Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive191

TeeVeeed
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning TeeVeeed

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 19:21, 21 April 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 17:37, April 14, 2016 User announced their intent to "...keep trolling this topic just because you are being so unreasonable."
 * 2) 08:14, April 14, 2016
 * 3) 08:35, April 14, 2016 Both this and the above dif show him both pushing a POV and disguising false claims as being properly sourced.
 * 4) 11:21, April 14, 2016 Reinserting false, unsourced claim to a sourced sentence.
 * 5) 14:05, April 14, 2016‎ Further revert to reinsert false claims.
 * 6) 10:00, April 21, 2016‎Misrepresenting talk page consensus to further push his POV.
 * 7) 11:17, April 21, 2016‎ Reverting instead of discussing.
 * 8) 11:57, April 21, 2016 Continuing to revert while claiming I said things I explicitly disavowed saying.
 * 9) 12:00, April 21, 2016‎ Responding at talk page with provocative edit summary of "i know you are but what am i".


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :

none


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):


 * 09:48, April 14, 2016 Given notice of discretionary sanctions by.
 * 17:48, April 14, 2016 Warned again by Jytdog.
 * 08:52, April 15, 2016 Warned by me.

This editor doesn't seem to have any real familiarity with the subject, but seems to be stumbling through, intentionally tryign to step on as many toes as possible in order to fight against what they perceive as an unnecessarily skeptical POV, but which no other editor at the page sees.
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

15:21, April 21, 2016‎ Given notice by me.
 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning TeeVeeed
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by TeeVeeed
I am sorry that I ever got involved at the article, because I don't like being drawn into edit-wars. And I really did try to understand the mostly good points involved with FRINGE tropics, and I appreciate what I learned with that. But there remains a problem in that article with WP:OWNERSHIP issues where a certain cabal refuse to understand anyone else's points. I have been harassed and accused of all kinds-of nonsense since a very minor GF edit made there. The very day that I 1st edited and then questioned on the TP, a "warning" was posted on the FRINGE noticeboard calling for editors to help brigade against "anti-vaxxers"--which was NEVER my point and which I did not do. My point was to edit in service to WP and the readers, as it always is. Now this drama after I decided that enough was enough on the TP and I requested comments on the RS board regarding a contentious source. Yeah I could have stayed-off the topic, but I'm feeling like this is a bully situation and have seen other editors with my same questions about why this film article was "different" being blocked, and drama-boarded and basically not playing nice with other editors who have tried to edit this article. And TY-to the uninvolved editor Rhoark, yeah rv me for the consensus that MjolnirPants (seemingly?) agreed-to, is just crazy-making. This should be a Boomerang, just for that imo. TeeVeeed (talk) 20:37, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

edited to add

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Gorski_again_for_article_Vaxxed Reliable Source question I posted immediately before this action was taken against myself.TeeVeeed (talk) 21:43, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Rhoark (uninvolved)
MjolnirPants seems to be edit warring against the wording that MjolnirPants themselves suggested, exactly as TV said. Also, why is it so important to cite the opinion of a non-RS blog about a movie the blogger admits to not having watched? He's an expert in oncology, not a clairvoyant. WP:BUTITSTRUE Rhoark (talk) 19:44, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Another Statement about why this should Boomerang and editor frustrations by TeeVeeed
Also, this is not the 1st time that a GF editor has been brought here. Please See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Conzar#Arbitration_enforcement from the TP archive. Also, in trying to reach understanding and consensus, one editor/admin? apparently uses two different names, which is confusing, and I am trying to AGF, so I am not accusing them of anything since they are obviously doing it in an open-fashion, but it has the effect of a SP-(appears like two different accounts in agreement when it is one), on myself at least.TeeVeeed (talk) 21:25, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning TeeVeeed

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * Topic banned. TeeVeeed says they're sorry they ever got involved at Vaxxed, where they have been an unequivocal negative and have wasted the time of experienced editors who could be doing something more useful. The simple solution is to topic ban them from Vaxxed and vaccination-related pages. Done. Teeveeed's comments about article ownership and bullying are without merit AFAICS. Best of luck editing the rest of Wikipedia, TeeVeeed. Bishonen &#124; talk 07:53, 22 April 2016 (UTC).

Request concerning STSC

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 14:52, 26 March 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Arbitration/Requests/Case/Falun Gong 2 :

User:STSC is essentially a nuisance editor with a consistent, pro-Chinese government point of view. He is involved in regular conflict with other contributors, edit wars frequently, and personalizes talk page discussions to needle and provoke his opponents. Although most of his actual edits are relatively minor, they are also consistently counter-productive, thereby creating problems that other editors have to resolve. Evidence of the user’s POV editing and adversarial conduct spans a variety of topics related to China (including Sino-Japanese relations, Hong Kong, Tibet etc.), but unfortunately this complaint is limited to the user’s conduct on Falun Gong articles per the relevant discretionary sanctions.

For more context, there was an ANI complaint about the editor recently here. The complaints there are pretty illuminating.

Evidence of POV editing
 * – claiming that something attributed to a third party is actually just from “Falun Gong sources”. (A Chinese human rights lawyer who has represented Falun Gong practitioners is not a "Falun Gong source"; civil rights lawyers were clearly interviewed by the media outlet for their familiarity with the subject, rather than as spokespersons for Falun Gong)
 * - Torture deaths as reported by the New York Times are merely “alleged” (Wikipedia's manual of style recommends against using expressions of doubt such as "alleged". There are exceptions where "alleged" is appropriate—e.g. in a pending criminal case against an accused individual—but this doesn't seem to fit the bill).

Evidence of prior warnings about Falun Gong discretionary sanctions:
 * - Changes the caption on an image of Gao Rongrong – a Falun Gong practitioner who, according to multiple reliable sources, was tortured to death in custody in 2005. STSC edits the caption to remove mention of the fact that she died, and adds the qualifier that she was only “allegedly” tortured. He used misleading edit summaries, calling these copyedits or “resizing”.
 * - Obsessively wikilinking the word “cult”
 * -Repeatedly adds Falun Gong to the page Governmental lists of cults and sects, even though Falun Gong is not on any government’s list of cults and sects (the Chinese state does often accuse FLG of being a “cult”, but this is a separate question from whether it is on the government’s official list of such groups, which it apparently is not). To get around this problem, he edited the article to say “cults and sects identified by governments are not necessarily put on a designated list.” Also worth noting that he uses clearly biased sources, and introduces errors of fact (e.g. claiming falsely that the National People's Congress outlawed Falun Gong—it didn't).
 * For insight into why STSC seems so compulsive about the “cult” thing, see his comments here. These are precisely the arguments used by the Chinese government to defend its treatment of Falun Gong. In essence: the mass imprisonment, torture, and killing of Falun Gong devotees is ok because it is not a religion, but instead a "cult" that imperils social stability (charges that are easily refuted, if only one bothers to read reliable secondary sources on the topic). In a chilling admission, STSC suggests that the “elimination” of this religious creed should not be viewed as “undesirable,” and calls for greater deference to be given to the Chinese government.
 * - Removing perfectly fine photos, often for being “irrelevant,” and edit warring to keep them gone
 * - Tendentious tag-bombing, mostly to the lead section, even though information contained therein is fully referenced in body of the article
 * – an interesting replacement


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Response
Ah, I did overlook the 20 diff limit. In that case, would the reviewing administrators allow an exception? Most of the diffs do not show complicated edits—most of these are small, simple edits made repeatedly. The number of them is evidence simply of the user's tendency to edit war to enforce his point; I'm not sure how else to illustrate this type of conduct.

As to STSC's contention that "any editor could have informed me on my talk page" about problems with his editing, this is not my experience. I attempted to do this, letting the user know that his edit summaries and caption changes were misleading. He responded by accusing me of harassment and intimidation, informed me that I was unwelcome on his talk page, and called my suggestion that he remedy the problem "a nonsense." The Blue Canoe  15:26, 1 April 2016 (UTC)

Discussion concerning STSC
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by STSC
This is a brief response as I'm in the middle of my long holiday and will be unlikely to respond in the next 2-3 weeks.
 * There're 40 diffs in the accuser's statement, far more than the 20 diffs limit.
 * My edits in the articles have been normal and reasonable, and usually within the Wikipedia's guideline.
 * My participation in the discussions has been normal and in civil manner, and usually within the Wikipedia's guideline.
 * Some of my edit summaries may not have included a comprehensive explanation due to my laziness, any editor could have informed me on my talk page if they required any further explanation.
 * TheBlueCanoe accuses other editors "POV editing"; from other fair-minded editors' viewpoint, his edits are actually very much pro-Falun Gong POV editing. This is just a classic case of WP:BOOMERANG.

Further statement: I and some other fair-minded editors have tried to correct the unbalance in many Falun Gong related-articles which have been religiously guarded by some diehard editors (user TheBlueCanoe included). My edits were justifiable according to Wikipedia policies so there's nothing much I need to add here.


 * @TheBlueCanoe: You did not ask me for explanation about my edit, you just told me to self-revert my edit as if you owned the article? That's the way you have been operating on Wikipedia - for you any edit that is not favourable to Falun Gong must go. STSC (talk) 18:13, 1 April 2016 (UTC)
 * @EdJohnston: I agree to your temporary arrangement for this case. Thanks. STSC (talk) 05:31, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * @Bishonen: I found it incredible that you just jumped the gun to echo all the accusations without looking into the evidence, the background and the original sources of those edits. STSC (talk) 13:30, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * @Rhoark: I would be putting more effort to write a better edit summary. STSC (talk) 13:57, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * @The Wordsmith and Rhoark: You failed to look at my reasoning in the discussion regarding the article title - "Wikipedia is neutral and should not make judgement on the Chinese internal policy (cracking down on Falun Gong) for the good of its society"; I was pointing out the Chinese POV, it does not imply supporting the elimination of any religious group. STSC (talk) 14:42, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by TheBlueCanoe
Over three weeks have elapsed. I am resurfacing this case so that a decision can be rendered. The Blue Canoe  16:24, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Rhoark
It is not policy to sanction an editor for having a POV, and I don't see any clear content or behavior violations in the diffs. The one thing that deserves censure is STSC's prickly response to other editors asking for better edit summaries. Given the staleness of diffs, and that AE actions should be preventative rather than punitive, I suggest only a warning at this time. Rhoark (talk) 16:47, 25 April 2016 (UTC) Having seen the diff The Wordsmith linked, I support an indefinite topic ban. Rhoark (talk) 14:36, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning STSC

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * Awaiting a response from STSC (who hasn't edited since March 21). Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:33, 30 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd be OK with putting this AE request on hold until STSC is back from his trip. A maximum of three weeks' delay could be considered. I'd collapse this AE and put 'On hold' as the result. If STSC doesn't return, then we should decide the case anyway. EdJohnston (talk) 04:49, 2 April 2016 (UTC)
 * TheBlueCanoe makes a good point about the many small diffs. It would be hard to illustrate STSC's annoying habit of inserting "allegedly" all over the place (See WP:ALLEGED), or the many wikilinks to "cult", or the tag-bombing, without a lot of little diffs. I don't think those put undue strain on the attention of the reviewing admins, the way forty links to argumentative talkpage posts would. Since the need for "permission of a reviewing administrator" is invoked in the page instructions, I'll just state that I'll allow TBC's diffs. As has already reminded STSC on his page, the three weeks for which the request was put on hold have elapsed. Pinging, too. Time to decide on this request. Bishonen &#124; talk 22:25, 25 April 2016 (UTC).
 * I find these diffs troubling. Particularly this one, which openly supports the "elimination" of a religious group as a good and necessary thing. To me, that seems to demonstrate an agenda that is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of Wikipedia; therefore I believe that the best thing for this topic area is to remove the editor indefinitely. The Wordsmith Talk to me 14:24, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

MjolnirPants
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning MjolnirPants

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 20:36, 25 April 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Requests_for_arbitration/Pseudoscience :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) Casting aspersions Everything you've argued is based on a very biased interpretation of policy, and your POV is not more important than factual accuracy.
 * 2) Reverts to re-include a BLP violation: calling a living person a "scientific fraud" using a self-published source.
 * 3) Implies agreement with removing the questionable source. I don't much care which notable source says something like "this is an anti-vax film by a guy who lost his medical license," so long as it's said. My only interest is in making sure the lead accurately summarizes the article, and that no anti-skeptic/anti-science/anti-vaccine POV is being pushed on the article. (These conditions are still met by the article after removing the BLP violation.)
 * 4) Asserts demanding reliable sources on Wikipedia is equivalent to 9/11 trutherism
 * 5) Casting aspersions Your arguments (both of you) are straight up wikilawyering to cover your own attempts to whitewash the subject.
 * 6) Restores the BLP violation again.
 * 7) Casting aspersions Your might want to cover up, because your bias is showing.


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):


 * Participated in an arbitration request in this area against TeeVeeed Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement

I first encountered this topic through the above enforcement request against TeeVeeed, and then examined the related Talk discussions and RS/N filing. As I commented in that case, MjolnirPants edit warred and filed against TeeVeeed based partly on an edit MjolnirPants themselves had endorsed on the talk page. I further noted an air of ownership in the warnings given to TeeVeeed and disproportionate hostility to TeeVeeed's having noted the fact that a blog by David Gorski is self-published. TeeVeeed responded to these provocations with an unfortunate turn of phrase, and did show some degree of credulity for pseudoscience, leading to a topic ban.
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

This left a poorly-sourced claim still on the page, and the justifiability of MjolnirPants' filing unsettled to my mind, so I set about to test the waters. I brought essentially three objections: that statements about the movie rather than science are not in David Gorski's area of expertise, that his notability does not warrant naming him separately in the lede from all the other sources calling the movie propaganda, and that a self-published expert cannot be used for BLP claims per WP:BLOGS. These are all correct judgements, but the last in particular has force of ironclad policy behind it. My suspicions of battleground mentality and ownership were immediately confirmed, with several editors leaping to conclusions that removing any pro-science viewpoint, no matter how improperly sourced, is indicative of pro-fringe POV pushing. To their credit, most editors eventually recognized either that I was acting in good faith, or that local consensus cannot override WP:V.

MjolnirPants, however, persists. Consensus is moving towards excluding the BLP violation, but MjolnirPants' potential for disruption remains. I do not wish to remove any anti-fringe editor from Pseudoscience topics in the long term, but without administrator intervention I do not think MjolnirPants will undertake the necessary introspection to separate sourcing that is pro-science from sourcing that is actually scientific and verifiable, nor separate editors that are pro-fringe from those with policy and evidence-based disagreement about fringe topics.


 * It would be pointy to disrupt Wikipedia to make a point, but it is not against policy to improve articles to make a point. My edit was endorsed by policy and improved the article by making it more trustworthy. Nor did I edit with the specific aim of eliciting sanctionable behavior. I suspected one or more editors might respond uncivilly, but had no clear expectation of who. I did not rush to file, instead at the point behavior became sanctionable, recapping arguments and allowing two days for the summary to be digested. Rhoark (talk) 21:37, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The purpose of sanctions is to prevent disruption, and I would not file if I did not think the effect would tend towards the prevention of disruption. That is why I did not file against anyone who seemed possibly unaware that the material was removed for BLP reasons (or anyone possibly following me to the topic.) I do however agree you are a good faith contributor, and most want from this situation for you to see that I (and Wnt, and TeeVeeed, and whoever may come along next) are good faith contributors. Rhoark (talk) 22:03, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Every filing should invite scrutiny of the filer, which is not often enough practiced, so I do not begrudge it in the slightest. The criticisms are misplaced, though. Rhoark (talk) 14:50, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * There is no disagreement about the number of reverts that were performed by various users; however, my going to a third revert in 24 hours was under cover of WP:3RRBLP, and the total sequence of reverts includes a period of 48 hours I allowed for discussion after my most comprehensive talk post. Meanwhile those restoring were in violation of WP:BLPREQUESTRESTORE, even at a single revert.
 * It is mischaracterizing to say I was out to "teach a lesson" as a punitive measure. The policy position I presented was, in Staszek Lem's words "irrefutable", and if an editor's attitude impedes article improvement, its not improper to seek to change that attitude as a preamble to changing the article. Furthermore, it would not have been necessary for me to share my motivations, were they not in the first place questioned and impugned to be pro-fringe. That in itself is prima facie evidence that attitudes needed to be changed.

Jytdog has presented more than I could possibly respond to, but I'll hit the highlights. Rhoark (talk) 16:17, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I concur with what Jytdog says about the real-world importance of vaccines.
 * My edits as a new user, especially prior to February, 2015 were often bad. They aren't probative to this case.
 * I edit Gamergate and other contentious topic areas. I stand by the soundness of every edit after the 3 month page ban I got for filibustering.
 * Jytdog linked a talk page discussion about the definition of pseudoscience that I participated in, but has not articulated any reason why my arguments for a rigorous and consistent definition should be considered disruptive.
 * I can see exactly why TeeVeeed was banned, which was said in my filing above. That doesn't mean everyone else had clean hands.
 * Jytdog was named by ArbCom for incivility and battleground mentality in the GMO dispute, a close cousin to pseudoscience disputes.
 * Jytdog reacted with disproportionate hostility incivility to TeeVeeed's innocent and accurate observation that David Gorski's blog is not as reliable as other sources being used in the article.
 * To his credit, Jytdog has not continued to suggest I support the anti-vaccination movement after I made it clear that I do not.

I had thought an uninvolved administrator would readily admonish MjolnirPants about the behavior I've outlined, but as Jytdog is someone MjolnirPants respects, his statement Yep. MjolnirPants was too harsh in arguing. Please warn him to cool it. (MjolnirPants, I say that as one who is too harsh myself sometimes; being harsh that way is to your longterm detriment here) fully fulfills what I had hoped for from this filing. I feel comfortable in withdrawing the complaint. This is of course a symbolic gesture that in no way limits uninvolved administrators from sanctioning MjolnirPants, myself, or random bystanders. Rhoark (talk) 22:49, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

if you can concisely specify something I've done wrong, I'll readily acknowledge it, but I won't be held responsible for any time wasted trawling my entire edit history on your own initiative. Rhoark (talk) 04:40, 27 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning MjolnirPants
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by MjolnirPants
Oh lord. For starters, contrary to what is stated above, I have only reverted edits removing this content twice. Once here and once here. There have been 5 other reverts of Rhoark and one other editor's attempts to excise the material in question, by 4 other editors. There is broad agreement on the article talk page and at an RSN thread about this that the quote is appropriate and useful. I've explained my rationale, and even offered a compromise which was completely ignored. As for the rest of the diffs, I don't have space to respond to them all. Suffice it to say, his characterization of me is very biased. I will respond in detail if necessary, but honestly, I feel like it's pretty clear that Rhoark doesn't understand what exactly is going on here.

To that end, there is this diff in which Rhoark describes his goal in pushing this. My primary aim is to prompt introspection that will make you a better advocate for science in the long term. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be editing to teach other users a lesson. It's also worth pointing out that Rhoark has racked up three reverts in the past 24 hours, (here, here and here), and brought this up after another editor reverted them most recently. It's worth noting that the other editor removed the specific words Rhoark objected to with no response from myself. In addition, Rhoark virtually admits to engaging in this whole crusade in order to teach me some kind of lesson, even though he seems to have missed the fact that I've shown already that I care about NPOV in this article, as well as in other fringe articles. MjolnirPants  Tell me all about it.  21:39, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you really think edit warring and filing AE notices against good-faith editors isn't disruptive? MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  21:46, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You seem to think you know quite a lot about my intentions and character for someone who's only ever read what I had to say about encyclopedia articles. I think the simple fact that you admit you're trying to teach me a lesson should be a red flag that you're overstepping, but then at this point, it's for an uninvolved admin to decide. MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  22:15, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Aside from PeterTheFourth's list of Rhoark's reverts and Rhoark's admission to getting involved only to teach me a lesson above, there's not much else I could put up to support a boomerang. Personally, I find it very worrying that someone would take this tactic on an subject under discretionary sanctions, but I can see how you could conclude that one worrying event isn't worth sanctioning someone over. Perhaps a warning to focus on constructive editing and not to focus on other editors would be enough. MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  00:43, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * My remarks concerning Loose Change were made to contextualize what Gorski knows, not what I know: in effect, I was analogizing what you said at the RSN. My point was that Gorski knows enough about the contents of the film that he doesn't need to know the exact narrative to make the statement he did. If I didn't make that clear enough, that's my fault, but I wasn't suggesting that Gorski is acceptable because I know he's right, I was suggesting that Gorski knew enough that his statement couldn't be discredited with the argument that he hasn't watched the film. MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  00:57, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I understand what you're saying, but your criticism seems based on the assumption that I was making the argument that Gorski's inclusion was acceptable because I knew he was right. At least, that's what you statement But we are wikipedians, and our knowledge is not an argument: it is a a guide in search of arguments published in WP:RS. strongly suggests. I'm trying to parse this statement in the context of you understanding that I was not presenting my own knowledge as an argument, and coming up with nothing. MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  01:32, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Weird that your only contribution to WP would be an accusation of canvassing. Weirder still that you would find that, and not find this, or this or this. MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  15:02, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Your smearing of is not helping you here. His part in all of this is merely to give his opinion, and your response is an extended ad hominem. Your and my histories are relevant to this, but his is not. More specifically, the "disproportionate hostility" you attributed to him in the first diff you provided reads to me like Jytdog civilly responding to TeeVeed's claim to be trolling us. There's nothing at all hostile about his response. Perhaps you could argue he was being condescending, but claiming hostility is an extreme stretch of the truth. The second diff is just him editing his response, so adding it on reeks of dishonesty, like you're trying to suggest it was two different incidents. To be perfectly honest with you, the more you write, the more I agree with Jytdog that you should face sanctions.  MjolnirPants   Tell me all about it.  22:12, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by PeterTheFourth
Given that was dealing with an editor whose misconduct has now gotten them indefinitely topic banned from the area, and from a position of quite a large consensus, I find the assertion that he was "edit warring" against them with a total of 2 reverts a bit hard to swallow. Indeed, I'll note that Rhoark themselves has reverted more than Mjolnir-.

The editor I'm referring to when I say 'indefinitely topic banned' is, not Rhoark. I could have made this clearer- my bad. PeterTheFourth (talk) 23:38, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Gongwool
I believe this is a frivolous complaint and I haven't the time to investigate diffs etc. I agree with PeterTheFourth above. But from what I know MjolnirPants has been trying to restrict WP:FRINGE breaches to such topics. I suggest close this complaint. Gongwool (talk) 23:27, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Wnt
After seeing TeeVeed's protest at Jimbo Wales' talk page, I looked at the article and decided that the Gorski blog was not suitable, per policy, for calling someone a "scientific fraud". (I'm OK with using it to call the film "propaganda") The importance of this was muted since reliable sources in the article were making similar statements, but technically, it was a violation of a core policy. In my talk page back-and-forth, MjolnirPants seemed too focused on, well, truth rather than verifiability. I think it is more important here that we establish clarity about what the BLP policy demands than that anyone be sanctioned. I would be much more interested in seeing MjolnirPants' stubbornness credited as a mitigating factor for TeeVeed to have a chance to get rehabilitated and to have a real way out of the usual downward spiral of sanctions than in seeing any action taken against MjolnirPants. The really fundamental problem at that article was a lack of editors and neutral voices to settle policy issues, and harsh administrative actions don't make that any better. Still I should note that it is important even for rationalists to understand that we're here to make a comprehensive and demonstrably neutral encyclopedia, so gathering and featuring the reliable secondary sources most prominently is something of an goal in itself. Extra note: In regard to the above comment, (stricken: ) Rhoark's comments on BLP were essentially identical to my own, so I don't regard it as "fringe POV pushing." Fairness and open-mindedness should not be viewed as problems requiring administrator intervention! Wnt (talk) 23:50, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

came up with a satisfactory solution, providing third-party coverage of the Gorski quote from the L.A. Times (though personally I would prefer some other quotes from that article made in their own voice). So I am nonplussed by his section here about Rhoark. It might be that Rhoark has an interest in conflict resolution - an editor shouldn't have to be an admin or even an admin wannabe to have that interest. Any editing history free of any clear restrictions or warnings should not count against him, more so if he actually touched Gamergate that often without getting stung. You can do "opposition research" on any editor, and you can make some argument or other about his motivations - the sheer number of available hypotheses when you do that guarantees you can find some weak statistical support for some detrimental notion or other. But Rhoark's policy argument was clearly appropriate for an editor in good standing, and he deserves to be treated as one. Wnt (talk) 15:37, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Staszek Lem
I believe everybody deserves a trout slap in this drama including myself. I came to Vaxxed] page from WP:RS noticeboard where it was asked whether Gorski's blog is a WP:RS. I have a firm opinion that in context of this article Gorski does have expertise. And therefore noticing his quotation removed with edit summary being a link to a talk thread which was [[tl;dr I jumped in with revert. (trout in my face) I was reverted with edit summary "WP:BLOGS prohibits this use regardless of expertise". . A little better, but still confusing, so I asked it the talk page and finally got a convincing explanation. Here is a troutpiece to Rhoark: Had he put this one short phrase that directly pointed to the problem, I would not have run my face into a trout.

That said, both sides are obviously smart persons, but their eloquence serves them bad. We all speak out of some context sitting in our head and some of our premises we forget to mention, taken for granted. While your opponent may just the same neglect to mention some other premises. Here goes a trout to the other side of the dispute: MjolnirPants wrote: " What you're saying is akin to saying that I have to watch Loose Change in order to know it's full of truther bullshit." - in reply to some philosophical remark of Rhoark. If you look at this phrase in isolation, M-Pants appears to be right: yes, one may know that Loose Change is full of it without actually watching it. But we are wikipedians, and our knowledge is not an argument: it is a a guide in search of arguments published in WP:RS. We (including experts cited) often "know" things by mistake, by hearsay, by a preconceived notion, etc. Therefore MjolnirPants' objection, while being smart, is a non-argument in the context of wikipedia.

The problem with eloquence in wikipedia is that a long rant may contain both valid and dubious claims. And your opponent, unless of extremely disciplined mind, will reject your position basing on arbitrarily picked pieces of your rant. This is exemplified by the following statement from talk page: "have all explicitly or implicitly endorsed the inclusion and refuted arguments against including it". I have no idea what the arguments were' "tl;dr", but I accepted that my position was countered by a single irrefutable argument. I don't know whether it was buried somewhere in that talk page above. Moreover, the contested edit was easily remedied by removal of only two words from the contested piece rather than by full-metal revert.

Therefore we have to learn to chop our arguments into digestible pieces and stick them to the corresponding pieces of the disputed text.

So, once again, peace and trout to y'all. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:34, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I would like to remind you that one of the lessons with Gamergate controversy in wikipiedia, please avoid personal accusations, such as "POV pushing" stickers, without solid proof, otherwise the boomerang may fly in a completely unexpected direction. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:43, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I did understand your intention, but only because I saw the whole enchilada and only because I happen to partly agree with what I think you wanted to say (but, IMO, failed to deliver unambiguously). In fact, I provided this example not because you were wrong, but as an example where discussion may readily go awry because of sloppy communication. That's my point: speak short and clear, not smart. The goal is not to defeat or deride the opponent, but to (a) understand him, (b) convince him, (c) find a common ground, and in fastest possible time, too; unless your whole life is wikipedia, socializing. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:26, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the educational threat Staszek Lem, I'll take that as WP:HA and WP:BITEing. I have changed my comment above to suit your demands. I was asked to come here and make a comment, and for doing so I get threatened. I now have no opinions as is required of Newbies. I will no longer make comments on ANI pages and such. I have no idea what Gamergate is, and really don't care about the lessons you're trying to lecture me about. Don't comment to me here or on my talk page Staszek Lem, I request that you no longer try to make contact with me in any way. End of discussion with you. Bye Gongwool (talk) 01:11, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I hope you will change your attitude about lessons after being here on wikpedia for a while, especially the ones about our core policies and rules of engagement. Staszek Lem (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked up WP:LESSONS but the policy has been deleted. So some alledged expert lecturing me "I hope you will change your attitude about lessons" has no basis as I can see. As requested maam, DON'T TALK TO ME AGAIN! Bye bye. Gongwool (talk) 02:00, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Jytdog
I want to note that I received notice of this AE from MjolnirPants. I had CANVASS concerns, but if you look at their contribs, he notified all the editors who have been active on the page and can still discuss the topic. The notice is (mostly) neutral, as well. So it is actually OK, I believe.

To the point:

Yep. MjolnirPants was too harsh in arguing. Please warn him to cool it. (MjolnirPants, I say that as one who is too harsh myself sometimes; being harsh that way is to your longterm detriment here)

My focus here is on Rhoark - I had a POINTy vibe through this whole thing. I am glad to hear them say now that they were indeed "testing the waters", but it is still bad behavior. That it was driven by doubt about whether TeeVeed was disruptive is yet more troubling with regard to their judgement in general. I don't want to re-litigate Teeveed's TBAN but for me the killer thing was that after several (!) exchanges I had with TeeVeed about about PSCI and DS and asking them to be careful, all through which they kept arguing with others about content, they finally wrote this to me, where they said " I don't even know what the PSCI is!" (in other words, what the PSCI issue is, in the Vaxxed article). And at that point I knew they were either incompetent or completely bad faith, and in neither case was it going to end well. So I struggle to see how, if Rhoark really looked at what Teeveed did and was saying, and understood our policies, there could be significant doubt.

Anti-vax is serious - kids are getting sick and dying because their parents  -sometimes other kids parents -  believe this stuff. And this being the "encyclopedia that anyone can edit", we have to deal with anti-vax advocates all the time, relentlessly. So the kind of tra-la-la testing the waters thing, the whole spirit of it, and the motivation for it from questioning Teeveed's TBAN, in light of the context here in WP, is disturbing to me.

This led me to look at their contribs. Rhoark joined us in Nov 2014 and it was Men's Rights/Gamergate that drew them. here is their first-ever unpromising edit, which was on Microaggression theory. They went from there to Frankfurt School conspiracy theory and then on to GamerGate, where their editing let to a TBAN via an AE for 3 months in Feb 2015: here. When that ended, they were right back to Gamergating.

From their edit count, they spend way more time arguing on Talk pages than they do creating content:
 * article
 * 34	R v Elliott (which they created - here is where the burst of creation put it)
 * 24	Gamergate controversy
 * 18	Gender representation in video games


 * Talk
 * 426 Talk:Gamergate controversy where they wrote stuff like this from Dec 20 (they opened their account Nov 20) Please do have a look at that
 * 15	Talk:Vaxxed
 * 11	Talk:No Gun Ri Massacre
 * 10	Talk:Masculism
 * 9	Talk:Parapsychology (where they made wikilawyering arguments about parapsychnology not falling under PSCI like this, in this section back in June 2015 which appears to be their first interaction with PSCI.

So that is where Rhoark has come from. Up to their entry into the Vaxxed article, on PSCI/altmed topics pretty much all they have done is that unpromising toe-dipping into the parapychology article.

So I will be frank here - that is far enough. The last thing the community needs is importation of Gamergate-trained relentless Talk page wikilawyering into PSCI topics; no focus on actual content creation. The POINTYness, the "let's test the waters to see what other endless philosophical contentiousness I can get involved in" of this whole thing, including the "gotcha" of the AE filing itself, is really bad, as is the lack of ability to see why Teeveed was TBANed. Further entry is going to be a drain on the time of other editors who actually are productive in creating and maintaining content. I will put a stake in the ground and request that Rhoark be TBANed from PSCI and alt med topics. In general, Gamergate is a terrible training ground for the rest of the encyclopedia, and has attracted many people who are not here to build an encyclopedia. Jytdog (talk) 14:54, 26 April 2016 (UTC) (amend Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2016 (UTC))
 * User:Rhoark - Yes folks know about my GMO TBAN, I acknowledged my history of too-harshness in my first substantial comment above, and you probably learned about the TBAN from reading my userpage where i disclose it, openly. Although you write here oh-so-smoothly, bringing that as a "gotcha" is just gutter tactics that, like this filing, says things about you.
 * More importantly nothing you wrote addresses the heart of what I raised here. Which is that you came to this article about an actually socially important topic and gamified it.  You played a little game, it came out like you expected, you filed an AE.  Nothing to do with improving the encyclopedia.
 * Changing the citation on Wakefield being a fraudster who took money from lawyers suing vaccine makers and who even filed a patent application for an alternative treatment shortly before he published his fraud, does nothing to improve the encyclopedia. (one source and there are zillions)
 * "Taking down" someone who does actual good work maintaining the neutrality of articles in the face of PSCI POV pushers doesn't help build an encyclopedia.
 * wasting everyone's time at the article with your game, and yet further with this AE, which has been met with a "meh", takes time away from people who are working to improve the encyclopedia
 * You did not come to the article to improve it. Nothing you wrote addresses that. If you had actually wanted to improve the article (not just cause drama), this would have been the edit to make.
 * Admins, gamergatification of alt med and PSCI topics is a nightmare that will be an endless time-suck for good faith editors; you can stop that right here. Jytdog (talk) 21:28, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Rhoark it is great that you are withdrawing your AE request but in the absence of acknowledgement of the concerns that have been raised (and you should note that even before I wrote anything here, the only issue for was whether this should boomerang), I am not withdrawing. This wasted a couple hours just of my time (I didn't write what I wrote without doing research), not to mention the time of others who interacted with you at Vaxxed and who commented here. Jytdog (talk) 04:02, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * offering side discussion here. Jytdog (talk) 04:50, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by D. Creish
My comment concerns section: the ratio of invective to diffs here is unacceptable. Especially so in a contentious topic area. On examination, this behavior mimics that which earned his GMO topic ban. A reminder or council from more authoritative editors seems in order.

I'll review the rest of the evidence and amend this section correspondingly. D.Creish (talk) 21:51, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Lizzius
I ended up on the page that started this AE responding to an RFC on a related topic, and I am astonished at how different the tenor of this article/talk-space is relative to most other editing spaces on Wikipedia (well, at least editing spaces that I have encountered so far). I thought reading through the discussion here would help me understand where the disconnect in content originated from, but I am left scratching my head. On that note, I couldn't agree more with concerning his point that turning topics like this into a bit of a quagmire could have nightmarish consequences for the legitimacy of the encyclopedia.

I'm admittedly very new to editing Wikipedia (though your history would suggest you are too) and certainly new to participating in discussions like this, but what specifically about Jytdog's reply worries you? I see you haven't been terribly active in editing the topic at hand, though you and Jytdog have had some overlap while editing in other areas that I won't list here. Lizzius (talk) 13:10, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning MjolnirPants

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * I'm still in the process of reviewing the Talk page and archive, but based on the 20 diffs that were presented I don't see anything actionable. I'm on the fence as to whether or not this should boomerang. Unless someone can provide more compelling diffs either way, tomorrow I'll close this as no action taken. The Wordsmith Talk to me 00:18, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Sailor Haumea
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning Sailor Haumea

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 17:39, 23 April 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Arbitration/Requests/Case/Longevity :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 14:55, April 12, 2016 First removal of entries not sourced to the Gerontology Research Group (GRG)
 * 2) 15:23, April 18, 2016 After a discussion, announces rejection of consensus and intent to revert to their preferred version
 * 3) 15:28, April 18, 2016 Removes all entries not sourced to GRG
 * 4) 15:40, April 18, 2016‎ Same as above, despite warning that there is consensus to include other reliable sources
 * 5) 15:59, April 18, 2016 Third revert, as above
 * 6) 09:50, April 23, 2016 "us vs. them" mentality indicated by claim that article has been "hijacked"
 * 7) 09:55, April 23, 2016 Another removal of non-GRG sources, self-reverted
 * 8) 10:04, April 23, 2016 Clearly states that they do not accept non-GRG sources


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):


 * Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, see the system log linked to above and diff

This is a long-running issue on longevity articles. Basically, there are some editors who believe that Wikipedia should only list supercentenarians that are verified by the GRG. However, a recent RfC resulted in the consensus that any reliable source is fine. Sailor Haumea showed up on List of oldest living people and removed all non-GRG sourced entries. They were reverted and engaged in talk page discussion (Talk:List of oldest living people) where it was explained that all reliable sources are accepted. They rejected this and edit warred to their preferred version, reaching, but not breaking, WP:3RR. However, they have continued to state their rejection of consensus and reverted again, though they self-reverted immediately after. This pattern of behavior is clearly disruptive. Editors with similar attitudes have been blocked or topic-banned under these discretionary sanctions: Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive186, Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive187, Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive188, not to mention those blocked or topic-banned under the original ruling. Given the behavior here and the fact that they appear to be a single-purpose account focused on longevity articles, I recommend a topic ban until such time as they can work with consensus instead of against it. clpo13(talk) 17:49, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :
 * Maybe those experts should learn to follow the rules if they don't want to get blocked or topic banned. This isn't about expert vs. non-expert opinion. This is about being disruptive. clpo13(talk) 03:40, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * But I'm not the one being disruptive, you are. You're ignoring the experts. Sailor Haumea (talk) 16:12, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Diff

Discussion concerning Sailor Haumea
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by Sailor Haumea
Longevity is a field requiring verifiable content. Sailor Haumea (talk) 17:55, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't want to get banned, so I will follow consensus. I won't try and argue that the GRG is some special source. You win. Sailor Haumea (talk) 18:32, 23 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Let's see what another expert, Robert Young, has to say:
 * "Is Wikipedia going to decide who the oldest person ever is? Yes or no. Because if there are no standards of validation, then Calment doesn't have a record. Or, is Wikipedia going to follow its own rules and reflect the mainstream, outside-source consensus..."
 * Another thing. They keep claiming "Oldest in Britain" isn't reliable. That's blatantly false, as we see here, a supercentenarian's obituary names both Oldest in Britain and the gerontology forum The 110 Club (though erroneously thinking The 110 Club's members run Oldest in Britain):
 * 
 * Stop trying to force a change of consensus by topic banning and blocking everyone in your way. --Sailor Haumea (talk) 00:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by EEng
Since stating above that "I don't want to get banned, so I will follow consensus", SH has just gone back to the usual longevity-fan nonsense: What's with these people anyway? No evidence SH is interested in anything but longevity so let's save time -- skip the topic ban and go straight to indefinite block.  E Eng  16:16, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * It says something that you had to block several GRG correspondents (such as 930310) to achieve your goals...blocking the experts from editing is a sign you're wrong. --Sailor Haumea (talk) 23:02, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Glrx
I believe I am uninvolved. I haven't been following longevity, but I did comment in Ollie231213's appeal of a topic ban in this area 3 months ago.

Ollie231213's appeal was declined 14 February 2016.

The Sailor Haumea account has been active since 24 February 2016.

From talk page comments, Sailor Haumea seems well aware of the decision to use sources other than GRG by 22:23 18 April 2016, but SH believes that decision was wrong / had been "debunked". Comment also shows that SH knows editors are getting blocked for editing behavior wrt longevity.

SH does 4 reverts on 18 April 2016 before an explicit 3RR warning on 18 April at 23;11.

Discretionary warning hits 23:13, 18 April 2016.

SH continues to revert and speaks of "Establish a consensus". SH appears to be a sophisticated user.

DS allows a 1-year topic ban, and that is what I'd recommend at the minimum.

I believe there is a colorable claim that SH is avoiding an existing topic ban. (First 2 diffs by EEng also show correlation with DN-boards1; see also User talk:DN-boards1.) Glrx (talk) 01:37, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not DN-boards1. Sailor Haumea (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning Sailor Haumea

 * Sailor Haumea is clearly persistently disruptive in the longevity topic area, exhibiting edit-warring behavior, tendentious editing and ignoring consensus, thus they are indefinitely topic-banned as an AE action. Separately there are telltale signs that this editor appears to be misusing multiple accounts. I will deal with that separately, acting as an individual administrator outside AE action.   20:34, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Request concerning Wikiwillkane

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 17:26, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: WP:ARBPIA3 :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 25 April 2016 Editing in the topic area
 * 2) 25 April 2016 Editing in the topic area
 * 3) 25 April 2016 Creating article in topic area
 * 4) 26 April 2016 Editing in the topic area
 * 5) 26 April 2016 Editing in topic area
 * 6) 26 April 2016 Editing in topic area
 * 7) 26 April 2016 Editing in topic area
 * 8) 26 April 2016 Editing in topic area


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :

Not applicable


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):

Not applicable

Informed by Huldra of the arbitration decision barring users with less than 500 edits from editing in the topic area on 25 April. Warned by me that continuing to edit in the topic area may result in being reported. Continued to edit in the topic area without responding. I dont know if its just they dont know to click on the link that says you have new messages or not, but something should be done to make sure the editor is aware that their edits are in violation of that decision (regardless of the general quality of the edits, which is bad) and that they agree to abide by the decision and refrain from editing in the topic area until they are allowed to do so.
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

The last edit was following my warning, all the ones from the 26th were after Huldra's notification, which as the editor is here responding to this makes me think that it was not simply being ignorant of the big you have new messages link meaning something. But regarding Dafna Meir, its an article on a woman killed in Israeli settlement by Palestinians. I dont think it gets much clearer than that, but hey who knows, maybe Im wrong and this new account knows something I dont. Pretty sure I did not reference a Roseanne Barr edit, but hey as the user brings it up, material on BDS is fairly clearly within the topic area as well.  nableezy  - 20:28, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Notified
 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning Wikiwillkane
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by Wikiwillkane
I was given a warning from Nableezy regarding the 30/500 and heeded his/her advice, and have not edited since on a page that came up with a 30/500 warning. However, Nableezy seems to be unilaterally expanding the 30/500 to anything related to Israel. Editing Roseanne Barr's page with the simple fact that she was a keynote speaker at an anti-BDS conference in Israel seems well beyond the scope of the 30/500 and does not seem to be the original intent of the rule. If the 30/500 rule is placed on the Boycott, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS) Movement, you will need to stop thousands who are presently editing on that topic without 30/500.

Regarding the Dafna Meir page, it never mentions "Palestinians" or "Terrorists," so, again, it should not be part of the 30/500 rule. It was about the murder of an Israeli woman.

Obviously, the 30/500 rule is not clear as some pages have the warning, others do not.

What about Roseanne Barr? At what point does the 30/500 not exist? If the word Israeli, anti-BDS, is that entire article now part of the 30/500? Dafna Meir did not mention Palestinians at all. She was a murder victim.

Statement by Huldra
Obviously, this editor does not believe that WP:ARBPIA3 is valid for them. After being warned, they start the article about Dafna Meir (nominated for deletion), claiming that it should "not be part of the 30/500 rule." (!) Please, could someone make this editor understand that  WP:ARBPIA3 is also for them? Huldra (talk) 22:54, 26 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that if Wikiwillkane actually creates an article on Simone Zimmerman "a Jew hired to be Bernie Sanders' Jewish Outreach Coordinator. She was let go because of her expletive-filled tirades against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and her detailed support of BDS" ---according to Wikiwillkane, then he should be blocked immediately, Huldra (talk) 22:55, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * And if he has any information/proof of " Paid operatives" on wikipedia, I suggest he looks at WP:COI, on how to deal with that, Huldra (talk) 23:01, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Peter James
The restrictions specifically mention "page" and "article". If editors intend to apply it to related content in generally unrelated pages an amendment should be requested. Peter James (talk) 10:10, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

I would regard the Dafna Meir article (and others mentioned) as related - perhaps the subject wasn't but the event that is the only reason for the article's existence is, and Wikiwillkane is aware of this. I was referring to the Roseanne Barr article. Peter James (talk) 23:29, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

The Scientology case adds "or discussions on any page", should this case be amended to add that? Peter James (talk) 09:14, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Wikiwillkane
I agree to stay away from the Israeli-Arab conflict until I have reached the 500 edits. However, Wikipedia's 30/500 rule now seems to be extend an extremely board net over what is considered the "Arab-Israeli conflict." The 30/500 rule was on certain pages of that conflict, such as "Israel" the "West Bank," etc. Now it moved into an area that is discussed, especially regarding BDS, in almost every university campus today. Are you stating that a college student cannot write about a visiting lecturer who discusses BDS because they do not have 30 days or 500 edits on Wikipedia? Roseanne Barr is an internationally known celebrity who was a keynote speaker at a conference in Israel and it was written about extensively. This NOW is under the umbrella of 30/500??? Does that mean that nobody can write on the Students Justice for Palestine Wikipedia page because they discuss BDS? Hillary Clinton is a vocal critic of BDS. Does that mean that nobody can edit her page to reflect this or to write about a speech she gives? Wikipedia must look how many users are now using the 30/500 rule specifically to stifle the voices with opinions different than theirs. Deleting my comments that Roseanne was a keynote speaker at a conference in Israel based on 30/500 is such an example. When an administrator must do a search to see that one news article listed Dafna Meir's murder as terrorism in order to justify that she falls under the 30/500 rule is again an example of far-reaching.


 * I would like further clarity from EdJohnston. Are you stating that all users without 500 edits and 30 days on Wikipedia are not allowed to edit anything that is connected to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement... not just on the BDS page, but any pages totally unrelated to BDS.  So, if Howard Stern goes on a rant against BDS, a user without 500/30 cannot update Stern's webpage?  Is that what you are stating?


 * Without responding to my previous questions, EdJohnston asked me to agree to his terms. I still don't have clarity, but I'll agree to this:  I will stay away from marked pages of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as well as unmarked pages such as Israeli Palestinian Conflict and the Palestine Liberation Organization.  However, I will not refrain from simply editing in Roseanne Barr's page that she was a keynote speaker at an anti-BDS conference in Jerusalem or from editing about Student's for Justice in Palestine, or anything related to BDS.  By doing this, you are limiting thousands of students from editing on a topic that is discussed daily in universities globally.


 * Better you look at your own 500/30 policy and how editors are using it specifically to limit other (less biased) POVs. This is the crime more than having a historian edit on Wikipedia with less than 500 edits.


 * And I will be creating a Simone Zimmerman article. This is a Jew hired to be Bernie Sanders' Jewish Outreach Coordinator.  She was let go because of her expletive-filled tirades against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, and her detailed support of BDS.  The slippery slope you've created about how 500/30 extends is getting slippery and slippery.


 * Rather than Wikipedia spending its time and efforts attacking people like me who simply want to edit, why don't you create regulations against paid operatives who are trolling Wikipedia for users like me, who have different opinions, then throwing the 500/30 net to limit their ability to edit? Sock puppetting no.  Paid operative abusing the 500/30 rule okay.


 * If Huldra wants me banned because I've said that I will create a Wikipedia page about Simone Zimmerman, then I suggest you get ready for the onslaught of hundreds, if not thousands of editors that you will need to sanction. This is not a threat.  It is a reality about BDS and the debate that is happening in our colleges across the country.  This 500/30 has become too far reaching and is well beyond either the original intent or scope of why it was created.  I am now signing off for the end of Passover and the Sabbath, and I'll return on Sunday (if I need to respond to a question).

Statement by RolandR
Peter James above engages in the most egregious wikilawyering with his quibble about "page" and "article". The sanction explicitly refers to "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict". Every one of the articles noted in the original complaint (Israeli-occupied territories, Palestinian political violence, Dafna Meir, Omar Barghouti, Judea and Samaria Area) is unequivocally related to the conflict. Indeed, it would be unreasonable to construe any of them as unrelated. RolandR (talk) 18:51, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Peter James continues his irrelevancies. The article on Roseanne Barr was not mentioned in the complaint, and has only been raised as a distraction manoeuvre by Wikiwillkane. In any case, editing an otherwise non-related article to add a reference to the conflict is indeed covered by the sanctions, as has been confirmed in a case relating to edits to Mobile, Alabama. RolandR (talk) 00:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Darwinian Ape
rant on

''"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so."

''The problem comes from the sanction itself rather than the editor conduct. 500/30 restriction is the antithesis of Wikipedia, yet here we have a broad spectrum of (current and future)articles with that restriction. Wikipedia, encyclopedia anyone can edit, unless it's a contentious topic, then you have to first go edit articles about broomsticks and teaspoons. Oh and did I also mention you have to wait for a period of 30 days? Same as acquiring a gun! Yes editing Wikipedia and guns, totally the same thing.''

rant off

If we put my little objection to the sanction aside, the problem is not adding the brand new extended protection to all pages that are "reasonably" construed as related to Arab Israeli conflict. Doing so will prevent this kind of AE requests to a degree. And it's only fair that we have a standard in preventing these lowly new editors and IP's from editing other than the involved editors of their respected articles.(What I'm trying to say is they may be unconsciously biased in their reporting.) That is my humble opinion on the matter. Darwinian Ape talk 18:51, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning Wikiwillkane

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions is marked on its talk page with the Arab-Israeli Arbitration Enforcement template. Revert-warring at Roseanne Barr to add mention of a speech at a BDS event also evidently falls under the sanctions. (Other edits of Roseanne Barr would not be covered). Dafna Meir, an Israeli woman killed at the West Bank settlement of Otniel in what is described by the Times of Israel as a 'terror attack' is presumably part of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I'd go ahead with a block of Wikiwillkane unless they agree to stay away from the Arab-Israeli conflict until they have reached 500 edits and 30 days' activity. EdJohnston (talk) 04:56, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Wikiwillkane has responded and agreed to stay away from the Arab-Israeli conflict until they reach 500 edits. Under my interpretation this means, no more edits like any of those given above as diffs 1 through 8. It also means not posting A-I conflict-related material anywhere on Wikipedia, such as in his own sandbox or on user talk or noticeboards. If he accepts this then the complaint can probably be closed. EdJohnston (talk) 16:35, 27 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The committee has in the past decided that discretionary sanctions can apply to just one section of a larger article. They ruled that the Scientology-related content of an article fell under discretionary sanctions but not the rest. EdJohnston (talk) 04:22, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * User:Wikiwillwane, creation of a new article about Simone Zimmerman that mentioned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement would indeed be a violation. It doesn't appear that you have any plans to abide by the 500/30 restriction, so I suggest this request be closed with a block or other sanction. EdJohnston (talk) 14:00, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Closing. Wikiwillane is warned to abide by the 500/30 general prohibition. Should he make further edits like the eight diffs listed in this report, he may be given an indefinite topic ban from all of WP:ARBPIA. This would prevent him from making edits related to the Arab-Israeli conflict anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages and noticeboards, and from making A-I related edits to other articles that are mainly not about the conflict, such as Roseanne Barr. This would take away any uncertainty as to what rules apply. EdJohnston (talk) 23:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Closing. Wikiwillane is warned to abide by the 500/30 general prohibition. Should he make further edits like the eight diffs listed in this report, he may be given an indefinite topic ban from all of WP:ARBPIA. This would prevent him from making edits related to the Arab-Israeli conflict anywhere on Wikipedia, including talk pages and noticeboards, and from making A-I related edits to other articles that are mainly not about the conflict, such as Roseanne Barr. This would take away any uncertainty as to what rules apply. EdJohnston (talk) 23:38, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by STSC
''Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action. To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).''


 * Appealing user : – STSC (talk) 02:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Sanction being appealed : Topic ban from the subject of Falun Gong, imposed at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement


 * Administrator imposing the sanction :


 * Notification of that administrator :

Statement by STSC
I appeal the sanction and I want it to be lifted. Based on this discussion on the neutrality of the article title, The Wordsmith wrongly determined that my comment "openly supports the elimination of a religious group as a good and necessary thing".

I commented, "Falun Gong was considered [by the Chinese] as posing a danger to Chinese society and therefore [the Chinese considered it] must be eliminated from China"... Wikipedia is neutral and should not make judgement on the Chinese internal policy for the good of its society."

My comment was pointing out that "Falun Gong was considered as posing a danger to Chinese society and therefore must be eliminated from China" is a Chinese internal policy. I used the wording "was considered" by a third party, the sentence as a whole was meant to be expressing the viewpoint of China.

Further statement

Admins are accountable to the Wikipedia community and they must properly explain their actions; and we certainly don't just accept some blanket statements as to what they think without showing any concrete evidence. It's a hasty and poor judgement by The Wordsmith who has not thoroughly investigated the complaint in a fair manner. STSC (talk) 06:40, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

The Wordsmith's decision was based on a comment in a discussion in June 2015, I have refuted his claim that my comment supports the elimination of a religious group. He then came up with other claims in his statement in this appeal but failed to provide any evidence as to when, where and how. I must ask the sanction to be lifted in the interest of accountability and fairness. STSC (talk) 06:54, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Review

I would review here the diffs which were cherry-picked to build up the baseless accusations by TheBlueCanoe. (I can only input bit by bit here when time allows)


 * – "claiming that something attributed to a third party is actually just from 'Falun Gong sources' "
 * The source: ReligiousFreedom2009 from U.S. Department of State clearly states as 'Falun Gong sources'. (Last sentence of section 1)


 * - "Torture deaths as reported by the New York Times are merely 'alleged' "
 * The source: In the New York Times article, there's no trace of mentioning Falun Gong adherents had been "tortured to death"; there's one sentence stating "where it has been dogged by allegations that it uses torture to crush believers into submission."


 * - "Changes the caption on an image of Gao Rongrong – a Falun Gong practitioner who, according to multiple reliable sources, was tortured to death in custody in 2005. STSC edits the caption to remove mention of the fact that she died, and adds the qualifier that she was only 'allegedly' tortured."
 * Only one source was linked to the image:, an Amnesty International report in German. In its English translation, "The Falun Gong practitioner Gao Rongrong died in June in custody... In 2004, she was allegedly punched in the face..." It does not say Gao was "tortured to death". The caption was meant to describe the image of the scarred face of Gao while she was alive.


 * - "Obsessively wikilinking the word 'cult' "
 * TheBlueCanoe is deceivingly telling a misleading story here; I was restoring the Wikilink to cult which had been repeatedly removed over a long period of time by two editors. One of them was later blocked, the other one had agreed to stop . STSC (talk) 07:37, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * @TheBlueCanoe: To repair damage from vandalism is certainly not "tendentiousness and battleground behaviour". Your persistently making false allegation against other editors is actually a disgraceful behaviour. STSC (talk) 21:54, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Replies


 * @The Wordsmith: Please show us the evidence of "bias and POV pushing". STSC (talk) 04:25, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Seraphimblade: Please show us the evidence that demonstrates the "cause for concern to justify the sanction". STSC (talk) 04:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @TheBlueCanoe: I could have replied point by point to your baseless complaint but I did not have the time to do so. Don't try to misrepresent my comment of 1 June 2015, in that discussion about the neutrality of the title Persecution of Falun Gong, I said, "Unlike the main religious groups - Christianity or Islam, Falun Gong is just a cult as classified in China. What the Chinese government did was crackdown on a cult inside China. "Persecution" is not a suitable word to describe the government's operations on the illegal activities within its own country... such process should not be described as "persecution" as if the elimination is undesirable... My main point is Wikipedia must not take sides on this." I stand by my comment which is wholly related to the argument as to whether the word "persecution" is neutral. STSC (talk) 21:12, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Rhoark: You should not take my comment out of the context of whether the title Persecution of Falun Gong is neutral per WP:NPOV. I was pointing out the word "persecution" would suggest that the Chinese policy of elimination of Falun Gong is undesirable, therefore it would make Wikipedia appear to take sides on Falun Gong. As I suggested in that discussion, "Crackdown on Falun Gong" would be a more neutral title. STSC (talk) 05:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Ryk72: You don't just believe whatever the accuser tells you but can you show us what is wrong in those diffs dated some time ago? STSC (talk) 09:13, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Dennis Brown: If you want any specific information then I will try my best to provide. I don't think The Wordworth's conclusions are reasonable because obviously he has not looked into the circumstances and the sources related to those diffs. STSC (talk) 09:58, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Shrigley: I have put too much faith on the admins as I wasn't bothered to defend myself against each accusation. After all, the admins are not qualified judges, but The Wordsmith clearly has not done his job properly; if he had looked into the sources and the circumstances related to those diffs, then he would had found out the accusations are baseless. Besides, those edits happened quite a while ago. To give me a topic ban is quite a joke, I sincerely hope that no element of prejudice has played a part in the admin's decision. STSC (talk) 08:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Ryk72: I have refuted the allegations in those ANIs so you just leave them out of this case. STSC (talk) 18:25, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * @Zujine: You're not in a position to "recommend that the appeal be declined". And please leave your attacks on other editors out of this case. STSC (talk) 00:38, 2 May 2016 (UTC)


 * @Rhoark: I can say this absolutely - I personally oppose any form of torture and cruelty to humans or animals. STSC (talk) 15:30, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by The Wordsmith
Obviously I stand by the sanction I imposed. I believe it to be in the best interests of that topic area that STSC be removed from participation. Reviewing their contributions makes it clear that they have lost the ability to edit in accordance with our policies and guidelines. I believe their pattern of bias and POV pushing to demonstrate an agenda that is fundamentally incompatible with the purpose of Wikipedia. Therefore, a lesser sanction or finite duration would not have been effective. I arrived at this conclusion after an in-depth review of all the evidence presented and after careful consideration of all the statements given, and I maintain that it is within the bounds of Administrator discretion allowed by Discretionary Sanctions.

I take pride in the fact that of all the enforcement actions I have issued, only one has ever been overturned, and that was in 2010 (and by an editor who was later banned by the Arbitration Committee). However, I'm still human, and therefore fallible. I welcome a review of the sanction issued. The Wordsmith Talk to me 03:51, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by TheBlueCanoe
It seems highly unlikely that anyone will overturn this topic ban, but here are some quick responses to the discussion:
 * Yes, STSC was describing the Chinese government's viewpoint. Yet, in his own voice, he then opines that the "elimination" of a religious creed should not be considered undesirable. This is what's problematic, and it speaks to his bias. I thought this was pretty obvious.
 * Shrigley observes that there is more than one way to interpret the Chinese government's campaign to eliminate Falun Gong. This is true. On the one hand, it involves the use of torture and "reeducation" to force people to abandon the practice. (The notion that this is about enabling people to "return to their families" or reintegrate into society may be the government's purported justification for forcible imprisonment and torture, but it's difficult to sustain in the face of the evidence). When ideological reprogramming fails, physical elimination does occur—this is why some jurists have argued that the campaign may be characterized as a genocide. Large-scale killing may not be the first resort, in other words, but it has happened. The only real question relates to the scale of the killing. Either way, it doesn't seem like a stretch to say that these policies amount to a "persecution", or that they are undesirable from a human rights perspective.
 * There are many scenarios where central governments prohibit torture but lack the capacity to enforce that prohibition at the local levels. That is not what's happening here. Human rights groups, scholars and journalists studying this campaign instead observe the opposite dynamic: central-level authorities sanctioned the use of torture against Falun Gong adherents, created a quota system that incentivized abuse, and granted impunity to the local enforcers.
 * I don't think anyone need be concerned that STSC's absence will have any undesirable effect on these pages.

Finally, this may be obvious, but Shrigley is not exactly "uninvolved"—at least not in the broader Falun Gong topic area. Some time ago I recalled that he fought vigorously (and unsuccessfully) to prevent an article about an apparent Falun Gong torture death from appearing as a DYK. There too, he presented himself as a neutral reviewer—which he evidently was not.
 * I see Shrigley has moved his comment to the appropriate section. That's good. Though it's still not clear what he hopes to accomplish by rehashing a bunch of discredited Chinese government talking points against Falun Gong. Is the goal is to excuse state-sanctioned torture by making the victims appear less sympathetic? And if so, how does this relate to STSC's competence as a Wikipedia editor? It's all a bit mystifying. Also, I sincerely hope that Shrigley did not mean to imply that support for torture and killing on the basis of religious creed is a "Chinese cultural point of view", because that would be grossly offensive.

 The Blue Canoe  18:44, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Responding to STSC:
 * -There were two sources for the claim, one of which (an article in the Telegraph) clearly attributed the claim to a Chinese human rights lawyer. When pressed to explain this edit on the talk page, STSC pointed to the Telegraph article—not the State Department report—which suggests that he knew the claim was supported by both sources.
 * The New York Times article cited does indeed reference Falun Gong deaths. It's in the lede paragraph, attributed to human rights groups. Also, see WP:ALLEGED
 * The Amnesty International source say that she died in custody—this is the crucial piece of information that STSC removed—and that she was reportedly tortured on the face and neck with electric batons. Several other sources corroborate this as well.
 * I never implied that the wikilinking of "cult" is, in isolation, a problem. But STSC edit wars repeatedly to wikilink this word—and no other. It's evidence of tendentiousness and battleground behaviour.  The Blue Canoe  13:41, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by John Carter
Only wishing to point out here that the elimination of a religious creed of any sort is not in and of itself in all cases definitely undesirable. If it were possible to retroactively eliminate heaven's Gate or the People's Temple, as groups, prior to the eventual suicides, I think most people might find that desirable. And there are or have been a few other religious groups over the years which have had core beliefs which have later been found to be without any reasonable foundation, and I rather doubt that the "elimination" they may have suffered when their beliefs were found baseless is one most people would necessarily find objectionable. Also, honestly, if Christian Identity or perhaps other groups tied to White supremacist ideology were "eliminated" in some way, preferably through means other than killing all of them of course, I wonder how many people would object.

I also, admittedly belately, support a lot of Shrigley's comments below regarding the "political correctness"/"PRC is bad" attitude which tends to prevail relating to FG related matters in the West. By most medical standards, FG practices qualify as quack medicine, which a lot of people in China accept because it is (1) traditional to them and (2) a lot cheaper than more useful Western medicine, which doesn't have the same pseudoscience/quackery issues as FG and other Qigong practices do. The fact that FG is now the standard-bearer of Western criticism of the PRC is another issue. We have had editors here labelled as supporters of the PRC for disagreeing with FG, if I remember correctly, and that same tendency toward labelling of FG opposers seems to me to be even stronger in outside press.

Right now, the assessment criteria of the Falun Gong work group at Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Falun Gong articles by quality statistics indicate a total of 28 articles of stub class or similar here, not counting all the NA pages. Is there any sort of way to maybe put them all under pending changes or similar so that maybe the only way to bring really substantive changes to them is through broad consensus through an RfC? That is, admittedly, a rather draconian proposal, but with so few articles, and what is to my eyes a rather obvious Western bias in the issue, it might, maybe, be workable. John Carter (talk) 18:54, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Rhoark
I am unconvinced that STSC was describing only the perspective of the Chinese establishment, and not their own authentic views (or possibly if they are living in China, views that they are compelled to publicly adhere to.) It's plausible that the "must be eliminated" section was intended to imply "from the perspective of the Chinese authorities", but such an interpretation does not concord with the rest of the statement, "...such process should not be described as 'persecution' as if the elimination is undesirable. Wikipedia is neutral and should not make judgement on the Chinese internal policy for the good of its society." This strikes me as the perspective of someone who internalizes official Chinese diktat rather than just describes it. If I'm wrong though, STSC should have no trouble positively affirming that no one should be violently compelled to renounce religious beliefs.

Anyone seized by a fashionable moral relativism should actually read the practices detailed at Persecution of Falun Gong, which is not so much analogous to Germany's treatment of Scientology as to Persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany, which I challenge anyone to describe as "internal policy for the good of its society." Rhoark (talk) 02:08, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Denouncing any particular government is not required, but it is required to be here to build and encyclopedia and to refrain from promoting violence. I'll reiterate that if this is simply an issue of misunderstood grammar, STSC should be able to assert not just that it was mistaken grammar, but that they do not in fact advocate that people be imprisoned and tortured for holding Falun Gong beliefs or possessing Falun Gong literature. Rhoark (talk) 14:22, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Shrigley
TheWordsmith's comment here, which justifies the sanction, does not show me that he critically considered whether TheBlueCanoe's diffs about STSC correctly impugned STSC's character. The filer of that original AE request is, as is obvious to anyone with experience in the Falun Gong editspace (it is necessary to drop certain cultural biases: more on that later), very motivated to see a sympathetic viewpoint to Falun Gong represented on Wikipedia, and to see unsympathetic viewpoints excised. I wish more people made specific comments analyzing the diffs and how they were presented. I don't have time now, but maybe I will if this appeal stays open a few more days.

If this diff is considered the "smoking gun" of STSC's supposed animus towards Falun Gong, it is weak evidence indeed. In the first place, the sentence structure (admittedly, his grammar is not perfectly native) shows that STSC was describing a viewpoint -- of Chinese society in general or the Chinese government in particular, it is not clear but does not matter -- and not expressing it:  note "was considered [by China]", not "should be considered [I implore you]". Also, I think STSC was not delicate enough with language on a very delicate subject. "Eliminate" can mean two things.


 * 1) Falun Gong as a corporate entity, à la RICO, must be eliminated. On an individual basis, this means a kind of intervention by local government officials to persuade FLG members to return to their families, accept medical care that the practice had forbidden, etc. I encourage speaking about the Chinese government's efforts like this, because it is more precise, and it is a dispassionate extension of people-first language. People join the rolls of Falun Gong, and can separate themselves from and denounce the organization (even if FLG continues to count them); they are not Falun Gong until they die, as the extremists would say.
 * 2) Falun Gong as a collection of people, must be "eliminated". Obviously this language suggests that some kind of horrible mass-killing is going on, which is the image that human rights advocacy groups would like to evoke, but it doesn't quite jive with what the best scholars of Chinese politics and religion think the state is trying to do. "Religious persecution" is similar language; our article on it immediately talks about crimes against humanity. If you think speaking of "persecution" is okay in this case; you are probably a victim of an etic WP:WORLDVIEW. We are much more careful here on en.wiki about describing the laws that, say, the German government uses to limit Scientology as "persecution" of that religion/cult/whatever-group.

A cursory look at TheBlueCanoe's diffs reveals them to be deeply problematic for anyone with specialist subject knowledge. For example, TBC lists this diff as evidence of STSC's bias. However, as with many third world countries, torture happens in China by local governments, despite it being illegal on a national level (and prosecuted by the central government when these cases are exposed!), because of certain perverse incentives to improve crime statistics for increased funding: the idea that certain incidents of torture happened as a planned tool of a national campaign against Falun Gong is pretty controversial. Shrigley (talk) 08:32, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Rhoark, we should not be taking a page out of Joseph McCarthy's playbook and demanding that someone denounce the Chinese government in order to edit Wikipedia's articles on these topics. This is a problem that all editors with lived experience or advanced education in the China-related topics area face: just by understanding the Chinese cultural point of view enough to explain it, you are accused of being a PRC government shill, rabid nationalist, or paid public relations specialist. With Falun Gong it's even worse, because answering what they consider to be "slander" is practically a religious precept. (It also boosts their profits and employment.)


 * I am glad that more people have realized that Thewordsmith's enacting of the ban was immediately based on a misinterpretation of STSC's grammar. In the original AE thread, and here, STSC did not argue vigorously and specifically enough that TheBlueCanoe was misrepresenting the diffs. I could make that argument, but that would just lead TBC to continue to cast aspersions on me. Since unfortunately this discussion has turned into a kind of referendum on how we feel about what's going on in China, I should point out that Falun Gong's activities do not end at China's border. In addition to their propaganda, the organization's exclusionary practices against gay people, mixed-race people, and those who submit to modern medicine, provoke controversy in the Chinese diasporic community. Despite what some editors here imply, FLG's critics are not only one government. Shrigley (talk) 05:30, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * This is getting a bit ridiculous. Now, just for commenting on this AE request in a skeptical manner, I myself am being attacked and my views misrepresented. What I actually did in my above statement was note that STSC did not complete a diff-by-diff refutation of TheBlueCanoe's case against him, and therefore think that this appeal has a "Chinaman's Chance in Hell" of passing. This is not a "defense" of STSC; it is quite the opposite. Also, let me disclose a personal viewpoint: I deplore the way that Falun Gong members have been treated in China. Full stop.


 * Zujine links to an old AE case where he asked administrators to topic-ban an editor who wished to include some academic criticism of Falun Gong's activities on Wikipedia, as evidence of my "disruptive" behavior or something. If you care to look at my statement there, it is replete with diffs showing how Zujine (in 2013) edited aggressively to promote Falun Gong's point of view and suppress FLG-critical points of view. I not only proved the standard activist stuff from him, but also that Zujine has conflict of interest and editor-hounding issues in this topic area.


 * Three years later, Zujine evidently has not stopped these behaviors. He and his protégé TheBlueCanoe like to talk about an old DYK on an article on which all three of us collaborated (or at least, I tried to collaborate with them&mdash;even approving their article, and they assumed bad faith at every turn). I have assumed good faith for so long with these problematic editors, and tried so hard to find a middle ground on Falun Gong articles, that they should beware the boomerang they throw so much. Shrigley (talk) 02:26, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Zujine
In view of the unfortunate lack of self-awareness or contrition demonstrated by STSC in this process, I would echo @User:Seraphimblade and @User:Dennis Brown and recommend that the appeal be declined.

I would also welcome administrator's views on whether a warning is in order for Shrigley. On numerous past occasions at AE, this user has come to the defense of clearly disruptive editors in this topic area (for example, see cases against User:PCPP and User:Bobby fletcher ). Although it may be a novel interpretation of policy—and certainly one that would need to be applied with great caution—I wonder whether repeated attempts to shield obviously disruptive editors from much-deserved censure may itself be a form of disruption. And though it's pretty stale, the user's conduct at this DYK nomination is troubling. Shrigley acted as a neutral reviewer for the DYK nomination, despite prior involvement in the topic area and clear animus toward Falungong. He approved the review on the condition that his heavily edited version of the article be accepted. If anyone rejected his edits, he would declare the page "unstable" and thus withdraw approval for the DYK (uninvolved editors ultimately overturned his arguments). I have a hard time believing this was anything other than a deliberate abuse of process meant to derail a legitimate nomination.— Zujine |talk 18:50, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

What Was Said
The critical edit here, apparently, is this:
 * Not every cult is harmful. Falun Gong was considered as posing a danger to Chinese society and therefore must be eliminated from China; such process should not be described as "persecution" as if the elimination is undesirable. Wikipedia is neutral and should not make judgement on the Chinese internal policy for the good of its society. 

This is neither very clear or grammatical, but of course Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit and some editors are not native speakers. If I were copy-editing this, my assumption is that the intended meaning was that "Falun Gong was considered [by the government] to be a danger to Chinese society; therefore, [the government] believed it must be eliminated from China." I would then have inverted the order to remove the passive: "The government considered Falun Gong to be a danger to Chinese society, and that it ought to be eliminated from China.'' This is not, I think, a strained or unreasonable interpretation, and seems to me to be a reasonable summary of one received narrative.

Even if the sentiments ought to be ascribed to the editor, which I think is doubtful, we have "Falun Gong is a danger to society and must be eliminated from China." This is intolerant and un-American, but I’m not entirely certain that we should be banning people who hold un-American beliefs. I would observe that the Court of Massachusetts felt much this way about Roger Williams in 1636, that American Nativists expressed much the same about Catholic immigration, and that a current candidate for the US Presidency has called for a moratorium on Moslem immigration. Even if policy prohibits the practice of religious intolerance, I doubt that it prohibits its description.

STSC is incorrect in asserting that this "should not be described as "persecution" as if the elimination is undesirable." Persecution is precisely the right word. An non-native speaker, or simply an editor with a limited background, might recognize only the informal, colloquial sense of persecution, and not understand that this is precisely its technical meaning. Otherwise, STSC’s statement makes no sense at all.

I don’t disagree with Seraphimblade -- I’ve not examined the rest of the history -- but I suggest this ill-composed passage has been misinterpreted. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:59, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Respectfully, absent this particular diff and associated Wikilawyering, the remaining 39-odd diffs in the initial filing appear sufficiently compelling. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 08:50, 29 April 2016 (UTC)


 * With actual, rather than pretended, respect, this is not Wikilawyering. It’s close reading and editing of the passage that one administrator considered of special importance. I possess some small expertise in this area, which that administrator might lack; not everyone is called upon to review technical and scholarly papers by non-native speakers.  WiikiHounding, however, is contrary to policy. MarkBernstein (talk) 12:51, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Editors should understand that the world, and the Wikipedia community, encompasses many persons with expertise in many areas; some of whom perform the task of reviewing technical and scholarly comment by non-native speakers of English on a daily basis. In this particular instance, I do not believe that the original finding was contingent upon this singular diff, and to focus thereon is to follow a red herring. Nor do I believe that the appellant has shown that the original finding was flawed; far less sufficiently so as to uphold this appeal and overturn the finding. WP:HOUNDING is indeed contrary to policy, I encourage those engaging in it to stop. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:53, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Previous ANI filings
I also note the following filings at WP:ANI - December 2015 ; February 2016 - which would seem to indicate that the behaviours discussed in the original WP:AE filing are both long standing and wider spread than the Falun Gong topic space. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:28, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Result of the appeal by STSC

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * The original complaint had more than enough cause for concern to justify the sanction imposed. I'm quite honestly amazed it took that long for it to happen. Needless to say, I therefore recommend to decline this appeal. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * MarkBernstein makes some interesting points, but no single statement by STSC was the straw that broke the camel's back so it wouldn't change the outcome. I believe The Wordsmith's conclusions and actions were reasonable and executed within policy. I don't see new information that warrants removal of the topic ban so I recommend declining the appeal.  Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 23:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
 * - That would be outside the purview of Arbitration Enforcement. We try to focus on Arb decisions only, as well as any immediate problem that needs attention during the process.  Long term problems not related to Arb decisions should be handled at ANI or at DYK or the right venue for that particular problem.  Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 22:15, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree with Seraphimblade and Dennis Brown: decline. MarkBernstein's analysis of "the critical edit" above is interesting, and we certainly need to keep in mind that not everybody is a native speaker. But there have been so many other "critical" edits. Bishonen &#124; talk 22:53, 2 May 2016 (UTC).

Jonniefood
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning Jonniefood

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 16:54, 30 April 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Requests for arbitration/The Troubles :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) First revert
 * 2) Second revert


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :

| Diff of notification of sanctions
 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):


 * Alerted about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, see the system log linked to above.
 * Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on 2 April 2016

Clear breach of the 1RR that is enforced on all articles related to The Troubles. This editor is a single purpose account in the area of the Ulster Banner and the Northern Ireland flag issue..
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

Diff of notification of this request
 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning Jonniefood
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by Jonniefood

 * What a load of nonsense. The first was because Soclaire inserted factually inaccurate material concerning local government. The second was because Mo ainm/Goodday then went on to inserted completely nonsense information that Northern Ireland was somehow different. The two edits were not related in the slightest. They aren't simply back and forward reverts Jonniefood (talk) 14:17, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by (Miles Creagh)
The diffs presented by the reporting editor don't seem to show true reverts, as each deals with different material and distinct language in the article in question. Also not sure it is appropriate to comment on the editor rather than content, by mentioning SPAs etc. Miles Creagh (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Statement by PeterTheFourth
Regardless of whether the reverts were each for different material, if they were both within 24 hours of each other and both reverts, that's still a violation of 1RR. PeterTheFourth (talk) 14:39, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning Jonniefood

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * This looks like a pretty clear 1RR breach, and the editor was specifically notified of 1RR by KrakatoaKatie when giving the DS notification. I think a break from the topic area may be in order, though at this point I probably wouldn't make it indefinite for a single violation. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:22, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Editor is new but was given clear warning. I would agree with Seraphimblade in that an indef topic ban would be unwarranted and likely counterproductive.  I would recommend a 90 day topic ban, which would give them time to get up to speed on how we do things here, and still give them a second chance in a reasonable period of time. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 17:42, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Abbatai
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning Abbatai

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 18:33, 1 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Requests_for_arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan_2 :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 14:20, 1 May 2016 1st revert
 * 2) 15:17, 1 May 2016 2nd revert


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :


 * 1) Blocked 3 times for editwarring and disruptive editing


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS): *Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on.

The article is placed under 1rr, and Abbatai already made 2 reverts of his edit of April 20th.
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning Abbatai
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by Abbatai
14:20, 1 May 2016

The first edit above was not a revert at all. I added the word "separatist" with reference to NKR, previously it was stating NKR Forces in the lead.

And this one: 15:17, 1 May 2016 was my first and only revert in which I explained why? on talk page and invited users to discussion. See and Thanks Abbatai 18:53, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning Abbatai

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * As Abbatai had previously added the "separatist" wording on 20 April, both edits were clearly reverts to a previous version, so this is a 1RR violation. The previous edit warring sanctions were many years ago, so I'm not inclined to factor them too heavily, but I think some time away from the topic area might be in order. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:46, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The blocks were so long ago as to be almost meaningless here. While Seraphimblade is correct that the same "separatist" verbiage was added 10 days prior with the same citation (which looks to check out), and it was technically a revert, to me this fades a bit with time.  Still sanctionable, but not as severe as other 1RRs I've seen that happen over a day or two.  He might have thought it really wasn't a 1RR violation, even though it technically was.  Since he hasn't been sanctioned in a very long time, and never for this particular Arb restriction, I would lean towards a very short topic ban, say 30 days, which would probably be adequate to prevent problems in the future.  I won't argue against something somewhat longer, I just think that is proportional to the disruption. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 17:58, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Abbatai
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning Abbatai

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 18:33, 1 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Requests_for_arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan_2 :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 14:20, 1 May 2016 1st revert
 * 2) 15:17, 1 May 2016 2nd revert


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :


 * 1) Blocked 3 times for editwarring and disruptive editing


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS): *Gave an alert about discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict in the last twelve months, on.

The article is placed under 1rr, and Abbatai already made 2 reverts of his edit of April 20th.
 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning Abbatai
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by Abbatai
14:20, 1 May 2016

The first edit above was not a revert at all. I added the word "separatist" with reference to NKR, previously it was stating NKR Forces in the lead.

And this one: 15:17, 1 May 2016 was my first and only revert in which I explained why? on talk page and invited users to discussion. See and Thanks Abbatai 18:53, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning Abbatai

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * As Abbatai had previously added the "separatist" wording on 20 April, both edits were clearly reverts to a previous version, so this is a 1RR violation. The previous edit warring sanctions were many years ago, so I'm not inclined to factor them too heavily, but I think some time away from the topic area might be in order. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:46, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The blocks were so long ago as to be almost meaningless here. While Seraphimblade is correct that the same "separatist" verbiage was added 10 days prior with the same citation (which looks to check out), and it was technically a revert, to me this fades a bit with time.  Still sanctionable, but not as severe as other 1RRs I've seen that happen over a day or two.  He might have thought it really wasn't a 1RR violation, even though it technically was.  Since he hasn't been sanctioned in a very long time, and never for this particular Arb restriction, I would lean towards a very short topic ban, say 30 days, which would probably be adequate to prevent problems in the future.  I won't argue against something somewhat longer, I just think that is proportional to the disruption. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 17:58, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

AmirSurfLera
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning AmirSurfLera

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 08:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive161 :


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) 2016-05-01T16:27:41 Edit related to the "Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed".
 * 2) 2016-05-01T16:28:06 Edit related to the "Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed".
 * 3) 2016-05-01T16:43:00 Edit related to the "Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed". Editor added the following to the Ken Livingstone article - "Actually Netanyahu said that initially Hitler had no intention of exterminating European Jews, instead he wanted to expel them from Europe, but he changed his mind after being persuaded by the Palestinian leader at the time, the mufti Amin al-Husseini, who argued that the expulsion of the Jews would result in their arrival en masse to Palestine."
 * 4) 2016-05-02T12:50:24 Edit related to the "Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed". Edited the caption of an image in the Palestinian territories section of the Antisemitism article about Palestinian mufti Amin al-Husseini.
 * 5) 2016-05-02T12:51:45 Edit related to the "Arab-Israeli conflict, broadly construed". Added a template requesting a source for the same caption as above.


 * If discretionary sanctions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:AC/DS):


 * Previously given a discretionary sanction for conduct in the area of conflict on 2014-07-08T06:27:20 by.


 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

Since AmirSurfLera's appeal for their indefinite ARBPIA topic ban to be lifted was declined in January 2015, they made no edits to Wikipedia using this account until a couple of days ago. Since reactivating this account they have made what I regard as 5 topic ban violations so far. I contacted them (User_talk:AmirSurfLera) to inform them that if they "make another edit that violates the topic ban I will file an AE report". Since I did not find the response satisfactory I have come here. The first 2 edits I listed above are unambiguous topic ban violations. The editor's explanation was "I made a mistake on Barghouti". Fine, they made a mistake. The last 3 edits listed all relate to Palestinian mufti Amin al-Husseini and the Israeli Prime Minister's stated view that a Palestinian was responsible for persuading Hitler to exterminate European Jews. AmirSurfLera's view is that "I didn't violate my topic ban with the rest of the edits, since they are related to Nazism, antisemitism and the Holocaust, not the Arab-Israeli conflict. I wasn't banned from all Jewish-related articles". I find this response unacceptable. Please ensure that this person cannot use this account to violate their topic ban.  Sean.hoyland  - talk 08:14, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :



Discussion concerning AmirSurfLera
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by AmirSurfLera
I'm not sure what Wikipedia means by ARBPIA. I interpret articles related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, an article about the economy of Israel, as far as I understand, is not part of this area, even though it's connected somehow. An article about Kiruv in Orthodox Judaism, is not related to ARBPIA, nor an article about a British politician. I wasn't expecting to be accused of violating my topic ban for editing about antisemitism, Nazism and the Holocaust. For example, this edit and this one are related to the Holocaust and antisemitism. In the first case I restored the picture of a neo-Nazi protesting in Berlin. In the second case, even though the mufti was an important actor in the Arab-Israeli conflict, I simply restored a caption about his meeting with Hitler (removed by Pluto2012 without previous discussion). The Mufti was other things besides an enemy of Israel (like a recruiter for the SS). If I made a mistake and I violated the ban with those edits, I offer my sincere apologies, I won't edit in those articles anymore. But I came back to edit in good faith (starting with Holocaust controversies), not to cause troubles in ARBPIA. I'm sorry that I edit on Jewish-related topics only, but I don't know anything about cars, bugs, trees and elephants.--AmirSurfLera (talk) 22:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I understand, although my knowledge of religion is limited. I'll be more careful. But what about antisemitism? (excluding Hamas, Hezbollah and things like that)--AmirSurfLera (talk) 21:49, 4 May 2016 (UTC) Reply to my comment moved from admin section to editors' section. Seraphimblade Talk to me 07:45, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Zero0000
The violation is obvious and I can't imagine how anyone could dispute it. Zerotalk 14:31, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Pluto2012
AmirSurfLera refused to selfrevert his edits on the article 'Antisemitism' despite he modified the caption on the Palestinian nationalist leader Haj Amin al-Husseini and that he re-inserted a picture in the "Palestinian section" with the portrait of Yasser Arafat. These are obvious violation of the topic ban. and he/she is perfectly aware of this.Pluto2012 (talk) 16:53, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning AmirSurfLera

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * These are unambiguous violations of the topic ban, and this editor already has several sanctions for violating the restrictions in this topic area., if you would care to comment here and explain why this is happening, I suggest you do so sooner rather than later. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:04, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I am, to be quite honest, not too impressed with that explanation. There's quite a bit about Judaism that you could edit without even getting close to the border of the topic ban&mdash;notable synagogues and rabbis, historical Jewish scholars, Jewish holidays and practices, kosher diet regulations and kosher foods, any number of things. At this point, I really don't see any reason to disagree with what Dennis Brown has said below. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:21, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Unquestionably, these are violations of the topic ban. On his talk page he excuses the edits by the fact that some had already reverted them, but this is nonsensical as a defense as they weren't his actions, but a defense to his actions.  They only have 525 edits, they are already topic banned, they asked to have ban lifted without editing outside that area at all, then left without making any edits and then came back again and instantly violated the topic ban.  This is a textbook POV/SPA case.  Anything short of an indef block seems a waste of time. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 18:28, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

HughD
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning HughD

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 21:09, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced:

Expanded on 26 April, 2016, "Your topic ban is expanded to include a ban on editing everything related to conservative US politics from 2009 to the present, broadly construed, on any article. Your topic ban is extended to Jan 1, 2017." (Talk page notification )
 * 1) "You are now banned from editing everything related to conservative US politics from 2009 to the present, broadly construed until August 28, 2016"

As part of the ARE closed on 26th April, it was noted that the way HughD has been editing climate change articles is a violation of his topic ban, ".Again, the topics themselves are not related to conservative politics but the nature of HughD's edits are within them related to conservative politics (Mother Jones categorizations at the very are conservative politics even if you don't consider climate change issues per se related). Ricky81682 (talk) 23:09, 18 April 2016 "

HughD was also warned, "The kind of playing round the edges of the previous ban (which was for the same area, but shorter) that led to this AE filing won't be tolerated. If you're in doubt whether the ban allows you a particular edit, please ask an admin before making it. There's a kind of logic in not blocking now, yes, but it also means the user has got away with a lot. Bishonen | talk 15:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)."


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :

The below edits may be considered political as they tend to further what appears to be an objective to cast Exxon's actions in the most negative light possible with respect to climate change. By them selves I do not believe these would be violations but they may be when considered in context with other edits.
 * 1) 26 April 2016 This is the exact Mother Jones article (Dirty dozen of climate change) mentioned by Ricky81682 on 18 April 2016
 * 2) 26 April 2016 The same MJ article added a second time after another editor removed the material as "reference stuffing" by
 * 3) 25 April 2016 RfC added to the ExxonMobil climate change article in a way which may be considered political. (Questioned by and myself).
 * 1) 25 April 2016
 * 2) 5 May 2016
 * 3) 5 May 2016


 * Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any :


 * 1) Oct 11, 15 Violation of topic ban resulting in warning.
 * 2) Oct 29, 15 1 week block for violation of ban. Appeal of block was rejected
 * 3) Jan 7, 2016 1 week block for violation. Appeal of block was rejected
 * 4) 26 April 2016 Extended block by 6 months


 * Additional comments by editor filing complaint :

A request for admins involved in the previous discussion to review the 26 April edits prior to filing any ARE was made. ,, "I'm not sure. Sorry, Springee, I'd rather not make the call either." , , "I don't have time to really look closely, but at first glance, I can easily see why you might be concerned."   was contacted and followed up with HughD  resulting in an unsatisfactory explanation and Hugh's claims of nothing but civil behavior, "I am proud of my article space focus, my good articles, all my edits, and in particular my superb edit summaries, and my exemplary participation and focus on content in article talk page discussions... All of my edits are good faith improvements to our encyclopedia and respectful of the topic ban; I respectfully request specific diffs of edits you feel are not, and an opportunity to discuss and self-revert."  The last comment was questioned by both  (end of section) and , ''"Anmccaff: I'm tired of dealing with him, to be honest. If you believe he's violating his topic ban, please open a report at WP:AE for wider input."'' Editors involved with the article in question have also expressed concerns with HughD's edits and behavior.

The ARE closed on 26 April originally suggested an edit block of 30 days but based on HughD's engagement in discussion an assumption of good faith was given and no block was included. The refusal to consider the concerns of others involved with the ExxonMobil articles and condescending replies do not support an assumption of good faith nor do they appear to support seeking consensus. (Comments directed at  )


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:HughD#Notice_of_WP:ARE

Discussion concerning HughD
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by HughD
No topic ban violation. No disruptive editing.

Let us together examine each the reported diffs, in turn:


 * 1) No topic ban violation. No disruptive edit.
 * 2) No topic ban violation. No disruptive edit.
 * 3) No topic ban violation. No disruptive edit.

In summary, no topic ban violation, and no disruptive editing. Thank you. Hugh (talk) 02:13, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

The rush to discuss how severe the sanction is deeply disturbing. I must insist on some demonstration of the ability to distinguish a vexatious filing from disruptive editing. I plan to appeal any sanctions from this filing. Please help. Respectfully I must insist that each responding uninvolved administrator very specifically identify an edit that is a topic ban violation, uncivil, or disruptive, and very specifically why, citing specific policy or guideline, before joining the chorus. Go on record, please.

I must insist on some acknowledgement of the above "your own conduct may be examined as well"; respectfully I ask each responding uninvolved administrator demonstrate some due diligence, and include some comment on complainant's editorial behavior, even if it is only to say you see nothing actionable or to praise complainant's contributions to our project. Go on record. Thank you.

"conservative US politics from 2009 to the present"

Respectfully, a reminder: I am not banned from politics, I am not banned from all topics on which two or more Americans may disagree, which of course is all topics. If you think Mother Jones (magazine), or ExxonMobil, or climate change is in scope of American conservative politics, please clearly say so and sign your name. Thank you.

, thank you for your suggested sanctions. Kindly explicitly state which edit or edits in your view are a topic ban violation and why it is a topic ban violation. Context matters. Be fair. You quote an excerpt from a source, not any content that I added to article text.

Serial complainant, single purpose account harassment and noticeboard specialist again artfully juxtaposes edits to give the appearance of an edit war. Let's take a closer look.

Article ExxonMobil


 * , a one week new editor, deletes "...and was a leader in climate change denial" from ExxonMobil, one of the most notable aspects of the subject, amply manifest in multiple noteworthy reliable sources. Edit summary "Climate Change denial is a pejorative and abusive term. The theory of Man caused Climate Change is a theory, it is not the Holocaust, an absolute fact, and linking Holocaust deniers with skeptics of a Climate Change theory is insidious. I removed it." A good faith edit by a new user. As regular followers of noticeboards know, the term "denial" is emotionally charged, and a frequent target in my area of interest, our environment. Please see Talk:Climate change denial and archives for more.
 * , Contended content, what do grown ups do? In support of the deleted content, I added neutral noteworthy reliable source references first...
 * ...then restored the deleted well-referenced article content with edit summmary for new colleague, "+ rs refs; sources say denial, and we can, too; please join discussion at climate change denial, thank you"
 * In the middle of my three edits,, one of our shall we say more iconoclast editors in the area of the environment, and an editor for whom vigilance in addressing WP:OVERCITE is a major source of pride, occasionally regardless of how contended or stable the content, jumps in and creates an edit conflict. Once he sees where I'm going, that I am not overciting for overciting's sake, that I am addressing the deletion, he lets it stand.

So string me up.

When RfCs are criminalized, only criminals will use RfCs. RfCs are not disruptive, RfCs are the opposite of disruptive. 30 May 2015 challenged me to be part of the solution; since then I have embraced dispute resolution including our content noticeboards and requests for comment and have at all times been civil. Meanwhile SPA serial complainant is a fervent champion of the supremacy of the local consensus, often when the local consensus consists only of themselves, and has specialized in the application of behavioral noticeboards in content disputes, and in disrupting dispute resolution. Complainant hates any attempt to broaden community participation. Complainant wants to take RfCs away from me, in fact all editing privileges. It only takes one admin to help complete their year-long project. If you are so inclined I must insist you lay out your reasons very explicitly and very clearly and sign your name.

Dennis asked for options. Some reasonable, measured options uninvolved administrators might consider in addressing this filing, were anyone interested in anything other than a witch burning.
 * 1) A reminder to complainant regarding our project's harassment policy WP:HARASS
 * 2) A reminder to complainant that they were asked by an administrator to cease harassment
 * 3) A reminder to complainant to focus on content and not editors WP:FOC
 * 4) A reminder to complainant to kindly limit future reports to edits that harm the encyclopedia WP:HERE
 * 5) A one-way interaction ban on complainant
 * 6) A two-way interaction ban
 * 7) Propose to our arbitration committee that WP:ARBCC be eliminated by subsuming it under WP:ARBAP2

I oppose sanctions without specific edits clearly violating specific policy or guideline. Thank you.

"I find it difficult to believe that you are so dense as to not understand..." Enough of that. I understand the topic ban very well and respect it at all times, thank you. You are responsible for explaining your administrative actions. You need to clearly explain how you believe an edit is in scope of conservative American politics. Do not shirk your responsibility by insulting your target and labeling them as unworthy of good faith and a well-reasoned cogent explanation demonstrating due diligence and careful reflection, respectfully request you strike through. I am a veteran productive content provider volunteer with multiple good articles, a good article in the pipeline at all times, an article space percentage of 68% and I deserve better from you. It is simply not the case that anything any two Americans might consider controversial is in scope to conservative American politics WP:COMMONSENSE. Thank you.

"You'll inevitably cross it" Not true, no topic ban violation has occurred. I inevitable get reported. There is a difference, an important difference, I hope. As we are all here to build an encyclopedia I know you do not want to sanction lightly, absent harm to our encyclopedia. Please avoid the echo chamber, I must insist you please specify an edit that in your view violated the topic ban or was anything other than a good faith effort to build our encyclopedia and specifically why. Respectfully, a reminder: I am not banned from US politics, I am not banned from topics you may consider "hot button", I am not banned from American politics. Complainant is very excited about the recent traction of the idea that a ban on conservative US politics includes all of politics or all issues any two Americans may disagree on, but complainant is not an admin, so they need an admin to complete their year-long project, so go ahead, make a new friend. Or, why not try the simplest thing that might work first? Remind complainant they were asked to stop following by an admin, ask complainant to leave it to someone else, if I am as bad as all that, inevitably we will be back here in about a week, and you can mete out justice, right?

Why are you bringing up Global Climate Coalition? None of the reported diffs involve GCC. Please focus. If you can't perhaps you should leave this filing to someone else. GCC was an industry trade group. It filed as a not-for-profit. It was prohibited from partisan political activities and was required to focus on the issues of its membership, it would have been illegal for them to pursue a political ideology of any flavor. GCC had a notable role in shaping our environment. GCC opposed regulation, and some conservatives oppose regulation, therefore, what??? On any given issue on which two Americans may differ, often one side may be labeled by some as conservative and the other as liberal; I am not banned from all such topics. It goes without saying, is that why our article doesn't say it? Doesn't seem much point to me in a topic ban on conservative US politics that includes all of politics and in fact all topics anyone might consider political, construed beyond all WP:COMMONSENSE, but apparently you agree with complainant, so you too have an opportunity to make a friend for life by delivering the capstone to a year-long project. Our article Global Climate Coalition is a good article nominee and I am proud of it. I worked hard on it, as a volunteer, unpaid. Will you delete it, work product in violation of a topic ban? Also, I note you have yet to comment on complainant's editorial behavior, anything jump out at you during your due diligence?

"play dumb" No. There's very simple explanation for the reported diffs: good faith efforts to improve our encyclopedia. Viewed in its behavioral context, there's a very simple explanation for this filing: surprising even themselves with the traction of the idea that conservative US politics = politics = everything, there was nothing to lose, might as well take a shot.

Last winter arbcom consolidated and simplified areas of dispute, if CC is a subset of AP2, make the suggestion, you may find it well-received. A given source may say many things, but in this case the Mother Jones article was used solely in an obviously good faith effort to support contended content regarding one of the most notable aspects of the subject of an article and to hopefully discourage future deletions. There was no edit war, no disruptive editing, only benefit to our encyclopedia.

How about "anything any two Americans might disagree on" or "anything complainant disagrees with"?

Please cite the topic ban notification or logging of Mother Jones (magazine) or climate change or all politics or all controversial issues. Thank you.

Please state whether your sanction is authorized by community, or under DS, and if so which DS area.

We have two admins who have gone on record that Mother Jones (magazine), climate change and/or all topics anyone might consider "political" are in scope to "conservative American Politics." Respectfully request addition uninvolved administrator input on this and on the proportionality of the suggested sanctions with respect to the actual disruption of our project reported here.

As previously stated, I plan to appeal. Respectfully request any block be suspended pending outcome of appeal specifically so I may participate, with a voluntary suspension of article editing. Thank you.

Statement by Only in death does duty end
Climate change != American conservative politics. American politicians may make climate change an issue at times, however that does not defacto make climate change as a topic part of the american politics area any more than any other topic US politicians decide to talk about. If you are going to extend that reasoning to literally everything politicians talk about, you also need to *explictly* ban Hugh from abortion, gun control, immigration etc etc. Hugh is clearly topic banned from one, and not another. Since topic bans are specifically about the topic, not the article page so lets look at the two issues above listed by the filer:
 * 1 (and 2). Edit adding a climate change ref to a corporation article. At *best* one or two of the people mentioned in the article referenced are linked directly to politics (either ex politicians or staffers) the vast majority are private corporation funded (or puppets). Neither the edit itself, nor the wikipedia article are linked to conservative american politics. That mother jones is seen as a conservative politically source, is not a reason to ban edits that reference it. You wouldnt attempt to restrict an editor from all reference use from the BBC if someone was banned from UK Liberal Politics.
 * 3. RFC on adding climate change material to a corporation article. Issue was discussed 3 months previously (without a formal RFC) - Hugh opened an RFC for wider discussion. 3 months might be a bit short for 'consensus can change', and while some might find it disruptive, it is clearly within the scope of the article and a formal RFC is one method of (content) dispute resolution. Attempting to get someone banned from the area by claiming it violates an unrelated topic ban is not. Only in death does duty end (talk) 09:36, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Izno
I rarely make a comment on a drama-related board, but I would tend to agree with the assessment that HughD is attempting to skirt his topic ban, given his focus on a certain set of sourcing in the context of certain articles

Remedy suggestions (and thoughtsmithing welcome): topic ban HughD from editing any topics, broadly construed, related to the post-1944 era. You can probably go back to post-1933 era (when The New Deal started). That would cover most of the major American political points of recent times--gun control (only so problematic as it is since the NRA started being active in politics in the early 30s), climate change (most of the science of climate change starts after World War II), and etc. Using a modern source to discuss, say, Japanese art of 1850, would not be intended to be a violation, but I suppose you might consider that blurring the line... a view, which, if taken, probably means he deserves a block. --Izno (talk) 12:22, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Regarding edit 2, HughD specifically quotes the following text from a book published in 2010: "major figures from the US (such as Exxon Mobil, conservative think-tanks and leading contrarian scientists) have helped spread climate change denial to other nations". That seems to be a topic ban vio, but I'm not experienced with such things. --Izno (talk) 12:35, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Springee
Question for admins: To avoid a potential future issue, would an AP2 (assuming a broadly construed clause) include topics such as the social/political back drop related to passing of a law or actions of the government? I ask to preemptively find out if such a TBAN would apply to several recent topic discussions. This discussion regarding the political backdrop that lead to the passage of a safety act by Congress and this discussion related to why the NHTSA chose to take action. I would assume the answers would apply to the same material in an article (or talk page) space. Ping:, , ,  Thank you, Springee (talk) 13:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning HughD

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * I'm stymied.  had his topic ban (Conservative Politics) extended 6 months for skirting his topic ban last time, yet this looks similar.  This is adding the exact same source to the same type of article that got you a sanction last time.  I have no idea what is going on in your head here.  Please enlighten us in 500 words or less, please.  Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 22:26, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * We may need to clarify the restriction here, but the only way is to make it more onerous in scope. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 22:32, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The simplest way may be to extend the political area, broadly taken, to include climate change (perhaps borrowing language from the arbcom case there), which (since before 2009) have been a hot political issue in the US so would easily quality in this area. --M ASEM (t) 23:03, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I was thinking something along those lines as well. Climate change has more politics than science, here and elsewhere.  We can't sanction if we broaden, but the goal is a solution, not retribution. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 23:23, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Given the "statement" offered, I believe that HughD has no intention of complying with the restriction. The comment made looks suspiciously like trolling at this point, and a block may be the only way to enforce the ban. The Wordsmith Talk to me 02:44, 6 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Hugh, this isn't about anyone but you. The problem is that it appears you are trying to skirt the sanctions yet again.  I would suggest focusing on a path forward instead of worrying about others.  I've already said you are using the same sources for the same kinds of edits in the same kinds of articles as last time.  It might be your opinion that these don't skirt the sanctions, but it is the opinion of the community that matters, not just yours. Any edit you make that has a political element to it is on the border of your topic ban.  This means your topic ban is more than about the current elections, it is about US politics in any way.  Climate change is certainly a political topic more than a scientific one.  Just looking at ONE edit: you weren't entering temperature or other scientific data, you were entering a source on Global Climate Coalition, a lobbyist group.  ie: their only purpose was to wine and dine Congressmen to push their agenda.  They played a part in blocking the Kyoto Protocol.  They spent exactly $0 on scientific research because their mission was 100% political. They dissolved due to public pressure. I find it difficult to believe that you are so dense as to not understand that these edits have a political content to them, and that this is skirting your topic ban. That one edit is block-worthy. You are headed down the road of being indefinitely blocked from any political topic plus a block.  That would be the easiest way to deal with this problem, as you aren't making it easy nor giving us many options. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 14:37, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Hugh, that Global Climate Coalition would be considered "conservative" goes without saying and I find it disingenuous for you to even question that. The other edits also speak for themselves.   Good faith isn't a suicide pact, and yes, I do think you are attempting to play dumb here, when in fact you are more than bright enough to understand the concerns and the connection. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 18:22, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * As HughD seems determined to push at the boundaries of the topic ban, I'm minded to broaden it to include the American Politics 2 area (all post-1932 US politics). After two blocks of a week apiece already for topic ban violations, I'd also be inclined to think that this one needs to be significantly longer. HughD, the idea of a topic ban isn't to keep trying to tiptoe up to the line without crossing it. You'll inevitably cross it, and in this case, you did. It means to stay well away from that area. If something has a hint of US politics about it, or is a "hot button" issue in American politics, leave it to someone else. Seraphimblade Talk to me 17:29, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The edits are already cited in the filing, you can review them above. As to how they violate the topic ban? Climate change denial is almost inextricably linked up with American conservative politics; indeed, many would say that climate denialism is a hallmark of American conservatism. The Mother Jones article you used as a reference devoted a great deal of time discussing donations to conservative organizations. If it had been the only one in question, I might have found the third edit cited to be just on the right side of the line, but with the other two unequivocal violations and the continual dancing on the boundary, this is clearly a pattern of you remaining in an area you ought to disengage from. And nothing you're saying here gives me any confidence that you will in fact do that, unless steps are taken to require you to. As an aside, most of us here are rather experienced at handling arbitration enforcement requests, so your advice on how to handle it is unnecessary and bloats an already overlong statement with irrelevancies. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:38, 6 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think we're getting much else here and I see nothing to indicate that HughD intends to abide the topic ban going forward. Absent objection, I'd propose to close this with a month's block (standard escalation from a week), and explicitly expanding the topic ban to cover climate change and post-1932 American politics. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:05, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we all agree that "anything that could be construed as a politically charged topic" is also the problem here, where he is doing the skirting. My wording might be too awkward, however. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 13:50, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I endorse the month-long block, and note that despite Hugh's arbitrary demands, it will not be suspended pending appeal. Users don't get to "insist" that enforcing admins jump through (increasingly absurd) hoops to justify our enforcement of policies. The Wordsmith Talk to me 23:34, 7 May 2016 (UTC)
 * HughD: it's well established that the major oil and gas companies (big oil) and groups aligned with them are politically motivated to critically evaluate any regulation towards emissions regulations and other factors that are result of the governments trying to enact regulations to combat climate change. Edits relating to these companies on their political nature and public relations towards the political side (eg if they are climate change deniers) would fall readily under any American Politics, post 1993 topic restriction. It's also clear that Mother Jones is a politically left-leaning publication (eg ) so would would also fall under a similar topic restriction. --M ASEM  (t) 15:11, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

MarkBernstein
''This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.''

Request concerning MarkBernstein

 * User who is submitting this request for enforcement : 22:18, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * User against whom enforcement is requested :


 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Discretionary sanction (interaction ban)


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) Violation 3 May reply to DHeyward.
 * 2) See also informal warning earlier in discussion


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Amended 23:47, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sanction or remedy to be enforced: Discretionary sanction; topic ban, gamergate


 * Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it :


 * 1) Violation -- both the edit summary and text explictly refer to Gamergate.


 * Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested :

Discussion concerning MarkBernstein
''Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.''

Statement by MarkBernstein
The (modified) three-way topic ban between myself, Thargor Orlando, and DHeyward specifically allows participation in noticeboard and ArbCom cases in which one or all are a party. Moreover, asking an editor to confirm an interpretation of a statement, or to clarify a statement that might be ambiguous, does not infringe the topic ban. To make assurance doubly sure, I checked in advance with the administrator who composed and modified that topic ban whether it was intended to prevent my participation in a case to which DHeyward is a party.


 * MB: Is it the intent of your (modified) topic ban vis-a-vis DHeyward to preclude my participation in Arbcom cases in which DHeyward is a party?
 * admin: Absolutely not. I designed the topic ban specifically to allow both of you to participate in editing the same articles and specifically to avoid the situation where one of you was forbidden on commenting on an issue or an edit or a person who was not one of the two of you.  
 * You may quote me on this on-wiki or anywhere else.

MarkBernstein (talk) 22:44, 3 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I asked the responsible administrator whether the intent of the topic ban precluded participation in an Arbcom case to which DHeyward is a party They replied, "Absolutely not."  I had stated this clearly here hours before  added his predictable contribution. If the admin was correct, this complaint is groundless and disruptive. If he was incorrect. I cannot see that I can be blamed for relying on his explicit and emphatic instruction. MarkBernstein (talk) 00:36, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Yes, the discussion above was by email, lest the query itself violate a topic ban. (Holy Kafka, Batman!)  MarkBernstein (talk) 16:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * DHeyward asserted a fact in passing, in a large block of text. I merely asked to confirm that what he wrote is what he intended to write. This seemed uncontentious and innocuous; people do sometimes omit words or overlook ambiguities.  It’s hardly disruptive. As to whether I might have asked on-wiki, I am glad to see you confirm my understanding of policy, but -- as you see here -- to ask on-wiki would have required a prudent editor  to first ask another uninvolved administrator or arbitrator whether they were permitted to ask the banning administrator. Hello, Mr. Kafka! Meet Mr. Xeno! Email can be simpler, and other factors (these will occur to you) also commended it. If you wish, you are free to ask the administrator to confirm the quotations. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:23, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

The scope of the ArbCom case in question explicitly excludes Gamergate, and both arbitrators and clerks have repeatedly asserted that the case is not related to Gamergate. Nor does it involve gender-related controversies. I have commented in a general way about threats against Wikipedians, but not all threats derive from Gamergate. (Arbitrators interested in off-wiki harassment may want to take a look at the customary sites, which have not been completely inactive overnight.) MarkBernstein (talk) 15:02, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * On DHeyward, I have supplied the instruction I received from the responsible administrator. I had every reason to rely on them. On the discussion at AN/C regarding the employment of threats to coerce a Wikipedia administrator -- a matter which has now been confirmed --  I did not identify the source of any threats and, with the exception of the death threat that appeared on Wikipedia, have not characterized them. I believe I am permitted to pursue my research and to fulfill my professional obligations when publishing elsewhere. MarkBernstein (talk) 19:55, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * The email exchange above dates from 3 May 2016, 11:05 AM EDT. My research interests include hypertext, knowledge representation, new media, and web science, and I publish results and commentary on these topics (which occasionally touch on Wikipedia) in a variety of places in the course of that work.  Thanks for asking. MarkBernstein (talk) 21:12, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * No, I don't intend to violate the topic ban in The Signpost. I am confident that the editor of whom I enquired., whom I understand to be one of the most respected and experienced of Wikipedians, can steer through those shoals. I might write about other topics elsewhere, of course. Some aspects of the matter are of particular interest to Wikipedia's ~1400 admins, and these might be more efficiently addressed in The Signpost than elsewhere. Again, I believe that's a question for the editor of The Signpost. MarkBernstein (talk) 08:58, 13 May 2016 (UTC)


 * I understand you think I'm being cagy or devious. I’m not. Don’t assume good faith: look at good faith when it walks down your street, waving its arms and distributing candy. Don’t consult your fears; read what I’m writing.
 * The employment of extortion and harassment to influence sites like Wikipedia is, I think, a matter of broad interest to society, and it makes sense to address that matter before a broad audience, not here. The specific problems confronting Wikipedia administrators and arbitrators in the face of harassment and extortion are interesting too, but they're most interesting to Wikipedians. The Signpost seems a natural place to address the topic, but of course its editor knows better than I.
 * Yes, I’m likely to be sternly critical of some aspects of Wikipedia. I don’t recall that policy prohibits stern criticism. If it does, I expect you can trust the editor to sort this out; he's done this for years. And -- realistically -- wouldn't it be better for Wikipedia to be sternly criticized inside than out?  If I’m wrong -- if I really am a terrible, malicious, idiot that those other sites call me--  well, I’ll be addressing  a bunch of admins and drama board fans who are already expert in the subject and (apparently)  don’t like me a whole lot. There’s not much danger they’ll be deceived.
 * If I’m doing this right (and I'm probably not!), an article in The Signpost sees something like 1250 readers []. As I recall, “Infamous” had something like a million in the first month or two. It’s not like I’m offering to do this for the immense audience. MarkBernstein (talk) 20:44, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Kingsindian
In the last AE request, stated that I was momentarily under the mistaken impression that the tridirectional DHeyward topic ban had been waived for noticeboard complaints. It had in fact only been waived for initiating noticeboard complaints. I would like to hear from Mark Bernstein if this interpretation is wrong. Because the comment in question here is clearly not initiating a noticeboard complaint. Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 23:56, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Can also tell us when this email interaction with Gamaliel took place? Kingsindian &#9821; &#9818; 04:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by GoldenRing
I'm also rather perplexed that MarkBernstein doesn't think that 1 and 2 are violations of his more recent topic ban. Either he doesn't think they're violations or he just doesn't care. I'm struggling to see how discussing Gamaliel's restriction from enforcing GamerGate arbitration provisions doesn't fall within "prohibited from making any edit about, and from editing any page relating to, (a) Gamergate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed." The tban contains no exceptions for anything, and there's no way those edits fall within WP:BANEX. GoldenRing (talk) 10:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Further topic-ban vios: 1 2 3. The contention that discussing Gamaliel's arb restriction from GamerGate isn't a violation of a tban from GamerGate is... interesting... GoldenRing (talk) 09:43, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Starke Hathaway
Given that the relevant sanction between MarkBernstein and DHeyward is a topic ban and not an interaction ban, it's hard to see a direct reply from MB to DH as a violation per se. Nevertheless, MB has in recent days developed a habit of testing the edges of the topic bans to which he is subject, demonstrated by the following:
 * Musing about a topic he is banned from. Mark reverted this himself after a few hours and no responses.
 * Discussing Gamergate in a comment about Gamaliel's ongoing ArbCom case. Mark struck the portion mentioning Gamergate within minutes.
 * Discussing on Coffee's talk page a revdel on the Gamergate talk page. Mark reverted this comment in a few hours during which no one responded to it directly.
 * This actually was a per se violation of Mark's DHeyward topic ban, in which he directly quotes a statement from DHeyward (among other statements) and then casts aspersions about "red herrings" and "crocodile tears." He struck the portion quoting DHeyward when I reminded him that he was still subject to that topic ban.
 * Musing about possible threats made to Gamaliel off-wiki, presumably by Gamergate. MB may deny that he intended to implicate Gamergate in this comment but I don't believe that denial would pass the smell test.

In fairness to Mark, he has generally reverted/struck these offending comments on his own initiative. But while that might excuse a single violation, it begins to look like a deliberate effort to opine on a prohibited topic while avoiding sanctions after three or four occurrences. I think Mark ought to be dissuaded from this course of action. Whether that takes the form of a stern warning (although warnings have had less than stellar effectiveness with MB in the past) or something more serious is for wiser heads than mine. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 19:22, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * MB writes above: I have commented in a general way about threats against Wikipedians, but not all threats derive from Gamergate. True enough, but when he tweets a link to those comments with the caption Wikipedia: did Gamergate harassment successfully intimidate an Arbitrator? from the Twitter account listed prominently on his personal webpage, to which he links on his wiki user page, it's pretty clear that he intended those comments to pertain to Gamergate in violation of his topic ban. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 16:47, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Dennis Brown
While I'm uninvolved when it comes to Mark, I (tried to) participate in that Arb case and mentioned Mark as the beneficiary of too much goodwill by an admin, which is not Mark's fault. The participation is still enough that I will stay on this side of the "results" line and just opine. I think if Mark had been named as a party to the case, it would be easy to overlook or even grant a temporary stay of the restriction while he participated in the case. Something to consider is the poorly chosen title of the case "Gamaliel and others", as Mark has been mentioned in interactions with Gamaliel several times, including by myself, although never in any way that indicates Mark did anything wrong. Judging from past cases (and this one) he could theoretically be added to the case with no explanation, or simply sanctioned without being formally listed as a party. This assumes he did something wrong prior to the case that would warrant sanction, something I have no evidence of. It is simply saying there is at least a possibility that he would be mentioned for sanctions, and would feel the need to defend himself or participate. I say this only because I think this AE case is just a tiny bit in the grey area. Honestly, Mark should have asked for a temporary lifting first, he should have known this would be seen as violating the topic ban, and I don't there there is any question these are textbook violations, but if I'm fair, I have to admit the circumstances here are very different than arguing on an article talk page. How much that should play into sanctions, I leave to those that are totally uninvolved. Dennis Brown - 2&cent; 15:08, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by James J. Lambden
This is getting ridiculous.

If “professional obligations” necessitate your posting to wikipedia, you must disclose any potential overlap - see WP:PAID and WP:COI. If not, it’s irrelevant.

The spirit of the restrictions are straightforward: avoid Gamergate and DHeyward. If you can abide by that I’m sure you can be productive elsewhere. If not, the community has better things do than police this “I’m not touching youuuu” nonsense.

Regarding “the instruction[s] received from the responsible administrator” you’ve been asked to clarify whether this came before or after you made the following comment (diff in Kingsindian’s section):

Despite several posts you have not clarified. Please clarify so we can wrap this up. James J. Lambden (talk) 20:52, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying the dates. If that's the case the responsible administrator has given apparently conflicting instructions which you shouldn't be held responsible for. I suggest the complaints re: your interactions with DHeyward be dismissed and either the responsible administrator clarifies explicitly, on wiki, the scope of the interaction ban or another administrator applies a more straightforward restriction. James J. Lambden (talk) 21:28, 5 May 2016 (UTC)


 * You tweet that the Arb case against Gamaliel is a “surrender to extortion” and request input from experts on internet extortion, citing the case of Alison Rapp (Gamergate). You then to  page asking if the Signpost would be interested in a short opinion piece on the subject of Wikipedia and extortion. Do you intend to violate your topic ban? Please explain. James J. Lambden (talk) 03:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

So there’s no ambiguity: your topic ban restricts you from the topic of Gamergate. It’s not a ban on the word specifically, so that by equivocation, you’re permitted to discuss it. Regardless of the supervising editor’s experience or respectability I can't imagine a scenario where writing an article on extortion you believe has been perpetrated by "Gamergate" doesn’t bring us right back here - assuming (hopefully) this request is closed by then.

This isn’t a government-sponsored legal system where in exchange for tax dollars you’re provided inexhaustible bureaucratic recourse. Each edit is a volunteer donating time and effort - persistent boundary-testing is an abuse of these donated resources. Your actions have real costs to the community. Please recognize that and behave accordingly. James J. Lambden (talk) 18:29, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Ryk72
The diffs provided by and  are clearly in breach of the respective topic bans. The advice provided by the imposing the "" topic ban explicitly states that commenting on the other topic banned person is within the scope of the ban; the diffs show comment on that person. I would suggest, however, that this is mainly supportive of the inadequacies of the topic ban itself; and demonstrative of the the inconsistent application of these bans thus far. I, therefore, recommend no sanction on the basis of the clear breach of the ban on commenting on DHeyward; but do firmly recommend that Admins should find consensus that this ban; and the corresponding bans on DHeyward and should be rescinded. The clear, continued, breaches of the topic ban on Gamergate, however, I leave to the mercies of those same persons (tender or elsewise). - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:18, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Capeo
Can we just be done with this now? Since MB's topic ban he's done nothing but dance around or step over the edges as the difs above show. The idea of TB is that an editor moves on to something else. MB is not moving on. It's endless innuendo and boundary pushing. We have a rather strange Iban from an admin who won't even respond that is basically unenforceable at this point and a Tban that has either has teeth or it doesn't. Capeo (talk) 02:35, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Sitush
Agree with Capeo. This is gaming the system, plain and simple. - Sitush (talk) 09:10, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by DHeyward
I didn't receive the latest reinterpretation where I can comment as long as it not about the other parties. This makes it very convoluted because the source of the topic ban was commenting in AE cases. I'd just as soon have the topic ban lifted. The admin that imposed it can't even interpret it any more per his ArbCom sanction. Please remove the 3-way topic ban so we don't end up here. It's already led to an enforcement in November that was overturned and led to the latest modification that is too convoluted to understand (see my block log) It's not helping the encyclopedia. --DHeyward (talk) 00:24, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Statement by Torchiest
It's clear MB is doing everything in his power to push the limits of his topic ban. Even just yesterday, he posted this to ' talk page. There's no doubt that the "extortion" referred to is explicitly related to Gamergate, based on comments he's made elsewhere. MB is looking for a way to continue his advocacy and WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. It's getting to the point that I think WP:NOTHERE may apply. —Torchiest talkedits 16:53, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Result concerning MarkBernstein

 * This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.


 * MarkBernstein, can you provide a link to this discussion you had with the admin? I think it's important to see it in context. Liz  Read! Talk! 15:13, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * MarkBernstein can confirm, but given the reference to "you may quote this on-wiki," I take it that this was communicated by e-mail or similar, not on-wiki. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:12, 4 May 2016 (UTC)
 * , just as a point of clarity, asking the sanctioning administrator for a good-faith clarification about the scope of a topic ban would not be a violation of that ban. "Asking for necessary clarifications about the scope of the ban" is explicitly listed as a ban exception. However, I do see some difference between the sanctioning administrator giving permission to participate in a case in general, and specifically replying directly to and arguing with another individual subject to the IBAN during participation in that case. I don't see anything in Gamaliel's clarification that would allow direct interaction, just general participation in the same area. The exemption is for "...commenting on an issue or an edit or a person who was not one of the two of you...", which seems to explicitly rule out commenting on an issue or an edit or a person when it is one of the two. Seraphimblade Talk to me 16:32, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * If the admin that MarkB is referring to above is Gamaliel, then this is the most recent on-wiki clarification (November, 2015) of MarkB's interaction ban from DHeyward in the words of Gamaliel. He is allowing MarkB and DHeyward to open enforcement requests against each other, but "The topic ban on discussing one another otherwise remains in place." The original ban as well as the above revision can still be found in WP:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions/Log/2015 by searching for the word 'Thargor.'  EdJohnston (talk) 17:10, 4 May 2016 (UTC)


 * While Mark doesn't outright say the word "Gamergate" (except when he does), it is blatantly obvious that that's what he's talking about. There are also the diffs of him plainly referencing DHeyward, without necessarily using the name. The sanctions he is under are bans from discussing the topics, not just mentioning the words, and these diffs would appear to show Mark testing the boundaries. While I don't think a block to enforce the ban is necessary or warranted here, it would be a good idea to formally clarify whether or not this is allowed under the terms of his active sanctions. The Wordsmith Talk to me 19:24, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I understand that your topic ban is confusing as well, but this request isn't the best place for it. If you feel it is no longer necessary, please make a standalone appeal and it will be dealt with accordingly, separate from Mark's sanction. The Wordsmith Talk to me 00:56, 13 May 2016 (UTC)