Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war/Evidence

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Evidence presented by rootology
Note: I've been editing on this article since Palin was announced as a VP candidate, nearly a week before all this erupted in a wheel war.

Consensus at the time did in fact support Full protection of Sarah Palin
There seems to be a lot of commentary that when the unprotections began, there was no support for the protection in the first place. This is totally wrong and not supported by the evidence summed up in this one link.

Jossi's claimed IAR removal of Full Protection was incorrect and harmful to a BLP article given the present state it was under. Sarah Palin is the most viewed BLP we may have ever had on Wikipedia for per-day volume, with at one point 2.5 million page views per day. At the times Jossie unprotected and vowed to unprotect again under IAR, there was overwhelming consensus that he was aware of, supporting at the least a short-term Full Protection of Sarah Palin. Specifically in this section we have the following admins/senior to fairly senior users all supporting Full Protection (or opposing a downgrade after the fact) and the ideas to work on the BLP around the full protection, to protect it. This tabulation is based specifically on the page as it stood when Jossi removed the Full Protection and vowed to do so again, which he later did:


 * 24 supporting at least short term full, if not longer: Kelly, myself, Cla68, Keeper76, RyRy, Celarnor, SirFozzie, George The Dragon, Hobartimus, Baseball Bugs, Wikidemon, Coemgenus, Joshdboz, Thingg, QuackGuru, Cool Hand Luke, GRBerry, Jtrainor, DMN, JzG, Lucasbfr, MASEM, Paul.h, Fritzpoll.


 * 2 Total opposing the full protection: Jossi, JamesMLane (let me know if I missed anyone on either side, I'll update).

There was no AE page discussion yet at this point. It was all on WP:AN, in the provided link. This was the same as unprotecting the Wikipedia Main Page in scale, if not worse, since it was a BLP that already was under heavy media scrutiny (from a quick look I think it's the most heavily reported-on Wikipedia article EVER, now). At the absolute least, given the completely chaotic situation that was unfolding, a short term full protection of roughly hours wouldn't have hurt. At a median, a day would have been absolutely reasonable for the sheer volume of pure dispute based edit warring--we protect other articles for days or weeks on ends because of that stuff. Wasn't Lyndon LaRouche protected for a year? At the most basic, if you're one admin, and you have a grand total of one other person supporting you, and 24 others including some people that have been around years, including admins, saying to leave it protected, "IAR" is not a valid excuse to bypass very obvious consensus. rootology ( C )( T ) 21:24, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

@Jossi, requested links to BLP vios
Here you are as you requested. A 20 minute sample of removals of what I agree were at the time BLP violations (things may have changed on any one of these since then if new sourcing emerged--this is all based on when this was happening). Backwards, starting from Keeper76's protection. Full history of the article around then is here, from Keeper's initial protection at 16:28 back to 16:00 (if my link is bad or changes someone please fix it later). That is 31 edits in 26 minutes, 1.19 a minute, and 6 of them or 19.3% (!) were likely as I see it removals of BLP violations. There's no way that people can reasonably keep up with that speed of edit warring, let alone looking for flagrant or subtle BLP violation insertions. If these BLP vios were in place for even 60 seconds, for example, on the day that Sarah Palin got 2,500,000 million hits according to Henrik's stats tool (I don't remember the URL) that meant that 1736 people saw that BLP violation in that 60 second span. Whats the benefit to us and our BLP subjects to not protect? That's nearly half the typical Main Page traffic numbers. We're certainly not going to unprotect that.


 * 16:28, September 3, 2008 - Keeper76 protects article fully
 * 1) 16:20, September 3, 2008 - BLP vio as per talk consensus over days
 * 2) 16:18, September 3, 2008 - likely BLP vio
 * 3) 16:15, September 3, 2008 - BLP vio at the time
 * 4) 16:14, September 3, 2008 - AIP stuff again
 * 5) 16:08, September 3, 2008 - AIP BLP stuff again, per talk consensus
 * 6) 16:05, September 3, 2008 - Affair BLP vio stuff again

If the above can be presented better, hopefully a stats guy like Bisanz can fix this up. Please fix any formatting or clarity as wanted, just don't take out anything.

Before anyone tries to accuse me of partisanship with my selection of these "BLP violations" since that seems to be the popular thing the past couple days, go look at my user page or read my commentary on politics when it comes up over on Wikipedia Review and then try to say I'm a Palin booster. I'll give you 100 quality edits on the article of your choice if you can demonstrate I am somehow. rootology ( C )( T ) 05:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi previously had no problem protecting Barack Obama twice
Across various venues, Jossi has strenuously and in good faith argued against the validity of editing protection on articles such as those of the participants in the 2008 United States presidential election, such as Sarah Palin, arguing that the perceived BLP violations, perceived consensus for protection, and even the outright edit warring (BLP aside) on Sarah Palin was insufficient for protection. However, this is not consistent with Jossi's previous protection in April 2008 of Barack Obama which he protected for five hours over far lighter edit warring than was observed on Sarah Palin. He announced the protection here, saying "Protected for a couple of hours to afford editors to discuss these changes," which is what he specifically objected to on Sarah Palin. Additionally, Jossi had in fact previously protected Barack Obama as observed in the protection log here, even extending protection at one point in August 2007. rootology ( C )( T ) 15:54, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Summary: Jossi wheel warred on an involved article, violated BLP
At a dead minimum, we protect non-BLP articles for longer periods of time fully for much more trivial edit warring than this. There was no reason or valid judgement to unprotect this or lessen the protection. If there was a question or dispute over whether it was a BLP matter, then it's irresponsible and sloppy to unprotect, especially for an admin who clearly was an involved content editor as Jossi was. Jossi, prior to unprotecting Sarah Palin, had edited the article 35 times and was actively arguing and debating on the content of that article on Talk:Sarah Palin.

Going at it TWICE to unprotect and remove full protection in violation of demonstrated consensus and at a dead minimum the true spirit of BLP (if not BLP outright) for an involved admin to unprotect is reckless and warlike. To do this on one of the highest profile BLPs we ever have had traffic-wise is a complete rejection of WP:BLP concerns in favor of some agenda not in the best interests of our BLP subjects and Wikipedia itself. rootology ( C )( T ) 07:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus had not changed several hours later when MZMcBride unprotected
This was WP:AE two minutes before User:MZMcBride unprotected Sarah Palin the second time. This was WP:AN one minute before he unprotected. At the time, MZMcBride had not chosen to participate in the discussions at all. MZMcBride apparently was either counseled or coached on what consensus was on the #admins IRC channel, which never takes precedence over on-wiki consensus, which was demonstrated as:


 * On WP:AE we have in favor of full protection: Chrislk02, Chillum, Kelly, MBisanz, myself, Kyaa the Catlord, MastCell, Ronnotel, patsw, Cenarium, Coemgenus, barneca, Paul.h, Baccyak4H
 * On WP:AE, opposed to full protection we have: Carl, nemonoman, UltraExactZZ, Jossi, JamesMLane.
 * On WP:AN, a few hours after my previous sample above, there no nee substantial opposes beyond the people that already are listed from AE.

There were no other changes in consensus, "on wiki", where valid consensus is decided, from the original consensus. rootology ( C )( T ) 17:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride Wheel Warred, violated BLP
As Jossi did, MZMcBride twice unprotected Sarah Palin, both times with the cryptic summary of "this is a wiki". On August 29th he removed Semi Protection, which was reversed 22 minutes later by Gogo Dodo. On 10:21 September 4 2008, after MBisanz invoked the BLP special protection, MZMcBride again unremoved protection saying "this is a wiki". In response, MZMcBride was blocked by User:WilyD and considered it a bad block. Moreschi later unblocked. rootology ( C )( T ) 17:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Editing volume overview as requested by NYB
For Newyorkbrad. All of these are from September 3, 2008. I'm going to track it from 13:00, 3.5 hours before it was first protected. A 3.5 hours long edit war, for example, would be certainly Full Protection worthy on any other BLP. To follow along, use this link, and keep clicking "newer 34". It's the same link I worked from on the reply to Jossi above. I'm going to break each hour down into half hours as well to try to make it as plain as possible. Note that the editors who were working on Sarah Palin when this happened without the support of administrators also had to monitor and deal with the Talk page of the article (talk page tracking with this URL), which also figures in, plus multiple ongoing WP:AN and WP:ANI threads.


 * Total article edits in 3.5 hours: 172, or 0.82/minute.
 * Total talk page edits in 3.5 hours: 171, or 0.81/minute.
 * Overall total edits to track for the 3.5 hours: 343, or 1.63/minute.
 * In contrast, our Featured Article that day, Pendle witch trials, had 34 article edits total in the same 3.5 hours, or 0.16/minute.
 * In contrast, here are the edits from our entire major Administrative noticeboard system for the same time period: WP:AN had 28 edits; WP:ANI had 22 edits; WP:AE had 2 edits; WP:BLPN had 2 edits; WP:COIN had 2 edits; WP:CCN had 0 edits; WP:FICTN had 0 edits; WP:FTN had 0 edits; WP:NORN had 5 edits; WP:RSN had 4 edits; WP:AN3 had 3 edits; WP:AIV had 90 edits, including bot edits to remove resolved issues.
 * This was a total of 158 edit for all of our core noticeboards. Sarah Palin's article alone outdid all of that by 1.08:1, and her talk together outdid all of our major noticeboards combined by 2.17 to 1. Given this volume, edit warring especially, BLP violations (some argue disputed BLP), protection was wholly warranted and it's removal was disruptive, if not a BLP violation itself.

13:01 to 14:00

 * Total article edits: 51
 * Edits from 13:01 to 13:30: 21, or 0.70/minute.
 * Edits from 13:31 to 14:00: 31, or 1.03/minute. We had seconds here to analyze edits and see what was changed, editors without the fastest broadband would be stuck here in "Edit Conflict Hell".


 * Total talk page edits: 48
 * Talk page
 * Edits from 13:01 to 13:30: 32, or 1.06/minute.
 * Edits from 13:31 to 14:00: 16, or 0.53/minute.


 * Total overall edits to monitor and track: 99, or 1.65/minute.

14:01 to 15:00

 * Total article edits: 49
 * Edits from 14:01 to 14:30: 28, 0.93/minute. "EC Hell"
 * Edits from 14:31 to 15:00: 21, or 0.70/minute.


 * Total talk page edits: 40
 * Talk page
 * Edits from 14:01 to 14:30: 21, or 0.70/minute.
 * Edits from 14:31 to 15:00: 19, 0.63/minute.


 * Total overall edits to monitor and track: 89, or 1.48/minute.

15:01 to 16:00

 * Total article edits: 41
 * Edits from 15:01 to 15:30: 11, 0.36/minute.
 * Edits from 15:31 to 16:00: 30, or 1.00/minute. "EC Hell"


 * Total talk page edits: 53
 * Talk page
 * Edits from 15:01 to 15:30: 24
 * Edits from 15:31 to 16:00: 29


 * Total overall edits to monitor and track: 94, or 1.56/minute.

16:01 to 16:31

 * Total article edits: 31, or 1.03/minute. "EC Hell"
 * Total talk page edits: 30, or 1.00/minute. "EC Hell"
 * Talk page
 * Edits from 16:01 to 16:31: 30, or 1.00/minute. "EC Hell"


 * Total overall edits to monitor and track: 61, or a final half-hour peak of 2.03 per minute.

Conclusion

 * Article protection by Keeper76, at 16:31.

Over the 90 minutes preceding the block, tied into Kelly literally having to go beg on WP:AN for administrator support, the volume of edits overall had continued to surge and rise to the point where no regular editor, without a Free Pass versus edit conflicts, the ability to read an article with it's associated edits, the talk page with it's associated edits, multiple concurrent threads at WP:AN and WP:ANI, and without the ability to actually parse all of that could keep up. This was a classic example of how the traditional ways of doing things are not designed to properly scale. From at least 15:30 or so onwards there was simply no way between the article, talk page, and admin noticeboards for anyone to have any real clue what was happening before. Add in the fact that there is flat-out edit warring scattered through this and thousands of outside viewers watching our war per minute...

The article should have stayed locked down for at a dead minimum for everyone to catch their breath per the overwhelming consensus that supported it. I know Jossi has repeatedly stated incorrectly there was no consensus, but has not yet as of this writing explained how even in the simplest terms a 24:1 margin of opinion against him isn't consensus, especially when virtually all of the 24 are admins or senior users. rootology ( C )( T ) 15:03, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

There was edit warring on Sarah Palin that alone warranted protection
(Anyone can edit this section to add evidence of edit warring--for contrary positions please use your own section, thanks)

(in progress)

BLP aside, there was a full blown edit war that in and of itself absolutely warranted protection. This is hard to track down since not everyone blindly hit the Undo button but kept manually removing and re-adding material, often under BLP grounds. Guide link to pull stuff from: here. See also Mbisanz's analysis of the same here. Thanks to GRBerry for helping to flesh out my initial raw list. As of my signing this, we've detailed approximately (some will argue some of these, I'm sure) 56 reverts in 220 minutes. If that's not an edit war, please give me a seat on the Arbcom. rootology ( C )( T ) 21:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * 12:50: Revert
 * 12:52: Revert (12:50 revert was prior)
 * 13:09: Revert (12:58 was prior)
 * 13:10: Revert (12:51 was prior)
 * 13:18: Revert
 * 13:24: Revert (13:18 revert was prior)
 * 13:35: Revert (13:34 was prior)
 * 13:41: Revert (13:35 was prior, not the 13:35 in this list)
 * 13:42: Revert (13:24 revert was prior, 13:18 revert was before that)
 * 13:43: Revert (13:21 and an earlier were priors on one paragraph, 13:25 on another, but intervening edits to eliminate triplication of residual content may have made the current edit hard to recognize as a revert at the time it was made )
 * 13:45: Revert (13:43 revert was prior)
 * 13:49: Revert
 * 13:49: Revert
 * 13:54: Revert (13:41 was prior revert)
 * 13:59: Revert (13:56 was prior, also undid intervening changes to section)
 * 14:10: Revert/Huggle (14:09 was prior, current edit summary is incorrect because the material actually was duplicated as part of the triplication discussed above at 13:43 )
 * 14:16: Revert
 * 14:18: Revert (of one of the intervening edits mentioned in the discussion of the 13:43 revert)
 * 14:21: Revert (13:54 was prior revert of 13:41 revert, now more justifiable than at 13:41 given a 14:02 edit )
 * 14:21: Revert (14:16 revert is prior)
 * 14:23: Revert (13:56 is prior)
 * 14:24: Revert (14:18 revert is prior)
 * 14:28: Revert (14:21 revert of 14:16 revert is prior)
 * 14:32: Self-revert of 14:10 revert
 * 14:34: Revert (14:28 is prior, but this edit eliminated all content from the section except the part being revert warred over)
 * 14:36: Revert (14:35 is prior)
 * 14:36: Revert (of 14:34 revert of 14:28 revert of 14:21 revert of ... is prior)
 * 14:46: Revert (14:40 is prior)
 * 14:52: Revert/Undo (14:47 is prior)
 * 14:54: Revert/Undo (14:36 revert of 14:35 edit is prior)
 * 14:55: Revert (14:24 revert of 14:18 revert is prior)
 * 15:00: Revert/Undo (14:54 revert of 14:36 revert of 14:35 edit is prior)
 * 15:26: Revert
 * 15:37: Revert (14:55 revert of 14:24 revert of 14:18 revert is prior)
 * 15:38: Revert
 * 15:43: Revert (15:37 revert of 14:55 revert of 14:24 revert of ... is prior)
 * 15:44: Revert (15:42 is prior)
 * 15:44: Revert (15:38 ?revert? is prior)
 * 15:47: Revert (15:44 revert of 15:42 edit is prior)
 * 15:49: Revert (15:47 revert of 15:44 revert of 15:42 edit is prior)
 * 15:52: Revert (15:44 revert of 15:38 ?revert? is prior)
 * 15:59: Revert (13:42 revert of 13:24 revert of 13:18 revert is prior)
 * 15:59: Revert (15:49 revert of 15:47 revert of 15:44 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:01: Revert (15:52 revert of 15:44 revert of 15:38 ?revert? is prior)
 * 16:02: Revert (16:01 revert of 15:52 revert of 15:44 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:05: Revert (15:59 revert of 15:49 revert of 15:47 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:08: Revert (15:59 revert of 13:42 revert of 13:24 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:10: Revert
 * 16:12: Revert (16:08 revert of 15:59 revert of 13:42 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:13: Revert (16:05 revert of 15:59 revert of 15:49 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:14: Revert (16:12 revert of 16:08 revert of 15:59 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:15: Revert (16:13 revert of 16:05 revert of 15:59 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:17: Revert (16:14 revert of 16:12 revert of 16:08 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:18: Revert/Undo (16:18 edit is prior)
 * 16:20: Revert/Undo (16:17 revert of 16:14 revert of 16:12 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:25: Revert (16:20 revert of 16:17 revert of 16:14 revert of ... is prior)
 * 16:31: Protection by Keeper76

Evidence presented by D.M.N.
I don't have much time to write a lot now, but a related article, Political positions of Sarah Palin has also been fully-protected, see the log. This protection is being discussed at AN here. D.M.N. (talk) 21:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

User:jossi has ignored consensus in favor of a mistaken view of WP:IAR
As stated above by User:Rootology, the vast consensus of the AN discussion was to at least temporarily full protect the article on Sarah Palin due to massive amounts of edit-warring, vandalism and BLP Violations, at a time when the article was quite possibly one of the most frequently viewed page. jossi clearly stated that he would not abide by such consensus, claiming WP:IAR. '''This is ridiculous. A current event page as trafficked as it is should not be protected. This is one of the times in which I will WP:IAR and unprotect again'''

User:jossi has refused to disengage on related articles
The article Political positions of Sarah Palin was recently full-protected, as many of the POV-pushers simply moved to that article to try to influence the main article by proxy. jossi, despite already being engaged in the events that lead to this ArbCom case, continued to battle editors, including user:Kelly on that article

Lack of ability to determine consensus, or need to lift/diminish protection
As evidenced by the following, the sysops who acted to lift or diminish article protection would not have been aware of either the consensus nor the scale of the problem (except in one instance).

Logs

Article edit history @ 500 per page Article talkpage edit history @ 500 per page

Breakdown of activity on article page and talkpage 1 hour prior to placement of protection, and activity logs of sysops who subsequently changed protection status.

29 August 2008


 * 2008-08-29 16:17:41 unprotected (initial semi by Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry at 2008-08-29 13:26:53) count of article edits in hour preceding protection = 48.

Number of edits by MZMcBride to above = 0 Number of edits by MZMcBride to WP in hour before protection = 0 (previous edit = 06:15)

Number of edits by Ragesoss to above = 0 Number of edits by Ragesoss to WP in hour before protection = 0 (previous edit = 00:36)
 * 2008-08-29 18:51:05 unprotected

04 September 2008


 * 2008-09-04 12:33:01 downgraded to semi, two entries (initial full prot by Keeper76 at 2008-09-03 23:28:01) count of article edits in hour preceding protection = 58. count of talkpage edits in hour preceding protection = 49. (total edits to both pages in 1 hour = 107)

Number of edits by Jossi to above = 0 Number of edits by Jossi to WP in hour before protection = 5 (all unrelated)


 * 2008-09-04 14:13:06 Jossi downgraded to semi, two entries

Number of edits by Jossi to article/talkpage/related since downgrading protection previously = 8 Number of edits by Jossi to WP since downgrading protection previously (otherwise unrelated) = 0


 * 2008-09-04 17:21:08 MZMcBride downgraded to semi

Number of edits by MZMcBride to article/talkpage/related since Jossi downgraded protection = 0 Number of edits by MZMcBride to WP since Jossi downgraded protection previously (otherwise unrelated) = 0

It would appear that (until Jossi repeated the downgrading of protection at 14:13 on 04 Sept 08) no sysop who acted against the consensus was active on the encyclopedia. At the time of their lifting or diminishing protection, the editors concerned indicated that article space should remain unprotected and any vandalism could be quickly resolved by editors, and the bad faith accounts warned and then blocked by the supposed many editors now looking after the article. However, the same editors expressing such faith had not been previously involved in reviewing edits at a rate of 5 edits every 6 minutes, resolving which were good faith and to be kept, which were good faith but to be removed, and which were bad faith and to be removed, the editor warned and blocked/reported to AIV/ANI. At a rate of an edit in just over every 1 minute, this difficult to maintain and consensus grew for the protection of the article. There is no evidence that the admins concerned were even aware of that consensus. Although hectic on 29 August, by 4 September 2008 there were a combined total of 107 edits to the Sarah Palin article and talkpages in the hour immediately before protection (this would not, it should be noted, catch any edit that failed by reason of edit conflict/duplicaton/exhaustion). Other than their own edits, contributors maintaining the pages were needing to review an edit on average every 40 seconds and determine whether it was bad faith or good faith, and whether the good faith edits were suitable for the relevant page. They were also expected - from the comments given both at the time and subsequently by the sysops mentioned - to warn, report and block as appropriate those bad faith editors. It is unlikely that this would have been possible and still maintain the integrity of the Sarah Palin pages. It is noted that Jossi participated on various talkpages between his initial reduction of protection and him re-instating it, although he does not appear to have been convinced by the argument that consensus was apparent for the article to be fully protected.

I suggest that in each case the admins who lifted or reduced the protection on the Sarah Palin article failed in their responsibility to properly determine whether there was either a need or a consensus for the placing of protection. Nor were they aware of the stresses and pressure in dealing with the edits to the article, and latterly the article talkpage, in the time immediately prior to the initial article protections, not having contributed to those areas. They, in my opinion and indicated by the evidence above, acted high handedly in delivering platitudes and quoting WP principles without any indication of appreciation of the hard work, dedication and stressful conditions that those they were speaking to had been experiencing. I suggest that, in these instances, they failed to act in accordance with their positions.

{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.

Evidence presented by Jossi

 * I added Sarah Palin to my watchlist as news broke about her nomination
 * The page was semi-protected until election day by User:Cool Hand Luke on August 30
 * The page was fully protected on September 3 at 23:08 by User:Keeper76 Diff for 5 days
 * I found the page protected on Sept 4 12:23 and unprotected it Dif on the rationale that a current event page should not be protected, the few hours the article was protected was sufficient, and it was no longer necessary.
 * I saw no evidence of major BLP violations, and I am active at WP:BLP/N. Granted, there was a flurry of edits, between User:Kelly, User:Pulsifer, User:J.R. Hercules, User:Rei, User:ThaddeusB, and others. Blatant vandalism and BLP violations were being deleted, other edits were claimed to be BLP violations but were not such, and all other type of edits in an article such as this. Some of these editors were asking for page protection on the basis of their assessment that there were "POV pushers" disrupting the article, when actually it was a dispute between them and others with which they disagreed.
 * Page was protected again by [ at 13:52
 * I asserted IAR and unprotected again at 14:12
 * The page was fully-protected again by at 15:02, September 4, 2008 by invoking WP:BLPBAN ( Look forward to  evidence to be presented by MBisanz in support of an application of BLPBAN)
 * The page was downgraded to semi again by 17:21, September 4, 2008
 * The page was fully protected again by, 9 minute later at 17:30
 * WillyD blocked MZMcBride at 17:31, a block that was lifted by at 17:58
 * A discussion at AE, that started before this ArbCm case was filed, shows that there is no consensus for full protection of this article.
 * Despite claims of BLP violations, as far as I can see, there were no warnings or blocks issued to editors involved in these purported violations

I have no regrets in having applied IAR in this case see below (the first time I have ever done this, check my logs). A high traffiic article such as this should be kept editable, and there were no BLP violations as per comments made by User:Celarnor, User:Krimpet, Doc Glasgow, and others. Prior restraint is not a path that should be mimicked in WP, on the very contrary.

Until this arbCom case is closed, I will refrain from applying admin actions in any and all articles related to US politics. I may comment here from time to time as evidence is presented. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Further developments
This may be applicable in the context of this case - edits made to the protected page by administrators (outside of editprotect process)
 * Administrators'_noticeboard
 * Massive edit and removal of sourced material to protected page by
 * Adding material to protected page by

Hindsight is 20/20
I have been reflecting on this incident, and my conclusion is that regardless of my intention in invoking IAR, which was to allow the editing to continue, it actually did the opposite: four other admins after me reverted each other, drama ensued, and as of today the article is still protected (no admin willing to touch it now, not while this arbCom case is proceeding...)

So I can see that regardless of the question if I was right or wrong in invoking IAR, the result was obvious: it simply did not work. Given similar circumstances, would I do this again? Of course not, if I want to stay true to the reason why I did invoke IAR in the first place. I will need to find another way if such circumstances ever arise again ... maybe time to re-read SoftSecurity vs HardSecurity -- (quote: When SoftSecurity becomes unilaterally enforced, it fails. )

So, lesson learned: you may feel right, and even be right, but the result of your actions will not always be the ones you expect. I may need to add a new law to Raul's list: "The law of unintended negative consequences"... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

@ Sir Fozzie
This is an evidence page, so rather than make assessments, present data. So, if you are asserting I was "battling" User:Kelly, Present diffs, please. (If battling an editor means providing sources, discussing in talk, warning a user of an imminent 3RR violation, and attempting to implement suggested compromises as discussed in talk, then I am guilty as charged). ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 00:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

@ MBisanz
Also, given that I believed the article was being viewed at a rate of 300 page views per minutes (actually closed to 500), in the minute or so it would take me to review each edit and check the source, several hundred people would see an incorrect version.

Diffs for BLP violations that are being claimed right and left (no pun intended), please? Or is this evidence page a forum for publishing our perceptions and self-serving narratives about how we saved readers from reading an incorrect version? Bring evidence to the evidence page, and leave your assessment of your own actions to be based on facts, not on your ideas of what these facts may have been. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * You need to do better than that to assert these diffs as BLP violations, MBisanz. Also note that the editors that made these edits:, , and are not newbies. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:19, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

@ rootology
Thanks for these few diffs. Clearly not the kind of material that cannot be dealt with easily by involved editors monitoring that article, and certainly not the kind of material that warrants full-protection of an article about which there are numerous and substantial material being uncovered and widely reported by the mainstream press. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Editing through protection
Post-wheelwar non-consensual editing through protection for consideration:

User:Tone adds tag (in the middle of a section, no less). Prose v. list discussion ongoing on talk page without "stick a template on there" conclusion. (Diffs on request).

User:Bogdangiusca makes an edit apparently based on his own judgement/OR.

(TimVickers blank edit, summary informing of intention to block the next admin to edit without consensus)

User:jossi changes the protection note from banner to padlock, explicitly against talk page consensus. When challenged, cites belief that present protection is nonconsensual & and user:newyorkbrad's forgetting that when actin outside of his arb role, admins are not his winged monkeys "non-arb" RFARB request that it be modified. (Diffs on request)

User:Moreschi turns list-y section to prose re-write ignoring talk page efforts. Presents edit for discussion on talk where it can perhaps be said to achieve rough consensus as a fait accompli. Soon after, article assertion that "Palin is known for her ... support for the minimal state and economic opportunity of classical libertarianism", introduced in moreschi edit, is found problematic and removed by edit request. (Diffs on request)

User:Bogdangiusca against consensus. Position on talk page is that "It's pointless to propose anything as long as the Republicans have their little dwarves around here to vote in mass against". This in a section where an unsupported proposal has attracted three objections, making it a personal attack. 

Since desysopping is such an inexplicably big deal around here, clearly the feeling is that one can sneak a few edits in and get away with it. I would have thought that a simple respect for their fellow editors would bring them to the talk page seeking consensus, but no.

Rationale for special sanctions
Questions have been raised as to why I invoked the special sanctions for BLPs when protecting the Sarah Palin article. Upon seeing yet another thread, several days after the initial thread, and following Jossi's second unprotection of the article, I decided to review the edits being made to the article. In the half hour following the 2nd unprotection, I saw continued edit warring, insertion of poorly sourced materials, and other BLP violations being committed. Given that this occurred during a period of increased vigilance, and the standard methods of reverting and warning users were still not preventing continued damage, I began to evaluate what would be appropriate action. Seeing that regular protection was having no effect as Jossi was willing to completely ignore wheel warring policy to keep the article semi-protected, I decided to review my options under the so called "nuclear" BLP special sanctions policy. In particular, I was amazed that despite continuous semi-protection and full protection for several days, the edit rate of the article by newly-auto confirmed users was still at a level near impossible for a human to review in real time. Since Arbcom had explicitly said
 * "Administrators are authorized to use any and all means at their disposal to ensure that every Wikipedia article is in full compliance with the letter and spirit of the biographies of living persons policy."

I felt that any options were on the table to ensure compliance with the BLP policy on the Sarah Palin article.


 * I could delete the article to prevent a version with BLP violations from being shown publicly, but I knew several hundred thousand people per day were viewing the article, and that there existed acceptable versions of it, free from poorly sourced and unsourced statements.


 * I could begin 4-im warning every person who inserted a BLP violating section in the article, and then blocking them. But given that most of the insertions were by newly-auto confirmed accounts, I would be biting a large number of new editors who had probably never heard of NPOV, RS, or BLP.  Also, given that I believed the article was being viewed at a rate of 300 page views per minutes (actually closed to 500), in the minute or so it would take me to review each edit and check the source, several hundred people would see an incorrect version.  Since the point of blocks are to prevent damage, blocking after so many hundred people had seen a version would be counter productive.


 * I could full protect the article. This ran the risk of people not being happy that they could not edit the article, but would keep newbie editors from being blocked, the subject's BLP rights from being violated, and the reader community's ability to learn about a topic intact.


 * I also could have given a final talk page warning that further BLP violations would result in some sort of sanction, but given that the warning template for such behavior had been deleted BLP Spec Notice in July by MZMcBride as "G6" (housekeeping) and that the vast majority of the drive-by insertions was not coming from people talking on the talk page, I did not see that as an effective means to ensure immediate compliance with the BLP policy.

So, I proceeded to full protect the article, citing the special sanctions in the edit summary, I applied the standard notice template to the article talk page, I noted it in the special enforcement log , and I noted it at AN where there appeared to be at least a consensus that we were failing in our efforts to maintain the BLP. About an hour and half later, I remembered that we had the new edit notice feature, and to help reduce the risk of an uninvolved sysop wandering upon the article and accidentally violating the protection policy, I also added an edit notice warning. When a discussion at AE was commenced, I participated fully, explaining my actions and working a large number of editors to find ways to ensure the period of full protection was minimized, while preventing further violation of the BLP policy.

I felt, and feel that I was acting in the best interests of the Wikipedia community, particularly referring to the Arbcom admonition:


 * "...In cases where the appropriateness of material regarding a living person is questioned, the rule of thumb should be "do no harm." This means, among other things, that such material should be removed until a decision to include it is reached, rather than being included until a decision to remove it is reached." and


 * Administrators may use the page protection and deletion tools as they believe to be reasonably necessary to effect compliance.

As out BLP policy points out about well known, public figures, If it is not documented by reliable third-party sources, leave it out. There is no exception that just because a person is famous, or well known, or has accepted a public lifestyle, that they are due any less care in our application of the BLP policy.

@Jossi, as our BLP policy and Jimbo have said 'We must get the article right.' Following your second unprotection, I cite  (in the article 4 minutes),  (1 minute),  (3 minutes),  (3 minutes),  (4 minutes),  (2 minutes). So for the 47 minutes the article was semi-protected, there were 6 BLP-problematic insertions (all were reverted by established editors) lasting 17 minutes, which is nearly 1/3 of the time semi-protected and is equal to an average of 8,500 page views delivered. Also, pointing up, Requests_for_arbitration/Sarah_Palin_protection_wheel_war/Evidence presents similar evidence in a much easier to read format.

Involved status
The Administrator policy states that:


 * Administrators should not use their tools to advantage, or in a content dispute (or article) where they are a party (or significant editor), or where a significant conflict of interest is likely to exist. With few specific exceptions where tool use is allowed by any admin, administrators should ensure they are reasonably neutral parties when they use the tools.

The following summarizes the involved status of the named parties.


 * had never edited the article or talk page of the article prior to using administrative tools to full protect it.


 * had edited the talk page to endorse full protection if problematic edits resumed and to fix a reference broken during the protection confusion, per a talk page request.


 * had edited the talk page once to disagree with semi-protecting the article, and later to remove semi-protection from the article, and then to remove full protection (to semi-protection) from the article.


 * has edited the primary Sarah Palin article and the related Political positions of Sarah Palin and Alaska Public Safety Commissioner dismissal articles numerous times before and after protection warring, including substantial content edits prior to the protection war, such as, , ,  , ,.

Still protected?
Following the initial two week protection, I was actively engaged in discussion with the intent of substantially decreasing the time the article would remain full protected, ,. Had I not become an involved party to this RFAR, and therefore an involved and disqualified administrator to the topic, I would have likely semi-protected the article late Saturday or Sunday EST. Of course, this is all academic hindsight.
 * Following a discussion at AE, a clear consensus was reached to reduce the time for protection from 336 to 104 hours and was implemented by.

Additional evidence
Pending pre-clearance.
 * Update: I do have further evidence to present, primarily a summation of an event that occurred at an unrelated forum I participate in, but I am waiting for permission from the proprietor of that forum before posting the summation. Pre-clearance granted.

Based on all facts available to me, I assert with a categorical degree of certainty, the veracity of the following statements (in camera evidence has been provided to the Arbitration Committee to this end).


 * MZMcBride held the explicit intent that his unprotection should be viewed as a wheel war.
 * MZMcBride was aware of the in-progress discussion at AE and that special BLP sanctions had been invoked.
 * MZMcBride understood the probable consequence of his action would be the immediate filing of an RFAR.
 * Following the establishment of the above, MZMcBride unprotected the article.

Evidence per NYB and Thebainer's request
I based my protection primarily off of the edit activity that occurred subsequent to Jossi's second unprotection, taking into account the already voluminous noticeboard threads and the prior protections as mitigating factors that indicated our regular processes of vigorous editing, blocking policy violators, and seeking to adhere to the BLP policy, were not working.

Below are the specific edit sequences that led me to believe simple blocking and reverting was insufficient to maintain an article free of BLP-problems.


 * , ,
 * ,
 * ,, ,
 * ,, , (last edit subsequent to protection)

Looking before Fritzpoll's reprotection, I see the following problematic edits:
 * (edit sum " summarize abortion (WP:BRD...)" is not a good BLP edit)
 * (removing a BLP violation)
 * ,, , (repeated insertion of section challenged on BLP grounds)
 * (potentially controversial fact sourced to the National Enquirer)

Involved statistics

 * Of the 7,237 edits to the Sarah Palin article, through 17:30UTC Sept 16, 2008, the following is a breakdown of the top ten contributors, administrative parties to this RFAR are bolded:


 * Of the 1,228 edits to the Political positions of Sarah Palin article, through 17:30UTC Sept 16, 2008, the following is a breakdown of the top ten contributors, administrative parties to this RFAR are bolded:

Wheel Warring
Looking at the protection log for Sarah Palin there are a very large number of actions by a large number of respected, longtime contributors. However, only two people appear more than once in the log who also appear during the wheel war in question (note NawlinWiki appears twice but before this incident). Jossi and MZMcBride.

Seeing as the entire basis for Jossi's second unprotect was in his own words "This is one of the times in which I will WP:IAR and unprotect again.", it appears clear that he knew he was redoing an action. The wording of our wheel warring policy is explicit.

'''Do not repeat an administrative action when you know that another administrator opposes it. Do not continue a chain of administrative reversals without discussion.'''

and given that Jossi was possibly an involved content editor, his repeated unprotections, citing WP:IAR, when the Admin Exceptional_circumstances policy clearly says "An administrator should not claim emergency unless there is a reasonable belief of a present and very serious emergency (ie, reasonable possibility of actual, imminent, serious harm to the project or a user if not acted upon with admin tools)," is egregiously unacceptable. His continued defense of these actions in his RfAR evidence "I have no regrets in having applied IAR" leads me to believe he will continue to do such actions in the future. His statement on his talk page that he still feels he's right reinforces that belief, towit: "But to ask me to sit still and allow a procedural mistake of massive proportions such as invoking the Footnote arbCom ruling to protect that page, will not do".

Addressing the second individual to perform multiple unprotections, MZMcBride, the situation is less clear. While I was not on IRC when the comments MBisanz and Ryan Postlethwaite cite were made, it seems that MZMcBride declared an intent to violate the wheel warring policy, knowing full well that an onwiki conversation was in progress and that discretionary arbcom sanctions had been applied to the article, and still went forward with the unprotection. Further, I can find nowhere onwiki where discussed the unprotection, either before or immediately after unprotecting. His comments on both protections was "This is a wiki", which ignores the entire reason we have a protection policy. Given that MZMcBride was blocked in June of this year for refusing to discuss an automated deletion script, this may indicate a worrying trend of refusal to engage in discussions over his admin actions. Regardless, the wheel warring in and of itself is unacceptable conduct from an administrator.

MZMcBride's second unprotect was clear wheel-warring. Jossi also wheel-warred by twice reinstating edit=autoconfirmed against consensus to the contrary.

Looking at the other individuals named in this case, it does not appear that WilyD or MBisanz wheel warred under the commonly accepted definition of redoing the undo of one of their actions or that they operated outside of the consensus or BLP policies. Possibly WilyD was too quick to block MZMcBride and MBisanz may have wanted to consider a short sanction period, but I would say their actions were well within the best aims of the project and were done in good faith.

I was not a proponent of either full protection or semi-protection

 * I endorse Jossi's first unprotection; to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time I'd ever edited her biography (is there a good tool for this?) Certainly I find nothing to well before the start of July
 * I endorse Fritzpol's reprotection, indicating that I was kind of opposed to it, but I'll endorse it for the sake of not protection warring.\
 * When I indicated I'd hand out blocks to admins who continued to war over protection, I consul dialogue, then action. I remain open to semi-protection once a consensus exists. And the same, the same, and again.

Blocking for wheel wars was consistant with WP:WHEEL

 * At the time I blocked MZMcBride, WP:WHEEL stated "Sanctions for wheel warring have varied from reprimands and cautions, to temporary blocks, to desysopping, even for first time incidents." Thus my actions were consistant with WP:WHEEL, though maybe not mandated by it.  In any event, when I warned that I would block anyone who continued to war over the protection, it was received uniformly well.  Warn, warn I get dittoed on the warning After MZMcBride's action, Oren0 asks "Where's the promised block already?"  Historically it's a usual penalty for disruption in general, and I cannot fathom any argument that the protection war was not disruptive.

Evidence presented by Physchim62
A little bit of background…

MZMcBride has repeatedly unprotected pages with minimal explanation

 * Protection log MZMcBride has unprotected over 500 pages in the last month with the identical reason "This is a wiki". The rate of unprotection, which gets up to six pages a minute at certain points, does not suggest a great deal of prior research before taking the decision to unprotect.

Jossi has not obviously misused protection tools prior to this dispute

 * Protection log Jossi's protection log is much shorter, and gives reasons for each action (both protects and unprotects) which prima facie fall within WP:PROTECT.

Short term full protection has been used in the past in similar situations
In response to the admin summaries "This is a wiki" (MZMcBride), "High traffic articles should not be proteded" and "There are times in which IAR is a necessity. This is a highly trafficked page AND a current event." (Jossi), it is instructive to look at the situation on similar pages:
 * U.S. (vice-)presidential candidates
 * Barack Obama full-protected for 26 hours August 10–12, 2007 (by Jossi); for one week March 7–14, 2008; for one week March 26 – April 3, 2008; for two hours April 5–6, 2008; for 27 hours June 7–8, 2008 (unprotection by MZMcBride with the summary "This is a wiki"), for seven hours June 16–17, 2008; for one hour June 25, 2008.
 * John McCain no full protection to date
 * United States presidential election, 2008 full-protected for 15 hours January 31, 2008.
 * Joe Biden no full protection to date
 * Other politicians
 * Gordon Brown Full-protected for eleven hours June 26–27, 2007 (while waiting for him to officially become Prime Minister)
 * Stephen Harper full-protected for one week November 2–9, 2007; for 22 days March 9–30, 2008
 * Kevin Rudd full-protected for nine hours October 24, 2007

Childish Behavior
It is unfortunate this document was fully protected in the first place. I am sure by now everyone realizes it should not have been and from what I understand this action is against the spirit of Wikipedia. At this stage I would strongly suggest the article be set back to Semi protect just like every other political figure on Wikipedia. Everyone should stop acting like children. As a new user on Wikipedia I would hope all the admins can grow up, unlock the article, shake hands and kiss and make up. Sitedown (talk) 02:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Traffic and attention to Sarah Palin was very high
The following is a summary of the traffic to Sarah Palin during the days before, during, and immediately after the events leading to this dispute. Calculations done according to UTC time.

For every day from August 29th to September 6th, Sarah Palin was the most visited article on Wikipedia.

During September 1st to 6th, the next five most trafficed articles showed the following pattern:

Visual summary of protection log
The following is a visual summary of the protection log. For brevity, I have ignored move protection acts.

white = unprotected, yellow = semi-protected, red = full-protected

{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.

Jossi had previous exhibited carelessness/poor judgment
I am not 100% sure this is relevant to the issue at hand, but I thought the community should be made ware of it. At 01:03, August 30, 2008 Jossi proposed that the Political Positions of Sarah Palin (PP article) be merged back into Sarah Palin (SP article). After some discussion which showed a clear consensus against the merger Jossi decided to change the PP article into a redirect. This was done against consensus and despite the fact that the main article had been summarized in the interim. He apparently did not read the main article before making this decision and left the link to the sub-article in the main article thus potentially causing unnecessary confusion.( please note the lack of edits to the SP article corresponding to the 16:35, August 30, 2008 change of PP article into redirect) The change denied users access to the content for approximately two hours before I reverted the change and left a message on Jossi's talk page asking why he made the change against consensus. He replied that "It is duplicated info" and proceeded to again request the merger, thus indicating he still had not read the article.. He then reverted his request 5 minutes later, indicating that he had finally read the article and realized that a summary had indeed been written.

Overall, I think this incident shows a pattern of hasty judgment and a tendency to assume he knows better than anyone else. A pattern which was later repeated in the wheel war.

Jossi apparently continues to disrupt the Sarah Palin article
I am very concerned that some of Jossi's recent edits at the Sarah Palin article appear to be disruptive. This edit by Jossi inserted a section that has been the subject of revert-warring for the past 24 hours, and is highly contentious. There is currently a "poll" being conducted about it here. As you can see from the poll, there is no consensus to include this material in this article. Since this is a BLP, "The burden of proof is on those who wish to retain, restore, or undelete disputed material".

It therefore appears that the events of the Palin wheel war were not an anomaly. All of the material that Jossi has revert-warred back into the article is already in the sub-article on Political positions of Sarah Palin. Therefore, according to WP:Summary style, it's our job to summarize that sub-article material in the appropriate section of the main article, rather than creating whole new sections that repeat everything verbatim from the sub-article.

Also, much of the material Jossi has revert-warred back into the article was already in the article, including stuff about creationism, which now appears twice. I wish Jossi would work within Wikipedia guidelines and policies. Thanks.Ferrylodge (talk) 02:05, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: shutting down the discussion that he wishes to disregard, by removing tag.Ferrylodge (talk) 04:10, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Evidence presented by {your user name}
before using the last evidence template, please make a copy for the next person

{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.

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