Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war/Evidence

Anyone, whether directly involved or not, may add evidence to this page. Please make a header for your evidence and sign your comments with your name.

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As such, it is extremely important that you use the prescribed format. Submitted evidence should include a link to the actual page diff; links to the page itself are not sufficient. For example, to cite the edit by Mennonot to the article Anomalous phenomenon adding a link to Hundredth Monkey use this form:.

This page is not for general discussion - for that, see talk page.

Please make a section for your evidence and add evidence only in your own section. Please limit your evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs, a much shorter, concise presentation is more likely to be effective. Please focus on the issues raised in the complaint and answer and on diffs which illustrate behavior which relates to the issues.

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Evidence presented by Doc glasgow
Party Statement I'll offer an explanation, but mainly an apology. Reversing another admin's action is wrong - and despite my sense of being justified - it was wrong to do it, and negligent in checking the facts before doing it. I apologise and will accept whatever medicine arbcom choose to deliver.

Daniel Brandt was deleted by Yanksox citing amonst other things 'privacy reasons'. It was listed on DRV, and (at the time in question) the deletion was being massively endorsed. For reasons not relevant to this, I was delighted by this, and thought Wikipedia was finally doing the right thing, and moving WP:BLP to its logical conclusion. I went away for a short period. I returned to find that, despite the gathering DRV consensus to keep deleted, the DRV had been closed and the article undeleted, and filed on AfD. That seemed unacceptable - we don't undelete something deleted for 'privacy concerns', we don't undelete when nearly all who were commenting were supporting the initial deletion, we don't forum shop. The purpose of DRV is to decide whether we undelete it, or relist it, - and DRV was then clearly saying 'no'

I re-opened the DRV, closed the AfD , and then re-deleted the article in order to allow the DRV to run its course - my rationale was "still on DRV - leave it there - no consensus to undelete and relist". Foolishly, I did not check the deletion log for the article, had I done so and seen that 6 actions separated mine from the initial deletion, I would certainly not have acted in this manner. For me to reverse an admin on the strength of defending the DRV consensus was bad enough, but I would not knowingly have engaged in a multi-admin wheel war. I was under the misapprehension that I was simply replacing the status-quo of Yanksox's deletion that was under consideration by DRV.

Having entered this limited mitigation, and pled guilty at the bar, I do not intend to defend myself or criticise any other party's actions. I now consider myself on a 0-RR regarding admin actions.--Docg 00:38, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

The deletion by CesarB and the second restore by Freakofnurture were not wheel warring
On 4 February 2007, Majorly did a delete followed by a selective restore to purge personal information from the history[].

On one of the time periods while the page had been undeleted, I noticed there were no deleted revisions; it could be either because the revisions with personal information had been oversighted, or because they had been restored together with all the others. I decided to err in the side of caution and delete the whole article[]; I also added a warning on the discussion on the noticeboard about that[]. I also commented on IRC about it, where after some time Majorly said these revisions had already been oversighted (Majorly also said the same on the noticeboard[]).

After that, I told Freakofnurture (also on IRC) that it had already been oversighted; Freakofnurture then restored the article[].

CesarB deleted several redirects to the Daniel Brandt article
I deleted several redirects to the Daniel Brandt article while it was deleted, together with the associated talk pages ([ log]; look on 23 February 2007 between 17:02 and 17:16). At the time I had not noticed the wheel war; I had only noticed it was on DRV, and the DRV had already been closed (it was [ this revision]). I fully intend to restore them if/when the article is restored and it does not look like it's going to be deleted again in the next few minutes.

CesarB protected a redirect version of the Daniel Brandt article
Since I had been looking at the Brian Peppers talk page DRV, things somehow got mixed in my mind and I thought Daniel Brandt was on one of the Protected titles lists. Thus, when I saw the Daniel Brandt article recreated as a redirect[], I quickly protected it, noting that the creation of the page as a redirect would disable the title protection[]. The protection was lost when the article was deleted again a few minutes later[]. This was also during the time before I noticed there was a wheel war (see previous section).

Evidence presented by freakofnurture
I really don't have much to say other than what I did and my exact reasons for doing so:

Restoring Brandt due to absence of BLP violation
After seeing that Yanksox had deleted Daniel Brandt, I thoroughly read the top deleted revision of the page, looking for any material that might be unsourced, unduly negative, or otherwise afoul of the biographies of living persons "BLP" guidelines, and found nothing of the sort. Additionally, but of lesser importance, the article met no generally accepted criteria for speedy deletion, so I restored it, fully unaware that it had already been restored and deleted again by Bumm13 and Deskana, respectively (neither of whom I've heard of). I did this because I believed this deletion was grossly improper. — freak([ talk]) 00:18, Feb. 24, 2007 (UTC)

Response to personal attacks by deleting admin
After I restored the article, Yanksox deleted it again with the summary "How do you make so many Wikipedians go apeshit? By arguing agaisnt their squewed logic that is based upon sophmoric revenge. This site has gone to the pits, let's clean it up!" I interpreted portions of that as a personal attack, possibly directed toward me, so I calmly commented at his talk page. . Regardless, I feel that personal attacks should be weighed on their own severity, regardless of location (edit summary, deletion summary, etc. or in paragraph form — it should make no difference). — freak([ talk]) 00:18, Feb. 24, 2007 (UTC)

Restoring Brandt again in protected-blank form for analysis by DRV
Most recently, I saw that CesarB had deleted it again, stating that "The careless restore restored revisions with personal information which should not be restored (check the deletion log). Please restore only the revisions which were not already deleted before". I contacted CesarB on IRC saying that it would be good to get an WP:OVERSIGHT to handle that if it if what he said was true. He responded saying that it had already been done. Meanwhile I examined the deletion review discussion and concluded that many of the people commenting had probably not recently, or ever, had the chance to read the article as it stood, so I restored it again, and protected it in the blank form containing only the "please see deletion review" template, and directed all further attention to the discussion in that forum. — freak([ talk]) 00:18, Feb. 24, 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Bumm13
Per the Brandt article log, Yanksox deleted the Daniel Brandt article at 1253 UTC on February 23, 2007. Yanksox gave "(privacy concerns, more trouble than it is actually worth. Are you people even human?)" as his edit summary. I was frequenting the Wikipedia IRC channel as I typically do when I became aware that the deletion had occurred. I was surprised that no administrator action had been taken regarding the matter, given that no discussion had recently taken place to suggest that the article was going to be deleted.

During this time, a deletion review regarding the article was started by User:Cool Cat at 1354 UTC. At 1547 UTC (almost 3 hours after the article was initially deleted), I decided that something wasn't quite right and went ahead to undelete the article but only restored the latest version of the article and history, giving "This deletion was not discussed and is current under review at DRV" as my edit summary; I assumed that the article was deleted out of process and thus should return to its previous state during DRV discussion (similar to how things work regarding WP:AFD). User:Deskana appropriately posted a comment on my talk page regarding GFDL issues with having an incomplete document-edit history, so he went ahead and restored the article's history via deletion.

Soon after, Deskana posted another comment on my talk page stating that it's best not to undelete an article while pending deletion review, so I heeded his comment and made no further actions regarding the Brandt article. Various other admins, including Yanksox (who originally started the chains of events surrounding the article deletion controversy) deleted and undeleted the Brandt article after my previous (and only) deletion and Deskana's undeletion/restoration of the article's history. I never had any intention of interfering with the appropriate actions taken by any of our administrators. Bumm13 12:53, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Timeline
I thought I'd present a timeline of what happened, in order get a clear overview of the situation. This covers both the wheel warring on the article itself and the edit warring on the subsequent deletion review discussion.


 * Legend

All times are in UTC. Note that the whole thing takes less than five hours; beginning with the first undeletion, all actions take less than two hours. Many actions occur within minutes of each other.

--bainer (talk) 13:33, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Updates
 * Thanks to Tra's excellent idea of using the MediaWiki API (see below), I have confirmed the order of the two actions at 16:26. --bainer (talk) 01:21, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Added some more actions, from the article's edit history. Note that recreations are linked as old revisions and not as diffs, since the diff doesn't truly represent the edit once the old revisions are undeleted behind the new recreation. --bainer (talk) 02:03, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Added pertinent messages between involved users to the timeline. --bainer (talk) 07:36, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Over several edits, added actions to the talk page of the article and some more messages between users. Since the response to including discussion between users has been positive, I've decided to include some of the comments made by involved users to the DRV and AfD debates since, among other things, it illustrates who was aware of what and when. --bainer (talk) 01:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Emphasized the dialogs between parties. → Aza Toth 02:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Geni's awareness of the DRV debate
Geni has disputed part of one of the findings of fact, so I submit this additional evidence to illustrate how that finding can be reached.

On the basis that: it may be deduced that if Geni had consulted the deletion log, Geni would be aware of the DRV debate.
 * the Special:Undelete interface displays the deletion log fragment for the page to be undeleted;
 * the deletion log fragment includes information about the time actions were taken on the article, by whom, and any comment left by them;
 * the comments describing Bumm13's undeletion and Deskana's deletion both include reference to the DRV debate;

Geni's undeletion summary was "out of policy and process deletion. The guy's long history of campianing [sic] makes him noteable." I submit that the only way to determine whether any prior deletion is "in" or "out" of process is by consulting the reason for deletion, available in the deletion log. Since Geni made such a determination, it is logical to infer that Geni had consulted the deletion log.

Thus it may be inferred that Geni was aware of the DRV debate when undeleting the article for the first time. --bainer (talk) 14:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Freakofnurture could have been more civil
My only assertion with regards to this whole thing is that I didn't take too kindly to Freakofnurture's restoring comment at 17:45 ("Undeletion summary: "2,276 revisions restored: i've just been told the revisions were oversighted. restoring so sheep voters can actually read the article.""). I personally find "restoring so sheep voters can actually read the article" a violation of WP:CIV. Side note that Freak has, to his credit, responded about this on the main talk page of the RFAR. – Chacor 13:37, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

YankSox's second deletion occurred before the closure of the deletion review
In response to TheBainer's evidence regarding the events that happened at 16:26, the deletion of the article was actually performed 21 seconds before the closure of the deletion review. This can be confirmed by looking at these two pages generated by the MediaWiki API: Tra (Talk) 23:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 16:26:10 The article 'Daniel Brandt' was deleted
 * |user|comment&rvstart=20070223162632 16:26:31 The deletion review was closed

Geni has restored Daniel Brandt before
Geni restored Daniel Brandt after an administrator (User:Hoopydink, who has utilized their right to vanish) deleted it  on December 8, 2006. His reasons for restoration were essentially the same then as they were in the most recent wheel war (asserting Brandt's notability): "Not A7 student protest days got him enough profile particlay [sic] when you consider his later work", on 9 December and "out of policy and process deletion. The guy's long history of campianing [sic] makes him noteable [sic]." most recently.

Geni engaged in a minor wheel-war before
Geni also engaged in a minor wheel war over the deletion of Talk:Brian Peppers, restoring the page twice one day before the Daniel Brandt wheel war (February 22, 2007). I can't read the deleted edits, as I'm only a humble user, but it seems that Geni was trying to preserve a message that he had left on the talk page. PTO 02:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Mailer Diablo
My deletion of the article was mainly for housekeeping reasons; I apologize for possibly worsening the situation unwittingly. I absolutely had no intention to wheel war.

There was a confusion of whether the discussion should take place at deletion review or articles for deletion (AfD). In this case, the article is assumed to be speedy deletion and should fall under deletion review, which is also the first discussion initiated. Things became messier when the review was closed, and brought over to articles for deletion. Doc later closed the discussion and brought back to deletion review. It should be noted that Geni undeleted the article shortly after the AfD discussion was closed.

This was the version that I saw before I deleted the article - 01:09, 24 February 2007 by Malo. As the discussion is now closed the notice is now inaccurate. After I deleted the page, I replaced the deleted page with the Deletion Review notification delrev, and protected it. I also share the sentiment of Deskana that undeletion of the article would not be suitable given that it is on deletion review. I also did note the possible problem of editors not being able to view the deleted edits, but both Chacor and Kirill Lokshin  have pointed out that it is possible to retrieve them cached in two seperate discussions.

After Geni has overturned my deletion, he left a note on my talk page in which I replied to and debated on which is the correct process. - Mailer Diablo 03:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * On the "right thing..." in the so-called "purple hearts award" that I've placed on Yanksox's talk, I'm referring to his WP:BOLD/WP:IAR action of the first deletion only. I only viewed the contents of Yanksox's talkpage itself, followed the DRV link posted by Cool Cat on the talkpage, and expressed my opinon on the issue from there. Inadvertently without checking the logs of the article itself first, I was not aware that a messy situation of wheel-warring as going on. It was only after adding delrev when I looked at the deletion log (that comes along with Special:Undelete) was I shocked at the true gravity of the situation, and backed off. - Mailer Diablo 15:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Geni has wheel-warred earlier
In addition to the evidence produced above, this happened during the Arbitration Committee Elections 2006. If they hold any relevance now – Logs of Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Candidate statements/Questions for Paul August –. diff – &mdash;  Nearly Headless Nick   {C}  13:47, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Yanksox received praise for his actions from administrators and editors
Yanksox received "barnstars" or awards from Doc Glasgow, Hipocrite , Mailer diablo , Messedrocker , Tyrenius , Random832.

This culminated in this, the launch of a petition to canonise Yanksox. "We the underside[sic] call on the powers that be to officially declare Yanksox a saint of wikipedia, a defender of our humanity, and an all round good guy." Catchpole 19:04, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

With opposition to this statement removed, SqueakBox 21:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * SqueakBox, may I advise you to keep your head down just now? You really do not want to get involved in this one. Guy (Help!) 22:42, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Gaillimh was sysopped through backdoor means
Gaillimh was given sysophood on 4 February 2007 by Redux as the reincarnation of an administrator who had previously left Wikipedia. Catchpole 12:59, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

(further evidence submitted via e-mail)

Reservation
I am reserving this section however, I invite everyone to look through each entry in my admin log.. Yank sox 04:24, 26 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't have any evidence per se, but I will post down blots of my ideas as they come along


 * 1) I admit, I was carried away with this deletion, I was acting passionately since I felt I was becoming more disturbed about this article and other BLP things brought forth by other people. I discussed this in length my many people and looked inside of my moral conscience to see what I would do in situations like this. I thought about the privacy invasion and how it can tarnish someone and it made me deeply upset.
 * 2) The way I carried out this deletion was improper and wrong, I was caught up in emotions. I am sorry for wasting valuable community time and efforts when it could be spend towards building the encyclopedia.
 * 3) I should be the only person accountable, I don't believe anyone else should be harmed by this considering I was the main actor.
 * 4) My previous admin log is nearly perfect, as shown by my exposing of the Satchel Cohen hoaxer from Christian Portland I have had a deep dedication to maintaining care towards articles and the relationship with the outside world.
 * 5) I had good intentions, and I decided to use WP:BLP with WP:BOLD and WP:IAR, I felt it was important to keep the quality of this encyclopedia without bringing in down to a sophomoric fight over keeping it just to "piss someone off," as one well respected Wikipedian as told me off-Wiki why they wanted to keep the article.
 * 6) I did not attack any person or any group of people. I was attacking a mentality, which in my opinion, was poisoning and bringing down every respectable and wonderful person in this project. Again, I must stress, I had the best intentions, but I had a lapse in proper judgment.
 * 7) I wish to remind everyone that punishments are preventative not punitive, I have not doing anything controversial before, and when I did violate WP:3RR, I blocked myself. When I was on DRV a few times, I volunteered to open an RfC.
 * 8) There is no one aside from myself, that will understand the deep repercussions that this caused. If I was ever resysoped, I would encourage my immediate desysoping at the littlest controversy.
 * 9) Again, words can not express how deeply upset I am by what occurred, I wasted valuable time, and that was not my intent. The ends did not justify the means. I think the real issue is that I chose the wrong means and I made a poor decision. Words can't express the sorrow I feel over this and the stress that I am feeling in real life over it. This is something that is genuinely bothering me, and I should be the only person that will face the music. Yank sox  19:49, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

2 days before, Yanksox got involved with the Brian Peppers article
Feb 21, 2007, two days before this wheel war, Yanksox used admin powers in the Brian Peppers incident: deleting and restoring the article, and deleting and restoring the photo. 

1 day before, Yanksox deleted his own user page and talk page

 * Log, Feb 22. The content of the user page at the time was:
 * I'm very busy with school work and should be fine tuning myself. If I'm editing too much, please proverbially hit me. I also agree with Sam Korn's sentiment about this goddamn site. Yank sox  20:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Sam Korn's sentiment seems to be: "I used to edit here a lot. I don't any more. It just ain't fun."

There was no emergency with the Daniel Brandt article
There was no sudden burning emergency with the Daniel Brandt article requiring quick, decisive, radical action on Feb 23. The article history for the last week shows Total 19 edits, including maybe 12 vandalisms or reversions, in the past week. While this was a reasonably actively edited and contentious article, it was by no means a raging bonfire. Just for comparison with an unrelated article that I happen to know well, another biography of a controversial living person, Jenna Jameson (history) got about 70 edits, including about 40 vandalisms or reversions in that time, and even that is nowhere near a record.
 * no previous edits on the 23rd,
 * 3 edits on the 22nd - an addition of an alumni category, a one-sentence trivial vandalism, and its reversion
 * no edits on the 21st
 * 8 edits on the 20th - a bot dating a tag, a page blanking and reversion, and an argument about 2 sentences, about a site being his or not, settled the same day
 * 7 edits on the 19th - an argument about 1 sentence about another Brandt web site, and a reference touchup
 * no edits on the 18th
 * 1 edit on the 17th - a removal of a 2 sentence third party quote
 * no edits on the 16th

Yanksox had never edited the Daniel Brandt article
I haven't looked further, but that covers the last 2 years, and should demonstrate the point sufficiently.
 * Latest 500 edits
 * Next 500 edits
 * Next 500 edits

Yanksox had never edited Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons
Complete
 * All edits

Yanksox had never edited Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

 * Latest 500 edits
 * next 500 edits
 * next 500 edits
 * next 500 edits
 * First 500 edits

Experienced editors believe Yanksox was creating drama for the sake of attention

 * William Pietri: "Were Yanksox doing this as a deliberate, thoughtful action that he were willing to defend and drive consensus around, I'd probably let it go. But his disappearance in a puff of drama suggests that even he knows it was an abuse of power."
 * Abeg92 "Out of process speedy kamikaze delete."
 * Tariqabjotu "YankSox – clearly desiring to go out with a bang"
 * Piloguy "The only reason why this was deleted is because Yanksox wants to tell the whole world that he's leaving."
 * PTO "Yanksox must have gone postal or something"
 * Cesarb "I think you do not know the meaning of the Ed Poor barnstar. Ed Poor is the administrator who once deleted the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion page, causing a severe server slowdown for several minutes, and ending up with the creation of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion after the ensuing discussion."
 * Jimbo Wales: "I have instantly desysopped Yanksox, though, because he's basically begging for it...Some of the people involved were trying to calm things down. Others were merely trying to cause more disruption and fighting by engaging in inflammatory actions designed to outrage the other side."; "Had you done the initial delete with a serious argument on the talk page, a deletion summary of WP:BOLD, well, I would not agree, but I would not consider it a serious problem."

By this action, Yanksox got lots of attention

 * User_talk:Yanksox - 1 barnstar, 3 purple hearts, 2 balls awards, 1 owl award.

The deletion review closed with the article restored for a future AFD
Here is User:Thebainer's close of the deletion review. The result is to undelete the article, wait a week, then AFD it if nobody has found a better solution in the interim. GRBerry 15:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

By the end of the DRV, a majority supported overturning the speedy deletion

 * See the full close comments linked above
 * See these two nose counts (by different users) from shortly before the deletion review closed. GRBerry 15:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Doc glasgow has left the building

 * Departure statement, later expanded on his talk page.
 * One later contribution implies he will still be watching at least selected areas.
 * I suspect, but can't prove that discussion at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Daniel Brandt (some of which is by me), was the straw that broke the camel's back. GRBerry 21:58, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Deletion review data

 * The community of frequent opiners at deletion review is quite small, I'd say on the order of 10-20 editors.
 * Statistics on deletion review activity and outcomes were done recently for one month (by me). See Wikipedia talk:Deletion review.  Roughly 30% of reviews not settled amicably resulted in overturning, and about 20% of those cases ended up with a red link by late the next month.
 * Outcomes at AFD coming from deletion review can be surprising. After a highly contentious deletion review for an article related to Marsden, there was a unanimous keep AFD.  (Surprising in being unanimous, not in being a keep.)  The Funny Farm webcomic got a unanimous overturn/relist deletion review yet mustered no consensus at AFD.  The soccer/football player Noureddine Maamria had a nearly unanimous result of relist for individual consideration from deletion review and a nearly unanimous delete AFD.  GRBerry 21:40, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by The Uninvited Co., Inc.
Thanks to User:Mackensen for providing the reasearch. I present herewith some evidence regarding Geni's history of reversing the actions of other admins:

Arbitration Committee Elections December 2006/Candidate statements/Questions for Paul August:


 * 1) SlimVirgin reverts Cyde
 * 2) SlimVirgin protects the page
 * 3) Geni unprotects the page
 * 4) Geni reverts SlimVirgin
 * 5) SlimVirgin reverts Geni
 * 6) SlimVirgin protects the page
 * 7) Geni unprotects the page
 * 8) Geni reverts SlimVirgin

Here's Geni revert-warring with Anthere over the site notice, in January of 2006:


 * 1)
 * 2)
 * 3)

And another revert-war over the site notice, this time in July/August of 2006:
 * 1)
 * 2)

Finally, there's the time he undid protect on an OFFICE-protected article without consulting Danny, back in March of 2006. This occasioned his second temporary de-sysoping (c.f. ).

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

{Write your assertion here}
Place argument and diffs which support the second assertion; for example, your second assertion might be "So-and-so makes personal attacks", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits where So-and-so made personal attacks.