approach might be a very constructive way of getting more hands on deck for sourcing. Leveraging the BLPunsourced tag, or another like it, having it blank the page, etc., might allow for lots of hands to go and put sources on those articles without every step requiring administrator assistance. That seems huge to me, and I would fully support a trial of this solution on a scale of 1000-2000 articles immediately (I think that a smaller set wouldn't really show how effective this tactic was at recruiting new people to the effort of sourcing), with a full rollout a few weeks later if we didn't get bitten by some "surprise" in the process, and assuming that this really did expedite the process of getting those articles well-sourced. In a full rollout, there might be a (completely correct) increase in CSD/PROD/AfD activity, I doubt that would be huge (in my experience the vast vast majority of these articles can be well-rescued), but if it was too large an effect I'd recommend simply throttling the blanking process. --<font color='#66dd44'>j &#9883; e deckertalk 19:48, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * I have views on this topic, but will await further statements. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:29, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * In terms of what would be useful going forward, I largely agree with Kirill's comments (except that I think he meant to refer to SirFozzie rather than Risker). The most useful input will be along the lines he outlines. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:02, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It looks like productive discussion is continuing in other forums. This should continue and result in further progress. I agree with the comments of several of the other arbitrators. I don't see any need for clarification or action by the Arbitration Committee at this time. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Gee. I'm surprised this argument made it from ANI to here. Really I am. (deadpan). I'm going to wait for further statements, but I also have views on this topic. Also, please consider this a fervent request... keep all statements brief, concise and cordial. The Clerks will have full reign to refactor or remove overly lengthy, or flame-fanning statements. SirFozzie (talk) 22:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Here's my suggestion, not as an arbitrator (we dealt with this in January as arbs, and while the problem has lessened, it's still there), but as a fellow editor. Looking at the WikiCup and the honoring of those who do the most Featured (X)/GA/DYK (and thus, honoring those who do the most to improve the encyclopedia's content), let's create a competition.. starting, say, December 1, and running through Feb 1, 2011 (three months). The top 10 editors who add references to bring articles up to basic Wiki standards get special one-of-a-kind barnstars or banners (I'm thinking the Bronze BLP Barnstar for 10th through 6th, the Silver BLP for 5, 4, 3, the Gold BLP Barnstar for #2, and the Platinum BLP Cup for the top editor who brings them up). Harness Wiki-editors basic competitiveness and creativity while we make sure that we never get in this state again, where the threats of mass deletions are considered necessary. I will participate, either as a judge or as a plain participant, although I certainly do not have any designs on winning one of the prizes myself. I'm going to post this to the ANI Subpage to see what people think. SirFozzie (talk) 05:43, 30 October 2010 (UTC)


 * It should be possible to increase efficiency here and for people to work together to both: (a) clear backlogs; and (b) identify the truly problematic areas and prioritise cleaning those areas up (e.g. the metrics Scott MacDonald mentioned). I hate to say it, but more and smarter work, and less discussion, might be better here, with the encouragement of staged batches of BLP prods, but certainly no 'threat' of mass speedy deletions. The backlog may look big, but generate and maintain enthusiasm for good-quality work, and it is possible to tackle such things. The problem here seems to be that the motivation tailed off. Find a way to keep people motivated to continue working on this, and watch the backlog go down. The bigger problem is making sure that the growth of the encyclopedia doesn't outstrip the potential for editors to maintain it, if it hasn't already done so (or at least find ways to counter that problem). But whatever happens, please don't fight and argue over it. There are enough clueful people out there to reinvigorate and drive existing processes, rather than coming over all heavy-handed and full of drama. Carcharoth (talk) 00:19, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * WereSpielChequers, thanks for the update on the stats. I have a question about some BLPs I worked, but I'll ask that at your talk page. Carcharoth (talk) 01:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I find myself in agreement with Risker SirFozzie: I am shocked, shocked to see this come up again. The question of whether the Badlydrawnjeff decision technically "authorizes" the course of action that Tony is proposing is a bit complicated—note, in particular, that the clause in question is a principle, not a remedy, and thus might arguably better be characterized as stating the Committee's understanding of existing policy at the time—but strikes me as ultimately uninteresting. Whether or not the suggested mass deletions are permitted, I think it's obvious to just about everyone that they are hardly an ideal solution, in that they are difficult to sustain in the long term, and cause significant collateral damage of various sorts. Rather than continuing to debate the wording of a three-year-old ruling, I would ask that those commenting here submit statements that address the following questions:<ul><li>How large of a problem are we faced with?  In other words, how large is the backlog, how quickly is it being processed, and how much new material is added per month?<li>How effective are the currently available community processes in dealing with the backlog? <li>Can the existing processes be improved to deal with the backlog more efficiently, and how?<li>What can we do to clear the backlog by the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia's founding?  Do we need some sort of centralized drive to source and/or remove these articles?  Is there some other method we haven't tried yet?</ul>The BLP policy will be enforced, one way or another; but I would very much like to see this discussion result in an approach that we can all collectively move forward with, rather than resulting in further division within the community. Kirill [talk] [prof] 02:58, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I strongly suggest everyone commenting here re-read Uncle G's highly relevant comments in the recent AN thread. There are ways to resolve this situation without drama. Shell   babelfish 03:20, 28 October 2010 (UTC)
 * An expansion on Uncle G's postings now that the thread has been moved to a subpage is located here. A pointer to this discussion has been placed at WP:VPP. It would be of considerably more benefit to the project if this can be resolved at the community level. I note particularly Uncle G's reference to the "editors with the teaspoons" - and urge everyone to remember that this project is largely built and maintained by such editors. Thinking out of the box is useful in situations like this. Risker (talk) 21:13, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Request to amend prior case: EEML (2) (November 2010)

 * Original discussion

Initiated by  Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus at 22:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)'''


 * Clauses to which an amendment is requested
 * 1) Remedy 3


 * List of users affected by or involved in this amendment


 * Confirmation that the above users are aware of this request
 * N/A

Amendment 1

 * Piotrus topic banned
 * This is a request to amend EEML Remedy 3 to end the topic ban that applies to Piotrus and allow him to edit articles related to Eastern Europe.

Statement by Piotrus
The amendment proposed last June concerning my person was described as "premature" and the Committee members suggested it should be revisited in one to three months time. As three months have passed, I would like to ask the Committee to consider it now (the topic ban is now in its mid-length, with six months passed, and six months to go).

I would like to repeat what I said three months ago (update: which I could summarize as "I apologize for becoming radicalized and violating WP:CANVASS and I promise not to repeat those mistakes") and to confirm that three months later I have still not been involved in any controversy or dispute resolution and that I am still actively contributing to English Wikipedia and other WMF projects. Notably, there have been not a single complain about my WikiProject Poland related activity, allowed by the amendment from May. I would like to resume carrying out clean up work on articles myself (instead of having to report all issues, even obvious vandalism, and burdening other editors with carrying out the tasks I can do myself). Further, I would like to resume regular new content creation (see how much content I created before and after the topic ban). I was the author of many uncontroversial Poland-related Featured Articles; in fact I have had a draft of a now-defeatured Poland-related article ready for transfer to en wiki for several months now (the article even passed a mock GA review a while ago)... is the project really benefiting from me not being able to fix this article and others...?

I would like to stress that content I created was never an issue of concern, the EEML case was about inappropriate canvassing. If the Committee has any lingering doubts, I can promise to voluntarily abstain from casting votes in Eastern European related discussions (moves, deletions, etc.) for the remainder of the topic ban original duration.

To the expected peanut gallery, I have this to say: I am here to build an encyclopedia, and I invite you to join me in good faith in this collaborative effort. To the "Piotrus is EVIL" chorus, I have this to add: I forgive you (you should try it, it does wonders for one's wikistress). To those who have supported me in the past and will do so in the future, I want to say thank you. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:57, 21 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Ghirla

"The absence of Piotrus from the Eastern Europian minefield made it a much safer and pleasant place than it used to be". Really? Given this, the numerous AE threads and even the discussions here, including some recent Arbitrator comments below, sadly, I am not seeing this. The dramu continues, without the dreaded EEML members. I wonder why... weren't we the root of all evil after all? :>

Anyway, here's a piece of ancient history: Requests_for_arbitration/Piotrus-Ghirla and User:Durova/Mediation. I stood by and still stand by your request and my promise - I have never commented on you since that mediation. It saddens me to see that you are not returning this favor, even through you made a clear promise: "I promise not to mention his [Piotrus] name in similar circumstances" (the similar circumstances being "to stop discussing [the other editor] on public noticeboards".

I was disappointed when you withdrew from that mediation, but till now, we have not interacted, and I considered our ancient disagreements a thing of the past, and the hatchet well and deep buried. I appreciate your uncontroversial content contribution to the EE topic, and your lack of involvement in the surrounding dramu; till your present comment on my person I thought you were the model reformed, deradicalized editor we could all learn from (create content, avoid conflict and dramu). I'd really appreciate it if you could reconsider your involvement, and rebury the hatchet. Thank you, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 18:03, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Offliner

You ask for some valid statements/links, and I am happy to provide them.
 * 1) "a real admission of all transgressions (not just a single one like "EEML case was about inappropriate canvassing", which is even in the passive voice) & a real apology": if you'd prefer an active voice statement, here you go: "I was involved in violations of WP:CANVASS during the EEML period, for which I apologize." Please also see here;
 * 2) "a real promise that nothing similar to the transgressions will recur": repeating from three months ago: "I plan on ensuring that errors of the past will not repeat themselves in the future";
 * 3) "perhaps proposing measures that will discourage relapse". In addition to the links above, please see here, here and here. Sadly, those proposals were not met with much discussion, amid calls for blood and such. I wonder, were this not the case, would the EE arena today be still as battleground-ish as it is now? Blocks and bans are simple, but not that effective, as experience shows. What is needed is a desire for participants to bury the hatchet and talk things over. Nothing less will fix the situation, I am afraid. Anyway, this is not the best forum for discussion, but I invite you to read my thoughts on this issue here and comment on the talk page.

In exchange, could you point me out to the apology you have made for the events that led to your block on January 15, a promise not to repeat the actions that led to it and any proposals to discourage relapse you have made? Thanks, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:52, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to "4+1+40 Offenses": I did and do acknowledge, apologize and promise never to repeat all items that the arbitrators listed in the findings of the case (what you refer to as "4 Offenses", which includes canvassing; I refer to the other items as "radicalization" and I mentioned that in my recognition&apology&promise above). I have never seen this bizarre "40 Offenses" list; it was certainly never a part of any proposed (or passed) finding. It looks to me like your own version of the official findings, in many instances differing substantively from them (and as such not something relevant to this amendment). In fact, some of your claims directly contradict the Committee findings (to start with your first claim - I will not discuss others for reasons of space and relevance - is that I was the list founder and organizer - the Committee found otherwise). Let me remind you that that this is not the place to re-litigate the case by bringing concerns from that time that were not taken up by the Committee, but in any case I do agree that the behaviors you describe should be avoided (by me and others). Once again, I did and do apologize for the relevant ("4") offenses and plan never to repeat them again. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:32, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Response to Skäpperöd

This is ridiculous, or bad faithed, or both... sigh. Regarding the note to Jusdafax, I found some anon vandalism, and I reported it to an admin that already reverted part of it. Months ago Coren has already confirmed I can report vandalism to administrators; the topic ban prevents me from undoing it myself but certainly does not mean that I should keep mum when I see it (oh, and during the period I was banned, I emailed info on vandalism I spotted to several arbitrators regularly, too). Sigh. This "evidence" gets even more ridiculous. Forced labor in Germany during World War II to which I made just a single mostly automated c/e edit concerns multiple nationalities, not to mention Germany is not in Eastern Europe the last time I checked; see also article's talk page and categories which do not contain any EE projects nor categories, just German ones. The only edit to Second Northern War I made was adding an uncontroversial talk MILHIST assessment template; in any case, just like the previous article, this article deals only marginally with Poland, probably as much as generic World War II article (for example); further the MILHIST template when assessed by another editor did not merit inclusion of a Poland-taskforce.

In fact, to make Skäpperöd's job easier, let me report myself for many similar edits. In the past few weeks I have made edits to pages like Wikimania (2010 edition of which was held in Poland), Revolution (I am sure some occurred in Poland), Pax Mongolica (Mongols invaded Poland at one time, you know), and multiple articles on generic concepts from the fields of science and literature, which are variously connected to Poland (galaxy for example contains the planet Earth which contains Poland, or space opera, which is a genre that Polish writers write in and some are probably mentioned on that page, too). I have also added assessment templates to scores of articles, and while I tried avoiding those obviously connected with Eastern Europe, I might have missed the fact that some of them mention something EE-related in the main body (which I usually don't read). I have also use AutoEd on the main body of many articles; again, it is likely that some of them may mention something EE-related (hmmm, come to think to it, I was working on the world-systems article, and IIRC somewhere in it is an example that mentions Poland in one sentence... I could go on :>

More seriously, I strongly believe I have upheld the topic ban quite well, and I think Skäpperöd's evidence proves it - in fact, thanks for bringing it up, I couldn't make a better argument myself :)

As I said above, I strongly believe that the EE area is not going to improve without editors following WP:FORGIVE. I am afraid, however, that if some editors will keep bad faith attacks on others, aiming to forum shop blocks or bans on anything that can be stretched and called "evidence", the battleground atmosphere will persist, and the Committee may need to step in again :( Perhaps some kind of restriction on bringing spurious evidence and requests is in order? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 04:34, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Kotniski
Again, I support Piotrus's request. There are no and never have been any serious complaints about Piotrus's actions as an editor of articles; and so, considering what a productive editor he is capable of being, any continued restrictions on this editing serve only to harm the encyclopedia.--Kotniski (talk) 08:55, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Ghirla
The absence of Piotrus from the Eastern Europian minefield made it a much safer and pleasant place than it used to be, prompting even Ghirla to resume editing activity, albeit on a limited scale. What a hell of an atmosphere it used to be when Piotrus and Co conspired behind the curtain how to oust from the project the editors like Ghirla, with more than 165,000 edits under his belt. It sends shivers down his spine even now. Poor Irpen, where he is now. Let's pardon the participants of the infamous mailing list, and you will have more drama, witch-hunts and persecution, leaving the Russia-related topics what they had been for quite some time: barren of authors. --Ghirla-трёп- 16:51, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The comments below remind me that I was declared a "hate/propaganda monger" (June 23) on what they call the "Russian front" or "taking the fight to the enemy" (June 21). I don't think I've ever commented on the case; only a prospect of full impunity for everyone involved in the long-term pattern of personal attacks and wikistalking prompts me to comment here. Those guys have succeeded in ousting every reasonably productive contributor from Russia-related topics. Just think about it. P.S. Mr Vecrumba is an EEML member and seems to be actively violating his topic ban. --Ghirla-трёп- 07:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Malik Shabazz
As I did three months ago, I once again support Piotrus' proposed amendment. I agree with other editors who have mentioned how prolific a contributor Piotrus is. I believe he has learned from the EEML debacle and will work toward the improvement of the project.

Currently, Piotrus is allowed to comment on Poland-related matters at WT:POLAND. Every week, he reviews new articles and posts notes about them (e.g., which ones should be nominated for DYK, whether articles should be nominated for speedy deletion, etc.). Then I evaluate Piotrus' suggestions and act upon them as I see fit, a task in which we are sometimes assisted by other editors. I think it would be easier for all concerned if Piotrus were able to perform this Wiki-gnoming directly, rather than by proxy.

In summary, I think Piotrus is an asset to the project and his inability to edit articles in the area of his expertise is a detriment to all of us. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 21:00, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Question for SirFozzie
Could you elaborate on your comment a little, please? It isn't clear how your comments with respect to Skäpperöd's proposed amendment relate to the this proposed amendment. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 22:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Question
In light of the long period that has passed since Coren said he would draft a motion, I feel the need to ask whether Carcharoth's comment ("I would suggest all those under sanctions of finite length just wait out the bans") reflect the Committee's latest thinking, or is it just Carcharoth's view? If the latter, could somebody indicate when the Committee might make some progress on this proposed amendment? Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 00:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Offliner
I cannot speak for what others or even Arbcom will want to see but this would be what I'd personally hope for. If any of this has happened before, it will have escaped my attention and some diffs will do to rectify me.


 * a real admission of all transgressions (not just a single one like "EEML case was about inappropriate canvassing", which is even in the passive voice)
 * a real apology
 * a real promise that nothing similar to the transgressions will recur
 * perhaps proposing measures that will discourage relapse. Offliner (talk) 21:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

The 4 Offences known from the official findings of facts

 * 1) Canvassing
 * 2) Piotrus was aware that usage of the list was inappropriate, and made efforts to keep its nature and existence secret from Wikipedia editors.
 * 3) Piotrus has used his administrative tools in disputes he and other members of the list were involved in in order to affect disputes and in furtherance of their point of view.
 * 4) Piotrus has participated in a variety of disruptive activities coordinated on the mailing list, including 'tag team' edit-warring and encouraging and advising list members to circumvent Wikipedia policies.

The 1 Offence Piotrus has acknowledged and promised to avoid

 * 1) Violations of Canvassing
 * Canvassing is most easy to game for Piotrus. In this recent on-wiki message (everyone knows that Piotrus usually prefers off-wiki contacts), Piotrus refers someone to his amendment, reminds that he supported him last time and implies support for an adminship application. He just obfuscates the meaning by using a pretext that he was interested in why that person had forgiven him unlike the others. Piotrus didn't write a message to those who had opposed his amendment last time, although it would make much more sense to ask them for forgiveness and ask why they had opposed him.

Statement by nihil novi
Not having been a participant in the East European Mailing List, I may not have a full understanding of some of its activities, which I gather were involved in sanctions now under review. I personally do not recall ever having been contacted in an inappropriate way by Piotr Konieczny. I have seen him as a most competent, dedicated and productive contributor to Wikipedia on a broad range of topics, including the history of Poland and Europe. His contributions to the overarching project have been of inestimable value, both in the production of content and in the coordination of an appreciable portion of the efforts of other productive authors. Wikipedia can, I think, ill afford to exclude such a capable individual from full participation in the community's efforts to build a comprehensive, honest, reliable online encyclopedia. Nihil novi (talk) 06:07, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Jacurek
Piotrus's contribution to the Wikipedia especially Project Poland is outstanding. His dedication and knowledge are way above the average contributor. Keeping him banned from the topic area of Eastern Europe any longer only hurts the project itself. Ridiculous and bad faith comments from well known opponents of Piotrus such as this one for example of user  are sad examples of aggressive block shopping that should be punished.--Jacurek (talk) 18:45, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Jniech
I consider myself a Polish editor (but British with a Polish father) hence I declare any bias.

First I find it difficult to really understand the view “that Piotrus and Co conspired behind the curtain how to oust from the project”. It easy enough to set-up a Wikipedia account and use a different IP address. If editing is easier then it is because those involved have accepted their punishment.

Further I understand that based on the decision, that Piotrus was found guilty.

I support this proposal that Piotrus be allowed to edit articles related to Eastern Europe. Having said that if it is rejected I would hope he would be allowed to write new articles and allowed to interact on talk pages (e.g. add quality, importance and take part in debates). Jniech (talk) 20:59, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Lysy
I support the request, for the same reason as before. As for my bias, yes, I am Polish and I admit that I am interested in the quality of Poland-related articles as well as unrelated articles. While Polish, I remained unaware of the illegal mailing list existence, so the conspiracy might have not been that wide and powerful, after all. This said I'm still surprised that mailing lists are considered illegal on wikipedia. Anyway, in my opinion the topic ban is irrelevant to the offence, serves no useful purpose and in fact is only destructive for wikipedia. --Lysytalk 17:38, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Artem Karimov
As an outsider, I would like to voice my opinion as well. It appears to me that Piotrus' behaviour has got no better since the EEML case. Such an obfuscated payoff pointed out by Offliner made me completely convinced that lifting the block is NOTNOW. If Piotrus' behavioural pattern does not change in the future, then, quite possibly, NOTEVER. Retracting my previous statement. There is always enough rope anyway. And Piotrus sounds sincere so probably we could give him a chance to redeem himself. Therefore support. Artem Karimov (talk | edits) 16:52, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Ezhiki
As long as Piotrus can stay out of trouble and edit peacefully, I see very little point in Wikipedia loosing a valuable contributor in a severely undermanned area. I support the remedy, although I would also support re-instating the topic ban immediately should Piotrus find himself in an (accepted) Eastern Europe-related ArbComm case ever again.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); October 7, 2010; 15:18 (UTC)

Statement by Biophys
You issued editing restrictions for a lot of editors in several recent cases. Some of these editors will not behave well and perhaps invite more serious measures, as evident from the recent discussions at AE and elsewhere. Others will follow your order to edit peacefully and productively in allowed areas and behave well in every respect, just like Piotrus. Whatever his problems in the past, Piotrus shows a very positive example (please compare with others). It makes a lot of sense to support editors like him. Otherwise, there is no hope. You should not only use big stick. Biophys (talk) 02:46, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Statement by Septentrionalis
I have not been contacted by Piotrus; I am not a professional Pole - on the other hand, I do not have ideological commitments to any of the other nationalities contending for Minsk and Silesia. My experience with Piotrus has been that he was always comparatively reasonable, and more willing to yield for compromise than several editors who were not sanctioned or have been sanctioned for fixed terms.

It is clear, above, that Piotrus recognizes the problem, and that he asserts his intertion to avoid it, under pain of permanent topic ban. Let us lift it, or at least declare a term (and at this point, many terms would already have expired); those who think otherwise should be prepared to jusitfy a permanent ban. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:29, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
 * In response to a comment: I see I have erred; Piotrus is under a ban of twelve months, to begin after his three month block. (Why so much vehemence over so short a time remaining?) This seems unusual, although understandable; ArbCom rarely attempts to regulate more than a year in advance - either things are indefinite or one year renewable, as with PHG above. I support the current motion, although I hope it will be interpreted assuming good faith and enforced by warning before blocks; a hostile admin could construe any diplomatic or military action of Poland-Lithuania as "ethnic conflict". If it passes and succeeds in keeping Piotrus out of inflammatory areas, that will be more evidence of Piotrus' moderation. If it fails, may I suggest making the year topic ban concurrent with the block, thus ending next month? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:00, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Statement by other editor
{Other editors are free to comment on this amendment as necessary. Comments here should be directed only at the above proposed amendment.}

Further discussion

 * Statements here may address all the amendments, but individual statements under each proposed amendment are preferred. If there is only one proposed amendment, then no statements should be added here.

Statement by Skäpperöd
Looking at Piotrus' talk page, one finds a recent note of Jusdafax, in which he confirmed making this EE edit on "request" by Piotrus (otherwise not knowing about the issue, see edit summary). What makes this even more worrying is that the "request" was apparently made off-wiki. Piotrus also violated his topic ban last month when he came to this article after his associate Molobo had edited there. I further remember Piotrus' interest an article I wrote, Second Northern War, which also is within the scope of his topic ban. The article was up for GAC review when Piotrus and encouraged another user to make critical comments during the review and tagged its talk page.

In the request below I provided evidence that Radeksz is back at his old targets after the return from his topic ban, he even got blocked for his post-topic ban disruption, and we are just talking about this summer. Molobo's post-block behaviour is also in part mentioned in that request. Jacurek evaded his topic ban by sockpuppetry. The group's associate Loosmark was recently EE topic banned. Biophys was subject to another Arbcom case after the EEML. The remedies of the EEML arbcom should have quieted the EE are for about a year, but they have not succeeded in doing so.

Until Piotrus2, Arbcom had decided in dubio pro Piotro, then gained access to the EEML archive, and responded with moderate remedies. This approach has failed. It is unlikely that Arbcom will every now and then be provided with a random archive of Piotrus' group's off-wiki collaboration, nor will Radeksz copy his inbox to mainspace again as he did while proxying for Molobo. That doesn't mean that it has stopped.

I suggest that Piotrus' group is subject to a permanent topic ban from EE articles concerning shared histories, naming disputes, or shared/disputed nationality issues.

Statement by DonaldDuck
For Piotrus, topic ban was deserved remedy. And this remedy worked. After Piotrus was topic banned, Eastern European topic area became much safer place. Editors can work without fear of being targeted by Piotrus and his group. EEML remedy should not be amended now. DonaldDuck (talk) 11:47, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Heim talketh
Apparently I'm now going to join the scorned "Piotrus is evil" crowd. So be it.

I'm quite concerned that Piotrus still seems to show no sign of remorse or even much concern about what he did. Indeed, his comment seems to almost be telling us that we need to absolve him. Forgiveness is not something to be demanded, it is to be humbly requested, and I'm not seeing this. Of course, this shouldn't be about personal disputes (and I don't believe I ever have disputed with Piotrus, myself), but the approach he's taking leaves me really skeptical that he's really learnt anything. He holds up his spotless record since his return from his siteban. Well, yeah, that's because he's been mandatorily away from the area where the problems happened. I can't see that this record proves much. (True, this can be said in the case of any topic ban.) I acknowledge that he's been a hard working contributor at Wikipedia for a long time, but the abuse he perpetrated with EEML can't be mitigated solely by that, and the committee has to weigh if he's really likely to be a net positive here. OK, still some concerns, but I did miss that there was an apology. Striking this much.

If the committee decides to lift, even in part, this topic ban, which I really think is probably not in Wikipedia's best interest, I strongly urge an oversight mechanism to be in place so that any relapse into previous behaviour will result in the reinstatement of the sanctions. Eastern Europe articles are already the biggest, most festering national/ethnic-related stinkhole on Wikipedia, despite the joys of Israel/Palestine and Ireland/the British Isles. I ask the arbitration committee to do whatever it can to be sure it festers and stinks less. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:07, 27 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Clerical note: Piotrus has raised concerns about statement that suggests I may have missed things. I intend to look later and make amendments as necessary. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 04:41, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've stricken some of my comments that I believe were inaccurate. I acknowledge that Piotrus has, contrary to my original understanding, apologized, which I reckon is a start, at least. I continue to reiterate that, given the severity of previous lapses, if the committee chooses to lighten this restriction, there should be proper oversight to stop this situation if there's any relapse. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 11:36, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Specifically for Newyorkbrad
Concerning your suggestion, I'm going to have to be one of those people who raises questions about line-drawing. In this volatile area, ethnic disputes pop up in unexpected areas. For example, Nicolaus Copernicus would seem like it ought to be just another science article, but no, it's also a been a point of ethnic disputes over the scientist's nationality. I have no real ideas about how the lines would be drawn, and I honestly question whether this idea is feasible. Completely understand the want to do this, but is it realistic? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:16, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Comment on terminology
I think Coren's comment is the second time recently that I've seen an arbitrator using the expression "toe the line" in a way that seems to be contrary to its normal meaning. My experience of its use is roughly in line with the wikipedia article where it quotes directly from sources:

"To adhere to rules or doctrines conscientiously; conform" (American Heritage) "To conform to a rule or standard" (Oxford)

The way it's used here though in "trying to toe the line and argue about where it lies" seems to mean... something else. The best I can make of the intended meaning is along the lines of "trying to push the boundaries". I think it's an emerging case of a locally redefined word or phrase that hinders communication with anyone from the rest of the world and would best be dropped before a local meaning sticks. Wikipedia really has too much of that already. 87.254.73.141 (talk) 04:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Clerk notes

 * This section is for administrative notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Arbitrator views and discussion

 * See below for my response and thoughts in this area. SirFozzie (talk) 22:59, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Further: I reiterate what I think down below, that the fact that people in this area cannot or will not get along with each other bodes very ill for the consequences.. as for the narrowing, I agree with Brad, and will at least be willing to narrow the topic ban, with the caveat that it's going to be very quickly reapplied if there are future issues. SirFozzie (talk) 04:16, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
 * The current topic-ban provides that Piotrus is currently "topic banned from articles about Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about same, widely construed." I do not think that in view of the entire situation and history, a consensus to lift the topic-ban in its entirety is likely to emerge. However, consistent with what I have suggested on other occasions, I am considering a motion to narrow the topic ban to apply only to "articles concerning nationalist or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe" and related pages, as opposed to all articles about Eastern Europe. This would allow Piotrus to edit many articles in his areas of interest without, hopefully, stoking disputes about the most contentious ones. I understand that there may be concerns about line-drawing, but I think they are solvable. Comments on this possibility would be appreciated; please submit them by Saturday so that, for once, we can potentially have a timetable for resolving this request. Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Recused. Shell  babelfish 09:20, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I also agree in principle with a narrowing of the topic ban, but that would be accompanied with a stern warning that trying to toe the line and argue about where it lies is the swiftest way to have it return. I'll propose an amendment in a few day unless one of my colleagues does so first in order to give more time for other arbs to chime in (we have had, regrettably but predictably, our attention mostly taken by an ongoing case rather than this page).  &mdash; Coren (talk) 20:47, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment Like Fozzie and some other arbs, why is it the East Europe editors seem completely incapable of getting along with one another. I'm beginning to think we should open another case and use wiki-tactical nuke level measures. <span style="font-family:Verdana,sans-serif"> — <b style="color:#060;">Rlevse</b> • Talk  • 15:51, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment - over the past near-two years I have been an arbitrator, this has remained an incessant battleground area. I fully expect that unless the same names that keep appearing time and time again get the message, there will be further measures taken either by this committee or the new one in 2011. There is such a thing as wearing out the patience of ArbCom as well as the community. I would suggest all those under sanctions of finite length just wait out the bans, and those with indefinite restrictions limit themselves to getting the restrictions changed to ones of a finite length. Carcharoth (talk) 06:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Recuse  Roger  talk 19:26, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Motion

 * Remedy 3 of Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list "Piotrus topic banned") is replaced with the following:
 *  is topic banned from articles about national, cultural, or ethnic disputes within Eastern Europe, their associated talk pages, and any process discussion about these topics until March 22, 2011 (the date on which the topic ban imposed in the original decision was to expire).
 * As there are 11 active arbitrators, 2 of whom are recused, the majority to pass is 5


 * Support
 * With my apologies by the externally imposed delay in proposing this motion. &mdash; Coren (talk) 13:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * SirFozzie (talk) 14:43, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Added the time limitation; I believe this motion is intended as a narrowing, not an extension, of the existing topic ban. If I have misinterpreted the intent, any arbitrator can revert and we should discuss. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:50, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was the intent. &mdash; Coren (talk) 22:03, 5 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Carcharoth (talk) 00:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Risker (talk) 02:03, 7 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose


 * Abstain


 * Recuse
 * Kirill [talk] [prof] 06:23, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Note: Based on the votes above the motion is carried. Let's wait 24 hours for any additional votes to come in, at which point the Clerk should archive and notify. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:43, 12 November 2010 (UTC)