Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Date delinking/Evidence

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

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

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

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

Evidence presented by Locke Cole
More evidence available in page history since, despite my best efforts, the evidence exceeded the apparently hard limits imposed. History link to my evidence for arbitrators.

Evidence of off-wiki coordination

 * 2009-04-14T17:43:31 – I've suspected this the entire time, but lately there seems to be more on-wiki confirmation of off-wiki discussions and coordination amongst their efforts.
 * Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Greg L/Delinking links – note that of all those participating in the deletion discussion (which was closed invoking WP:SNOW) only one editor is not involved with the date delinkers.

More bad faith from Tony1

 * Note that diffs are from the French Wikipedia


 * 2009-05-06T14:56:57 – I leave a message thanking for providing evidence at this arbitration.
 * 2009-05-06T16:23:29 – Tony1 responds, leading off with "Please note that [Locke] has a long history of being blocked for misbehaviour at the eng.wp, and has more recently been edit-warring over his issues there.". This would be a personal attack, more specifically, poisoning the well.

Date delinkers on the French Wikipedia

 * fr:Wikipédia:Bulletin des administrateurs/2009/Semaine 19
 * Tony1 on French Wikipedia
 * Ohconfucius on French Wikipedia
 * Lightmouse on French Wikipedia
 * Diff where Sourisnaine admits he is Lightmouse.
 * Tony1 insisting this behavior is acceptable.
 * See also 's evidence, below.
 * All have been subsequently blocked (infinitely) on the French Wikipedia.

Tony1's evidence

 * What is lacking in his evidence is any sense of context for my comments. The majority of which aren't as bad as they might first appear, and the remainder having been made only after months of dealing with his stonewalling at MOSNUM.

Ohconfucius campaigning/spamming

 * 2009-05-22T07:36:12 – 2009-05-22T09:25:25 – Ohconfucius engaging in campaigning, insisting that date linking is deprecated while this committee is considering sanctions against him for his actions so far. (Note: this links to a history page offset to the specific edits in question, 41 messages in total so far).

HWV258 meatpuppetry
From WP:MEAT:


 * Meatpuppetry is a Wikipedia term meaning the recruitment of (typically, new) editors to join a discussion on behalf of or as proxy for another editor, usually with the aim of swaying consensus in that discussion.

It is my belief that and  knew each other offline prior to HWV258 creating an account on Wikipedia, and that HWV258 has acted to support Tony1 at his behest (likely through off-wiki contact, likely canvassing, of which there was evidence during the most recent RFC conducted by Ryan Postlethwaite).


 * 2007-12-03T00:26:29 – First edit to HWV258's talk page is a message from Tony1 which implies familiarity with this individual (Tony1 refers to HWV258 by first name, "Andrew"). By this time HWV258 had only made six edits total, five to articles and one to his user page. None of the articles had been edited by Tony1. The HWV258 account was created on 2007-11-30T03:34:18.
 * 2007-12-03T00:26:29–2009-03-27T15:26:30 – Note that HWV258's talk page is largely comments from Tony1 (at least early on; recently that has changed somewhat).

RFC on linking of birth and death dates
These were his first edits, ever, to the MoS (and only his 3rd or 4th edit to the Wikipedia namespace). Again, I believe they were likely caused by offwiki contact with Tony1.


 * 2008-11-13T21:35:01
 * 2008-11-14T03:30:57
 * 2008-11-17T22:19:57

First two Date linking RFCs
He also appeared at the Date linking RFC.


 * 2008-11-24T03:54:59
 * 2008-11-24T03:57:22
 * 2008-11-25T21:36:59
 * 2008-11-25T21:40:24
 * 2008-11-25T21:42:31
 * 2008-11-25T21:45:32

Lazare Ponticelli
And here at the Lazare Ponticelli date linking dispute, on an article he'd never edited before. Arbitrators may wish to note this timeline with my other evidence (archived), available here.


 * 2008-12-02T23:30:11
 * 2008-12-03T00:50:36
 * 2008-12-03T01:44:17
 * 2008-12-03T21:41:59

Conduct since
Since that time HWV258 has been an outspoken supporter of Tony1 and those on the delinking side (see the various arbitration pages, workshop, etc). He has also been increasingly incivil, especially during the recent Proposed decision phase of this arbitration (suggesting we've "got what's coming to us" on the talk page of the Proposed decision; he also has taken to removing another editors comments entirely).

Wikihounding

 * Applicable here: WP:HOUND


 * 2009-05-30T19:11:50 – follows me to a discussion page he's never participated in before. This is harassment.
 * 2009-05-31T06:23:14 – insisting to Greg L that his behavior is not stalking.
 * 2009-05-31T12:14:48 – Ohconfucius then follows me to the same discussion page (which he's also never participated in before). Also harassment.

Evidence presented by NuclearWarfare
The following is an assessment of the two community RfCs that went on during December, which were supposed to be the be-all and end-all for this issue. I had summarized them earlier, but I have no issue with doing so again:

The two Requests for Comments showed a clear consensus in most cases for at most very limited linking.
 * Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Three proposals for change to MOSNUM had a clear consensus to reject date linking and date autoformatting. It had a less clear, but still fairly strong consensus to allow automated and semi-automated edits to help delink dates.
 * Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date Linking RFC
 * Deprecating the current date autoformatting - Dates should not be linked (very clear consensus)
 * Is some method of date autoformatting desirable? - About 50/50, but this is not relevant to this RfAr, and is more a Developer issue.
 * When to link to Month-Day articles? - 2/49/49 support. Examples:
 * "John Fred was born on September 15 and invented the tricycle on October 29."
 * American independence was declared on July 4
 * American independence was declared on July 4.
 * When to link Year articles - 10/60/30
 * "John Fred was born on September 15 1789 and invented the tricycle on October 29 1810"
 * "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue" but not "George Adams was born in 1977"
 * "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue."
 * When to use Year-in-field links - murkier; no real consensus came about there.

Hope this helps. NuclearWarfare  ( Talk ) 23:55, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Reply to Point One by Locke Cole

 * After a certain while, huge discussions essentially become votes with murky rates of establishing consensus. At one of the RfCs, a proposal was made to limit the use of semi-automated scripts or bots to delink articles. 96 people opposed this and 23 people supported it. I don't know, but 80% opposition to limitation of script-based removal is significant enough for me to call a consensus. NuclearWarfare  ( Talk ) 00:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Reply to reply: It seems to me that community feels differently. I see nothing that indicates that the community as a whole feels that bots shouldn't be allowed. And if a bot writes over a particular article over and over again (which it shouldn't; I was under the impression that Lightbot is doing a one time scan of the entire database), it should be easy to fix. Just use the Bots template to deny AWB-running bots and add back in the useful edit.
 * "Consensus": But that is in August. I honestly could care less what happened then. I understand that there are problems with the MoS, but as far as the date unlinking issue is concerned, the entire community has had their chance to speak up about it in the widely advertised RfCs in December. That's the consensus we should be talking about. NuclearWarfare  ( Talk ) 00:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

There is a valid counter-argument concerning bots
I agree with Locke in that I also believe there is consensus that dates may be linked when the date article is relevant to the article containing the date. (See User talk:Dabomb87/Summary of the Date Linking RFCs.)

The counter-argument concerning the bots goes like this: I honestly believe that this represents a sincere, good faith (if long-running) difference of opinion between two groups of editors, and for what it's worth, an examination of the sections I linked above will show that these diferences can be debated in a generally civil and polite way. It is sad that there is no agreement yet on which of the two opinions should prevail, and as I respect ArbCom, I trust that they will not attempt to adjudicate a resolution of this particular difference of opinion without reflecting on the very large amount of debate that has already taken place. --RexxS (talk) 01:07, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The number of date links that are relevant is a tiny proportion (possibly less than 1%) of all date links. Presumably they are mistaken links of date fragments by editors believing that should be done to auto-format. (See for example the first few edits to WT:Manual of Style (dates_and_numbers).)
 * It is more efficient to remove the vast majority of irrelevant date links (millions?) with a bot, then re-add the (relatively) few relevant ones manually, than to work out which are irrelevant and remove them manually. (for an example of this debate, see WT:Manual of Style (dates_and_numbers).)

The consensus to deprecate Date Autoformatting was documented on 24 August 2008
A consensus to deprecate date autoformatting was reached between 16–23 August 2008. The discussion is documented on talk:MoS archive here: supplemented by discussion on a subpage of of Tony's: and two notices on Village pump requesting input: The change was made on 24 August 2008. The important point is that that consensus - although questioned regularly - has not changed and was re-affirmed in both of the recent RfC's.
 * Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Archive_D6
 * User:Tony1/Support_for_the_removal_of_date_autoformatting
 * Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_33


 * Response to Tennis expert: The evidence presented here and in proposals needs to be examined in the context of the surrounding edits on each page. Such an examination clearly shows that TE was more often the instigator of the problem because of his refusal to edit collaboratively. For reasons of brevity, I illustrate this by examining the most recent example (January 8) that I can find of his reversion of an edit by Colonies Chris. The edit by CC removed a massive amount of overlinking in the article. However CC made one mistake: he linked Birmingham to "Birmingham, Alabama", not "Birmingham, UK". Any editor looking for a collaborative consensus would have corrected that error and attempted to reach consensus: TE did not; he simply reverted the entire edit made by CC and complained about use of AWB. Within just the sections "Challenger and ITF tournaments" and "Past events", TE created by that revert:
 * about 30 unnecessary redirects (e.g. changed "Wolfsburg, Germany" to "Wolfsburg, Germany", "Braşov, Romania" to "Brasov, Romania", etc);
 * over 30 unnecessary links to countries (e.g. changed "Italy" to "Italy" nine times in one subsection, "Brazil" to "Brazil" six times in the same subsection, etc).
 * The irony is that he corrected CC's "Birmingham, England" to "Birmingham, England", adding a link to England as if nobody knew where it was and missing the fact that all other UK towns were given as e.g. "Brighton, United Kingdom". If TE actually took the time to review his edit, he would have spotted such overlinking and internal inconsistencies. That is a show-piece example of a "blind revert". --RexxS (talk) 19:05, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by MBisanz
At the beginning of this conflict, I was asked to mediate between the various sides, but this was declined at. Since then I have kept the page watchlisted and recorded some edits that seemed problematic

Edit warring

 * Prolonged edit warring that led to blocks on, , and after page protection failed to stop an edit war.  Currently WP:MOSNUM has been protected since November 20th  because of the failure of the parties to resolve their differences.  I had previously protected for a week because of this sequence of edit warring , , , , , , , , , , , however the parties soon resumed after the protection lapsed, as shown below.


 * Tony1:,, , , ,
 * After the initiation of the RFAR:, , ,


 * Locke Cole:, , ,


 * Arthur Rubin:, , , ,

Threats
Arthur Rubin threatened to block despite admitting he was an involved administrator to the dispute ,
 * Yes, administrators who don't like the changes you've made to the MOS without a clear consensus are threatening to block bots acting on an extension of the (changed) MOS. So? As for "involved" admins, if Lightbot edits a date article and removes links specifically mentioned in the appropriate WikiProject, (and I happen to notice it), I'll block it, even though I'm involved

Civility and Battle
See also:Expanded version
 * Tony1
 * Rudeness comes naturally to me. When responding to a question over editing at FAC


 * ...the strongest muscle we have is "name and shame"... When describing how to respond to disputes with administrators


 * 


 * 


 * 


 * Calling out another editor's mental health state.


 * when addressing proposed changes to part of a guideline.


 * 


 * 


 * This would be the application of the "shame and name" comment above


 * More shaming and naming


 * Calling out another editor's mental health state


 * Lengthy comparison of other editors' behavior to being an "analogy with state fascism".


 * 


 * Rather aggressive response to RFC edits.


 * 


 * 


 * Note: Locke Cole has never been an administrator.

Bot policy
Lightmouse has repeatedly misused Lightbot in violation of Bot policy and 3RR, despite being warned by several members of the bot approvals group to edit its own userpage and undisable its own stop button:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , blocked for disabling shutoff, discussion, User_talk:MBisanz/Archive_5.

The bot has continued subsequent to the warning, blocking, and discussion to edit its own usertalk page in violation of bot policy through January 3rd.

Socking
has operated former accounts, and, and an alternate current account, , in a deceptive manner.

User:Lightmouse created his account May 23, 2007.

His 23rd edit was setting up an archive bot for his talk page copying the code used on User talk:Editore99, of his first 50 article edits, half were the edit summary of general edit and half were the edit summary copyedit.

User:Editore99 registered on May 5, 2007 and stopped editing May 23rd 2007 His last fifty edit were with the edit summary copyedit. During his month of activity he was blocked once for making very fast edits, something Lightmouse has been blocked for several times.

In the course of his editing, Editore99 imported and began editing a date-delinking script that Lightmouse has continued to refine. As this edit shows, it was retrieved from User:Bobblewik's date-delinking script five days after Editore99 registered.

Bobblewik was a very prolific editor from March 2004 to October 2006 (65,000+ edits), who was blocked over 17 times by several administrators and arbitrators for running fast automated date delinking processes. At the time he stopped editing, there was apparently a great degree of controversy at his talk page and the block lengths were a week to a month in length. Also, he submitted several rejected date-related bots at BRFA archive and was the subject of RFC/U.

(IP evidence removed)

According to the usercompare tool they have 9,700 pages in common as editors.

According to the relevant section of the sockpuppetry policy:


 * ...Using alternative puppet accounts to split your contributions history means that other editors cannot detect patterns in your contributions. ... it is a violation of this policy to create alternative accounts in order to confuse or deceive editors who may have a legitimate interest in reviewing your contributions.

By splitting his edits over several accounts even after knowing them to be controversial (by being blocked over 17 times), he prevented BAG members and crats from having adequate knowledge of his abilities as a bot operator and user of high speed editing tools. He further prevented administrators from utilizing blocks of an appropriate length when responding to complaints of his behavior, as they could not be aware of his prior blocks under other names.

On May 4th, 2009, during this case, Lightmouse created a new account, Sourisnaine, which he used to conceal edits at frwiki and then created the account at enwiki without any link to his Lightmouse identity.

There is a push to deprecate date autoformatting as presently supported in MediaWiki software
The method of date autoformatting, where one of several date formats is wrapped with double square brackets as to cause the Mediawiki software to reparse the date with links and in a style for logged-in users with date preferences set in their desired manner while leaving the written date format unchanged for all other users, has been argued by Tony and the others to be a bane for WP due to several issues (overlinking and date inconsistencies for the majority of readers). The effort to remove them has been happening for at least 5 months (since August 2008) if not even earlier.

The RFCs have both clear and unclear results.
NuclearWarfare above provides a clear summary of the results of the RFC. Most important is the strong support for the removal of autoformatted dates (which is important to note applied to a day/month/year combination, other ways of presenting dates, such as year alone or day-month alone, do not fall under this). As these RFCs were started to establish that community-wide consensus was there to remove date autoformatting, the use of bots specifically to remove these types of links should not be an issue.

What is not clear from the RFCs is what to do with links to day/month pages or year pages that otherwise don't interact with the date autoformatting system. It is clear that we do not want to link to every day/month or every year, but it is also clear that there are some times when day/month and years are linked. Some situations when these are appropriate are suggested by the RFC but there was never any significant iteration or discussion of them, instead leaving the language to link infrequently and when necessary to these.

There is more than one way to skin a cat
Tony, Greg L, and others that are strongly in favor of removing date links per the RFC are insistent on going ahead and getting various bots started on the task, with editors that want to restore dates doing so manually after the bots are done. I have attempted to point out several times that while this approach is perfectly fine and against no specific policy or guideline, there are methods that are more favorable to all WP editors and can gain better goodwill, making it less than a hassle for others, and the like. Specifically, I've recommended that templates can be used to grandfather in any existing year and date links that will be invisible to the existing bots (thus requiring no bot change), and that we give editors two weeks to a month to apply the template to dates they believe they should keep (given the current lack of the consensus of when such links should be made), announcing the methods to do this at the Pump and other places. Then after this period the bots can run to achieve the same result. I'm sure there's other ways this can be done to keep certain dates unchanged by bots, but the practical upshot is that in exchange for waiting a bit more to achieve their desired results of reducing the number of date links, they gain good faith from the community in their efforts.

There is no deadline
The primary concern of mine in this entire affair is the insistence of Tony and the others at MOSNUM that we have to achieve these results in the very short term. Date linking of any type is not hurting Wikipedia in any way beyond some usability issues; it is not like WP:BLP or copyright violations that need to dealt with quickly. The changes to MOSNUM regarding date linking are far reaching, likely to affect every WP article (since it will also affect reference lists). Thus, instead of trying to race to establish consensus and then immediately set off into action, it seems to make more sense to sit down and reach consensus on all factors relating to date linking (including exact cases when years and day-months should be linked, when to use year-in-field links and how to make date links overall more relevant to the pages of interest). There is also a likelihood of working with the various projects that maintain the targets of these date/month, year, and year-in-field pages to make sure they are relevant as well when they are linked.

This will be an automated task
More to confirm Ohconfucius' point below, there is no question that a bot needs to be let loose to run the tasks of (at bare minimal) removing date autoformatting, doing volumes more work that humans can in general editing to remove linked dates. Lightmouse's Lightbot seems best poised for this, as well as making sure that AWB users can do this as part of general cleanup, and so forth.

There is a poisonous atmosphere at MOSNUM that leads to unhealthy discussion
While I believe that ArbCom stated that this case would only focus on the issues of date delinking by bots, it is important to note that I strongly believe we would not be here if attitudes on both sides of the issue worked better on compromise and consensus building instead of what actually resulted. When I entered the debate around August 2008, I was amazed at the vitriol that was being thrown about by both sides. (Others have linked to such examples already, but the archives speak for themselves) Tony, Greg L, and others were taking their attitude of elitism that they seemed to know best for Wikipedia, and thus They Were Right, while others like Locke Cole were involved in trying to argue every nitpick of the arguments; neither approach is consensus building. Nothing that is enforceable, but neither is good to promote. When the RFCs closed, I thought everyone was going to put that all behind but then when there was negative feedback about the bots delinking bare years, the attitudes came right out again. Even with this ArbCom case started, I am amazed at how both sides are reacting to this, everyone trying to find the tiniest fault with the process or the person. When I go back over the past discussions, I realize that if the same thoughts were stated but without the negative connotations of the delivery of those thoughts, we likely would not be here at ArbCom now, and maybe have already settled the entire issue a month or more ago. While I don't believe that ArbCom should take any action regarding this, I do believe it is in ArbCom's best interest to recognize why this case got here to understand what aspects they should and should not take up.

Evidence presented by Ohconfucius
I have found this whole RFA experience is a very claustrophobic one, concentrating all the bickering and personal attacks in one place. The faulty process, the incompetent management of this case have brought shame to WIkipedia. Here, the unpleasant goings on include attempts to sully the reputations of Tony1 and The Rambling Man, two of Wikipedia's finest editors certainly in terms of skill and dedication, as well as other equally dedicated editors of lesser standing. In retrospect, it demonstrates the wisdom of Lightmouse (who is a skillful programmer and responsive and responsible wikipedian), who refused to be drawn into this secondary circle of violence. Lightmouse correctly predicted the escalation of finger-pointing and point scoring, which was never all that problematic at MOSNUM before in comparison.

Among the parties who I assert to be fanning the flames is MBisanz, admin who may be using this case to demonstrate his "independence" and "impartiality", and the style anarchist PManderson. Tennis expert, who is not named as a party and who may believe that this status accords him some immunity on this process, has in actual fact been one of the principal footsoldiers in this battle, seemingly taking the cue from the cunning User:Locke Cole. There appeared to be a brief split in the ranks briefly when Rubin and Cole distanced themselves from Tennis expert's repeated spamming this and the workshop page with his "evidence" and his motions to censure.

I created the account as an account to manage the edits to make all date formats consistent. My actions in connection with WP:MOSNUM have always remained faithful to this central objective.

Since September, I have strongly objected to methods used by the above named individuals to block, stymie, and browbeat. They also attempted to reinterpret "consensus", as well as to redefine the meaning of "controversy" - particularly regarding the use of Auto Wiki Browser. The consensus arrived at in August may have been too small to be representative, but was a consensus well within the historical practice of WP. Attempts to 'warn' fellow editors to stop edits to put articles into compliance with WP:MOSNUM and WP:CONTEXT were actually misplaced, and some of those warned considered it harassment or intimidation - witness the reactions of Colonies Chris and Skywalker (both editors who have never been at the centre of these machinations).

As has always been the case on WP, consensus remains consensus until it is overturned by another consensus. I believe this difference in "interpretation" is a fundamental locus of this dispute. Despite the complaints, and the traditional onus upon challengers to the consensus to prove their case, no attempt was made to demonstrate the validity or otherwise of this consensus until November 2008. Nevertheless, the hard core opposition, fail to be silenced even in the face of a two three landslide RfCs. Most of the delinking has been uncontentious or has been welcomed. Occasional objections have been due to the mechanical removal of (or alteration to) certain date fragments which caused broken links, but script- and bot-operators have now taken steps to mitigate these errors.

Generally, the modus operandi here on WP is that things are always permitted except when expressly forbidden. The RfCs repeatedly demonstrate the unpopularity of date linking, and endorse the use of semi-automatic tools to remove them. Adding more special mandates for these tools and bots would be bureaucratic and retrograde, as these tools perform useful functions such as unifying date formats, which would be fastidious as scrubbing out toilets with a toothbrush.

Consensus
I refer to evidence by Tony1 and Dabomb87.

Incivility

 * User:Locke Cole (02:24, 17 November 2008 (UTC)) "rm message from troll"
 * User:Tennis expert (Revision as of 05:23, 22 November 2008) "Remove crazy comments"
 * User:Locke Cole (Revision as of 05:19, 24 November 2008 (UTC)) "'open threat? insanity! "TONY STARTED THIS RFC TODAY IN A CLEAR SHOWING OF BAD FAITH, KNOWING FULL WELL AN EXISTING RFC WAS ALREADY IN PROGRESS'... How hard is it to understand that this is Tony merely being Tony and trying to be disruptive yet again?"


 * User:Locke Cole (Revision as of 05:19, 25 November 2008) "rm trollery"
 * User:Locke Cole (08:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)) "rm trolling"

Inappropriate use of Admin powers

 * Arthur Rubin (08:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)) "Concur with reverts" "I'd say the reverts should be exempt from 3RR, but it's not going to happen, so be careful. Feel free to E-mail me if you're blocked for this reason."

Edit warring by User:Tennis expert
During the period from mid October until his "retirement" mid-November, Tennis expert conducted a slow edit war to reinstate linked dates on at least 158 articles. There were at least 751 reverts, and a highest revert count of 11 for any given article. Detailed information is located at User:Ohconfucius/Tennis wars.

Note that within the Tennis project, Tennis expert likes to claim "local consensus" to fight off anyone who he disagrees with, particularly when his inclusionist obsession with small detail is challenged. I cite the RfC‎ initiated on 26 April 2009.

Cause of complaints against Lightmouse
I cite my post datestamped 02:59, 24 November 2008 (UTC) at AN3

Evidence presented by User:Kotniski
Two issues; don't let one cloud the other. First: what went on before the RfCs. No-one's in a position to cast the first stone about behaviour during that period; arguing about exactly who was out of order and how much is completely beside the point, and won't help reach an outcome. And the outcome can only be diagnostic here: what went wrong in the system and how such messes can be prevented in the future. That's a matter for wider debate, but maybe ArbCom will offer some wise guidance. That's all it can do, so any discussion of behaviour in the period in question must be looking in that direction, not towards scoring points in personal disputes which should be long forgotten.

Second: what to do about the date-delinking process post-RfC. This is a technical issue. I agree with Masem up to a point, but would point out: there is no deadline, but it's also harmful to obstruct good work without good reason. The fact that people are willing to spend their time and expertise on making a contribution to the project should be respected; we shouldn't tell them they have to wait in line because there's a couple of Spidermen on the Reichstag wall right now. And the idea about the template that says "leave this link alone" is a bit irrelevant - people can add such things before or (far more likely in practice) after a visit by the bot, it's not a reason why the bots should wait. Simply, the bots are doing what they've been doing for a long time, fully in line with consensus and very well established practice. No reason has been given for people to be told to stop making Wikipedia better in this way. Discussion is now totally exhausted; we know what people think, and we know that the vast majority of these links are not desired, and none of them are desired to any significant degree. Change for the better must not be allowed to be held back indefinitely just because a few people are making a noise about it.

Clear consensus that approval at MOS page not required before running a date-linking/unlinking bot
There was quite clear consensus at Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Three_proposals_for_change_to_MOSNUM that the following wording was rejected: The use of an automatic or semi-automatic process to bring article text into compliance with any particular guideline in the Manual of Style (dates and numbers) requires separate and prior consensus at the talk page.

Locke Cole has shown an unwillingness to acknowledge RFC results

 * How hard is it to understand that this is Tony merely being Tony and trying to be disruptive yet again? ... This RFC is inherently illegitimate and your acknowledgment of it is only making the situation worse. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:45, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * at the time, the other RFC was still in draft


 * Regardless, as this RFC is largely invalid due to the actions of one disruptive editor (Tony) this could run for two hours or two years and I wouldn't really have any concern with the result —Locke Cole • t • c 00:16, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Every single person who opposed above ... is largely "voting" blindly based on their own personal understanding. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:24, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * response to this was someone saying to stop putting words in voters mouths; as one of those opposers, I also took offense to this but didn't comment then


 * That's just being stubborn, which is unfortunate. It's incomprehensible why someone would oppose something if they know there's a solution for their problems with it. —Locke Cole • t • c 21:41, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Bizarre, because I'm getting the impression there's no consensus on the issue of date linking and perhaps even some support for auto formatting. —Locke Cole • t • c 00:37, 29 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Cole, I where is this "no consensus" on date linking from? Are 91 supports against 3 opposes (on Question 1, give or take a couple on both stats) WRT linking not enough for you?. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:10, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

No consensus on whether or not to link
The polls under show that this is a three-way debate; a small minority, including Locke Cole, want to routinely link all dates, and autoformat. The rest of us divided evenly between "link sometimes" and "never link"; actually reading the results will show that many editors, on either side of the line, actually said "link rarely". There is no consensus for never linking.

Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)/Three_proposals_for_change_to_MOSNUM consists of three questions,posed and phrased by, solely, as extreme choices, so they would fail. Observe that he !voted against them himself, as he posted them. All they can show is that those three propositions do not have consensus; no effort was made there to form or judge consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:39, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot's approval
presently claims to be operating under Bots/Requests for approval/Lightbot 3.

The current phrasing of that approval permits LightBot to "add, remove, or modify" a dozen classes of things (see the link for exact wording).

Under this phrasing, Lightbot can do almost anything. This is contrary to the intent of bot approval; and was almost immediately criticized by as far too wide. It was also opposed by several users, not all of them parties to this controversy; and, after approval, several users (again, some but not all of them involved in the controversy over dates, Bots/Requests_for_approval/Lightbot_3 Lightbot's permission.  Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:55, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

MOSNUM and consensus
MOSNUM has not been edited by consensus; it reflects the edit-warring of a small number of regulars. Rather than plow through the distressing evidence of its archives, I will simply point out that it has been protected for edit-warring four times in the past year. I could reconstruct the issues over which this silliness took place, if ArbCom likes; but only two of them were this; two of them were even more petty. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:53, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Tony is improving
By his standards, seems to me to be being comparatively mild in these discussions, compared to these routine uses of insult and profanity as negotiating tools in past discussions.


 * And PS, you might like me sometimes, as you imply, but I don't ever like you.
 * Retained through this copyedit, so it is a tactic, not a loss of temper
 * poor, deluded fool
 * sabotage
 * dirty hands
 * anarchist
 * I treat your entries with contempt.


 * After claiming that an opponent was inconsistent Is it only when it suits you?
 * Tony was asked to "Please examine your behaviour" and responded:
 * Dear Finell, I do examine my behaviour, every day — as I do my stools. Both are fine, thanks for asking.
 * and, again, copyedited.
 * On further challenge, he asserted that precisely the right amount of information to get my point across
 * Despite a PLEASE be civil the conversation ended there.

I believe these were a set of negotiating tools which he uses when in a hurry or under stress; his user page says that his off-Wiki work load varies drastically. Other interactions suggest he intends these as form of humor, or as part of a Real Australian persona, rough and tough, mate, and all that. But all of these are approaching a year old; he may have learned better techniques for coping. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:11, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Use of FA as a club
Please consider Template talk:E; this is the continuation of a discussion at WT:MOS, now archived at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Archive_97. The minority, which insisted that scientific notation must be spaced exactly like ordinary multiplication because they both use ×, demanded that
 * the squashy rubbish be done away with; I don't know why you think you had consensus to move back this template so that it breaches the Manual of Style, but your actions just suck. I think the proper spaced version should be reinstated and that you should argue it out at the MOS talk page, as anyone else with a scrap of decency would. (Note that the edit summary, as an additional civility, is "Utter arrogance by this Knowledge Seeker person".)

After that, the minority proceeded to threaten [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:E&diff=next&oldid=197923090 OK, if you're happy for all FA candidates to be knocked back for not following MOS in this respect, fine.... I'll ensure that until it's worked out properly at MOS, FA candidates wait. You're call.] [sic] and declare that OK, so the template is no longer acceptable in FAs. The same editor then proceeded to speak to compromise as making him bow and declared that he would be endorsing an alternate template; if this were a matter of any significance, we would call this a POV fork.

This is precisely the problem with MOS. It permits editors of high self-importance to get their way in matters of utter triviality, which should not consume the encyclopedia's time. The idea of judging a scientific article by whether it spaces scientific notation, when many scientists don't, is... Well, what is it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:55, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This, naturally, is Tony again. I gather from the evidence in the workshop that he actually hasn't improved much. Pity. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:42, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Evidence against PMAnderson
At the moment, this consists of one section by OhConfucius, at : This contains two reversions, and a novel text, in a short period of time, after which I walked away from the controversy. Is this edit-warring, as MBisanz would have it? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:05, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Tony has added some quotes. They consist largely of observations of his language and manner; he includes, for example this comment, substantially identical to this proposed finding of fact. The evidence supports this; if anyone can suggest a phrase more parliamentary than "obscene, and abusive" for Tony's language, I would be happy to adopt it hereafter. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 01:31, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Build the web
This evidence has been moved to talk.

Tony and the Great anti-MOS Conspiracy
As an example of the sort of abuse that any effort to change MOS presents; Tony1, of course, responded to criticism of MOS as prolix and containing unnecessary rulings (in this case, that we should never use that heinous offense April 17th):
 * "huge, unmanageable and intrusive Manual of Style". Schakescene, now we know you're a bedfellow of Anderson. He will stop at nothing to re-ignite his "let's dilute MoS" campaign, which has been going on for three years....

I have never communicated with Shakescene outside of this Arbitration, but if Tony can dismiss any fresh voice questioning about MOS as part of the Plot, he can ignore it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:49, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Some of the date de-linking has been directly contrary to the MOS
Manual_of_Style_(links) in its current state reads as follows:

"Items such as days, years, decades and centuries should generally not be linked unless they are likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic. Articles about other chronological items or related topics are an exception to this guideline.

Links to articles on a topic in a specific chronological period, such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in the United States, may add significantly to readers' understanding of the current topic. One such link per article is enough to serve as a gateway for readers to access sibling articles for other years (1983 in film and so on); multiple links throughout an article are unnecessary. Year-in-X links should generally be kept explicit, so that readers can see where they lead, but they may be piped to look like plain year links – for example 1997 – in some tables, infoboxes or lists where compact presentation and uniform display are important."

While the specific language of this section has been in flux during the time noted in this arbitration request, the exemption for tables, infoboxes, and lists has been a constant. However, on several occasions, Lightbot has removed piped "year-in-X" links from infoboxes, tables, and lists, in direct contravention of the MOS excerpt quoted above. The following are a few examples:


 * This edit removed a "YYYY-in-radio" link from an infobox, leading to this discussion
 * This edit removed a "YYYY-in-basketball" link from a table, leading to this brief discussion
 * This edit removed a series of "YYYY-in-poetry" links from a list, leading to this discussion
 * This edit removed a series of "YYYY-in-poetry" links from another list, leading to this discussion

Date-related de-linking has removed useful contextual information
The following is part of Lightbot's approval: "Edits may add or modify autoformatting. Edits may remove autoformatting where it is invalid, broken or itself breaks a date for readers." On numerous occasions, Lightbot has removed the valid contextual linked portion of a set of date links that may have originally been linked for autoformatting. As has been noted on these occasions, it would have made far more sense for the bot to delink the day-month pair and leave the piped link at the year. Examples include:


 * This edit, one of a large series of them, removed a "YYYY-in-radio" link, ultimately resulting in this discussion at AN. The parties concerned about this series of edits agreed that the AN discussion was resolved based on Lightmouse's comment here, that Lightbot would "not fix these errors anymore"
 * Contrary to the resolution of that issue, this edit, once again part of a large series of them, again removed a "YYYY-in-radio" link, ultimately resulting in this discussion at AN/I

General comments
Ultimately, I believe the problem here is that the zeal to achieve a project devoid of date links has led to de-linking that has not been as thoughtful as it ought to have been. Would a "See also" section providing a link to contextual information be better than a piped link that might look like a "useless" year link? Without a doubt, and if the bot's edits were inserting that "see also" link at the same time as the piped link was removed, I'd be fully supportive of the bot's activity and the whole idea of automated de-linking. Instead, the bot is only removing the valid contextual link, even when that link conforms to the MOS.

Is there logic in using an automated approach to remove the vast number of date links that aren't useful, and then leaving it to individual editors to restore the links that were actually useful — the 'collateral damage' resulting from automation? Yep, I can completely buy that argument. However, the bot isn't limited to a single pass through articles. There's been mention of developing a way, through some template or comment mechanism, for editors to 'warn off' bots and scripts from de-linking dates based on their reasoned judgment that the link is useful. This really should have been in place before any mass de-linking began and, regardless of the outcome of this arbitration, it should definitely be in place before the injunction against mass de-linking is lifted.

Reply to Ohconfucius
I'm a bit confused by the statement in your second paragraph above — "assuming 1.5 million of the 2.8 million articles in en:WP with DA date links, and the rate of delinking (as I estimate at present) of approximately 2,500 per month, it will take almost two years to complete.". The math isn't working for me — at 2500 de-links per month, it would take 50 years, not two — so I'm guessing that perhaps the rate you've estimated was a typo.

Regardless, the rate of delinking is significantly faster than that. The five-day period from November 9 to November 13 represents the lead-up to the AN discussion I reference above and the period while that discussion was taking place. During that five-day period, Lightbot alone made approximately 65,500 edits to articles to remove linked dates. That's one bot, five days. I use Lightbot as an example only because it's what most often pops up on my watchlist, but there are other editors using scripts, AWB, etc. — some named in this case and some not — who are making similar edits. I would suggest that we're well into the 1.5 million articles you've suggested had date links; in fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we were already a quarter of the way there, or more. Mlaffs (talk) 20:16, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

We cannot wait for non-link date auto-formatting
Locke Cole said that it will be possible to autoformat dates without linking them. However, this would require developer action. The request for that feature has been open for just over three years with no result. Two years ago Tony1 presented a petition of 70 editors at English Wikipedia requesting the feature, but the developers refused to implement it. When Tony1 again raised it in October last year, a developer just replied with insults: ''Tony, you're an idiot who clearly doesn't understand the first thing about technology. You should just leave Wikipedia for good, and stop annoying people.'' Tony1 is fully right in not wanting to wait for a possible future method of date auto-formatting that does not use linking. If we ever get that feature, we can discuss it then. --Apoc2400 (talk) 19:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by llywrch (talk)
Note: I consider myself tangentially involved. I am against the assertion that all links to dates & years ought to be removed, but believe that overlinking is a style problem on Wikipedia, which needs some form of remedy.


 * Is the Manual of Style equivalent to policy, or is more of a guideline or statement of best practices?

Many of the participants here seem to think that the Manual of Style (MoS) is policy; if so, it can be enforced without exception with automated edits. Hence the heat & emotions over the language of this one section. If it is instead (as I believe) equivalent to a guideline or statement of best practices, then running a bot to enforce it makes about as much sense as running a bot to enforce, say, Don't draw misleading graphs. Defining the MoS less than policy doesn't reduce its importance -- editting in the face of an established best practice is both foolish, & may lead to one being blocked -- but at the same time if a vocal minority objects to opinions in the MoS, then they can not only ignore it, but write their own essay defending their practice, instead of engaging in an edit-war over the MoS.

I believe that the reason that some Wikipedians are defending their changes to the MoS so passionately, as Septentrionalis pointed out above. From my experience, I am convinced they have found a back-door to admitting their favored policies: edit some statement of how to do something that is not necessarily binding (e.g., edit, resolve conflicts) then defend the change as "established consensus" & enforce their desires over the rest of the Wikipedia community, who then acquiesce under the assumption that the matter was rationally decided on. I was involved in an edit war with another user over this practice, & asked at the talk page for an interpretation, & had the current version of the MoS cut-n-pasted at me as if were the very words of Jimmy Wales himself! This unsatisfactory response -- & later learning that this style choice was not truly a consensus -- was one of the reasons I took a long WikiBreak recently: I couldn't make useful contributions & debate every possible binding rule concerning what & how I contribute to Wikipedia.

Edits to meta-pages like the MoS is supposed to minimize conflict & disputes, not fan them. This conflict has been slowly escalating over the last several months over this admittedly trivial matter, but no one likes to be treated like a child & told without an explanation that she/he can't link dates & years at all. -- llywrch (talk) 20:39, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Examples of Greg L being incivil to other editors
At WT:MOSNUM:
 * please present your “I am really, REALLY *Special*” license for inspection.
 * What is wrong with you that would compel you to write such a stupid thing?
 * you have a profound tendency to spout nonsense on issues you know absolutely nothing about. - includes aggressive external image links
 * hammered dog shit
 * help us to accept that you actually like the puke you expect our articles should be linking to. But just because you can prove you can stomach through reading that shit will only prove that you like reading mindless shit - edit summary: "Readers come to Wikipedia to learn, not to be faced with trivia-based shit"
 * you seem so intent on playing childish games... turning yet more main body text into a giant blue turd. - bowdlerized repost of previous edit
 * I’m not about to let one Mr. Locke Cole (who resides who-knows-where on this pale blue dot), dictate how I might enjoy my hobby here on Wikipedia or control my life in anyway whatsoever—particularly over such a whiny-ass, sore-looser stunt. - also includes agressive and inappropriate external image links

At WP:AN, in yet another branch of this disagreement, in November:
 * the above two posts and this thread’s section title of “The consensus is: no consensus” are pure bull shit. (indeed, that conveys my sentiments very precisely). Edit summary: "Two words: Hog Wash".

Note: I have not investigated the history of the discussion further back in time when I was not present for it. If further diffs exist, please contribute them to this page. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   20:51, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

See also the user conduct RfC regarding Greg L that contains many more examples. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   22:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Greg L made a bizarre and incivil accusation on the workshop page of this arbitration. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   13:58, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

On February 14th this complaint was filed at Wikiquette alerts regarding Greg L being extremely incivil in an area unrelated to this arbitration. It is clear that Greg L behaves poorly on a regular basis irrespective of venue. — Hex    (❝  ?!  ❞)   13:52, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Examples of Ohconfucius being incivil

 * Accusing me of "forum shopping" after I dared to raise the date linking issue at WT:MOSNUM
 * labelling of editors he disagrees with as "same old gang of five"
 * "I am usually heavily sarcastic"
 * Admitting incivility along with Greg L
 * Accusing me of "canvassing" back at the article where I originally encountered the date linking issue(!)
 * Accusing Locke Cole of having "cohorts" and deliberately making disruptive edits
 * Accusing Locke Cole of "strategically planning seizing this committee"
 * Accusing Locke Cole of having a "clique"
 * I have no idea what the text added here means, and the edit summary is far from useful.
 * Being obscene in French in an edit summary - just because ellipses were used doesn't mean the meaning isn't clear. If you don't speak French, a Google search for "va te faire" may help.

Ohconfucius mass-delinking dates again in contravention of injunction
In direct contravention of the temporary injunction against automated or script-assisted date linking or delinking issued by the ArbCom during this arbitration, Ohconfucius began mass-delinking dates once again, using both his regular account (occasionally) and his alternate account Date delinker (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · [ logs] · block user · [ block log]) (hundreds of times in bursts, especially on January 23rd and January 29th). The injunction was issued on January 13th and delivered to Ohconfucius' talk page on the same day.

Examples:


 * Date unlinking by Ohconfucius made on 25th January. Edit summary "dates to dmy", does not mention delinking of dates.
 * Date unlinking by Date delinker made on 29th January.
 * Date unlinking by Ohconfucius made on 30th January.

Complaints made to Lightmouse regarding date delinking
I have just been through the entire history of User talk:Lightmouse. Here are the complaints made to Lightmouse about his date delinking activities.

                                                           

What is also noticeable from the history of this page is that in July 2008, Tony1 appears and starts deflecting queries into the validity of date delinking, a trend which continues right up to and into the beginnings of the current major round of this disagreement.

Reply to Ohconfucius' comments above
I just saw this sentence:


 * "The dark horse is Hex, who came from apparently nowhere in the WP:MOSNUM debate."

You have got to be kidding me. Ohconfucius clearly finds it hard to believe that someone who hasn't spent weeks hanging around MOS arguing about guideline cruft has had the temerity to actually participate in this issue.

Well, you know what, Ohconfucius? It's not just for your gang. Unlike most of the dozens and dozens of people who've turned up to comment, whether at MOSNUM, MOSLINK, Lightmouse's talk page, or wherever, because they're unhappy with what they see happening, I decline to be bullied and browbeaten until I go away.

If the arbitrators want evidence that Ohconfucius has ownership issues with this process, he appears to have generously provided it for them himself.

Evidence presented by Goodmorningworld
By now, I'm sure, the arbitrators are heartily sorry that they ever agreed to taking this case. Of course, they had no inkling then of the tsunami of trouble heading their way - real, serious controversies that require immediate attention and their full commitment. The silliness from Locke Cole could go on endlessly, he can keep this up forever. Case in point, most recently, his tendentious presentation of Lazare Ponticelli. Conveniently he omits his own edit warring on that article but the History of the Article shows the facts. Incivility: if I had limitless amounts of time I could easily find double the number of incivil edits, edit summaries and Talk posts that LC has made compared to what he cites for Tony1. It would take me many hours, though, and please understand that I do not have the time nor inclination, for I have reason to fear that LC has another wall of text already prepared to retake the initiative.

Lazare Ponticelli, as one of the few actual examples where an Article's regular editors objected to delinking of dates, is in fact an example of editors talking mostly reasonably and leaving the article in better shape than it was before. user:Editorofthewiki initially insisted that years of birth and death in the lead stay blue-linked, arguing that linking these dates gave readers context. I replied that "If people need to click a link to find out what 2008 is like, they have been living in a cave or the past few years and most likely they do not have access to the Internet anyway" (see Talk:Lazare Ponticelli). Editorofthewiki then relented, acceding to the unlinking of the year 2008.

Unfortunately Editorofthewiki did not agree to also unlinking of the year of birth, citing policy of WikiProject:World's Oldest People. I pointed out that another prominently featured article on a supercentenarian within that project did not link date of birth and death in the lead; unfortunately Editorofthewiki never replied to explain himself. At that point I decided to let it go.

Similar for the comments by user:Tony1 on that Talk page. While there was some abrasiveness in his tone, he provided good advice on improving the Article, and in fact much of his helpful commentary was accepted with little fuss.

Nothing to see there, just a typical discussion between editors, occasionally a bit rough around the edges, with the normal give and take. Nobody got their way entirely but everyone went home feeling that progress had been made. Everyone, that is, except Locke Cole. (Septentrionalis, an editor who allied with him in the past, is trying to keep it up but his heart isn't in it anymore. Arthur Rubin, another ally, has seen the light and conceded.)

Time to end this
Although this has been largely a big waste of time, it is not too late for ArbCom to reverse itself. This war is mostly over, what you are seeing are a few skirmishes by the diehard. Editors have spoken, overwhelmingly they want most (nearly all) date links gone from articles.

Allow nature to take its course. A few determined stragglers are still fighting a rearguard action. Let them. They are not doing much harm.

ArbCom should end this proceeding, lift its temporary injunction, and deal with more pressing matters. I will not be back to this page to make further comments. It's in the hands of you arbitrators now.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 21:22, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

There is consensus to delink autoformatted dates *and* other chronological items
Perhaps one of the few things that has been agreed on in this debate is that the current system of autoformatting dates through wikilinks is inadequate and needs to be changed/removed (see Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/Date Linking RFC; even Locke Cole believes this to be the case, see this comment and his evidence section above). Since the discussion of this issue culminated in the initial deprecation in late August, the scope of the debate expanded to include linking all chronological items, even those that are independent of autoformatting (1942, 17th century, etc.). Part of what has fueled this dispute is the ambiguous wording of the style guidelines. MOSNUM refers to WP:MOSLINK, which states that "days, years, decades and centuries should generally not be linked unless they are likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic." Now, "likely to deepen readers' understanding" is a subjective phrase, doubtless every editor has a slightly different view on what would aid understanding. The second issue is that certain editors felt that the gauge of consensus was not completely clear. I believe that it was more than definitive. For one, our Featured Articles/Lists implemented the change in date-linking guidelines with not much complaint (see User:Tony1/Support for the removal of date autoformatting). Also, considering that tens of thousands of delinking edits have been made, there has been relatively little complaint from people besides the usual editors. One editor even asked me for the date autoformatting script here. If anything is needed, I believe that their needs to be clearer wording in our style guide with regards to date linking; I have drafted some guidelines here.

Lightmouse has a history of being unresponsive to users' concerns when using bots and semi-automated tools
I've gone back and forth over whether or not to add this evidence, since it admittedly has nothing to do with date de-linking. However, based on the workshop page the effective scope of this case seems to have reached the point that this may be useful; if it isn't, the Arbs will I'm sure feel free to disregard it.


 * On March 13, 2008, Lightmouse used AWB to insert a convert template into Edmonton municipal election, 1963:1
 * Since the template was in a direct quotation, where I didn't think the template was useful, I reverted it, with an explanation:
 * Lightmouse used AWB to repeat this edit on April 10 and May 5 .  Each time, I reverted it: ,
 * After the third reversion, I raised the issue with Lightmouse on his talk page: . He responded by saying that he would try to make sure that it didn't happen again:
 * On June 14, Lightbot performed the same edit again: . Again I reverted  and again I raised the issue on Lightmouse's talk page: .  Lightmouse was again very polite, and took it upon himself to raise the issue at the MOS talk page to see how a repeat performance could be prevented.  There, a variety of helpful users engaged in discussion that was mostly beyond me:   The upshot of this was that User:Jimp made some changes to the article  and Lightmouse expressed optimism that said changes would prevent a recurrence:
 * The next occurrence was on October 19, once again by Lightmouse using AWB:  Once again, I reverted:.
 * Lightmouse repeated the edit December 5, again using AWB:  I raised the issue again on his talk page:
 * Having raised an issue about Lightmouse's use of AWB on his talk page, I was immediately set upon by the date delinking crowd (pro- and anti-), with User:Tennis expert suggesting that Lightmouse was edit-warring (which he only was under the broadest imaginable interpretation of the term), User:Tony1 calling the edit "something so trivial in such a trivial article", and User:Ohconfucius making a totally unfounded accusation of ownership against me.
 * The experience having been extremely unpleasant so far, I decided not to pursue the matter (since and solution needed to be less effort than a single revert once every few months).
 * While looking up the diffs for this section, I noticed that I wasn't the first to raise the issue of use of the convert template within direct quotes; Sceptre did so February 8, 2008:  Lightmouse on that occasion apologized for "a rare case of [a quote] that slipped through":

I haven't paid enough attention to this entire episode to have any well-developed thought on what Arb Comm's findings should be, but I wholeheartedly endorse the notion that Lightmouse's use of scripts and bots has, over the long-term, been suboptimal. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 00:13, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Addendum:


 * Though I missed it due to being on Wikibreak at the time, Lightmouse apparently made the same edit again December 22: Sarcasticidealist (talk) 20:24, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

1Whenever I bring this incident up, somebody suggests that this article, which I created, doesn't meet WP:N. This is obviously a legitimate view, and I'd welcome an AFD (though I'd also !vote keep), but has nothing to do with the complaints I'm raising.

Lightmouse has often used AWB at the rate of more than one article per minute
The evidence can be found in a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Reedy also has used AWB at the rate of more than one article per minute
Reedy on September 24, 2008, used AWB to edit 162 articles in 61 minutes, which is 2.66 articles per minute or 1 article every 22.6 seconds. On August 8, Reedy used AWB to edit 193 articles in 24 minutes, which is 8.04 articles per minute or 1 article every 7.5 seconds.

Reedy closed a complaint about Lightmouse's rapid use of AWB
Administrator Reedy on December 10, 2008, closed a complaint about Lightmouse's use of AWB and threatened to block the complainant. Reedy's own use of AWB was substantially similar to Lightmouse's.

User:Tony1 repeatedly has been incivil and disruptive in violation of several important Wikipedia policies
The evidence can be found in a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Tony1 has encouraged edit warring concerning date delinking
In a message to SkyWalker, Tony1 said, "User:Tennis expert is stalking me, User:Colonies Chris and User:Lightmouse, undoing our good work. Feel free to add you weight by reverting this disruptive behaviour".

Ohconfucius has refused to correct errors made by him while using AWB
On December 12 and 15, 2008, Ohconfucius was notified by two editors that he had committed errors to 60 articles while using AWB. To date, Ohconfucious has neither denied that those errors were committed nor corrected them.

Ohconfucius repeatedly has been and continues to be incivil, disruptive, and unconstructive in violation of several important Wikipedia policies
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Colonies Chris repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates, been incivil, and been dishonest about both of those facts
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Colonies Chris has advocated the use of scripts to delink dates in an unsupervised manner
On the Lightmouse discussion page, an editor nicely asked Lightmouse to make sure that before he delinks a date using a script, he spends a little time exercising discretion to determine whether the date link serves any useful purpose. Colonies Chris interjected this: "CR, since you aren't prepared to suggest any practical means for an editor, human or bot, to make such a determination, your question is both empty and tendentious and LM is quite right not to answer it." See also this, where he repeats that position and then adds that the urgency of date delinking is almost equivalent to an emergency situtation.

Dabomb87 repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates (117 edits spread over 37 articles)
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

HJensen repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

===SkyWalker repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates (31 edits spread over 15 articles), including blind reversions in 23 articles that harmed Wikipedia===

This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

===The Rambling Man, sometimes known as The Rambling Man on tour, repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates (136 edits spread over 45 articles), including blind reversions in 20 articles that harmed Wikipedia===

This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

2008Olympian repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates (134 edits spread over 53 articles), including blind reversions in 8 articles that harmed Wikipedia
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Tony1 repeatedly has edit warred to delink dates (131 edits spread over 51 articles), including blind reversions in 15 articles that harmed Wikipedia
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

===Tony1, 2008Olympian, The Rambling Man, Colonies Chris, SkyWalker, HJensen, Ohconfucius, and Dabomb87 repeatedly have engaged in tag-team edit warring to delink dates (954 edits spread over 154 articles)===

This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

The Rambling Man has been highly disruptive, which is unbecoming of the trust placed in bureaucrats and administrators
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Lightmouse ignored Tennis expert's September 2008 complaint about Lightbot's date delinking edits of tennis articles
This section was moved by Ryan Postlethwaite, an arbitration clerk, to a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Dabomb87 harmed Wikipedia when he unlinked dates in the Lindsay Davenport article
On October 12, 2008, Dabomb87 harmed Wikipedia when he unlinked dates in the Lindsay Davenport article. Before his edits, registered users who had expressed a date formatting preference were able to see, without ambiguity, the correct dates of Davenport's tournament victories. Since his edits, those dates have been ambiguous for every user of Wikipedia because the now-unlinked dates are in a format like the following: "1994-01-03".

===Greg L, helped by HWB258, Goodmorningworld, and Ohconfucius, is continuing to harm Wikipedia through incivility, us-versus-them, and other unconstructive behavior===

The evidence can be found in a frequently updated subpage in the user space of Tennis expert.

Evidence presented by User:Tony1
There's an increasing tendency on WP to brand as "incivility" what might normally be regarded as "straight talking", and to call "disruptive" what might otherwise be "bold moves to reform WP". Most of the diffs accusing me of incivility appear to be simply "straight talking", although I overstepped the mark on a few occasions.

Locke Cole: incivility and harassment

 * "Tony the sooner you stop disparaging what the community supported by a majority at the RFC as a "programmers' toy", the better off our discussions will be."
 * "Nice, here comes Tony with the typical "who cares" / "waste of time" argument."
 * "it just rings as more of your ranting against this"
 * Please stop beating the same mantra that Tony does here"
 * ...we need to sit down like adults and talk this out without resorting to childish incivility, name calling, disruption or personal attacks. Unfortunately for the regulars here that seems IMPOSSIBLE."
 * interpretation of the RFC is irrelevant, biased and nonsensical,..."
 * ignorance of Bugzilla and the software development process are not my problem.... Nice to see his disruption doesn't merely occur here on Wikipedia.... Unfortunately Tony and others from here decided to try and take their political issues from Wikipedia to there."
 * "...what Greg/Tony/etc have been acting like during this (consistently and repetitively making irrational claims that the software will cause problems..."
 * "...there are no "fatal flaws" in that RFC beyond what your imagination has concocted."
 * "If you'd like to be able to use this to brow beat editors into submission you should see about getting it tagged with ,.."
 * "your behavior has been deplorable during this dispute."
 * "And I'll continue reverting edits which remove date links until I'm shown there's actual consensus..." Tony   (talk)  14:17, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

PManderson: incivility

 * "It has already resulted in an unholy mess, with Ohconfucius as chief mess-maker."
 * "All I ask is that this rule-monger [HWV258 go peddle his rules somewhere else;"]
 * "...Tony's tolerance of obscene and vulgar abuse is high, especially when he himself produces it."
 * "No, try to see if Tony (and some others) can behave like civilized human beings..."
 * [MOSNUM describes the prejudices of a handful of underqualified editors."]
 * ",..their efforts result either in a campaign for a New and Improved, politically correct, English, or in preferences for Tony's native dialect over others. When they fail to accomplish that, they resort to obscenity, abuse, and try to blackball editors out of this page
 * "I know that the various system-mongers are unlikely ever to get this;... Greg's system is just as futile, bossy and destructive as the ones which would mandate using AD/BC or CE/BCE..."
 * "the handful of cranks whose edit wars have gotten it protected (how many times?) in the past year will suddenly, magically, agree with each other to impose a New Order."
 * "Tony, I agree; you engage in outrageous and unfounded attacks when you do have a shadow of an argument."
 * " whether a small group of editors should propose to bully all Wikipedia into the format of their choice is another question entirely,.."
 * "...you and Tony ranting until you get your way, mostly. But this confirms it; this page is Kotniski's personal property,.." Tony   (talk)  19:05, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

UC_Bill/Sapphic: gross incivility until now not mentioned in the proposed judgement
I am moved to insert this evidence of abuse we all experienced since, unlike Kendrick7, who is mentioned even though departed from WP, this user and his sockpuppet rate only positive mention in the draft judgement. That is very odd, since the abuse may put into context why some of the reformists found it hard to be civil at all times. Tony  (talk)  15:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * ",... not to mention the COUNTLESS OTHER LINES OF BULLSHIT YOU'VE SPOUTED THAT YOU KNOW TO BE INTENTIONALLY FALSE  because you're hoping that it'll confuse people. You should be  PERMANENTLY BANNED  from Wikipedia. You're a useless drain on this project that does nothing but obstruct the work of other people. Get bent, WP:DICK."
 * OKAY, ASSHOLES. If you want to play the "last word" game then I can too. Here I was thinking Greg was finally being reasonable and at least addressing the relevant points rather than blindly repeating the same thing over and over and over, then he goes and pulls some shit where he not only fabricates a "quote" by me out of thin air but repeats the same tired bullshit that he had just acknowledged was irrelevant to the discussion in his previous reply. What the FUCK does the ... And thanks, Ohconfucius, for letting us know you're sick of the thread. JUST STOP FUCKING REPLYING THEN.'
 * "... your continued efforts to be misleading and to misrepresent the situation are downright infuriating.... The fact that you keep telling flat out lies about this is incredibly annoying.... You're getting what you want, so please just shut the fuck up ...
 * "... simply ignore [Tony and his comments. Nobody takes him seriously, everybody knows he's full of it, and it does you no good to argue with him. Let him scream into the wind ... As for the edits by Lightmouse, Greg, et al. you should feel free to revert them.... If you have the time, it would be better to re-link the dates they've unlinked.] (Addressed to Locke Cole on LC's talk page.)
 * "Tony, you're an idiot who clearly doesn't understand the first thing about technology. You should just leave Wikipedia for good, and stop annoying people...  Bypassing autoformatting is not the same as fixing it, so your asshole-ish actions of mass delinking aren't actually a "solution" at all.  Go away...  I recommend we just completely ignore the MOS-nuts who have some sort of vendetta against date links....". (Most of this was duplicated at MoS talk at the time.)

"Detailed" RfCs were POV and present significantly contaminated results
Support for my assertion. Several users here have been making much of a set of "detailed" RfCs that are purported to provide evidence of some kind of partial or substantial consensus for the use of date-autoformatting and/or linking. Major claims have been made on this basis. I'm linking you to analyses of the first, the second, and the third of these RfCs. All show significant contamination in the way information was presented to participating users and the surveys were structured, and which strongly suggest that they offer no useful evidence of anything except the need to apply skill and care to the framing of NPOV RfCs if their results are to be used as evidence. I believe the same is true of the other "detailed" RfCs, and will present analyses of them over the next day or two. The statistics provided by Colonies Chris at the application page on the vanishingly low rate of objection to date-delinking over a considerable period and many thousands of aritlces, together with the results of what I believe are RfCs of much more straightforward design, and many other pieces of evidence too numerous to cite here, point to the broad consensus in the community for what is now known as "smart linking" (a more selective approach to linking on the basis of link-value). Tony  (talk)  13:24, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Allegations WRT fr.wp by User:Phe
This WP.fr user has acted to politicise and personalise the matter here, where in fact this ArbCom concerns only the eng.WP. Lightmouse, Ohconfucius and I have raised the mater of the appalling state of overlinking on that project, and delinked a number of articles to test LM's script. I make no apology for that in the face of (lies?) and distortion. There was no warring (not even reverting, except for a partial two by Ohconfucius); no one performed a single unlinking after the steward's rather aggressive warning. It remains to be asked just why lifetime bans were issued, like some tsunami: no reasons have been provided, and since I, for one, did what was requested, it is an extraordinary action. Tony  (talk)  17:32, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Lightmouse has a history of being very responsive and courteous when approached with concerns about bot/script activity.
Anyone who browses Lightmouse's talk page can find scores of examples of his courtesy in responding to questions and addressing glitches in the bot and script operation. Just a handful of examples from a very quick perusal of recent entries: , , , , , , , ,  Sssoul (talk) 12:44, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

There is community acceptance of date delinking
Most of what I do on WP is gnoming. Since the MoS was changed to deprecate autoformatting, I've been routinely unlinking dates and date fragments in the course of my other edits. I estimate that I've edited about 10,000 articles in that period and roughly 70% of those edits involved some sort of date delinking. That's about 7000 articles delinked.* If delinking were widely disputed, you’d expect me to get a lot of complaints. In the period up to November 2008 I received only eight complaints. I've itemised them all here, with a brief description. Two of them were resolved after I explained my reasons. After that I received no complaints from anyone other than Tennis expert.
 * My talk page: late Nov Tennis expert posted a 'warning' of his own devising, with no official status whatever, suggesting that I should desist unlinking. I refused to comply with his bullying.
 * My talk page: 24 Nov Tennis expert notified me that he had reported my edits at Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring. The outcome of this complaint was 'NoVio'.

I also received two messages of support. A further note: I make that six unsatisfied objections, or a proportion of around one in a thousand (half that if you take out the objections by editors who object to just about everything). And I think it's also significant that almost all the objections came in the first three or so months after the MoS had been changed. As time passed and the changes to the MoS became more widely known, the objections ceased.
 * My talk page: 12 Jan 2009 User:Swtpc6800 wrote "Your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Date delinking are clear and to-the-point. I have no objections when an article on my watch list is stripped of date links."
 * My talk page: 12 Jan 2009 User:John wrote "Yes, I just read them too and you make some very good points. I have been delinking dates since the consensus changed back in August. I must have done several thousand, usually as part of a copyedit (ie I fix any other problems I see with the article at the same time). I had one or two inquiries at the beginning, but it is obvious that an overwhelming majority of editors here never liked the linked dates and are now quite happy to see them go"
 * Back when the MoS used to recommend linking dates for autoformatting, I used to routinely link dates when editing an article. I also received the occasional complaint about that. To be consistent, the complainants in this case should count those as evidence of community opposition to autoformatting.

This tiny proportion of objections makes it perfectly clear that the community does not object to the removal of date links. Locke Cole's assertion that the changes are being steamrollered in without community support are complete nonsense.

* I can't provide hard evidence for this percentage - it's just my subjective impression. However, even if my estimate of the percentage were substantially wrong, the number of complaints would still be a tiny proportion; the overall argument stands regardless.

Response to Tennis Expert's accusations of edit warring
Tennis expert seems to have rather shot himself in the foot with this one. A look at the full edit history of these articles shows a pattern of edit warring certainly - by Tennis expert. He repeatedly reverts all attempts to unlink dates in line with the Manual of Style, and claims to be defending a 'local consensus' to keep dates linked. However this 'local consensus' exists only in his own mind. Not a single other editor came forward to support his actions and least two frequent editors of tennis articles actively opposed his actions. A look at the edit histories of Steffi Graf and Tracy Austin is instructive.

Steffi Graf

 * 7 September Tony1 unlinks dates
 * 7 September Tennis expert reverts ("(rv edits by Tony1 that are inconsistent with consensus for tennis articles - see the tennis project discussion page")
 * 7 September The Rambling Man (a frequent tennis editor) unlinks dates again ("Undo MOS breaches since no clear consensus exists")
 * 7 October Tennis expert relinks dates
 * 13 October Dabomb87 unlinks dates
 * 31 October Tennis expert relinks dates
 * 6 November Colonies Chris unlinks dates
 * 6 November Tennis expert relinks dates
 * 6 November Dudesleeper unlinks dates
 * 7 November Tennis expert reverts Dudesleeper ("There is no consensus to remove existing date links, and there is nothing wrong with the other links")
 * 8 November SkyWalker reverts Tennis expert
 * 10 November Tennis expert reverts SkyWalker
 * 15 November 2008Olympian unlinks dates
 * 15 November Tennis expert reverts 2008Olympian
 * 15 November 2008Olympian reverts Tennis expert
 * 16 November Tennis expert relinks dates

Tracy Austin
Note that Tennis expert is on his own here. Not a single other editor supports his actions. As for the 'warning' I received about edit warring - he somehow forgets to mention that it was he who placed it on my talk page, and he who filed the complaint; and he also forgot to mention that the result of his complaint against me was NoVio. Colonies Chris (talk) 23:52, 21 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 21 October The Rambling Man (a frequent tennis editor) unlinks dates
 * 6 November Tennis expert relinks (without explanation)
 * 6 November HJensen (another frequent tennis editor) unlinks dates
 * 7 November Tennis expert relinks ("There is no consensus to delete existing date links")
 * 8 November SkyWalker reverts Tennis expert
 * 10 November Tennis expert reverts SkyWalker
 * 15 November 2008Olympian unlinks dates
 * 15 November Tennis expert reverts 2008Olympian ("There is no consensus to remove existing date links")
 * 15 November 2008Olympian reverts Tennis expert
 * 16 November Tennis expert reverts again
 * 16 November Date delinker unlinks dates
 * 19 November Tennis expert reverts Date delinker
 * 19 November Seicer reverts Tennis expert

Incivility and votestacking by Greg L
I've been asked to comment here because of my past experience with User:Greg L on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).

Greg's behavior is one of the reasons I quit Wikipedia last summer (specifically, the fact that problem users can engage in this type of disruptive behavior without any consequences.) He's one of the most abusive editors I've encountered.

I haven't been involved in the last few months, so I'll just point to the Evidence section of the RfC that I filed previously. (I'm not sure if that evidence should be reproduced here. If so, feel free to add it in this section.)  I wouldn't be surprised if the same pattern of behavior has continued unchanged to today.

I'll also point out that in his comparatively short time here, Greg L has made far more edits to the talk page than any other editor. Consensus is based on civil discourse and an attempt to understand others' points of view, not sheer persistence. In my past experience, Greg refuses to consider any point of view but his own, does whatever he thinks is best, regardless of consensus, and actively disrupts (votestacking, gaming the system, belligerent personal attacks) any attempts to build consensus that might result in another outcome.

He may try to deflect attention from himself by characterizing it as a "content dispute" (removing it from the jurisdiction of the ArbCom), as he did in the RfC, but the problem has always been his behavior.

(And for the record, I think that most dates should be delinked, with formatting provided by an independent technical solution. I think this puts me on the same "side" as Greg, but that doesn't change my condemnation of his behavior.)  — Omegatron (talk) 03:00, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Thunderbird2
I concur with Omegatron. Greg_L has a long history of incivility, which as far as I can tell continues unabated. Since August 2008 I no longer edit articles on English WP, partly because of the abuse I receive from Greg_L. Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:50, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Greg_L routinely uses ridicule and incivility as a substitute for constructive debate

 * Gene, you can do better than blow an example like ft/lbs out of your butt. (01:52, 17 November 2008)
 * (*sigh*) address another herpes outbreak (21:51, 17 November 2008)
 * Reverts at pi: Fuck off  (22:58, 7 October 2008 )
 * Doing so I will at least help us to accept that you actually like the puke you expect our articles should be linking to. But just because you can prove you can stomach through reading that shit will only prove that you like reading mindless shit; it will come up short of convincing proof that those trivia articles are “compelling reading” that most readers appreciate. 23:18, 7 January 2009

Greg_L is quick to make accusations of disruption, vandalism and bad faith

 * So stop vandalizing the page by deleting polls please (23:48, 10 September 2008)
 * What you did is basically vandalism by someone who didn’t want to devote the time that others have invested into this debate (04:19, 9 September 2008 )
 * I have clear proof that Thunderbird has lost the right to be presumed to be operating here in good faith since it is a matter of record that he lied and deceived to get his way only about five months ago. (20:41, 30 October 2008)
 * He manipulates others and isn’t up front in his dealings. He wastes our time. He is not due an “assumption of good faith” because he has proven his SOP is to not operate in good faith. I utterly reject the notion that any rule in a decent and civilized society requires that civilized men in a party have to endlessly put up with a brute who crashes a party, disrupts all the proceedings, and refuses to behave himself. It’s high time to kick his ass out onto the street curb. (20:41, 30 October 2008)
 * Thunderbird2 is not due a presumption of good faith because he has demonstrated that he consistently operates in an exceedingly frustrating, underhanded manner.(20:20, 3 November 2008)
 * Choose your next post carefully and consider yourself warned. Your behavior as of late bears all the hallmarks of a tendentious, single-purpose editor whose benefits to Wikipedia are wildly offset by the disruption you cause. One remedy for this, which is distinctly possible, is a permanent ban. (20:20, 3 November 2008)
 * Please stop disrupting Wikipedia to make a point. If you want to hop into a time machine and change reality, do so. Until then, I’ll have none of this effort of trying to deny reality; no editor has to put up with absurdity.Greg L (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well… Duhhh, what part of “4096” do you not understand? Please stop being disruptive here21:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You and your cohorts have junked this whole article up.22:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Vandalims reverted to last version by Slashme 15:21, 24 October 2007

The forgotten issue: The community consensus
Gee, I don’t know. This place looks a lot like fourth-graders have taken over the elementary school with name calling (“so-n-so called me a ‘poopy head’”). Last I checked, a key consideration is what the community consensus is as evidenced by the RfCs. Anyone interested? Seems clear to me. Dabomb87 has produced a nice summary of the relevant RfCs at User:Dabomb87/Summary of the Date Linking RFCs. There, you arbitrators will find links to the RfCs so you can look at the raw results. Greg L (talk) 05:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Leopards don’t change their spots
Locke Cole is the principle opponent of letting bots engage in date delinking. Any rational reading of his block log shows a chronic problem with incivility towards others and profound stubbornness. Like a moth to a flame, he somehow seems to gravitate to conflict. This is also borne out in this RfA, which resulted in a month-long block for stalking another editor. Over the years, Locke has learned the rules of the game here so he can exploit Wikipedia’s propensity to reward civil language (with little regard to true, editing conduct) so he can hide mean-spirited moves behind a veneer of civil wikiwords while avoiding repercussions. The result: stratospheric levels of wikidrama via wikilawyering. And here we all are, like marionettes, getting dragged into it all.

Let’s contrast that with Tony’s block log. One block, which was quickly undone when an admin realized he was mistaken and Tony had been in the right all along. Are we seeing a pattern here? Anything that might be relevant to an important *grin test* here? Greg L (talk) 05:03, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Rehashing tired old issues
As for Thunderbird2 and Omegatron, simple issue: both would like to make Wikipedia go back to using computer terminology like “kibibytes (KiB)” rather than the “kilobytes (KB)” observed by every computer manufacturer when communicating in any way to their customer base, as well as by all other general-interest encyclopedias, as well as all by all general-interest computer magazines in the world. Those two editors were likely *invited* here for a good ol’ Greg-bash. But that “binary prefix” issue is dead and buried. Wikipedia follows the way the world really works and doesn’t confuse our readership by trying to promote change through the use of non-standard terminology that is totally unfamiliar to our readership (and is done in an “oh, didn’tcha-know” fashion).

It’s true, I led the final charge that ended that three-year-long war. What those two editors don’t seem to realize though, is that they “lost”, not because of me, but because their words were unpersuasive in a venue—WT:MOSNUM—that is a marketplace where ideas are exchanged. The community consensus was that Wikipedia should change course—and we did.

Those two editors like to think that this change back to the way the real world works was unjust and can be attributed to “Greg being mean.” No, it was brought about because using terminology like “a computer with 2 GiB of RAM” proved to have been a bad idea in the first place, and after two months of intensive debate, it could finally be demonstrated to everyone’s satisfaction but theirs that there was a new consensus to deprecate the practice. Does anyone see history repeating itself here? Greg L (talk) 05:25, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Tennis expert should be sanctioned for intentionally lying here on this page
(*sigh*) I was tempted to ignore Tennis expert on this one, but this allegation is just a bunch of misrepresentation so excessive, it amounts to an authoritative looking lie. The page he is whining about was one of my own user pages (User:Greg L/Delinking links). He was editing it, adding unwelcome material intended to piss us off. I reverted him and informed Tennis expert here on his talk page that his edits were not welcome in my userspace. His response was as follows: OK. I will pursue rapid deletion of your biased subpage. And he carried through with this B.S. threat; he started an MfD on my own user page. I filed this ANI against him. An admin, Gwen Gale, snowballed the MfD on the spot, instructed Tennis expert on his talk page that what he had done was “spiteful and disruptive” and that he had no right whatsoever to mess with my user page, advised that he came reallly close to being blocked for the move, and instructed me to advise her if he edited my user page again.

Compare what TE wrote above, to what the true facts of the issue are really all about. It took a lot of gall for him, after being admonished that what he did was “spiteful and disruptive” and he could be blocked for persisting at what he was doing (it was he who violated policy, not me) to leave that above post here. What does that say about his veracity on the other things he is ranting about? ‘Nuf said about that character. Greg L (talk) 02:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Fallacious points made above by Omegatron and Thunderbird2
Above Omegatron writes "Incivility and votestacking by ..." followed by "I've been asked to comment..." which I would put forward as evidence of someone asking Omegaron to post to stack the votes in this RfC. Omegatron then claims to have quit because of someone which is a weak argument and can be discounted because I could say for example: "I almost quit because of the bad behaviour demonstrated by Omegatron but I realised that would be letting a bully win so I stayed instead." - Obviously that has no weight for the same reasons that Omegatron's claim has no weight, therefore Omegatron's point can be disregarded. The fact is Omegatron's point of view as debated on MOSNUM was refuted by much stronger arguments, in part these stronger arguments came from Greg. So with Omegatron's point of view refuted he then posts an RfC against Greg, it is a credit to the RfC system that what started an an RfC against Greg turned into a forum where Omegatron was given extensive feedback about his poor behaviour. Then Omegatron decided to "quit because of someone" but not quit "quietly" but did instead continue to misrepresent Greg, these are not the actions of someone who deserves to have an administrator tag. Indeed, since Omegatron admits to quitting then the administrator tag should be removed (I believe this is Wikipedia policy?) to avoid an ex-admin account being abused. Now we come to Thunderbird2, in the previously mentioned RfC against Greg Thunderbird2 was also given extensive feedback about his poor behaviour. Lately Thunderbird2 has been the subject of an RfC/U Requests for comment/Thunderbird2 because the user has refused to accept consensus when it is obvious and amply demonstrated. Please note the lack of support for Thunderbird2's poor behaviour as detailed in the RfC/U and the overwhelming consensus calling on Thunderbird2 to modfiy his behaviour. As can be seen from the recent edit history Thunderbird2 is still using his talk page archive to misrepresent and wiki-stalk other editors and this is despite the RfC/U explicitly pointing out this poor behaviour. Thunderbird2 also claims to have "quit English WP because of abuse" by someone yet Thunderbird2 fails to realise that he is to user who is providing that abuse by repeatedly acting editing consensus and continuing to misrepresent Greg and other editors. As the consensus in the RfC/U shows Thunderbird2's conduct demonstrates this user should be strongly warned and then banned if the behaviour continues. The fact both Omegatrong and Thunderbird2 claim they "quit" for the same reasons but do not do so quietly and continue to misrepresent other editors (like Greg) who actually positively contribute to Wikipedia only go to show how disengenuous and fallacious Omegatron's and Thunderbird2's "argument[sic]" actually is. I put it to both Thunderbird2 and Omegatrong that if you both intend to quit then really do so quietly and stop misrepresenting other editors from the sidelines. Fnagaton 13:01, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

AWB access has in the past been revoked for date delinkage and drama has ensued.
I appreciate I am somewhat late to the party here. [As an AWB Dev] I removed the access of various users to the tool. User_talk:Martinp23/Archive12 and the two threads below contain parts of the exchange. Discussion also took place on the AWB talk page: Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_19, Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_19, Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Archive_19. Martinp23 20:41, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Behaviour
As a lowly krill creator and improver of aircraft articles I complained several times to Lightmouse about repeated removal of contextual date links that were being stripped by Lightbot. On the last occasion my answer to Tony 1 about there only being two people making a noise was swiftly removed from Lightmouse's talk page and placed on my own talk page by Ohconfucius. In my view I had a genuine complaint and found it very odd, if not insulting, that my comment be removed as it clearly was not vandalism. In eighteen months on Wikipedia that is the first time that has happened to me and I think is against policy. I took it as a 'sweeping under the carpet' exercise.

Lightmouse, whilst civil with very short replies, never apologised to me for any inconvenience caused, stripped many templated years from infoboxes, converting them to 'bare' year links ready for the next step of 'sanctioned' bot removal.

I further note that Lightmouse does not provide a readily accessible link to his talk page archives like myself and many other editors do (making it much harder to find 'diffs'), I am not ashamed of my past mistakes and never delete anything.

I find the attitude and actions of all three mentioned editors akin to that of a Steamroller.

Consensus
The word 'consensus' crops up many times. I am concerned that the maximum number of wikipedians sampled here is less than 100, not all agreeing to total date delinking. This surely is a very small percentage of the total number of active editors? While silence apparently implies consent I believe that not all Wikipedia contributors knew or appreciated what was happening and even in late 2008 when a banner message was added to link the various RfC's they probably dismissed it as trivial not realising the consequences. I personally agreed with date delinking except contextual 'years in' links, I got frustrated when they too got delinked with an air of superiority against complaints. Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by)   05:41, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

I asked Lightmouse to stop his bot from delinking years and eras in July 2008, matter seemed settled
My first encounter with Lightmouse occured on 5 July 2008, wherein I asked his bot to stop delinking years (as here), and gave one, of many possible, suggestions as to why I thought this was a mistake. A half hour later, this sentiment had gotten an added vote of support from User:SkyWalker. Three hours later, Lightmouse removed the discussion from his user page and put it on WP:MOSNUM, for reasons that aren't entirely clear, as at the time MOSNUM said nothing about delinking years (beyond the oddly named shortcut MOS:UNLINKYEARS) and date auformatting had not yet been deprecated.

In the continuing, now moved and retitled discussion yet another user came forward asking Lightmouse to stop the bots behavior, and another chimed in that while he thought delinking was OK, Lightmouse should heed the objection. User:Greg_L reminded everyone that Lightbot was a work in progress and while most years were overlinked that "Maybe the bot can be tuned to cut historical articles some slack." Only one editor seemed to support removing all year links project wide, and insisted WP:CONSENSUS existed to do so. This editor, User:Tony1 wrote:
 * As far as I'm concerned, Aervanath, there is consensus to de-link years. This cancer should be expurgated from WP without delay. No reason at all to stop. Send the complainers to me and I'll politely explain why it's so necessary, and enquire into their particular reasons for objecting .... TONY (talk) 08:33, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

However, Lightmouse proceeds to say the bot was malfunctioning, and that it should not have been removing all dates, and in particular had been mistaking two digit years for months, and that it had been repaired. I considered that to be the end of the matter.

In early October, Lightbot starts removing links again, I join an existing complaint at WT:MOSNUM
In October, I noticed Lightbot running back through my watchlist an delinking years again (as here). Following a similar note left be User:LlywelynII on WT:MOSNUM, I echo his insistence that the bot owner should get consensus for this behavior.

This ended up being a long three day discussion, during which time multiple editors pointed out that there was no consensus to delink all years. Locke Coles's evidence above does a good break down of this conversation by diffs.

As a result of the discussion, Lightbot was paused, until such time as a consensus for its behavior, which Lightmouse showed no interest in changing, could be moved inline with existing consensus.

Lightmouse argued that links were pointless, and that readers could just use the search tool, which became another long discussion. It is decided than an RFC could be a good way to move forward on the matter.

In late October, Lightbot starts removing links to years yet again
(Just one example ) And now, I'm a tad snippy about it, having been through this twice already. Lightmouse's bot is claiming in its edits that they are being performed "per WP:MOSNUM" and so I lodge a complaint with him on his talk page. This evolves into a longer discussion before Lightmouse removes it from his user page to WT:MOSNUM. By that time I had already started a new section on this problematic behavior at WT:MOSNUM.

It should be clear at this point there was still no consensus for the bot's behavior, as User:Masem puts it. Much wikilawyering ensues over the meaning of consensus, such as the claim by User:Tony1 that there was never consensus to link to dates in the first place, so no new consensus to unlink dates, (presumably including years), is required, and that opponents to delinking are being completely unreasonable, and, much as in July, he claims that consensus is "well established."

In January, Lightbot is still removing links to years
(Same article as above ) So here we are 7 months down the road, countless editors asking Lightmouse to stop, and the bot was still humming away.

Locke Cole overstates allegations of abuse at FAC and FAR
In "Evidence presented by Locke Cole" Locke Cole overstates alleged abuse by Tony1 at WP:FAC and WP:FAR.
 * "2008-12-07T11:36:39 - Tony1 puts the article up for Featured article review claiming MoS breaches, [...] the linked date at the opening, still not satisfactorily justified on the talk page amongst other reasons;"

In fact, Tony1 put the article at FAR for multiple reasons (WP:WIAFA 1a, 1b and 1c, in addition to 2, MoS):
 * "IMO, it fails Criteria 1a (poor prose throughout) and 2 (MoS breaches, such as the range-hyphens in the infobox and the linked date at the opening, still not satisfactorily justified on the talk page), with a question mark over Criterion 1b (it's hard to believe that it's comprehensive—a person's whole life and, specifically, his role in the war and symbolic meaning as the last survivor). The repetition and density of the inline citations unnecessarily affects the appearance and readability of the text (cf. the requirement for a professional standard of formatting)."

Further, Featured article review/Lazare Ponticelli reveals the concerns were warranted. There is no abuse of process here.

Locke Cole also presents a diff, alleging involvement in the FAR listing by User:Dabomb87, because he did the routine FAR notifications:


 * "2008-12-07T16:58:00 - Dabomb87 seems to also be involved in the listing."

In fact, most of the editors who frequent FAC and FAR routinely help out with notifications since I stopped doing all of them; this diff indicates nothing out of the ordinary and provides no evidence of abuse of process.

Locke Cole also presents a diff to a conversation on Tony1's talk page, alleging coordination of efforts:


 * "This seems like an abuse of Wikipedia's Featured article system, making what is likely a bad faith review request due to editing disputes of date linking. It's worth noting that the article is still under review at WP:FARC. Arbitrators may also find the last two discussions in this old version of User talk:Tony1 worth reading (they seem to admit to coordinating efforts)."

Just as most FAC and FAR regulars follow my talk page, or Raul654's talk page (for the purpose of helping to answer the many questions posed on our talk pages), many editors also follow Tony1's talk page, as he is one of the most respected FAR and FAR reviewers (and because he's in a different time zone than many editors).

None of Locke Cole's diffs alleging abuse of process at FAC or FAR are supported by evidence, and I am unaware of any abuse of process or even any negative effect at FAR or FAR of the date delinking controversy. Delinking of dates was embraced by most FA writers as far as I can tell. I am concerned about the overstatements and misstatements in Locke Cole's evidence. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 04:18, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Lightbot
Betacommandbot=== I would like to suggest to the Arbcom that this is a situation which is essentially similar to the Betacommand case:
 * As with Betacommandbot before him, Lightbot is making edits to a significant proportion of all Wikipedia articles.
 * As with Betacommand before him, a user watching an article sees the official-looking edit summary: "Lightbot (Talk | contribs) (7,158 bytes) (unit/dates/other) (undo)"
 * As with Betacommand before him, Lightmouse argues that his bot perfectly implements the current version of the MOSNUM, and so any complaints about his bot are actually complaints about the wording of the MOSNUM.
 * As with Betacommand before him, Lightmouse is responsive to bug reports, but unresponsive to complaints about the scope of his task.
 * Unlike Betacommand, Lightmouse is yet to supply any evidence that this task is so urgent that complaints should be overridden.
 * Unlike Betacommand, Lightmouse is yet to be rude on a talk page.
 * As with Betacommand before him, the user who wishes to complain is completely frustrated using the following method:
 * directed to Lightbot's user page, which contains only links to the approvals.
 * looks at the current approval with a whole bunch of complaints which have never been acted upon.
 * goes to lightmouse's user page and makes a complaint, which is moved to Talk:MOSNUM before being completely ignored.
 * Now, I would direct you to the archives of Lightmouse's talk page for some evidence, but he doesn't keep any archives, and searching through every diff on his talk page is beyond what I'm willing to do. Searching through the 100-odd archives of MOSNUM is also beyond me, but suffice to say that this is a pretty standard example.

Now, I think that it should be clear that I think that Lightmouse is non-responsive and running a bot which should be disallowed, but I cannot suggest strongly enough that the arbitrators read the request for approval for his current task:

Bots/Requests_for_approval/Lightbot_3

The section at the bottom is called "Reconsider" and I would add that I have never seen a similar section for a major bot. I would say that the BAG was under probation after the end of the Betacommand case, and has finally demonstrated its complete uselessness in this case. I will close by quoting my comment from that request for approval, which I think has some relevance to this case:

"By its nature, a guideline such as the MOS tends only to have consensus within the small group which actually edits the manual of style. Normally the wiki-wide consensus of the changes suggested by the MOS is gauged by whether those edits are reverted by other editors. Lightbot attempts to turn particular sections of the MOS into a policy by winning all of the following edit wars. Note that I say suggested changes, not mandated changes, since MOS is a guideline rather than a policy. Even if the MOS were a policy, there is still considerable doubt about Lightmouse's interpretation. In many of these cases, Lightmouse is using Lightbot to win the edit war about whether his interpretation is correct. Additionally, this approval is so broad that it essentially allows Lightmouse to write the MOS as he pleases, and enforce his own interpretation on wikipedia. As Lightbot is currently implemented, I think probably at least 60% of its edits are not controversial, but this approval is far broader than the current implementation. (...) When I read Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) I don't see the kind of consensus for Lightbot's currently programmed tasks which you apparently believe is there. Further, the scope of this approval is such that Lightmouse can edit units and dates as the whim takes him. If there is less than full consensus for his current tasks, I simply don't see how there can be a consensus for the entire scope of this approval."

Regards, AKAF (talk) 15:55, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Editing statistics
Locke Cole presented raw edit counts for MOSNUM that are a bit misleading. Some users create and polish their comments in a sandbox before posting; others edit online and make four or five corrections to each posting. (I create mine offline but often have to make a correction anyway.)

Greg_L is forever tweaking his contributions. Here is an example from today. Greg made 5 sequential edits in 14 minute period followed by 7 more sequential edits in a 25 minute period. This is typical of Greg's editing style.

Fort Glanville Conservation Park was a "Did you know…" article today. In creating the article, Peripitus, added 53,421 bytes in a single edit with a summary of "update a lot". Raw edit count numbers can be very misleading.

Here are the top edit counts to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) over the past 5 months. Locke is number 3.


 * 1048 (894/154) User:Greg L 2008-10-01 04:31 2009-02-18 03:40
 * 316 (315/1) User:Tony1 2008-10-01 02:31 2009-02-14 12:12
 * 270 (247/23) User:Locke Cole 2008-10-25 19:27 2009-02-15 11:38
 * 232 (218/14) User:Ohconfucius 2008-10-02 04:22 2009-02-12 16:14
 * 220 (214/6) User:Pmanderson 2008-10-02 22:30 2009-02-17 00:20
 * 184 (144/40) User:Army1987 2008-10-05 14:49 2009-01-28 13:29
 * 177 (177/0) User:Lightmouse 2008-10-02 13:36 2009-02-11 12:55
 * 152 (135/17) User:Gerry Ashton 2008-10-01 14:42 2009-02-16 19:46
 * 150 (137/13) User:Arthur Rubin 2008-10-06 03:35 2009-01-29 23:17
 * 121 (88/33) User:Sssoul 2008-10-05 17:22 2009-01-31 09:28
 * 101 (101/0) User:Gene Nygaard 2008-11-16 13:52 2009-01-19 15:12

SWTPC6800 (talk) 04:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic dates was created in July 2003

 * Discussion:
 * Tim chimes in - 23 June 2003 - "Why are you bothering writing conversion scripts? Just write PHP code ... Even for someone with my low level of PHP prowess, it's not a hard task. There's no need for special markup .... The default rendering could be whatever the result of the vote is. If we vote for "lack of preference" then it will just be displayed as entered."
 * Tim votes "no standard"
 * .. and changes his mind
 * Phil Bordelon calls it "dynamic dates" - first person to do so I think.
 * Tim responds to concerns about "dynamic date overhead"
 * Tim archives the talk page and notifies everyone of dynamic dates (now mw:Manual:Dynamic_dates).
 * Tim announces a basic "dynamic date" demonstration, and asks
 * "Should a style be imposed based on what country the user's IP address comes from? Or what their browser setting are?"
 * Eloquence introduces the date delinkers argument:
 * "Requiring them to be links reduces the likelihood of false positives, but some people prefer not to have all dates linked."
 * and "Auto-detection for anons would be neat, but "nice to have", i.e. not necessary. Anything beyond that is IMHO overkill. "
 * Tim asks about "Dth of M" format
 * Tim: "This is not a pipe dream, this is a piece of code which is mostly already written, and will likely be in CVS by the end of the week. If you think it's going to make articles unreadable, now is the time to say something. Do you think there should be a method of overriding the user preference on an article-by-article basis, say with a special command at the top?"
 * "Someone else" raises the problem of Julian dates, and Tim replies "The date/time page is too long for me to edit, but I'd like to put in another plea that Julian/Gregorian and double dates be handled properly!"
 * Tim: ".... ISO 8601 (whichever flavour you nominate) as a fourth dynamic format? That way it could be listed in the manual of style as an acceptable alternative."
 * Angela notes the outcome of the VfD
 * Tim announces "dynamic dates" - July 29, 2003


 * Code:
 * 1416 + 1417 "Dynamic dates" - July 1, 2003
 * 1418 prefs imp - July 1, 2003
 * 1424 pref "$wgMungeDates" added - July 3, 2003
 * 1425 "Misc. dynamic date fixes and improvements" - 3 July 3, 2003
 * 1429 "minor change to dynamic dates" - July 5, 2003
 * 1431 "Much improved ability to disable dynamic dates in LocalSettings" - July 6, 2003 (introduces mw:Manual:$wgUseDynamicDates)
 * 2024 "New date formatter" - November 20, 2003 (DateFormatter.php added)
 * 2026 "Date formatter into temp branch" - November 20, 2003 (uses wgDateFormatter from DateFormatter.php)


 * Version 1.1 was r2286 - so dynamic dates was in the first packaged version of MediaWiki.

Battle commencement
added links to dates in May 2008.

As part of a long run of date delinking across a wide array of articles, Lightbot delinked a few tennis articles. On June 15 Tennis expert reverted five Lightbot date delinking edits to tennis articles, including Chris Evert.

frequently delinks dates without edit-warring, and was the first to reverse the actions of Tennis expert, resulting in an edit-war.1 2 3

On September 3, Lightmouse delinks a few tennis biographies among many other articles Tennis expert relinks dates on Serena_Williams the following day. and finds another one a few days later

Lightbot started an date delinking run on a wide array of articles on September 5, 2008 at 19:36. (it looks like they are articles in Category:living people; i.e. not just tennis articles)

Tennis expert started reverting Lightbot at 2008-09-06 08:23 

Two hours later Dudesleeper reverted 12 of these Tennis expert reverts (10:22-10:26)

Six minutes later Tennis expert started reverting Dudesleeper (10 articles between 10:32 and 10:36)

Dudesleeper then reverted Tennis expert 10 times between 10:34-10:39

Again interleaved is Tennis expert reverting Dudesleeper on the same 10 articles using the edit summary "This is how tennis articles are done, i.e., consensus" (10:38-10:48)

While Tennis expert was doing that, Dudesleeper initiated a project discussion at 10:46 (2008-09-06 10:46:06) Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Tennis/Archive_4 and disengages. At that time, Tennis experts contribs looked like this.

At 12:07, Tennis expert issues a stop command to Lightbot and asks Lightmouse to refrain from editing tennis related articles due to an ongoing discussion.

At 12:50, Lightbot removes the stop command with "see talk page" and the bot resumes. Four minutes later, Lightmouse posts a comment to the talk page of the Tennis WikiProject. 

At 10:58 joined in the discussion, reverts 12 times, works on something else and then performs another 9 reverts between 20:44 and 12:16 the following day.          Without Tennis expert or The Rambling Man exceeding WP:3RR, due to Lightbot initiating the sequence the result is the delinking "winning". The Rambling Man warns Tennis expert about WP:3RR in series of user talk messages each reverted and the final one reverted with e/s of Discuss it on the tennis discussion page where everyone can benefit from it.

It is worth noting that there are individual year articles for most tennis events, such as Wimbledon Championships and Wimbledon tournaments, so there was often a better link target for these years, either worked into the prose or hidden under the link (the MOS folk much prefer the former).

Lightmouse later comments on the MOS discussion on whether WikiProjects can opt out. 

On September 6, Tony1 enters the debate (an unabashed Lightmouse TPW) returns to the discussion on September 7 , delinks 22 tennis biographies, and replies to Tennis expert on Lightmouse's talk page, delinks another 43 tennis articles, and makes a few comments including a note to Lightmouse that "I think the area [Tennis expert] "owns" is probably best left for a while."

On Sept 7, User:2005 reverts twice and enters into the discussion.

HJensen reverts Tennis expert, and ten days later withdraws from the project, but still delinks occasionally. 

Also on September 7, And Lightmouse notifies the Tennis Project of his new bot request. 

On September 8, Tony delinks two more tennis articles. and two more on the 27th.

restored the autoformating date links on the DOB of Maria Sharapova removed by Tony1  This autoformatted date was removed in October by

Also on September 8, The Rambling Man reverted one Tennis expert relinking on Jimmy Connors and posted four to User_talk:tennis expert in a new section "Edit warring". There were no further relinkings on that article, and The Rambling Man did not do any further tennis articles date delinking throughout September. He has remained active in the WikiProject discussion.

On September 9, a discussion is started on Jimbo's talk page, which continues on Kumioko's talk page

After September
In the beginning of October, The Rambling Man does some heavy lifting on Maria Sharapova to push it to a Good Article, and makes a few motivational comments on the WikiProject talk page, one with a snide comment about Tennis expert ("expert" at work with his magical "consensus") and another to fix the overlinking. 

On the same time in the month, there is a round of reverts: Tony1, Tennis expert, & The Rambling Man.

Lots more impressive tennis editing by The Rambling Man (on tour); some delinking on articles he is actively editing, and a large set of reverts on 2008-10-16 (there are more sets of reverts).

Late in October while WP:MOSNUM was disputed, commenced editing, primarily relinked dates on tennis articles, often as reverts, and commented on the date delinking issue.

WildCherry06
has systematically kept the tennis biography infoboxen up to date. The edit are grouped together in clumps, with summaries almost always being "updated Infobox" but sometimes one or two are without edit summary.

WildCherry06 used date autoformatting on September 29, and then started delinking on October 6.

October 6:                                                    

October 10                              

October 27:          

January 12 2009.           

February 9.      ("30 Oct" delinked)  

Feb 16.  23rd. 

March 2.    

April 13-date fragments added the previous day.  

April 20. 

May 4 

May 11.   

Counting the cost

 * User:Tennis expert/Date delinking arbitration evidence: "1,081 edits spread over 202 articles", mostly performed by 8 editors (not all of these are tennis articles)
 * User:Ohconfucius/Tennis wars: Tennis expert reverted "751 times on 158 articles"

Karl Popper
Lightbot delinks on 2008-07-04

Between 2008-10-07 and 2008-11-30

Tony1 delinks it five times. Dabomb87 delinks it twice. John delinks it once. Colonies Chris delinks it once.

restored DOB and DOD links seven times. Locke Cole reverted once.

Discussion occurs User_talk:Lumos3 and two sections beneath that. (User_talk:Lumos3, and User_talk:Lumos3 in re George Frideric Handel )

Prior to this, Lumos3 had edited the article 20 times, and John had edited it once.

Tony1, Dabomb87 and Colonies Chris had not. Neither had Locke Cole.

I have not found how the last three parties learnt of this skirmish.

Clement Attlee
As mentioned in my Tennis articles evidence, Lightbot initiated a date delinking AWB run on a wide array of articles on September 5, 2008 at 19:36. (it looks like they are articles in Category:living people; i.e. not just tennis articles)

Sept 5-19

On September 6, does a manual date delinking of one of the articles partially delinked by Lightbot.

reverts John's edit. Six days later audits the article again. 3 days later G-Man reverts again with a summary "rv excessive date delinking". Four days later Lightbot makes an erroneous half delink resulting in AWB fixing it by completing the delinking This is still less than ideal, because all of the other dates in that area are autoformatted.

On October 3, relinks the date of birth and death.  Two days later, G-Man relinks the year that had been unlinked in September.  The following day, Lightbot unlinks the year.

On October 10, John delinks it again.

November 11, G-Man relinks it again. Within 24 hours,  delinks it.  On the 20th, G-Man relinks citing no consensus.  A few hours later Dabomb87 delinks it again.

G-Man relinks on the 28th.

On the 3rd of December, John unlinks again. G-Man delinks on the 10th.  20 minutes later, Dabomb87 delinks.  30 minutes later, G-Man relinks. An hour later, Dabomb87 delinks.

On the 16th, G-Man relinks 1945 and then other years citing WP:CONTEXT. Half an hour later, Dabomb87 delinks those. G-Man reverts.  A day later,  reverts.

On the 29th, G-Man relinks a few years and initiates a discussion. Talk:Clement_Attlee Dabomb87 asks for more reasoning the following day

Two days later, Lightbot removes them.

January 22 and G-Man provides the requested reasoning on the discussion page. Dabomb87 replies the next day. G-Man replies on February 16 asking a question. No response from Dabomb87.

On April 7, G-Man relinks "per talk".

Jonestown, Demerara
A date linkage slow moving edit war spanning 47 revisions, with other changes being reverted as well. Party consisting of and  initially, then  and finally. 

Edit warring over multiple pages
A side issue of the date delinking dispute is contention over whether a merger of the pages Build the web and Linking, performed in January 2009, is consistent with the wishes of the community. I accept that the merger was done in good faith, but it was not well advertised to the community, and earlier this month, quite a bit of opposition to it emerged: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(links)/merged

User:Kotniski and User:Locke Cole in particular have been edit-warring across multiple pages related to this dispute, namely Wikipedia:Linking, Wikipedia:Build the web (currently protected as a result), Template:Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and Template:Guideline list.

Although User:Kotniski and User:Locke Cole have been the most visibly disruptive users in this particular aspect of the dispute, there has been quite a bit of dogmatism displayed by many users relating to the date delinking dispute, and this has interfered with our ability to provide guidance on the issue that represents an actual consensus position.

I urge the Arbitration Committee to remind those involved in the date delinking dispute that our guidance on all issues must be forged through consensus, not through edit warring, voting, dogmatism, or other coercive means.--Father Goose (talk) 22:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Preference-based autoformatting of unlinked dates will soon be possible
See 48249. Hopefully this clears things up a little. &mdash; Werdna  &bull;  talk  02:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Ohconfucius has maliciously evaded blocks to continue edit warring
Having been blocked for violating the temporary injunction in this case, proceeded to continue his violations of the injunctions by logging out to evade the block, and editing with a variety of IP addresses. This is detailed in the block notice that I left on his user talk page; the IPs are ✅ by CheckUser as being him.

Response to Andrew and Werdna
The patch made available by Werdna provides a method to invoke the present autoformatting system without linking dates, but does not provide preference-based autoformatting because the vast majority of readers are not logged in, and therefor cannot express a preference. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 17:14, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Delinking for purposes of autoformatting
While removing the linking was a good idea (why did we ever think that linking the date was such a good idea?!?), but autoformatting had its plusses, primarily that it provided a standard by which everyone could set their date formats. In retrospect, I think it would have behooved us to simply choose one standard (and I'm impartial as to which one we choose) and allow autoformatting to alter it for anyone who wants it to do so.

Removing the autoformatting also has additional problems besides just removing links, it decentralizes the editing process into individual articles that need changes to meet MoS standards. Whereas changing the central Wikipedia standards within linking and preferences would effect changes Wikipedia-wide, this particular change has effected hundreds of thousands (millions?) of articles which now need altering to comply with a guideline. — BQZip01 — talk 06:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

There is an additional problem
The current phrasing of WP:DATE states "Dates (years, months, day and month, full dates) should not be linked, unless there is a reason to do so." This ambiguity "unless there is a reason" phrase is far too weak to provide any meaningful guidance. Just because someone has a reason to link a date (such as it was a significant event that year/on that date or one that coincides with a user's birthday) doesn't mean it is an appropriate reason. I suggest further guidance on this section to prevent further conflict. (I'd make the change myself, but with this Arbcom session running, it seems like it would be in poor form). — BQZip01 — talk 06:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Vassyana
This is evidence compiled from several sources, as a courtesy to the parties and for reference by arbitrators. This is not intended to be a full accounting of all actions, which would be thousands of links, but instead as a presentation of examples or noteworthy evidence (such as relevant logs).

Absence of evidence
I did not find any substantial evidence indicating a pattern of misconduct on the part of editors not listed below.

Apparent coordination and general environment

 * 
 * 

Wikipedia space pages edit warring
Besides the "main" edit warring on the MOS and related conflicts at WP:BTW, the conflict also spilled over into Wikipedia:Linking and Wikipedia:Editing policy.

Tennis expert

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 

Lightmouse

 * Block logs
 * Lightbot:
 * Editore99:
 * Bobblewik:


 * Concerns expressed by a wide variety of editors about bot use over a considerable period of time
 * 


 * Lightmouse's (semi)automated tools operation has been controversial
 * Distinct section on bot approval page:
 * Discussion related to restoring Lightmouse's AWB access:


 * Bot proposal for date delinking bot denied
 * 


 * Lightbot account used to remove "stop" requests.
 * 

Locke Cole

 * Block log
 * 


 * Edit warring over the Manual of Style
 * 


 * Edit warring over Build the web
 * 

Colonies Chris

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 
 * 

Dabomb87

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 

HJensen

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 

Skywalker

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 

The Rambling Man

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 

2008Olympian

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 
 * 

Dudesleeper

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 

Arthur Rubin

 * Block log
 * 


 * Edit warring over the Manual of Style
 * 


 * Statements of potential concern, regarding admin action
 * 

Kotniski

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 


 * Edit warring over the Manual of Style
 * 


 * Edit warring over Build the web
 * 


 * Statement regarding edit warring
 * 

Kendrick7

 * Block log
 * 


 * Edit warring over Build the web
 * 

Tony1

 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 
 * 


 * Edit warring over the Manual of Style
 * 

Ohconfucius

 * Injunction violations and block evasion
 * 
 * 


 * Mainspace date link reverts
 * 

Greg L

 * Block log
 * 


 * Edit warring over the Manual of Style
 * 

Evidence presented by Bishonen: harassment by Locke Cole
Locke Cole has been accusing User:HWV258 of being a sock of User:Tony1 since 17 April, very persistently and with no proof. Both HWV and myself took this as a bit of a joke at first—a jesting obfuscation of the UC Bill/Sapphic sockpuppetry—and HWV wrote a gracious comment. However, Locke has been insisting that he's serious, and that he has evidence for his allegations, although he "doesn't have the time" to investigate them. (See what you think of what he calls his basic evidence, here and here.) HWV, who wrote nice appeals to Locke to begin with, seems, with good reason, to be getting a bit frayed at these never-ending attacks on his "reputation at WP"(see for example this), so I hope the committee will put a stop to Locke's harassment of him. Bishonen | talk 15:17, 22 April 2009 (UTC).

Attempt to export of edit war on other wikis by Lightmouse, Tony1, Ohconfucius
These three user (and perhaps other, we are investigating on fr:wp), started to edit through script on fr:wikipedia since 4 may for ligthtmouse and 2009, april 9 for Ohconfucius, and Tony1  (which is the date of the "Temporary" injunction to stop such behavior on en: ...). Exporting such behavior, while it's perhaps a hole in what can do the en:Arbcom, is a pretty big WP:POINT. On fr:wp, there is no consensus for or against date linking but actually there is no edit war before Tony1 tried to export the en: trouble. One example of concerted edit, and

Beside that, I'm very unhappy by Tony1's behavior on my talk page, what does that mean ? Can't Tony1 be polite and avoid conspiracy theory and all. Or does he tries to involve me in a quarrel so I'll be a suspect witness ? (he already try through conspiracy theory that ...) - phe 18:11, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

John did not engage in edit-warring
(see also User talk:Jayvdb)

War against Wikignomes?
Here is a slightly longer rebuttal with diffs. I will try to explain why I do not think the demonstrated evidence of "edit-warring" on my part merits the sanctions proposed against me.

I have been a registered editor of Wikipedia since January 2006 and have made just over 70,000 edits in that time. From the very beginning I have focused on being a Wikignome, making small changes to spelling, wording and formatting, in order to keep our articles readable, professional-looking and internally consistent. This has included correcting overcapitalization of headings per WP:HEADING (e.g. "==See Also==" -> "==See also==" ), reducing overlinking of common terms per WP:OVERLINK (e.g. "New York, United States" -> "New York, United States") and correcting common mis-spellings (e.g. "seperate" -> "separate").

It became obvious to me early on that dates were overlinked beyond what was necessary to cater for autoformatting, which in those days was recommended to be accomplished by linking full dates. In August 2006 I passed RfA when my user page looked like this; as you can see, it had a declaration of my intent to reduce over-linking of dates (...(there's hardly ever any point in linking years, months or days of the week). Confusingly, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) has changed to allow some ambiguity here, but I still go with the common-sense: "Not every year listed in an article needs to be wikilinked. Ask yourself: will clicking on the year bring any useful information to the reader?"). It was a fairly contentious RfA but no concerns were raised over this at the time, in line with the prevailing consensus principle of OVERLINK.

Fast forward a couple of years. When (in August 2008) the consensus for autoformatting was overturned, I was one of a number of editors who took this as a license to delink dates. I made several hundred edits to delink dates over the next months. This was not seen as controversial at the time. I have reviewed my talk page archives and these two are the only items I can find on the matter.


 * 1


 * 2

As you can see, these were two polite inquiries, letting me know of errors in the script. In the second example the inquirer thanks me for the "valuable job" I am doing. At no time did anyone tell me that, per Jayvdb's comment here, all date delinking would later be retrospectively regarded as disruptive. ("All of your delinking edits are part of the problem")

I became aware in late 2008-early 2009 that this was a matter of significant controversy, and at that time I stopped making multiple delinking edits. In January 2009 this case was opened and I very vaguely followed it, noting the injunction against mass delinking. I was not named as a participant.

On 17 May I was named as a participant and informed on my talk page of the proposed restrictions against me:

''' is subject to an editing restriction for 12 months. John is prohibited from reversion of changes which are principally stylistic, except where all style elements are prescribed in the applicable style guideline.'''

These seem to be the main "evidence" against me, in support of the contention that I "edit-warred".


 * 1 shows one edit to delink dates on an article.


 * 2 shows three edits to remove links to dates, over a three month period.

As described here, one of the arbitrators who has already voted ahead of this rebuttal, has made edits indistinguishable from the ones which are retrospectively regarded as problematic on my part. If it was to turn out that any one of these multiple edits of Wizardman's inadvertently repeated a previous edit (albeit from two or three months previously), presumably Wizardman would be added to the case and subject to the same restrictions as are proposed for me? This seems daft.

This is the only instance I can find where I knowingly and consciously reverted another editor's contribution on this style issue. Yet the prevailing view at the moment among arbitrators seems to be that this nevertheless constitutes edit-warring. This seems greatly at odds with any previously accepted definition of edit-warring that I have seen.

Nevertheless I am happy to acknowledge that this edit was a mistake, and that I should have been more careful in the handful of other edits where I repeated a formatting change I had previously implemented.

There is significant dissent from the proposed sanctions at the talk page, including here and here, and also on my talk page here.

My own problems with this proposed decision fall under two heads.


 * On the one hand it seems like a breach of natural justice (specifically the principle of audi alteram partem) to sanction me for something that I did not know was controversial and was not previously warned for, and have had no proper opportunity to defend myself against.


 * Furthermore, this remedy, if adopted, will make it impossible or far more difficult for me to continue with my work here. For example, I would be unlikely to risk being blocked by making further edits like this series, which used AWB to replace instances of "passed away" with "died". Although I think this is a very uncontroversial change (so much so that it is incorporated into the typo fixing project AWB code), it is possible I could be inadvertently repeating an edit I had previously made, and that another editor could interpret this as falling within the "principally stylistic" definition of the remedy, although it does not concern dates. I am proud of never having been blocked in my career here and would like to keep it that way.

If I made one reversion, intentional or not, of a date formatting edit like this one, or a non-date-related edit like this one or this one, I would risk being blocked under these proposals. This does not seem in line with the best interests of the project. I therefore respectfully ask that the proposed restrictions be reconsidered.

Evidence presented by (your name here)
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{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.

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