Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Philwelch/Evidence

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

When placing evidence here, please be considerate of the arbitrators and be concise. Long, rambling, or stream-of-conciousness rants are not helpful.

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

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

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

If you disagree with some evidence you see here, please cite the evidence in your own section and provide counter-evidence, or an explanation of why the evidence is misleading. Do not edit within the evidence section of any other user.

Be aware that the Arbitrators may at times rework this page to try to make it more coherent. If you are a participant in the case or a third party, please don't try to refactor the page, let the Arbitrators do it. If you object to evidence which is inserted by other participants or third parties please cite the evidence and voice your objections within your own section of the page. It is especially important to not remove evidence presented by others. If something is put in the wrong place, please leave it for the arbitrators to move.

The 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 may edit /Proposed decision.

Philwelch constantly violates WP:NPA
Philwelch has on many occasions violated WP:NPA :
 * On February 22, 2006, he blocked a user, calling him a moron in the block reason.


 * On February 22, 2006, he blocked another user, again calling him a moron in the block reason.


 * On May 15, 2006, Philwelch called Samir a "clueless newbie".


 * On the same day he called Travb a "temperamental child".


 * Yet again on the same day he called Nathan a "twat". When Lord Voldermort warns him to stop personally attacking people, Philwelch responds with "Don't you think I've been told this by enough people already...?".


 * On May 29, 2006, he calls several editors "goons".


 * On July 20, 2006, Philwelch calls followers of a certain religion kooks. On July 23, 2006, Addhoc warned him that calling people who are followers of a certain religion "kooks" is a clear violation of WP:NPA.  Philwelch responds with I will assume this is a joke.


 * On December 12, 2006, Philwelch called me a "clown".


 * On December 23, 2006, Philwelch called an editor a sanctimonious ass. Naconkantari asked Philwelch to not attack other editors again.  Philwelch responded by calling Naconkantari a sanctimonious ass.


 * On February 9, 2007, 3 days after the arbitration case against him was opened, Philwelch claimed that ThuranX is a sockpuppeteer. Dionyseus 23:12, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch constantly edit wars and violates WP:3RR

 * On April 6, 2005, Philwelch made 5 reverts in less than 6 hours, and was blocked for violating WP:3RR.


 * On October 7, 2005, Philwelch was blocked for violating WP:3RR in the Star Wars article. The blocking administrator stated that Philwelch's "3RR violations to numerous to give all the diffs here."


 * On May 15, 2006, Philwelch made 4 reverts in less than an hour in the NSA call database article.


 * On August 19, 2006, Philwelch violated WP:3RR twice. He reverted the Aaron Doral article 5 times, and the Brother Cavil article 6 times within the same day.  For these two violations, Philwelch was blocked 24 hours.


 * On February 1, 2007, Philwelch made 5 reverts in less than one hour on Werdna's rfa, removing good faith edits, two of those reverts were done with his administrative rollback tool:, , , , . Dionyseus 23:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch blocks those he disagrees with

 * On August 19, 2006, Philwelch was blocking anyone he disagreed with on the Battlestar Galactica dispute. He did not issue a warning to me, he simply blocked me for my revert to the version of the article that was agreed upon by the regular contributors to that article.  I asked him why he did not issue a warning to me, and his excuse was "Boldness is encouraged on Wikipedia".


 * On August 19, 2006, User:Geni warned Philwelch that blocking users you are involved with in an editing dispute is a violation, that he violated WP:Block when he blocked User:MatthewFenton.


 * On August 19, 2006, User:JesseW warned Philwelch that blocking users you are involved with in an editing dispute is a violation.


 * On November 25, 2006, User:Friday warned Philwelch that blocking users you are involved with in an editing dispute is a violation, that he violated WP:Block when he blocked User:John Reid.


 * On December 11, 2006, Philwelch blocked User:ThuranX while in a content dispute with him.


 * On February 1, 2007, Philwelch blocked User:David Levy while in a content dispute with him, an administrator soon unblocked David, calling it a totally unjustified block. Dionyseus 22:53, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch is rude and incivil to others
Philwelch constantly deletes comments on his talk page from other editors, calling it his method of "archiving", and often uses rude edit summaries in his "archiving" such as "archiving nonsense". Dionyseus 04:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch has attempted to deceive by tampering with my evidence in this arbitration case
On February 9, 2007, Philwelch attempted to deceive by modifying my evidence once, twice, and a third time. I have never seen this behavior before in Wikipedia, completely improper to tamper with evidence. Dionyseus 22:10, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch has abused the admin rollback tool
On February 1, 2007, Philwelch used his admin rollback tool to undo David Levy's edits,. The second rollback was made after Majorly had adviced him not to in his edit summary. Just before his second rollback, Philwelch threatened to block anyone who restored the edit. Dionyseus 00:22, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch often accuses others of wikistalking to try to discourage editors from presenting negative evidence against him
On December 12, 2006, an incident thread was opened up about Philwelch's inappropiate block of ThuranX. I posted evidence showing that there's a clear pattern of Philwelch's abuse of his admin status, and Philwelch responded in a rude and incivil manner by calling me a "clown" and accusing me of stalking him. Carcharoth responded by telling Philwelch to stop calling people clowns, and Philwelch responded by accusing Carcharoth of wikistalking him. Dionyseus 01:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {ThuranX}
Per Newyorkbrad, I've copied and pasted this here.
 * Following PhilWelch's declaration that he was done with Wikipedia, I actually contradicted myself, and DID restore the Rush in Pop Culture(RIPC hereafter) page. Within FOUR hours, PhilWelch was reverting it. It was re-restored by an IP. PhilWelch's response, accuse me of sockpuppetry and . PhilWelch has NO grounds for this accusation, and thus it is BOTH Incivil and a PERSONAL ATTACK. The consensus of the page which PhilWlech refers to was that the page should not be deleted (No consensus on AfD, default to Keep). Phil summarizes the AfD as 'keep AND merge', which is made MUCH more difficult by PhilWelch's redirect actions. Unless you already know that the RIPC article existed, all you can find is in the Rush article. Contradicting PhilWelch is that during the Rush page's FA review, it was the recommendation to split the RIPC into it's own page, and this was done. Now Phil suggests that it's plagarised form a website, (the website may well have cribbed from wikipedia), and should be merged. This is self-contradictory. If the content is demonstrably plagarism, Wikipedia should delete all versions which are the plagarised material, and if not, then given that AfD was No consensus/Keep, and the FA Review was 'create', then create +Keep means it should stay.
 * TO Summarize: PhilWelch is avoiding established consensus of specific review of the article, consensus of involved editors, and resorting to WP:PA and WP:CIVIL Violations to get his way. This is extremely disconcerting, especially given his previously stated intent to take a LONG wikibreak, as a means of 'cooperating' with this RfA. This RfA needs closure and a decision. PhilWelch has not demonstrated the ability to live up to his own volunteered behaviors.
 * Finally, I asked to be totally removed from this procedure, believing that PhilWelch would come after me vindictively. This has been shown to be true (Note only the one theme of contribs, Rush, the VERY pages referenced in this RfA and which I gave a statement about?). I am not happy about that.ThuranX 23:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


 * . A second attack. ThuranX 23:28, 9 February 2007 (UTC)


 * 

Here, PhilWelch Directly interferes with the RfAr rpocess by editing the statements and evidence presented against him by another editor. Are the admins going to step in at any point and stop this? How many of the users who were drafted into this does he have to be hostile to? All of them? ThuranX 02:16, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by User:Newyorkbrad
As noted above by ThuranX, Philwelch has made several very significant edits to the evidence submission of another party to the case on this page, describing them in the edit summaries as "factual corrections." This practice is highly improper and evidence or comments by any party or other editor should be made only in a separate section under that editor's name. If this conduct is repeated I will move for an injunction. Newyorkbrad 02:28, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Fortunately, this appears to have stopped. Newyorkbrad 23:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Dionyseus has engaged in wikistalking
Dionyseus has shown a tendency to follow me around and maintain unwelcome contact me ever since my initial run in with him.

After my initial run-in with this user, I chose to cease editing Wikipedia for some time. Dionyseus took this as an opportunity to remove me from the Facebook and nominate my picture for deletion, as well as other images I had uploaded. He also followed me around on AFD. The 2006-12-12 AFD log shows that the only three deletion discussions he participated in that day were those of three articles I had deprodded as I felt they were worthy of being kept —he voted "delete" on all three articles. That was the only connection between those three articles, and they do not appear together in sequence. Weeks later, when one of those articles was recreated (but the original article itself not restored), it went back to AFD: again, my vote was immediately followed by Dionyseus. This January, my participation in an RFD was again followed by that of Dionyseus. This pattern is remarkable, because the only other person to participate in four of these five debates was the user who discussed my deproddings with me on my talk page and escalated them, with my blessing, to AFD. Also, in all those cases, the debates I was involved with were the only ones Dionyseus joined that day—or, in the case of RFD, ever. Philwelch 12:09, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Dionyseus has also expressed a motive for this harassment: in response to my question Do you want me to leave Wikipedia?, he responded, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dionyseus&diff=107192587&oldid=107191918 The answer is YES. You are by far my worst experience ever in Wikipedia.] This is the second time I asked him, since the first time he merely "did not welcome" my comment (actually a question) on his talk page. His stated desire to avoid contact with me makes the above-documented pattern of maintaining unwanted contact with me all the more telling. Philwelch 00:05, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Another user has [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dionyseus&oldid=107749729#Response. complained] to Dionyseus to stop stalking him. Philwelch 19:26, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Dionyseus is using this RfAr as an opportunity for a vengeful fishing expedition
See his entire evidence section above. Clearly this is about axe-grinding, not dispute resolution. This behavior demonstrates an irrational obsession with me and extends the pattern of harassment established by his wiki-stalking, especially given my stipulation to the material facts behind this case and the widely-expressed view that there is little here that truly needs arbitration (per the original statements). Philwelch 01:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Also see his remarks and proposals on the workshop page. Philwelch 05:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Apparently considers my actions tantamount to murdering somebody's family, and considers his campaign of axegrinding a "grieving process". Philwelch 20:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Philwelch is not very talented at handling autoblocks
A couple people have pointed out the bizarre unblock of this IP address. That was indeed my IP. I unblocked it because the autoblock was preventing me from deleting my userpage:

From, reordered chronologically


 * 2006-08-19T23:54:16 Philwelch (Talk | contribs) unblocked Philwelch (contribs) (to apply longer block) // unblock myself to apply a longer block
 * //not shown—attempt to delete my own userpage, prevented from doing so by autoblock
 * 2006-08-19T23:54:50 Philwelch (Talk | contribs) unblocked 66.233.98.204 (contribs) //remove autoblock
 * 2006-08-19T23:55:12 Philwelch (Talk | contribs) deleted "User:Philwelch" (own userpage) //delete my own userpage
 * 2006-08-19T23:55:35 Philwelch (Talk | contribs) blocked "Philwelch (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite //reblock myself

My understanding is that it was autoblocked again when I reblocked myself indefinitely. As you can see above, I indefinitely blocked my own username, which I thought would retrigger the autoblock, AFTER unblocking that IP.) That IP has never contributed to Wikipedia, and I unblocked it as a hidden numeric signal to the Russian mafia there was no dastardly plan behind unblocking it.

My second account, User:Sammy on Skids (a joke account created to bring a smile to the faces of RC patrollers last April 1) did not contribute any edits after April Fools Day, 2006 (and in fact has never contributed a single destructive edit at all). User:Phil-welch is a different person entirely. His only contribution between the time I indefinitely blocked myself and the time I returned to Wikipedia is this. I don't understand or care about the distinction between "tonnes" and "metric tons", and didn't know what the Fernsehturm Berlin was until I saw that edit—I would not have made that edit. There is no other account I know of that could possibly be me. Philwelch 20:59, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Regarding trolling by David Levy et al
Basically, I'm going to echo what I conveyed (although sarcastically) here. As David Levy pointed out to Thatcher131, 4 editors re-inserted the question (without the inappropriate link): yandman, Majorly, David Levy, and myself. Now, I only have minor experience with yandman and none with the other two, but considering that all three are administrators, I think it's safe to assume that they've probably done a lot of good for Wikipedia and want to see it succeed. Like, they have good will towards it and all. Well, Thatcher has called David Levy's re-insertion of the link "trolling", also saying that he "set out to stir up trouble" - this sort of implies that yandman, Majorly and I were all trolling also, especially considering how evasive Thatcher was in responding to the direct questionby David. I'm not an idiot and I know that the idea that I was trolling by re-inserting the question is believable, so let's focus on these other three inserters.

This assertion doesn't really seem logical to me. I mean, "trolling" is deliberate disruption, actually trying to make a mess of things. As in, your goal is to do some harm to Wikipedia. Well, if Thatcher's accusation (which really makes him at minumum a judgemental observer rather than an impartial clerk) was true, that would mean that three administrators simultaneously got the urge to disrupt Wikipedia out of nowhere. It wasn't even their question to begin with, but somehow, Konstable's question gave them the opportunity to unleash their ill will towards Wikipedia all at once. Or maybe they didn't all independently decide to try and trash Wikipedia, maybe they were all conspiring together, and chose this moment to troll Wikipedia by re-inserting a question.

How realistic does that sound? Yeah, the question was related to some arbcom-blacklisted website whose name escapes me, but does that alone make it plausible that three admins, all of whom have spent a good deal of time making improvements to the project, suddenly got the urge to make some trouble for Wikipedia, and all chose the same spot to do it? Even if someone thinks that their re-insertion of the question was a bad idea, it's nonsense to speculate that they were all acting in bad faith.

In fact, why is that website even of any concern? The question being asked was a question, not Konstable saying "THIS IS WHAT YOU SAID AND YOU ARE BAD" - in fact, Werdna later confirmed the logs were legitimate! So why is where they were typed up relevant at all? Especially to this arbitration case? By the time Philwelch took to the page, all mention of that website had been removed from the question entirely (by me, coincidentally), as had any links or logs beforehand. The case is about Philwelch's supposedly inappropriate blocking and edit warring and use of rollback and lack of WP:AGF, the website has nothing to do with it and it would be nothing less than a fiasco to make it any part of this case.

Philwelch makes personal attacks in block reasons
Bearing in mind these are readily visible to blocked editors:


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Evidence presented by Matthew
He made some (serious) mistakes, let's just move on now, the past is the past, we are all only human, everybody deserves forgiveness/second chance. Though I do believe he should go through the RfA process again rather then be granted back the tools by the arbcom. Phil can be a fine editor, and I am sure after he has earned back the community's trust, a fine sysop. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 16:20, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Deckiller
Phil is what we need in the community - someone willing to make difficult, gutsy actions. Sometimes, however, he goes over the top, which is why I think he needs to go through RfA again before he is given the tools back. That way, he can think about the extremes he took, and how he can make adjustments so that people don't see him as "evil". I am also dissapointed in the amount of stabbing taking place on this RfAr, which, in my opinion, drastically outweighs the minor ruffling Phil caused by going a little too extreme. &mdash; Deckiller 20:32, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, ThuranX is going a little extreme above when presenting the "Rush in popular culture" case. Phil and myself agreed that consensus needs to be extended beyond the regular editors of the Rush articles, because they may not realize how discouraged trivia sections are on Wikipedia. Hence the current situation at the AfD, where current consensus is to delete. As for the sockpuppeting, I can understand why Phil would say such a thing, because the IPs replied to ThuranX's comment within 20 minutes; however, I do believe it was extreme to outright say that, so I hope Phil realizes that it was a mistake. Although I disagree with his constant use of rollback and back-and-forth reverting, Phil does have good intentions. Maybe this fiasco will show him how to channel it into a slightly more realistic approach. &mdash; Deckiller 20:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

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

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

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

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