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

__NOINDEX__ This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. The Arbitrators, parties to the case, and other editors may draft proposals and post them to this page for review and comments. Proposals may include proposed general principles, findings of fact, remedies, and enforcement provisions&mdash;the same format as is used in Arbitration Committee decisions. The bottom of the page may be used for overall analysis of the /Evidence and for general discussion of the case.

Any user may edit this workshop page. Please sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they believe should be part of the final decision on the /Proposed decision page, which only Arbitrators and clerks may edit, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.

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Sarah Palin protected edits
1) Given the extremely contentious and hostile nature of the conflicts, no admin is authorized to make edits to Sarah Palin without an request on Talk:Sarah Palin while the article is Fully protected, to avoid disruption and ill will. Any admin edit not pre-authorized on the talk page by clear consensus may be freely reverted by any uninvolved admuin. Admins failing to observe this (a notification will be placed on the talk page) may be subject to sanction.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


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 * Please, it's just getting absurd now. Daily or more we've got admins now making changes to the fully protected article in spite of this case being open. There's not really any other way to get everyone to calm down besides telling everyone by force to stay hands off that I can see. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To be fair, some of the edits in the history are in response to talk page requests. D.M.N. (talk) 16:48, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but at the same there are enough that are just coming out of the blue that it's clearly upsetting a lot of editors needlessly and provacatively. If an article is protected, there's no reason it can't sit idle until such time as there's consensus to unprotect it, if people are this riled up. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. I do believe the article needs to be temporarily fully protected, and I do also think that both minor and significant changes can and should be discussed and, upon reaching a consensus for inclusion, be implemented.  But making significant edits without discussion, let alone consensus needs to stop or be stopped.    user:j    (aka justen)   16:52, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Request rejection. Abuses of admin privileges should be handled by normal dispute resolution procedures in the first instance; ArbCom should be the last resort, and this sort of "injunction" should be the last resort of the last resort. If tempers are so heated that admins cannot contain themselves, then maybe a few temporary suspensions are in order, but this committee can apply those themselves without need for a resolution such as this. Physchim62 (talk) 17:01, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a proposal for a temporary injunction regarding nonconsensus protected edits on the wp:blp article of the subject of this arbitration request. I'm not sure how much more direct a nexus one could find.    user:j    (aka justen)   17:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is absurd, the number of edits made to the article is a reason to loosen protection, not make it more difficult to improve it. Mr.Z-man 17:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * @Physchim62: When there has been no shortage of requests for admin eyes on this article, when admins have wheelwarred, when an arbcom case has been opened, and when editing through protection continues regardless, normal dispute resolution = arbcom. 86.44.22.55 (talk) 02:20, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - Unprotection requested by outside party. D.M.N. (talk) 17:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Support - sadly necessary. Kelly  hi! 18:07, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Either it is protected, or not. I'm am extremely unimpressed by all these edits by administrators over the protection. NonvocalScream (talk) 17:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Article should be unprotected as there is no consensus to keep it protected. This aspect is outside of the remit of ArbCom and is being discussed at WP:AE ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That aspect is in the remit of the Arbitration Committee and directly related to this case. Therefore, ArbCom can impose this injunction.  As far as consensus goes, I doubt there is an admin willing to touch it without Arbitration resolution.  Remember, that this is not a content decision on the top, but a conduct decision here.  NonvocalScream (talk) 18:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * ArbCom can impose such injunction, but cannot get involved in a community discussion about restoring the article to its default state, which is anyone can edit it, if no consensus is achieved to keep the protection in place. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would suggest that if such an injunction were imposed it should have a time line attached. I corrected some spelling above NonvocalScream (talk) 20:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You know that articles can be indefinitely protected per precedent, right Jossi? Protection on this one expires in the year 2037. rootology ( C )( T ) 23:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection so far has forced the community to pay more attention to one another. It has forced the community to SLOOOOOW DOWN and not just throw th newest stupidest rumor on the page. It has forced the community to address each issue thoroughly. It's working. Can we please keep it protected longer? --98.243.129.181 (talk) 05:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

There was no discusion or request for arbitration to lock the article so I am confused why we are now even going down this road. The article should be unlocked now. The ammount of effort required to handle all of these conversations and discusions far exceeds the effort to keep an unlocked article up to date. This is pure censorship. It is a sad day in history when wikipedia decides to change the rules of a wiki and only allow a select few to make changes. Sitedown (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that this only makes sense if we exclude uncontroversial edits from this restriction. Someone pointed out grammar and WP:MOS mistakes on the talk page yesterday and I fixed them immediately without waiting for an editprotected request or consensus.  This should obviously be allowable. Oren0 (talk) 19:30, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Admins don't have any special authorization anyways, any edit that requires admin tools must be made with a clear consensus. This is not a special rule for this article, it is the fact of having admin tools for any article. The consensus need not use a specific template, but lacking that consensus any admin should really hesitate to touch any protected article. This is something anyone running for RfA already knows, so I don't think I should need to be explain this to established admins. However looking at the history of Sarah Palin after it was protected seems to prove my confidence was misplaced. Chillum  20:34, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Oren0, MoS, spacing, etc. fixes shouldn't need special consensus. ff m  21:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

BLP protection rescinded
2) Wikipedia is both a wiki and an encyclopedia. As such it is important that articles remain at the lowest level of protection sensible, and wheel warring is unacceptable. Therefore:
 * The special BLP protection of Sarah Palin is immediately cleared.
 * Protection from Sarah Palin is immediately removed.
 * Administrators and users are admonished to Calm down
 * Administrators are reminded that wheel warring is unacceptable.
 * Any administrator that is found wheel warring on Sarah Palin or related articles is subject to being immediately added as a participant to this case.
 * Editors and administrators are to get back to business as usual on Sarah Palin and may block and protect as needed.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Wikipedia being a wiki also means it's not finalised tomorrow. If things take a day, a week or a month to sort out, they'll still be there.  Relaxing is the order of the day. Wily D  10:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think I've now commented on this at Requests_for_arbitration/Sarah_Palin_protection_wheel_war/Evidence and . Not much more I can do at this point.  MBisanz  talk 15:12, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Authored the above to try to get the show back on the road, because the case itself will take forever. Done as a private Wikipedian, if clarification on that point is needed. Recommended used in conjunction with Proposed Temporary injunction 3.--Tznkai (talk) 22:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't quite see why this article needs indefinite full protection. George W. Bush et al. seem to do quite well on semiprotection. But we probably need an Arbcom injunction to lift the protection, given the previous wheelwarring.  Sandstein   15:05, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Administrator reversion restriction
3) Because of the high profile nature of Sarah Palin and the history of acrimonious editing on that article:
 * Administrators are to follow the One revert rule on Sarah Palin. Failure to do so will result in a 4-hour cool down ban from editing on Sarah Palin and related articles.
 * Editors are admonished to also follow the One Revert Rule
 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Recommended to be used with proposed temporary injunction 2.--Tznkai (talk) 23:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support putting all editors on that article on 1RR. Kelly  hi! 23:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I considered that as well, but newbies don't know WP:3RR let alone WP:1RR and we don't want to get bitey. Trying to determine who gets a newbie pass is a pain.--Tznkai (talk) 23:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

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Questions to the parties
I would appreciate it if parties or other knowledgeable users could provide evidence concerning (1) how much more serious the volume and nature of inappropriate edits on Sarah Palin on September 4 were compared to other articles of a similar nature, and (2) what was the nature of the inappropriate edits, e.g. childish vandalism, malicious attacks, political mischief, unsourced rumors described as true, unsourced rumors described as rumors, false statements, etc. This information can be placed on the /evidence page with a cross reference here.

It would also be appreciated if presentation of evidence could be completed by 1800 on Friday, September 12. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * How big of a time frame are you looking at, prior to the protection/unprotection spree? rootology ( C )( T ) 02:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I hadn't focused on a specific time interval, to be candid, so I guess the answer is "whatever seems relevant and can be analyzed without undue difficulty." What I am getting at, of course, is whether user conduct on Sarah Palin on September 4 was so out of the ordinary as to warrant extraordinary measures ... or whether it was more typical of an ordinary day on a high-profile day on Wikipedia (in which case it would mean either that extraordinary measures were an overreaction, or perhaps it would mean that extraordinary measures should be used much more often, depending on how one looks at it). Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:52, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Most of the 4th it was full protected, as the first full protection occurred on the 3rd, and then all the lowering/putting back to full was on the 4th. The page was only unprotected for 139 minutes on the 4th.  I have 2 of the 3 periods parsed at User:GRBerry/ArbComm PreEvidence.  My analysis done to date does not include evaluating POV, whether or not the edit was supported by any sources used, et. cetera - but it would be a start for further work by others if they want to snag a copy... .  GRBerry 03:18, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The goal is not to get inundated with a blow-by-blow analysis of thousands of individual efforts. I'm trying to get at some form of objective but qualitative understanding of whether things on this article were not as bad as, as bad as, or worse than they have been portrayed, and what the nature of the specific problems was. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:22, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've done the third (9 minute) period now. My experience analyzing the periods is that to 1) load each diff, 2) not look at any sources, 3) come up with a one phrase description of what was done, and 4) note that phrase, the editor, and copy the url for the diff took me roughly one-half the time of each unprotected session.
 * I had similar experience last night with the initial batch of edits subsequent to lowering to semi-protection. Article protection lowered at 20:02 my time, I started reviewing every diff at 20:50 my time, at 22:56 I had caught up to the current diff (98 edits later) and edit conflicted with Dragons flight in attempting to undo a BLP (privacy) violation.  During this period I didn't read the talk page, or look at any related article, or their talk pages, or any of the related AFDs, or any of the related noticeboard threads.  I did draft feedback messages for three editors, all of which I saved when it became clear I had edit conflicted and there was nothing further to review.
 * Actually trying to review every edit and keep track of the talk page is just more than a human can actually achieve - especially if they were also checking whether or not various edits were supported by sources. No human could do it for the times that they are awake and online, much less could they review the history of what happened while they were asleep each night.  And I think at least some of the article problems have stemmed from people who from sheer necessity gave up on trying to figure out what edit and editor put something into the article or took it out and just were doing their utmost to make the article "correct" as they saw "correct".  I should probably draft a finding of fact about this, but since I know NYB's will be used anyway, it isn't urgent.  GRBerry 03:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I just noticed this section. At the evidence page, I placed a discussion of the traffic and activity levels at Sarah Palin.  It doesn't address inappropriate edits directly, but does address the very high edit volume and page traffic it has recieved.  For every day since her announcement as a VP candidate, Sarah Palin has been (and continues to be) Wikipedia's most visited article.  Dragons flight (talk) 03:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I have a separate question. Several editors and admins have various opinions about whether open editing plus warnings and blocks would or did work or not.  Has anyone compiled any evidence about whether warnings and/or blocks were being issued at all?  I haven't seen anything better than the limited discussion at User talk:Kelly/Archives/2008/September GRBerry 20:58, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A partial answer, at least towards my tangential involvement, I know of one editor that was blocked, pre-protection, User:Winger84, for edit-warring over the inclusion of POV and neutrality tags. (I declined the unblock). I believe it was a 31 hour block, no more than 48 hours though. I also warned two other users for "tangential" issues with some of the sister articles/start ups:  User:Elan26 and User:EricDiesel.  Both (to my knowledge) were also attempting to add information to the Palin article itself.   Keeper    76  16:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just noting, as I got a note about this, I have no knowledge of any of this. I applied semi-protection when her VP nomination was announced extending to the election, as is standard in such cases, and have not altered the protection since then, nor made any efforts to monitor the situation. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I've begun a response at Requests_for_arbitration/Sarah_Palin_protection_wheel_war/Evidence and will try to expand it as time permits.  MBisanz  talk 14:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks MBisanz. The evidence you present there shows that the system was working, not that it failed: I see edits adding material sourced to reliable sources such as The Washington Post, other material that was not and that was promptly deleted, and other material that was maybe borderline, but nothing out of the extraordinary that could not have been dealt with warnings, 3RR blocks or similar measures. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * As I and others have shown: 1. The insertions were being made by a large number of individuals, so blocking in and of itself would not have been effective. 2. Given the number of page views of per minute, any BLP violations were likely to have a very magnified impact. Also, that none of the material in any of those edits is currently in the article, indicates that their content was problematic enough that even with the semi-protection of the last 16 hours, no one has found that the material met our standards for insertion.  MBisanz  talk 15:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What BLP violations that were not dealt with promptly? What magnified impact, exactly ?And how do you know if blocking would not have been effective if it was not tried? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've already shown how it contained those problematic statements for 1/3 of the time it was semiprotected, that is an unacceptable time ratio. And to do a proper block following each insertion, one would need to review the edit, compare it to the past edits the individual had made, read the talk page, review the editor's user talk, warn/block the editor.  And to do that in a fair manner the two or three admins reviewing the page at the time, would've needed to review each and every edit made in the same manner.  As other's evidence has indicated that edits were being made at the rate of 2-3 per minute, it would become impossible to keep the article compliant and handle the individuals editing it in an nonconstructive manner.  Also, there is the newbie biting aspect that it appeared from the nature of the edits (such as the link insertion), that the user was new to Wikipedia.  A harsh warning or a block to a new user might drive them away forever.  Hitting a "page protected, go to Talk:" notice is far less likely to have that impact.  MBisanz  talk 15:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I made my point based on the evidence you and rootology have presented, and we can agree to disagree. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okey.  MBisanz  talk 16:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * For the arbs, here's my half hour by half hour break down of volume metrics: see here. Since it's just pure number crunching to show the flow of how the article & talk volume built up to the point of inconceivable, I tried to format it simply. I didn't even realize until I did this that we were looking at 2+ edits per minute by the end overall. rootology ( C )( T ) 15:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No one is disputing that there was a flurry of edits during that period. But where is the evidence of BLP violations and/or disruption? And where is the evidence that these violations were dealt with warnings and blocks before considering protection? Granted some editors were claiming BLP violations right and left, but I have yet to see any evidence that this was the case (hope someone can collect that)... sure, the editing was fast and furious but that is no basis for protection unless there were violations of such a magnitude that would warrant it. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:18, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Again: Here's my initial evidence on BLP and Here's Bisanz's initial evidence. We know you disagree there were BLP violations. Lets see what everyone else thinks. rootology ( C )( T ) 15:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Everybody else? Check BLP/N ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi, thanks. That is a small consensus, but has no authority over other consensus... All the BLP stuff aside (which several people are still tabulating) we've got full evidence here of a full-blown edit war that warranted protection. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Jossi, that discussion was 70-30 hours prior to the events that lead to Keeper76 protecting the article. It was also not attended by any of those who were involved in dealing with the editing of the article and talkpage, possibly because of the effort being expended there. While you were active on Wikipedia in the hour before protection (5 unrelated edits), there is no evidence that you were involved in regard to the Sarah Palin article. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I've added a section on the full-blown edit war that warranted protection, disputed by Jossi BLP issues aside. Note the "note" I put at the top of that section. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Would you be kind enough to add the name of the user(s) doing the reversions to that evidence and check if there were any 3RR violations there? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * On a cursory look over these 180 edits pre-protection, I can see User:Kelly, User:ThaddeusB and User:Pulsifer editwarring and blowing up way beyond 3RR during that time. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * When myself or anyone else has time, yeah. I'm going to get back to it later, but keep in mind that nearly all of these were claimed BLP concerns, which carry the 3RR exemption. The arbs are going to have to probably decide what was a BLP violation in the end based on evidence from the time. Its still frankly disgusting that despite the absurdly high profile nature of this, the massive volume, and the frequent cries for help that we had zero admin support to protect a BLP. Three people alone edit warring for BLP or otherwise is more than enough to warrant protection, easily. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:20, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Please note that I do not dispute the initial protection, only its length (it was protected for 7 5 days by Keeper76), so I restored editing 12 hours after the protection, an enough cool-off period. Granted, with hindsight, I should not have undone the re-protection of Friztpoll as already explained in my evidence. What is missing from the evidence you and others have presented, is checks about the validity of claims of BLP violations (see MBisanz) and about who was edit warring upon what seem to be spurious claims of BLP violations. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:17, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, like we said, we're getting to it. Rome wasn't built in ten minutes. You can always do a competing evidence section showing how their weren't BLP violations, which I think would be good to contrast with what you obviously know I'm going to show based on my first dump of links that I used as sources in my findings of facts already. rootology ( C )( T ) 17:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * (re to Jossi). Just for the record, my initial full protection was for 5 days, not seven.  I literally typed "5 days" for the duration.  Had you felt strongly that the protection was too long, and had you stopped by my talkpage to ask me about my rationale (instead of stopping by to tell me that you'd undone my action), we likely wouldn't be here as I would've likely obliged shortening the duration. My rationale for "5 days" was to give the article (and more importantly, those editors trying to protect it manually,  a "weekend off".   Keeper    76  17:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that would have save the day... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hindsight it is. FWIW, I would not support any sort of desysopping for any length of time (forgive me Arbcom powers-that-be if this is in the wrong section) against you. I've looked at your history of contribs on-wiki, they are impressive.  Your admin actions are sound, justified, and well-intentioned.  I strongly believe this was a one-off (or perhaps, a two-off:-), I believe that you acted in good faith, missed a step, or maybe two, and regret it.  Been there.  I really hope this all goes away with some trouts, some beer (or maybe some tea for those less inclined), and nothing more to show for it than a few battle-scars, red cheeks (on the face, not the other cheeks), dented prides, and intact tools.  Keeper    76  19:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Please note that I had already given some basic details regarding the activity on the article and its talkpage for the hour preceding the protection by Keeper76. This is raw data only, since my intention was to provide an indication that Jossi had not participated in making those reviews, reverts, warnings and blockings (as appropriate) that he commented should have been made prior to and instead of protecting. I would also suggest, to compilers and NewYorkBrad, that activity on the article talkpage should be included since those active on the article page would likely also be so on the talkpage. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If anyone wants to see total volume between article & talk broken down, see here. rootology ( C )( T ) 19:49, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent, Rootology. What about adding usernames to these edits for easier identification? ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For the Nth time, when I have a chance...! That will be a "sit and work on it for at least an hour straight" kinda thing. rootology ( C )( T ) 22:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Got a message on my talk page about this... I semi-prot'd the page because of a request at RFPP . History indicated many rvv's by anons, so I didn't think much of it. I admit I didn't look at the prot log until I found out I accidentally turned the move prot to semi (it was quickly changed back to sysop). Didn't know about any wheel war until I bumped into rfar. Lack of judgment can be attributed (in my case, at least) to not looking at prot log, and thinking "well, she's the new VP, the article is gonna get a lot of vandalism, and it is" and stopping thinking about there. Xavexgoem (talk) 23:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * MBisanz wrote, ". A harsh warning or a block to a new user might drive them away forever. Hitting a "page protected, go to Talk:" notice is far less likely to have that impact."
 * The Palin article was the first I ever tried to participate on. The fact it went to full edit protection WAS the reason I did stay. The protection status gives order to the process in these circumstances. Knowing an edit had to be approved by others and finally an 'admin' allows me to participate more fully and engaged in the thread [on talk] rather than trying to rush and edit over another [I never did make an edit, believing the talk process worked better]. Now that the protection is off and I see "admins" doing edits on their own - I've disengaged from the article considering it pointless now and the POV's have won. The process while locked, I felt was fair and went smoothly - for example I believe this thread showed good behavior by all those that did work through the issue, even if it did take awhile to get agreement [topic kept moving to different threads, they are below].
 * Talk:Sarah_Palin/Archive_15
 * Talk:Sarah_Palin/Archive_16
 * I think a review of that thread compared to the others and with special notices of those that were involved that also had "admin" type rights is notable (and those absent to be frank). Thankfully, it wasn't a topic of interest it seems to catch the eyes of certain others with "admin" rights. The fact that "they" weren't involved pushing their own POV edits to negate all the hard work everyone on the thread put into this allowed it to finish. Theosis4u (talk) 03:26, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Per request of Newyorkbrad and Thebainer, I am adding my reasoning behind my semi-protection actions. I have added it here because I do not feel comfortable adding it to the /Evidence page since I am not party to the case and it appears that the case is more focused on the wheel war on September 4 than what happened on August 29.  My first semi-protection was due to the excessive vandalism by anonymous IPs and my surprise that such a high profile article that was sure to attract vandalism was not protected.  I protected the article indefinitely due to my haste in getting the protection done, clean up the mess by the IPs (I was getting edit conflicts), and then reset the protection time to a reasonable time after looking at the other Vice Presidential and Presidential candidates articles.  I believe that the rapid resetting of the semi-protection expiration happened because AuburnPilot and Feydey came to the same conclusion that I did that too much vandalism was occurring (AuburnPilot used the same exact protection summary as I did), but we picked different expiration times.  After a discussion with AuburnPilot that he was okay with resetting the protection to indefinite, I checked the other Vice Presidential and Presidential candidates articles for their protection levels and expiration times and reset the semi-protection to the same expiration time as the other VP candidate using a similar summary.  If I remember correctly, my only other involvement in the article was to revert one IP vandalism and to place two notes on the Talk page that the vandalism was cleaned up and the article semi-protected. -- Gogo Dodo (talk) 04:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

=Proposed final decision=

Wikipedia is a wiki
1) One of the key principles of this project is that “anyone can edit.” Restrictions on editing, such as protection, should be rare, require explicit justification in terms of preventing harm, and should be for the shortest possible duration.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * This is particularly true of articles linked from the main page (as was Sarah Palin at the time of this incident) which should be protected almost as much reluctance as "today's featured article". — CharlotteWebb 22:17, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. The article was in an unusual circumstance where an edit every 90 seconds meant far more bad edits (vandalism, BLP violations, etc) than any editor could reasonably handle.  "Everybody can edit" sometimes means "everybody will edit."  Nearly every article has far more bad edits that get quickly reverted than good edits, particularly high inerest articles on politics and current events.  It is not clear that page protection is a good mechanism for dealing with overwhelming edit volume, or that we have any reasonable alternative either.  Locking articles down indefinitely to throttle back edit volume seems like a last resort. Wikidemon (talk) 22:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You place too much emphasis on the word "Wiki". I placed more emphasis on the partial word "Pedia" (as in encyclopedia) SirFozzie (talk) 00:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The project is indeed open so that "anyone can edit", but each article (and talkpage and all other Wikipedia pages) has the ability to be protected; it is therefore apparent that semi-protection and protection are recognised as tools available for the benefit of the project. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed - however if vandalism, POV pushing is noticed, then protection should be concerned for the benefit of all concerned. D.M.N. (talk) 16:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse - The project should not abandon its aims and goals and allow political strife to affect its basic principles. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

I always edit anon. I have no problem with this article being protected and forcing everyone to edit via admin. It's a slower process but everyone still has a voice in it. --98.243.129.181 (talk) 05:07, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia has protected articles for years, unless we give up page protection all together this principal is for the most part meaningless as applied to this case. This protection was short term and in response to a real ongoing issue, discussion lead to an agreement to re-evaluate in a few days. We have both real external reasons to protect and a consensus to do so. This is well within our protection policy and not contrary to any of our fundamental ideals. This protection was rare, had explicit justification in terms of preventing harm, and was made the shortest possible duration(a mere couple days until re-evaluation through consensus). Chillum  20:28, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * @Chillum: are you saying the principle as proposed is false, or is irrelevant with regards to this dispute? Anthøny   ✉  20:35, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is of course true. It is however not relevant, a red herring to be specific. Yes, a wiki is a wiki, and Wikipedia seeks to be as open as possible. I don't think anyone is disputing that. But first and foremost we are and encyclopedia and as such accuracy is important, particularly in cases of living people. Nothing in the above argument contradicts actions taking towards protecting the article. The fact is that consensus, and our regular practice as defined by the protection policy was followed(at least before wheel warring started).


 * The only reasonable relevance this principal could have is to point out that a rare, explicitly justified(in terms of preventing harm) protection should not be undone against consensus. Chillum  21:08, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse. We are both encyclopedia and wiki, but are probably the definitive wiki, and we would not be the biggest encyclopedia were we not a wiki. Every so often someone propose that now we are mature, we need to stop being a wiki, and not let the rabble in. There are other projects for that. --GRuban (talk) 19:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This proposal appears to be at odds with What Wikipedia is not which characterizes the online community portion of the project as a means to an end instead of the end itself. --Allen3 talk 01:26, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Lower-profile biographies
2) In general, lower-profile biographies of living people, which are often under-watched by sympathetic users, and which may be amongst the only information on the subject available on the internet, are more prone to bias and libel remaining unchecked, and have the greater potential to do damage to the subject. In these cases, our willingness to depart from normal free-editing wiki-processes in order to avoid harm should often be greater than with higher-profile biographies.


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 * Simply, no. The same standards (the very best possible) should be applied across the spectrum of BLP articles. It may be argued that the higher traffic articles provide the standard by which other articles are edited to. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Same standard for all BLP articles. I agree with LHvU on the second point on the traffic of articles. D.M.N. (talk) 16:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse - That is the spirit of WP:BLPBAN. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would disagree. The standard is the same for all BLPs. Kelly  hi! 04:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A very well known person gets less protection than a well known person? How about we leave politics/popularity out an react to the facts. The ratio of editors/reader vs. responsible editors(who understand and respect our policy) was just too far out of whack. Saying "in general" then applying it to an article that is an exception to the rule will only lead to the wrong result, this is not a general case. The facts are that over a million people per day were reading the article and the few minutes a day that BLP way on the article added up to thousands of readers. We were not able to keep up with the damage and protection was correct. The blanket statement in this proposal does not take into account the vast variety of circumstances the can occur or even the circumstance in this case. Chillum  20:23, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Who brought politics in? kmccoy (talk) 23:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I did introduce the alternative term via the slash(/) for people who do not prefer the term "politics", the term "popularity" does just as well in this context. Chillum  01:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Strongly agree. People opposing this also seem to be missing the major reasons this make sense: 1) There are more eyes on major BLPs then there are on minor ones. Problems will be corrected much more quickly. And if BLP is motivated to a large part by minimizing harm (which I think most of us agree is true) then we must conclude that there is  much more potential for harm when someone is less well known then when someone is well known. Indeed, if there are serious problems on an article about a famous person Wikipedia looks really stupid but the person isn't hurt almost at all. If there are serious problems on an article about a barely notable individual it can do them serious real life harm. JoshuaZ (talk) 23:35, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Utterly correct, and utterly irrelevant to this case. Physchim62 (talk) 23:58, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It is not the number of eyes, it is the ratio of eyes to reader/pov editors/new user/vandals etc... Yes, this article has more attention that other BLPs, but its "ratio" of attention to problems is very poor. While it is generally true that higher profile articles have a better ratio, that is not always the fact(including in this case). Chillum  14:15, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Vandalism on high-profile articles
3) The usual response to articles being vandalised is to revert the vandalism and, after warning, block any repeat offenders. The community accepts that the annoyance of continually reverting vandalism is the cost of our open editing preference. Protection ought to be used only where necessary, and with particular thought as to the impact on good-faith contributions to the article.


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 * Comment by parties:
 * Although this is called a "Principle", it seems to be a factually incorrect finding of fact. Protection, both full and semi, is a highly usual response to vandalism, especially when it occurs in volume. Wily D  10:45, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Being related to a current event only increases the negative impact created by full protection, due to the urgency of keeping such articles up-to-date. — CharlotteWebb 22:23, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Normally, I'd agree Doc, but it just doesn't scale to this level, sorry. SirFozzie (talk) 00:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Decisions to limit the ability of others to edit are not taken lightly, necessitates consensus, and needs to be deemed to be of net benefit to the project. (This is true of all articles, high traffic or otherwise). LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse - Standard practice. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Generally true, but not for this particular case. I was one of the few editors removing vandalism to the article - it was coming so fast and furious it was simply impossible, in a practical basis, to use the warn/block system. Kelly  hi! 04:12, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I aree with Kelly that the "warn and block" system is (very) occasionally not feasible, but I do observe that the proposal notes that using that system is the "usual" response: I presume that is a reference to it occasionally (for example, in this dispute) being necessary to use alternative measures to prevent disruption. (On a practical note, the wording here may need to be refined to clarify this.) Anthøny   ✉  20:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've offered evidence that full-protection of high-profile articles is not an isolated occurrence, but that neither is it common: either this finding of "principle" is meaningless, or it is an attempt to change policy through the arbitration of an exceptional event. In either case, it should be roundly rejected. Physchim62 (talk) 10:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse. This is the standard practice for our Today's Featured Articles, which are intended to be the most highly visited article on the entire site. We rarely semi-protect them, but we certainly never fully protect them. A reversion is always easier than an edit, and there seem to have been plenty of experienced editors watching this article. --GRuban (talk) 19:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection to prevent BLP violations
4) The general response to BLP violations on articles is simply to remove the violation and warn/block the offenders. Protection should be used when there is a significant danger that the violation will be repeated, and not otherwise be immediately removed. The higher the profile of the article, the more likely that further violations will promptly be removed, and conversely the greater collateral damage in frustrating any good contributors.


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 * Again Doc, does not scale in this case. We had editors begging for help precisely BECAUSE they couldn't keep up with the BLP-Violations/edit-warring/vandalism. SirFozzie (talk) 00:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Then we should spend more effort keeping up. Reverting the article to a good state takes a few seconds. --Apoc2400 (talk) 17:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "Upon detecting an enemy aircraft, the rest of the flight should be made aware of the presence of same by use of the codeword Ochre, with an indication of the number and direction"... "BANDITS!!! Bandits, Bandits!! BANDITS!!!
 * Endorse - It is basically incorrect to claim that there are not enough eyeballs on high=profile articles. Raucous editing? sure, but that does not mean that it can be taken care of by standard practices. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, generally true, but was not workable for this article in the particular time frame discussed. Kelly  hi! 04:14, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Excellent idealism, but the reality was that there were not enough people watching out, if there was then there would not have been an issue. Since we are working with what we have and not what we would like to have, I would say this proposal is a great idea in general but in this particular case it is just wishful thinking. Chillum  20:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with others here; this principle simply does not scale to the extent and rapidity of edits which this article saw. Whether the edit rate is unprecedented I would not like to say, but I can't recall any article having attracted bad edits at this rate from so many accounts in such rapid succession. Guy (Help!) 18:41, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Reversion always scales. One revert removes one bad edit or twenty bad edits, just as easily. Semi-protection will protect from bot edits, and surely there were enough admins to block logged-in blatant vandals. --GRuban (talk) 20:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't particularly agree that it scales. Sure, a revert can remove one bad edit, but when that bad edit is in between five good ones, where do you revert? Revert all the good ones to get rid of a single bad edit? And by the time you've made the decision, ten more edits have occurred, and who knows if one of those is bad or not. Protection helps cut down the workload for the people who volunteer to help articles. The "more sets of eyes" arguement doesn't particularly pan out if those sets of eyes get sick of dealing with being overworked, and just take a break. In fact, that leads to less sets of eyes. Protection doesn't just protect the article, it gives the hard working editors a much needed break from what is obviously a high workload. Kinsloft (talk) 21:54, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection and blocking
5) In general it is preferable to block an offender, than to protect an article against general editing. This is particularly true where it is anticipated that many other editors will wish to improve the article.


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 * This is true, but there are times when it is unworkable. I doubt that anyone could have kept up with this article at its peak, unless the threshold for blocking were lowered (see my proposed remedy below) Homunq (talk) 23:51, 5 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In an ideal world yes. In this case, no. SirFozzie (talk) 00:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * An offender? Yes. Some offenders? Yes, providing the absence from the article does not allow further disruption to pass unreverted. Very many offenders...? May as well protect the article while the various blocks (after ensuring due warnings were provided, etc.) are executed. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse - In this specific case, there were hardly any blocks issued to offenders (if there were any, that is). ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As I mentioned above, there was too much activity and too few responsible editors (in this case) for this to be workable. Kelly  hi! 20:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection of pages on political candidates is normal
1) The semi-protection of certain high-profile articles, often including major political candidates, has historically been normal and accepted.


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 * Of course. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * This seems relevant, and is why I initially protected the article - it does not take a particularly deep knowledge of trends on Wikipedia to know that Sarah Palin was going to be a vandalism target. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:38, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Support. This goes without saying. rootology ( C )( T ) 16:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

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Proposals by User:Homunq
The following are very incomplete. I generally agree with the proposals above, but had a few to add.

Stress can be reduced by making tasks easier or by increasing the perception of cooperation
There will always be another event that leads to record edits on some page, putting a strain on existing mechanisms. When this happens, people will make controversial decisions in response. When we have time to work it out, these people should not be punished, but we should do our best to create options to reduce future strain. These options should include technical, social process, and enforcement improvements. Technical solutions which simplify the process of detecting and removing violations will reduce the strain and thus the necessity for and occurrence of stronger measures such as protection and/or blocks. Technical and/or social solutions which provide middle ground between one level of reaction and another will increase the feeling of compromise, and thus buy-in, by different parties.


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Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

"BLP State of emergency" articles
A new template should be created saying something like "This biography of a living person is experiencing an unusual volume of unsourced edits. For the next 48 hours, until, any edit which is a clear violation of wikipedia's policy on such articles (all information should be verifiable through a source, should be notable, and should not be given undue weight, especially if there is a counter-consensus on the talk page) is punishable by an immediate 4 hour block." This template should be applicable only by an admin and only after documenting an unusually high volume of libelous (not just vandalism) edits, from multiple users, over a period of at least 3 hours.

Admins carrying out such blocks should make a good faith attempt to be conservative in who they block, only blocking for clear violations. They should be especially careful with usernames they recognize. However, they should not be punished if some small fraction of their blocks are somewhat questionable.


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 * I refuse to comment on the appropriateness of this practice, only the feasibility (which is actually high). See Krimpet's new Editnotice feature at work. This would at least be better than making banner-style notices visible to readers who do not plan to edit. — CharlotteWebb 14:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, this proposal is quite BITE-y. I thought blocks were for preventing further harm, not deterrence.  Even if such a template is feasible it would not readily apply to articles like this one.  It might be okay for current news events involving people who are not otherwise public figures, e.g. the arrest of the parents of a missing child.  But having such a tool available for administrators to use under claim of BLP when there is a legitimate question on how best to calm a high-interest article on the presidential election, would probably increase rather than decrease the level of dispute among administrators on how best to act.Wikidemon (talk) 16:22, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This has good intention behind it, but doubt it would work. I believe I understand what's being said in that proposed template, but am not sure.  And very few people ever accused me of not being able to parse an instruction set.  Aside from being overloaded with set-in-stone instructions ("unless there is a counter-consensus...,") and being a case of instruction creep in action, I was also under the impression that blocks are not punishments.  In fact, I think that can be read in the first sentence of WP:BLOCK.  (I also think I can understand the good intent behind such a proposal, but think it would be disastrous in application.)   Laughing Vulcan  01:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Transcluded subpages
When an article rockets to prominence as this one did, it may be helpful to split it up into transcluded subpages to untangle the issues in the history and talk pages. The main page should be protected, and the subpages should be at least semiprotected and possibly protected.


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 * Wouldn't that just lead to more work and required history merges later, muddling things even more, while not really stopping the importing of BLP violations since you'd just be watching and debating over that many more pages? Too bad we can't semi protect or full protect just article sections. rootology ( C )( T ) 08:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It wouldn't stop anything. But as someone who was editing at the height of things, I noticed that everything took 2 times as long as it should because you had to unravel the history and fight past edit conflicts. A factor of 2 in editor effectiveness is significant. (The vandals, I'm assuming, have no problems with the history). Homunq (talk) 11:09, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Transclusion has some problems, but it's a great idea to consider technical solutions to deal with editing volume. There is probably a good one out there, although implementation and adoption would come through village pump or just boldly trying it somewhere, not from Arbcom. Wikidemon (talk) 16:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea, needs further refinement. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is possibly a good idea but it is not a valid arbcom remedy. A change on how high-editing-volume pages are handled should not be implemented via Arbcom fiat. Mike R (talk) 16:37, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia
1) Users must remember that Wikipedia is "The Encyclopedia anyone can edit. While anyone can edit Wikipedia, due care must be taken to fufill the core policies of the encyclopedia. That is, to present, neutral, factual information.


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 * Agreed. I'll point out that Wikipedia won't be finalised tommorow, and something that doesn't get done today, tommorow or the next day is no big deal, unless it's doing harm in the meantime. Wily D  12:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. The encyclopedia part is more important then the wiki part. SirFozzie (talk) 00:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For the sake of consistency, allow me to point out that the main page says "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." kmccoy (talk) 05:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, the encyclopedia as a whole may be edited by anyone. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Blocks/Warnings do not scale properly for large-scale edit wars
2) Techniques used to prevent disruption of Wikipedia articles, such as selectively warning or blocking edit-warriors do not always scale properly.


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 * Comment by parties:
 * Historically if there are more than a couple people involved in an edit war, the result is protection. If nothing else than it's just too hard to figure out who did what and what happened. Wily D 13:34, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Someone said to me "Why didn't they just block/warn the edit-warriors involved?" With that many editors involved in the scrum, it was rather hard to determine who was editing within Wikipedia's policies, and who were harming the article. Full protection was necessitated. SirFozzie (talk) 00:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regardless of their number of editors involved in this my own sampling indicates that the cumulative revert-warring comprises a small fraction of the total edit-traffic of Gov. Palin's article but I'm willing to be proven wrong. Please add names and diffs for said edit-warriors to the /Evidence page if you disagree. — CharlotteWebb 14:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup. Time spent warning/blocking would have detracted from the ability to revert further violations in this matter. LessHeard vanU (talk) 08:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Couldn't agree more. In the span of less than a few hours, a large number of wp:blp reversions were necessary on the article (and even the talk page).  Warning and blocking would have taken critical scrutiny away from the page itself, which was unprotected at the time.    user:j    (aka justen)   16:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? Show me any attempts to warn and block that did not scale. I would venture that there was no attempt made to implement current practices. None. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 17:59, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I can do that; (taken to talkpage).
 * This is absolutely correct. Kelly  hi! 04:16, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Is it worth appending to the end "and should not be used"? This principle seems to all but say that; we may as well go the full mile and say what the rest of the proposal hints at. Anthøny   ✉  20:26, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No. We make people admins when we trust their judgement.  It's a "use your judgement as to which is best".  Talks, locks, blocks or a combination. Admins' judgement is supposed to be at least nominally trusted. Wily D  12:51, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

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Wikipedia makes decisions by consensus
1) Wikipedia makes decisions by consensus, as long as the matters being decided don't conflict with WMF mandates or rules. No one user has the authority to unilaterally overturn a broad consensus repeatedly. Admins are as bound to consensus decisions as non-admins.


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 * This strikes me as entirely true. "Ignore all rules" does not mean "be a madman", it means "rules are not perfectly formulated, and sometimes conflict with that encyclopaedia building dealie.  The latter is more important." Wily D  11:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Kinda obvious. rootology ( C )( T ) 09:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Clarity is useful. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Obviously. Kelly  hi! 04:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a nice wording which doesn't conflict with an occasional use of WP:IAR when there is no (or not yet a) consensus on the specific issue in question. Physchim62 (talk) 11:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Admin tools or status in a dispute or involved articles
2) Admins may not use their extranormal tools, abilities, or status as administrators in any content or policy dispute in which they are involved, to gain any kind of advantage or leverage. An admin who is a regular and routine "normal" editor in behavior on a given article or policy dispute is forbidden from overtly or deliberately using their administrator status, tools, or the threat of the same as leverage, clout, or as a tool to gain an advantage over other users, on the article or policy dispute in which they are already a participant.


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 * This is, again, true. Not sure about PhilKnight's definition of uninvolved; involvedness decays with time (I'm not sure I could tell you what articles I was significantly involved in back in '06, for instance).  Involvedness is like a pornography analogy, I'd remember the analogy if I saw it. Wily D  11:47, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Does this make sense or should I reword it? <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur. (I had to read it twice... which is fairly standard for me.) LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:23, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well said, however, I would prefer to split this into:
 * "Administrators are forbidden from using, or threatening to use, their administrator tools, abilities, or status, to gain an advantage in content or policy disputes."
 * and
 * "An administrator is considered "uninvolved" if it is clear that they are able to exercise their tools from a position of neutrality. If they have been involved in a content dispute, were a significant editor of an article in question, were involved in revert wars, they do not qualify as uninvolved."
 * PhilKnight (talk) 12:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Warlike behavior using administrative tools
3) Administrators are strictly and most seriously forbidden from engaging in warlike behavior using administrative tools, whether for desirable reasons or not. With very few exceptions, when an action performed using tools has been rejected to the point that a second administrator has reversed it (or similar related actions were reversed), then there is almost never a valid reason for any administrator to reinstate the same or similar action (or end result) again, without clear discussion leading to a consensus decison, and administrators who do so may risk desysopping for abuse of their access. As a corollary, reversal of an administrative action should also not be undertaken without good cause. The policy Wheel war describes this kind of behavior.


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 * Long and clunky, but more or less correct. Whether you have to redo anyone's admin action, or your own, to really wheelwar, is a matter of historical debate, though. Wily D  11:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. I stole this from the IRC RFAR final decision. It seems appropriate here. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I think this would apply. Kelly  hi! 04:17, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not about winning
4) We are here to build a neutral encyclopedia, not to push outside agendas, political or otherwise. We are not here to "win one for our side", or for our beliefs. See WP:WINNER.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Is this different from the common "Wikipedia is not a battlefield"? --jpgordon&#8711;&#8710;&#8711;&#8710; 16:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with the essence of Jpgordon's point but WP:BATTLE and WP:WINNER are two different concepts. The former refers to off-wiki battles brought and fought inside Wikipedia. Unless Rootology --the author of the essay-- meant otherwise, the latter refers to on-wiki disputes dealing with internal conflicts such as wiki-politics (I dislike this term) fought inside Wikipedia.  fayssal   / Wiki me up® 05:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * I agree with this. Wily D 11:55, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * @Rootology, 35 edits most of them minor is not a "deep involvement". My interested picked after the incident. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Seems applicable here, given the subject matter. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. D.M.N. (talk) 17:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Amen. Kelly  hi! 04:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not sure that this would be relevant to any decision, even if I heartily agree with spirit of it. Physchim62 (talk) 11:50, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To jpgordon: Yep, totally different. WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND is basically a summary of why Wikipedia isn't a place to fight, go "after" others, and in general advises not to engage in assholery. WP:WINNER/Is not about winning and this proposal of mine explicitly is that we're not here to win, or to be right, and that anyone who engages in that mindset is not working with Wikipedia's best interests at heart--and that this kind of "I will win and thats that" and "I will win because I am right" mindset is inherently wrong for what we're here to do. I'd go further and say it's an actively destructive or dangerous mindset for anyone on Wikipedia or any similar style of website or project, but the essay hasn't been mine since I published it, and I have no desire to write a manifesto. I added it here because Jossi's tone (and apparently, MZMbride's in IRC) boils down to "I will win because I am right" which is totally incompatible with Wikipedia, let alone adminship. We don't need Alpha personalities harming BLPs with their egos because they think mistakenly they're right for whatever reasons. We need people that are willing to put themselves and their interests always second to the big picture, from the guy with one edit to the Arbitrator that's been here since 200whatever. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:21, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To FayssalF, I can assure you as the author of the essay that it wasn't just for wikipolitics, but for the mentioned "ideological" or general political points, plus general personality disputes. Jossi's... fervent (?) editing of all things Sarah Palin was a bit unnerving, at least to me, and I'm no fan of the lady. It had a crusader feel. That's why I put this in here--the unprotection seemed to be extension of that zeal to allow more and more into the article. Jossi apparently is a crusader for some BLP causes but let that all fall away here for some reason with Palin. The fact he basically set out to "win" via IAR combined with his deep involvement and crusades like actions here is what made me write this. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 05:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

IRC or off-wiki consensus cannot trump on-wiki consensus
5) Users can attempt to decide consensus for content decisions or administrative actions such as blocks, protections, unprotections, deletions, and undeletions in any venue. However, they have no value, bearing, or validity unless evidence of the consensus can be demonstrated on-wiki. If a conflict or discrepancy exists between on-wiki and off-site consensus, the off-site automatically is secondary to the on-wiki.


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 * Comment by parties:
 * Consensuses (Consensii?) can only develop where everyone is able to discuss. Discussion elsewhere may illuminate your thoughts, but actions taken from those discussions are your own, whether the discussion is on IRC, at Wikipedia Review, enwiki-l or with your mom over tea. Wily D  11:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:17, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Same goes for comments made at Wikipedia Review I guess. D.M.N. (talk) 17:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If a conflict comes up, yep. Three WP users all saying, "Hey good idea," on Wikipedia Review/IRC/e-mail/over beers can go make their change. If no superior consensus here undoes it, it sticks. If two people on-wiki say, "Whoa, hold up," then the outside consensus falls by the wayside until they all come here to demonstrate consensus. Someone can probably word my analogy better. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm trying to find the relevance to this case. What on-wiki action was described by its doer as justified by a consensus off-wiki?  kmccoy (talk) 18:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * See here.. It's here for completeness. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 22:43, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Longstanding sore point that the ArbCom has yet to effectively address. Kelly  hi! 04:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur. Agreement between WP editors reached off-Wiki may be implemented, if time critical, and then consensus sought. If not time critical, an off-Wiki agreement between WP editors should be brought up at a suitable venue so that consensus be sought. I suggest "Consensus", as far as it relates to WP, is that which is formed on-Wiki only. LessHeard vanU (talk) 09:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, I'm not sure that this is relevant, but I cannot argue against it for any other reason than "we [the "community"] have already said it many other times" Physchim62 (talk) 11:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus supported protections on Sarah Palin
1) At the time when the wheel warring for unprotection on Sarah Palin was initiated by the administrator User:Jossi, consensus clearly supported overwhelmingly to protect the article, in the opinions of many long term and established Wikipedia users. At the time, the discussion which Jossi was aware of, being a participant, was centralized on WP:AN.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Not really disputable as I see it. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:10, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Suggest omitting "(by a factor of ... Jossi)". Although some sort of measuring stick is always necessary as a rough guide to whether general agreement exists for or against a particular point, I think it prudent that we stay clear of the idea that consensus can be gauged against metric standards—more so in arbitration rulings than anywhere else. Anthøny   ✉  10:51, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur - with Anthonys caveat. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Good idea, I changed it. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 15:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As Rootology said, indisputable. Kelly  hi! 04:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Now that the wording has been tweaked, as per Kelly: agree. This makes sense. Anthøny   ✉  15:40, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Articles are protected for edit warring
2) Articles that are subject to even light edit warring between good faith users are typically often protected to prevent further disruption to the encyclopedia.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Essentially dishonest to suggest otherwise. Protection and blocks are complimentary tools that are used to prevent disruption; either or both are used where it is believed it will be effective by administrators trying to solve a problem. Wily D  12:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Do I need evidence? This is kind of flagrantly obvious. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Suggested amendments:
 * "to even light edit warring" → " to edit warring ";
 * "typically Full protected" → "often protected";
 * "to stop the disruption of the edit war" → "to prevent further disruption to the encyclopedia".
 * I would propose an alternative to this, but you seem to have largely hit the nail with the hammer, so I'll offer my suggestions to you first, Rootology. Anthøny   ✉  10:56, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Your wording is better, I changed it. Thanks. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 16:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If this reflects actual practice I could stage an edit war concerning Tropical Storm Hurricane Hanna's date link format eye color, cause the article to be locked until long after anyone cares about it, and not be blocked. That's a very scary thought and I hope it does not resemble general practice. Blocking disruptive users is always preferable, and quite especially when the majority of total edits are unrelated to the dispute. — CharlotteWebb 14:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, look now... "between good faith users" is added. Common sense always rules for the protection, right, but articles do get protected for really stupid edit wars all the time. I mean, they just do. :) <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 16:03, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I am a "good faith user" and I resent any innuendo to the contrary. Pages should almost never be protected pre-emptively, but only after blocking the vandals/edit-warriors/BLP-violators/whatever is demonstrated to be ineffective i.e. coordinated disruption continues due to said users having too many wiki-friends or sock-puppets or IP-ranges. Even then the article should not be protected 'til the cows come home, but only as much time as it takes to treat the source of the problem (rather than the symptom). I fundamentally disagree with long-term full protection of any article, even those related to the LaDouche movement. — CharlotteWebb 17:32, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Trust me, no innuendo to the contrary, I know you're a very good faith user, it was a suggested wording change that was left for me. My simple point was that we do protect articles for really trivial edit warring, let alone stuff on the scale of what we saw on Sarah Palin. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Charlotte, you are a good faith user, and that's why you don't "stage edit wars". Your hypothetical above involves you acting in bad faith.  Wily D  12:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Charlotte: see, which may cover some of the points you make. I've been having similar thinking, hence my proposal. Anthøny   ✉  18:02, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've just posted some evidence for full protection of politician articles (including a full protection of Barack Obama by Jossi!). It should be "typically" or "often", but not both ;) Physchim62 (talk) 10:10, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've struck out typically on grammar grounds, as my analysis of the consensus view here and now: feel free to revert my BOLD action if it would help discussion. Physchim62 (talk) 11:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, grammar good. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 14:25, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

High risk or contested BLPs may be protected abnormally
3) High risk or contested WP:BLP articles historically have precedent to be protected for unusual amounts of time. For example, Lyndon LaRouche as of 09/06/08 has been Full protected for approximately 10 months, and it's protection does not expire until the year 2037. A possible short duration block of Sarah Palin or other BLPs would not be unreasonable if a problem existed, based on history and practice.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * This is also true of non BLPs, though probably less so. Wily D 13:35, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed... <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:16, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't see the relevance of it being a BLP. That there are BLP violations is somewhat relevant, but BLP violations could occur on any article, and not every policy violation in a BLP article is a BLP violation. Wikidemon (talk) 16:30, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Apples & Oranges. That article is not a recent article, it is not the subject of 1,000s of reports on the mainstream media, and is quite stable. This article, on the contrary can only benefit from intense editing and restricting editing by protection is not serving the article, the subject or the pedia. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:53, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmmm, any thoughts why "That article is ... quite stable."? Might it be because it is protected? LessHeard vanU (talk) 09:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah Palin, BLP violations, and fast edits
4) The Sarah Palin article was the subject of many BLP violations that occurred very quickly before User:Keeper76 first fully protected the article to protect the BLP subject from further harm. The editors who were active on the article were unable to protect it without admin tools from, for example, 31 edits in 26 minutes preceding the protection, a rate of 1.19 a minute, and 6 of those edits (19.3% of the total) were removals of what can be considered BLP violations at the time.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Per my evidence, editors reviewing and acting upon edits to the article page were also engaged in responding to edits on the article talkpage - further draining the necessary resources to deal with any BLP violation, or otherwise biased edit, that may occur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:31, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. It became a challenge simply to remove wp:blp violations due to constant edit conflicts.  By the time I could get the page to save, there were already five more diffs to review.    user:j    (aka justen)   17:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * BS. No evidence of BLP violations, unless now sourcing materials from the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and other mainstream sources are no longer reliable for this project. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Personal opinion. I provided lots of links to removals of BLP vios here. At the time you wheel warred, there was for most of these edits paltry and insufficient sourcing which put them squarely into BLP violation territory. Some of these may or may not be acceptable content today with new sourcing, but when you abused the tools, they were BLP violations. None of these removals were the Wall Street Journal or NPR, so I have no idea where you're getting that from. They were YouTube links, synthesis/OR BLP violations, and forced insertion of the affair rumors which still haven't panned out yet as of today.<span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 20:00, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * An opinion that has no support in the evidence you provided. These were not BLP violations that require aticle protection or god forbid claim WP:BLPBAN. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:12, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was referring to your own personal opinion, which was in opposition to the clear (24:1) overwhelming consensus which did not really later change, per evidence. Having tools doesn't give you authority to overrule consensus of other admins and "senior" users who've been around a while, and have a clue. You can always do it anyway, but thats how you get where we are unfortunately. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 20:18, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Washington Post, ABC News, AKIP website, CBS News, CNN. These were the sources used in these edits. Needed a bit of tweaking, but not a BLP violation. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:17, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Your extreme minority viewpoint from the time is that they were not BLP violations and that the article did not require protection, despite the fact that at the time of the edits there was clear consensus these were synth BLP vios of unstable rumors at best, despite the overwhelming fast edits which made it impossible to gauge and edit what was happening without dozens of edit conflicts. Do you believe your judgment and intellect is superior to 24 other users? and that allowed for you to wheel war against a clear consensus on that day and hour? <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 20:20, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No BLP violations, period. Thanks for your opinion about what constituted consensus "at that time". Consensus of editors cannot trump the core principles of this project, and I have acted in that spirit and take full responsibility for my actions. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 20:40, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. There were many severe and repeated BLP violations going on at both the article and the associated talk page. Kelly  hi! 04:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Where is the evidence? No such evidence has been presented despite many requests. Any obvious BLP violation was promptly removed. Many other edits were basically disruption based on spurious claims of BLP violations. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 15:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi is an involved editor on Sarah Palin
4) Before Keeper76 protected Sarah Palin, User:Jossi was a regular participant and involved editor on the article and talk pages, working to enable his desired changes to the article with others. He edited the article itself 35 times prior to protection. See WP:UNINVOLVED.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Not disputable. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi and page protection of high profile BLPs
5) 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.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 15:39, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Unnecessary, I hope. Physchim62 (talk) 11:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi Wheel Warred on Sarah Palin
6) Jossi, an involved and regular editor on Sarah Palin, twice used his admin tools against policy and practice to unprotect and remove full protection in violation of demonstrated consensus on one of the most visible and scrutinized BLP articles at the time, which was under wide media attention and subject to heavy BLP violations and attacks. Jossi claimed he did this under WP:IAR and vowed to continue Wheel Warring. In presented evidence on this RFAR, Jossi shows no regrets over Wheel Warring. Jossi's actions here are counter to his actions on related articles, such as Barack Obama.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. All sourced, indisputable facts. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 09:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Several hours after Jossi Wheel Warred consensus had not changed
7) Examining consensus several hours later, when admin User:MZMcBride unprotected Sarah Palin, escalating the Wheel War, consensus had not yet demonstrably changed over the validity of the protection.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride Wheel Warred on Sarah Palin
7) MZMcBride, an admin, Wheel Warred on Sarah Palin, twice using his admin tools against policy and consensus to unprotect and remove full protection in violation of demonstrated and ongoing consensus on one of the most visible and scrutinized BLP articles at the time, which was under wide media attention and subject to heavy BLP violations and attacks. MzMcBride's second removal of protection was a removal of the special ArbCom enforcement BLP system that MBisanz had placed. Apparently, MZMcBride either decided a new consensus in contrast to the on-wiki consensus, or was coached or influenced somehow on the #admins IRC to undo MBisanz's actions. According to MBisanz, MZMcBride announced his intention to premeditatively Wheel War on #admins IRC.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * It's unclear to me whether MZMcBride participated in a single struggle in which he performed two administrative reverts, or two struggles in which he performed a single administrative revert. Maybe this doesn't matter, but maybe it does, depending on what you believe constitutes a wheel war. Wily D  12:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. All sourced, all indisputable facts except the language used on #IRC. MZMcBride, would you be willing to release the language you used on IRC? It would help clear up any misapprehensions. I asked him here. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:32, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The IRC events are irrelevant. What is relevant is what happened on-wiki.  The language MZMcBride used on IRC was in a private channel, and at no point on wiki did he claim that his actions on-wiki were justified by a consensus on IRC.  Therefore, the continued attempts to draw IRC into this should stop.  Actions on-wiki are accountable on-wiki.  kmccoy (talk) 18:45, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I was just putting it all in for completeness. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 18:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Given one was semi->unprotected, and then 5 days later the other was full->semi, I don't think this classes as reapplication of an administrative action, and thus not wheel-warring. Ian ¹³  /t  10:12, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I find it very unfortunate that MZMcBride undid my initial long-term semi-protection of the article - such a protection was utterly in line with standard practice on such articles, and had it stood little of this would have happened. That he offered no comment on my talk page or attempt at discussion with me before undoing the access is poor. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:37, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

BLP special enforcement
1) The special enforcement authorised at Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes is intended to ensure that all Wikipedia articles comply in full with Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy. The provisions of this special enforcement authorise administrators to perform what actions may be reasonably necessary to ensure Wikipedia articles do comply with this policy.

Should an editor disagree with an administrator's action as made under that special enforcement, the appropriate and correct course of action is not to use one's administrator tools to undo that special enforcement, but rather to pursue the avenues of appeals specified here (under "Appeals"). Only when a consensus to overturn or adjust that original action emerges from those appeal forums, should an uninvolved administrator overturn the action.

Wheel warring is harmful to the project, and indeed is more disruptive than one misguided action could be. Administrators are only authorised to effect actions under the special enforcement provisions, and indeed, only permitted to retain their status as an administrator, in so long as they act with solid judgement and sufficient thought for the consequences of their actions on the encyclopedia.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * It should be obvious enough ArbCom endorses the former and you have to at least not interfer with such things. Wily D  10:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Anthøny   ✉  10:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Disagree with extending BLP special enforcement to apply to full protection of high-importance BLP articles. Special enforcement is a blunt tool that circumvents our carefully designed processes for how administrators are supposed to make their decisions.  It is risky, and possibly harmful to the project, to empower administrators to use the trump card of BLP too widely in order to make their decisions hard to review.  Wikidemon (talk) 16:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Replies for Wikidemon:
 * Administrators using special enforcement as a "trump card" – a very understandable concern. My proposal to have the committee author additional advice for the community on using the special enforcements is designed to counteract that. Additionally, the appeals process built in to the special enforcement arrangements has the exact purpose of ensuring that all administrator actions are for the benefit of encyclopedia; to prevent and minimise (further) disruption; etc., etc.
 * It may well be that the BLP special enforcement arrangements are a step in the wrong direction. However, the fact is that the arrangements still stand, and as such clarification on their purpose is needed. (I'm inclined to disagree, incidentally, that the BLP special enforcement remedy is a poor move: although the remedy's set up has some design flaws, the principle is one which, I believe, we largely need in the Wikipedia of today.)
 * Anthøny  ✉  15:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "BLP Special Enforcement" never had consensus to begin with, still does not, and is essentially a rejected attempt at policymaking by ArbCom. Seraphimblade Talk to me 05:42, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Expectations of administrators
2) As editors entrusted with additional technical abilities, Wikipedia administrators are expected to contribute positively to the encyclopedia and to lead by example, by:
 * Acting with good judgement and appropriate thought;
 * Conducting themselves professionally;
 * To consider the consequences of one's actions on any pages affected and on the encyclopedia as a whole.

Actions that are contrary to these principles are not appropriate or helpful in a collaborative encyclopedia environment. Acting within these principles is especially important for administrators when exercising such technical abilities as page protection; page deletion; and user blocking.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Agreed. Admins generally know what they're doing and have already proved that they can be responsible, we need to be held to a higher standard of behaviour, not a lower one. Wily D  12:56, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Input and comments welcome. Anthøny   ✉  11:21, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Dealing with disruptive conduct
4) Editors who edit in a disruptive fashion—including edit warring, failing to pursue discussion of disputed matters of content—may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator in order to prevent further disruption to the affected articles.

Articles that are subject to intensive edit warring, vandalism, or other disruptive actions may be protected by any uninvolved administrator in the same vein as the intention of blocking disruptive editors: to prevent further disruption to the affected articles.

Although a protection is expected to end further disruption to a page that has been recently disrupted, that is not to say that the conduct of the editors who disrupted the page originally is excused: although blocking them at that point may be considered punitive rather than preventative, the fact that they choose to disrupt Wikipedia articles may be a sign of wider conduct issues. The community should, as a response to editors who repeatedly disrupt Wikipedia articles, review that editor's conduct and consider whether their presence on the project is a detriment to the project.

In any case where it is concluded that an editor is disruptive, the community should take appropriate action—including issuing editing restrictions (for example, if the editor often disruptively edits only a particular topic area, but otherwise contributes constructively); assignment of a mentor to educate the editor as to the communal norms of Wikipedia and the community's expectations of editorial conduct; and community-endorsed blocking or banning.

In short: although protection may be used to end a period of article disruption, it may be necessary to deal with individual editors who have trouble editing constructively.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * All of this seems true, it's not obvious to me what it has to do with the price of tea in China, though. Wily D 13:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * [Non-party comment.] Is this a comment directed at the relevance of this proposal to the case at large? If so, I believe it to be highly relevant in a case that has administrator misuse of tools at its heart. Anthøny   ✉  15:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I mean, if it's meant to relate to the case at hand, which is solely about the use of administrative tools, it certainly doesn't go out of it's way to show how it's related. Wily D 16:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Covers all the bases, I think. Disruptive editorial conduct should not go excused and unnoticed. Let the committee educate the community a little on how to deal with disruptive conduct. Anthøny   ✉  15:56, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To make a long story short, disrupted articles are a symptom of an underlying problem which is disruptive users; treatment should primarily target the latter. Perhaps the above could be refactored on account of its length (which is likely to double in the hands of arbcom'ers). — CharlotteWebb 20:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I prefer to be lengthy with complex issues where I can. "Cover all the bases," and all that. The principle of the proposal stands, though, yes. Anthøny   ✉  20:19, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring (AGK)

 * Incomplete.

5) Where an incident arises—often taking place against a high-interest backdrop—in which two or more administrators are using their rights (blocking or unblocking an account; protecting or unprotecting a page; deleting or undeleting a page) to retain a particular action's presence on a page, to the point where no discussion between the administrators over their differences of opinion, a wheel war can be said to.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * (Incomplete; saving thus far. Anthøny   ✉  21:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC))

Format for administrator conduct

 * General suggestion for a presumably forthcoming range of statements on the conduct of individual administrators.

I think it appropriate that we review the conduct of each individual administrator who is party to this case (and, perhaps, those that made [even minor?] actions on ) against the evidence submitted. Furthermore, feedback and suggestions for improvement may also be submitted.

As an example,


 * {| style="border: 1px solid silver; background: cream; padding: 1px; margin: 1px; font-size: 95%; width: 40%;"


 * MBisanz

Filing party. General statement of involvement.
 * Event A. Poor conduct. How to handle "next time."
 * Event B. Good conduct.
 * Event B. Poor conduct. How to handle "next time."
 * }

MBisanz is used absolutely as an example there, and I am not making any comment, through events A-C, as to his conduct out with the purposes of example or hypothesis.

Parties whose conduct may be reviewed on an individual format as above:



Thoughts welcome.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Seems reasonable. Wily D  13:03, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * This seems like a good format to follow. Anthøny   ✉  16:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed remedies (AGK)
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

BLP special enforcement: further guidance
1) The Committee recognises that further guidance is necessary with regards to the special enforcement on BLP articles. The intention of this guide is to:
 * Provide non-official advice on dispensing special enforcements on BLP articles;
 * Provide guidance on where (on which articles) and when (at which stage of an incident) special enforcement actions should be made;
 * Suggest possible sources of advice and assistance in the event of special circumstances.

The Arbitration Committee shall author this guide within two months.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed. Points over which I particularly desire feedback:
 * Third bullet point: too specific a point to include in a "general aims" list?
 * Wording: any possible refinement or improvement?
 * Time limit: is two months too short? too long? possible alternatives?
 * Anthøny  ✉  10:47, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Another bullet: *provide guidance on editing articles while they are under special enforcement (see Moreschi's comments and my replies below). Homunq (talk) 11:36, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Also, I think that "author" is not quite the right word. The guide should be open to general edits and be written by consensus. Obviously, I think that ArbCom members would be given due respect in such a format, and their presence would be an important part of the legitimacy, but that doesn't mean the task falls on them. Homunq (talk) 11:44, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The intention is that the committee is to expand on its original schematics for these arrangements. I really think that they ought to be the ones that pen the final draft, although your suggestions that the community have time to offer input is a very good one: I would hope that the committee would invite opinion and comment regardless. But yes, I think author is the appropriate terminology here; of course, if you have any suggestions as to alternatives to "author," I'm all ears! Anthøny   ✉  16:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposals by Ncmvocalist
tbd=to be decided

Proposed principles
Incomplete. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

BLP Special Enforcement (Ncmv)
tbd) The BLP special enforcement remedy at Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes is intended to ensure that all Wikipedia articles comply in full with Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy. Administrators are only authorised to effect actions under the special enforcement provisions, and indeed, only permitted to retain their status as an administrator, in so long as they act with solid judgement and sufficient thought for the effect of their actions on the encyclopedia.

Should an user disagree with an administrator's action as made under BLP special enforcement, they should pursue the avenues of appeals specified here (under "Appeals"). In the absence of a clear consensus at the avenues of appeals to reverse or modify the action, all administrators are expressly prohibited from using their tools to undo that action. Wheel warring is harmful to the project, and indeed is more disruptive than one misguided action could be.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Like every other rule, we have to expect admins will misapply it from time to time. Taking special action (especially protection, the least harmful of actions) shouldn't call for special penalties for poorly judged, if not egrarious, specious or reckless use.  In short, if we want admins to do what they can to keep us in line with the principles and letter of BLP, we shouldn't dangle a sword over their heads if they do.  Second paragraph seems reasonable to me. Wily D  13:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The word 'consequences' might not have been the right word so I've modified that too. I'll respond in more detail later. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Modified from AGK. The remedy was drafted so that consensus was needed for the appeal - not consensus for the original action. Why? When an admin makes an action under the remedy, it was to be treated in line with the rule of thumb - 'do no harm', and that was the entire purpose of the remedy. BLP policy does not change because an article has passed FA, nor can WP:IAR be invoked for a very clear procedure on this remedy. Some administrators have failed to even realize the alarming extent of their poor judgement or unacceptable administrative conduct, and sadly, perhaps the only way the point will be hit home is through appropriate individual remedies, including suspension and revocation of administrator privilleges. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur (no preference between this and AGK) LessHeard vanU (talk) 12:39, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This also seems fair to me, although I'm inclined to support including the in-built mini common sense check of "wheel warring undoes any progress made from installing BLP special sanctions on an article" that I have in my proposal. Anthøny   ✉  15:36, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked it to be more explicit now; I agree it should be covered. Ncmvocalist (talk) 09:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Administrators are expected to lead by example
tbd) Administrators are expected to lead by example, and act as role models for users in the community. To a greater extent than other editors, administrators are expected to observe the principles of Wikiquette by behaving in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others. Sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia is incompatible with the status of administrator. Even if no misuse of administrative tools took place, administrators whose actions are inappropriate and disruptive risk being desysopped by the Arbitration Committee.

tbd.2) Administrators are expected to lead by example, and act as role models for users in the community. Administrators are expected to observe the principles of Wikiquette by behaving in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others. Sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia is incompatible with the status of administrator. Even if no misuse of administrative tools took place, administrators whose actions are inappropriate and disruptive risk being desysopped by the Arbitration Committee.


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 * Comment by parties:
 * Historically, no misuse of tools has meant no desysoping in all but the most over-the-top cases (I'm not sure I could cite one). It's definitely not that case that we hold admins to a higher standard of civility and etiquette; we should, but we don't.  In any event, the same level is all that policy defines, and practice doesn't go that far - I don't think we can say more than "same". Wily D  10:56, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Combined from 2 previous cases. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * These are the expectations, but this is not always born out in practice. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In my experience admins and established users are held to a lower standard. If a new user followed the example of some admins they would get blocked. If you try to enforce an equal standard on admins(ie block them for edit warring with their tools or editing against consensus)/established users you get yelled at. I would however like admins to be held to a higher standard. Chillum  14:20, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Per LHVU, but in any case, I've added a variant. I thought there was desysopping even in the absence of misuse of tools, but given I can't remember a particular case name to support that, and that it might have been too long ago, I'm not sure. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:26, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring (Ncmv)
tbd) Wheel warring (undoing an administrative action by another administrator) without first attempting to resolve the issue is unacceptable; see Wheel warring and Resolving disputes. Wheel warring is harmful to the project, and indeed is more disruptive than one misguided action could be.


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 * I'm sure I could take misguided actions that're worse than wheel warring. This seems too strong. Wily D  13:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Proposed; keeping it relevant. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Know yourself
tbd) It is important for all users, but especially administrators, to be aware of their own agendas, feelings and passions, and to deal with them appropriately, avoiding both biased editing and ill-considered administrative actions.


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 * Standard. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Compliance
tbd) All users are expected to comply with the rulings of the Arbitration Committee.


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 * I've heard "not oppose" - comply with is kind of vague, there is no obligation to enforse, implement or impose, merely to not oppose. Wily D 11:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Standard. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:00, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not concur (per WilyD, above). The ArbCom, famously, do not make policy but reflect practice; this would not be possible with blind obedience to either ArbCom or policy - which also is descriptive, not prescriptive. Rulings by ArbCom are generally directed toward a party and/or subject and/or a specific action or actions.LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:40, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * By comply with, I mean: to act in accordance with those requirements/instructions. For example, if ArbCom ruled that a user is subject to a particular restriction and they can only be blocked up to a week in the event of repeated violations (must be 5 blocks before you can go any further), then you're expected to stay within those requirements - blocking them for 1 month after 2 blocks solely for that conduct would not be complying with the ruling. Similarly, you're expected to comply with the requirements under a discretionary sanctions remedy by being an uninvolved admin when enforcing sanctions under that remedy, etc. There's no difference in this case when it came to BLP Special Enforcement. You might not agree with the remedy, and you have no obligation to enforce or impose the remedy yourself. However, where another admin has enforced/imposed/implemented the remedy, by reversing the remedy without a clear consensus, you have violated the ruling (you did not comply with it, or its requirements, as you were expected to). Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:47, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Ignoring all rules
tbd) Wikipedia has many policies and processes that affect protection, unprotection, deletion and undeletion of pages. Where there is strong community support (or minimally, a lack of objections), it is sometimes permissible to sidestep or otherwise take liberties with these process. Those who ignore all rules should proceed slowly and deliberately; act only when informed by any existing discussion, history, or logs; and should be prepared to explain the reasoning for their actions.  If ensuing discussion shows an absence of community support, practitioners of Ignore All Rules should have the grace to revert their own actions.


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 * Proposed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:27, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:34, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

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Proposed findings of fact
Incomplete. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:07, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi
tbd) The removal of full protection  from Sarah Palin by  was inappropriate. Jossi was an involved content editor of Sarah Palin-related articles, broadly construed. Further, Jossi did not engage in a sufficient amount of on-wiki consensus-building or discussion, either before or after the fact, to justify Jossi's actions under our doctrine of ignore all rules. Despite several users repeatedly expressing concerns over Jossi's actions  , Jossi did not revert the actions.

Although Jossi has promised not to take administrative actions on this article until the close of this case, Jossi has continued to edit on the topic.


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 * Proposed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 06:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride
tbd) inappropriately removed full protection from Sarah Palin. The article was full protected under special enforcement on biographies of living persons, and there was no clear consensus at the avenues of appeal for the full protection to be modified. MZMcBride's logs indicate that he has inappropriately been using his tools to remove full protection from a variety of articles and templates, without adequate discussion or edit-summaries to justify those actions.


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 * Proposed. Ncmvocalist (talk) 07:06, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

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Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

I'm not going to be able to finish this after all. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

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tbd) Jossi is indefinitely prohibited from taking any administrative action concerning Sarah Palin-related articles, broadly construed.

tbd.1) Jossi is prohibited from taking any administrative action concerning BLP articles for a period of 3 months.

tbd.2) McMZBride is indefinitely prohibited from taking any administrative action concerning BLP articles.

tbd.3) McMZBride's administrative privilleges are suspended for a period of 3 months.

tbd.4) WilyD is admonished for inappropriately blocking.... (didn't have time to complete the finding for WilyD either).


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 * I'm sure others will write principles/FoFs that relate to this, if the arbs want to use it. Just throwing this out there. Giggy (talk) 12:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Desyoppings
1) For showing very poor judgement in the misuse of admin tools, all users involved in the wheel war are desysopped, and encouraged to re-apply via the usual means.


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 * Comment by parties:
 * Giggy - please think about buying a horse before loading up your cart. As it stands, nobody has proposed any findings of fact that MBisanz or I abused our tools at all.  Without such findings, I don't think this can be entertained.  In any event, each of us should be judged by our own merits; if I've abused my tools, they should be taken away, otherwise not.  MBisanz, Jossi and MZMcBride's behaviour were all different, and should all be considered seperately. Wily D  03:31, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd agree that at the least this should be split into four remedies for separate consideration. Not commenting on the remedy itself yet.  MBisanz  talk 13:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Let's let the community decide who of those involved still have community trust. Before the usual "zomg no admin today would pass RfA" arguments come out, remember that people do support good admins. Just look at any reconfirmation RfA.
 * By my calculation, users desysopped by this would be MZMcBride, Jossi, MBisanz, and WilyD. Feel free to suggestion addition/removal of others. Here's the log, though non-logged actions may also be relevant. Throwing this out there for thoughts. Giggy (talk) 12:55, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All four is too extreme, see my evidence input at Requests_for_arbitration/Sarah_Palin_protection_wheel_war/Evidence — Rlevse  •  Talk  • 14:15, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely support desysop of MZMcBride and Jossi, both of whom undid admin actions twice. The others, probably not. --uǝʌǝsʎʇɹoɟʇs (st47) 18:33, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All is too extreme. It would be keeping with precedent, tradition, and past history for those that did it more than once to be desysopped. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 18:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would support desysopping Jossi, as I thought the nature of his repeated wheel warring, especially as an involved editor on the associated article, was particular egregious. I don't know enough about MZMcBride to judge at this point, and the other two definitely don't deserve desysopping based on their actions in this situation. Kelly  hi! 04:25, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I just got a disturbing Wikipedia e-mail from Jossi in response to the above comment, I've forwarded it to the ArbCom. Kelly  hi! 08:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * .....wow. I'm really beginning to wonder if jossi's account is compromised, if true, this is like COMPLETELY opposite to what I thought of jossi before. SirFozzie (talk) 08:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not compromised. I found it unbelievable that a private email is used by Kelly to further undermine me, by calling it"disturbing" in a public forum such as this. It only strengthens my assessment of Kelly's behavior in these articles as expressed privately to her in that email. Give her actions, I am contemplating publishing that email on her talk page, my only constraint being that I would not want to add to the drama (that was the reason I sent her a private message in the first place) ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:33, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Certainly not MBisanz - I don't see the need for this user to be subject to any remedy. However, I cannot rule remedies out for the other 3 just yet (but a desysop remedy seems unlikely for Wily imo, given the circumstances). Ncmvocalist (talk) 08:42, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No. I would support language that speaks of suspension or removal of adminship, or warning regarding further violations, dependent on the degree of violation of WP:WHEEL found, and the acknowledgement of culpability, but nothing as stark as this. LessHeard vanU (talk) 09:44, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This appears to be a clear-cut case of wheel-warring by at least a couple of admins. Whether desysopping is the best remedy for wheel warring, particularly in situations where admins promise to continue the same activity, is up to the ArbCom. However in previous cases that has often been the result. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 05:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Administrators or users with a strong POV should avoid editing the article
1) I think one of the main problems here to do with the disputes, especially surrounding Palin, but to a certain degree which surround any political figure is that bias for or against that person will emerge. People will simply edit the article, to throw in there own view, or a view with a source that promotes strongly a particular viewpoint, which thus should be removed in any example per WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV, as of course all articles, should strenuesly (sp?) promote NPOV. I think too many users Palin supporters/opposers are fighting over what they think is right on the talkpage, which on the whole could decrease the neutrality of the article (that at some points did happen leading to reverts and page protection warring).

I on the whole, think full-protection was good for the article, as it meant particular viewpoints could not get into the article, and thus the article would stay stable. What I didn't like, was the protection-warring from full to semi to full to semi, as this (for those users) suggests they have a strong POV in the article. Everyone has a POV, and I wouldn't expect everyone to ignore the article, however if users feel they have a strong POV towards or against a particular candidate to the point where it would weaken the neutrality of the article I would strongly suggest those users would cease editing the article, even if it got to the point where administrators begin handing out topic bans, in order to remove the POV-warriors from the article. In short, I think users with a strong POV towards one or another should not edit the article, or if they feel they do have a POV, take it to the talk to discuss possible changes. D.M.N. (talk) 16:35, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Okay, I've seen this hinted at a lot, but I'm not clear on it. Is there a belief that political alignments are relevent to this case?  That certain political alignments favoured semi or full protection?  If that is the case, which to which? Wily D  18:18, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just take a look at the contribs of active editors there. A pattern of obfuscation, filibustering, spuriuos claims of "POV pushing" and BLP violations, removal of talk page comments and mainspace material sourced to reliable sources, and other disruptive behaviors will emerge quite quickly. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 18:47, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * How do you enforce this, though, for normal editing? My personal views re: the Republican party and US conservatives are hardly a secret (even having a laugh about it here with Kelly of all people!), but I try hard to keep it out of my editing here, and I'm not going to hold views against anyone personally. If people can or can't keep their spare dirty laundry and luggage out, it'll be obvious, and slip-ups as long as they don't involve admin tools, vandalism, incivility or BLP violations are no big deal. It happens! The community usually does at least a decent job of shutting down the disruptive POV pushers, once a crowd gets a whiff of it. The tag teamers, though, is a separate debate that needs to be solved. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 18:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, as regards sysops. Admins should, as part of the job description, act neutrally in all instances. Where an admin suspects that their decisions may be tainted by POV they should withdraw (not discuss, because sysop decisions must be neutral). Those that bring a strong POV into sysop decisions should no longer have the status of administrator. However, the introduction of differing sourced POV's by anyone should be encouraged, and added subject to WP:WEIGHT. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:01, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

Ignore all rules is deprecated by Consensus upon the first objection
1) The nutshell of WP:Consensus is: I would re-iterate fundamental . By necessity, WP:IAR is the rationale behind an action or decision by one person; WP:Consensus only applies to that application of WP:IAR if there are no subsequent objections to that action or decision. As soon as one objection is lodged WP:IAR no longer has consensus, and is therefore deprecated.


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 * Proposed. WP:IAR cannot be invoked to ignore consensus, and especially the consensus that WP:IAR was not in the interest of the encyclopedia. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:03, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, concur. IAR is a means to implementing a consensus that requires the rules to be circumvented, and nothing else. Anthøny   ✉  15:58, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would also agree with this. IAR, by my interpretation, should only be invoked to streamline something that is clearly noncontroversial but at the same time is not quite within the exact letter of policy. If this view is correct, it would preclude invoking IAR after someone raises an objection. J.delanoy <sup style="color:red;">gabs <sub style="color:blue;">adds  19:22, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that consensus trumps IAR, strongly. I would disagree with quantifying this with "first objection" - that's just asking for people to start wikilawyering IAR. IAR should be stated always in terms of general principles, not bogged down with rules - that's the point. Homunq (talk) 01:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is what it is when it is formed
2) Consensus is formed by the participation of those persons creating it. There is no reason to second guess what effect non-participants might have, or what may happen in the future, as consensus is open to change. Therefore consensus may not be disregarded, since once formed the only appropriate mechanism is to change it.


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 * Proposed. LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:15, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This makes sense. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 21:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

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Sighted revisions
We already have an extention, WP:FLAG, that can be implemented on a per-page basis. For very-high-profile articles such as this one I propose that we use the lightweight sighted revisions proposal. Administrators (and maybe another user group) would be able to approve new versions of articles, and approve changes as long as they were not vandalism nor NPOV. ff m  21:46, 7 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * @Rootology, the best person to ask about Sighted revisions settings probably is who wrote the code for it.  MBisanz  talk 23:06, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with the general sentiment here. I don't exactly hide my amorous desire for flagged revisions, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Wily D  13:27, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * A bad context for making a good decision, I'd say - it would be interpreted by the "ArbCom is evil" crowd as a power grab, legislating from the bench, but as a plan it has obvious merit and I would be inclined to float it at the village pump, perhaps with some input from deWP where I believe something very similar is in use. Guy (Help!) 21:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it would not be wise for the committee to be the body that introduces flagged revisions. It remains a body that deals with conduct issues; although, for example, the BLP special restrictions were introduced to combat conduct issues across a wide area of Wikipedia, flagged rev's is in an entire other league: they do not deal with conduct problems, but rather content almost exclusively. It's really out with the committee's remit, and to add to that trouble, it really wouldn't go down well. Anthøny   ✉  22:09, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Question for the people that know Mediawiki well enough... would it be technically possible for a change with an extension that let you set Sighted or Flagged revisions on for say just every article in a given category? It would be awful nice for all the BLPs. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 23:04, 7 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Note that individual pages can be adjusted already. A mass category based method would probably be feasible with proper caching. Not sure if it would be a good idea though.  Aar on Sc hulz  00:01, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Per the comments above, I proposed this at Wikipedia talk:Flagged revisions. Cenarium  Talk  15:22, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * While I'm a big fan of revision flagging and would like to see it implemented globally (fun fact - deWP has now passed 77% of pages flagged according to the stats page)... I don't think it would have helped in this case. The problem here was that updates were coming in so fast that people couldn't keep up with them. Having this page set up with revision flagging wouldn't have slowed down the pace of updates at all... and would have introduced an additional problem. If updates come in more quickly than they can be flagged then IP users are seeing a different page than they will get when they click the 'edit' button. Most of the time this isn't too much of a problem because there may have only been one or two updates since the last flag was set and they might be on a completely different section than the IP is looking to edit. However, on a page with an ultra high number of edits the IP user could end up editing a page which has dozens of changes from the last time it was flagged. The text they were looking to change might not even be there anymore. As such, I think that even when / if revision flagging is implemented we are still going to have semi and full protection... as a means of 'throttling back' on the pace of edits. I also agree that this isn't something which should come from ArbCom. --CBD 15:44, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The editing was so fast, I think full protection was the only way to handle it (review an edit and several others have been made). I think that now it would be helpful for this article though, and to many others (in the same context: Obama, McCain, Bush, ...). I agree that Arbcom should not introduce FlagRevs, and that it should be the community's decision. Progressively, we'll get to it. Cenarium  Talk  16:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For information, you may see my detailed proposal on sighting versions at User:Cenarium/sighted revisions. Cenarium  Talk  16:17, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring and blocks
1) A block is an appropriate measure to prevent further disruption in the event of a wheel war (defined as a disruptive back-and-forth conflict [along the lines of an edit war] involving administrative actions [including editing or moving through protection]). The fact that the person causing disruption can unblock him-or-her-self is no more a reason to call it "non-preventative" than the fact that a non-admin can create block-evading sockpuppets.


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 * Err, obviously I believe this. Wily D 21:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Proposed --Random832 (contribs) 20:42, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If it is for short periods, I agree with this in principle. However, I'm not sure that present policy supports this (unless interpreted under the blanket of disruption). Ian ¹³  /t  10:16, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong support, although I realize that I am in a minority on this. Admin blocks don't work because too often the admin gets one of their "friends" to unblock them, and then both go to attack the original block decision. There is no reason why admins should not be blocked for disruptive behavior (and repeated actions against specific consensus are certainly disruptive), and not to make this clear would only leave us in an even greater situation of polarization of the admin community than we have at the minute. When was the last time that ArbCom penalized an admin for undoing the block of another admin? Note that, as I have said elsewhere, I think it would be petty to penalize in the current case. Physchim62 (talk) 12:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Moreschi's statement about the unblock to me specifically allowed me to reinstate it if I felt it was necessary. I didn't feel the need to, so I declined.  Wily D  13:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

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Administrators
1) Wikipedia administrators are trusted members of the community and are expected to follow Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Occasional lapses may be overlooked, but consistently poor judgement may result in desysopping.
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 * True. Wily D 10:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons
2) Wikipedia articles that present material about living people can affect their subjects' lives. Wikipedia editors who deal with these articles have a responsibility to consider the legal and ethical implications of their actions when doing so. 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.


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 * This seems to be true. Wily D 13:46, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Very yes. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Makes sense.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Ignore all rules
3) Ignore all rules is one of the projects oldest policies and states that "if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This is often helpful when encountering uncontroversial situations where the project is helped by ignoring other policies. It is not a carte blanche for administrators to use their tools whenever they feel like it. When there is consensus supporting a particular view point, Wikipedia:Ignore all rules should not be used to circumnavigate that.


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 * Agreed. Ignore all rules is not ignore all discussion.  Wily D  13:29, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


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 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we need to make a distinction between consensus on a specific issue (here, the protection of a specific article at a specific time) and consensus on general issues (eg, only protect pages where it's really necessary). WP:IAR is intended to override the latter, but not the former. Physchim62 (talk) 06:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. I thought I had already said that! LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:04, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring
4) Wheel warring (undoing an administrative action by another administrator) without first attempting to resolve the issue is unacceptable. Administrators that wheel war may be desysopped.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah Palin
1) has seen some of the highest levels of page views and editing ever seen on Wikipedia. With such high levels of editing and external viewing, the article has been subject to run of the mill vandalism, violations of the biography of living persons policy and other disruptive editing. The article has also been the subject of a wheel war involving a number of Wikipedia administrators who dispute the level of protection that the article should be put under.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 *  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The last sentence appears to say that only those admins who wheelwarred disputed the level of protection; whereas other admins who did not wheelwar disputed some of the levels of protection. Also, some of the the admins wheelwarring may have been disputing that consensus already was in place for the level of protection. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Ryan's assessment here. I find the Palin article to be "unprecedented" (my quote, not ryan's).  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi
2) reduced the protection level on Sarah Palin from full protection to semi protection twice within the space of two hours. The first reduction came despite consensus that full protection was correct, although it could be argued that Jossi did not see the discussion at the time he acted. Jossi was aware of the discussion before his second reduction in protection level, and vowed to "WP:IAR and unprotect again", despite there being consensus to keep the article fully protected.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Ian ¹³  /t  10:18, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've edited this to remove the wikilink to WP:IAR in the quote since it is interfering with the diff link. --Random832 (contribs) 20:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur, per my evidence. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:43, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree, but at the same time, wholeheartedly wish that Jossi, a superb admin, had talked to me (the initial "full-protecting" admin), before undoing my action. The article was unprecedented in its volume of viewers, volume of editors, and volume of vandalism, according to my experience.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:40, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

MBisanz
3) restored full protection to Sarah Palin after Jossi’s reduction, citing special enforcement on biographies of living persons. There was also consensus on the administrators’ noticeboard at the time. Whilst the use of the special enforcement in the middle of a wheel war was not ideal, it is understandable.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Was there an ideal action? All options seemed pretty shitty to me. I choose "apply blocks" on the hopes that we could avoid this place. *sigh*  BLP special sauce, blocks, strongly worded letters, indefinite war over protection, fabulous prizes for everyone who didn't war - what was the ideal answer? Wily D  13:27, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My understanding from reviewing this ArbCom deliberations (and I'm open to correction) that MBisanz cited Special Enforcement in regard to the consensus that stood for the full protection, and it was the consensus that informed MBisanz action. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:47, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree there was consensus for the protection, but I don't believe there was consensus for a 2 week protection at the time (most people who specified a time supported <24-72 hours) nor was there consensus that BLP special enforcment should be used. Mr.Z-man 17:59, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The point of special enforcement is supposed to be that you take an action when it's urgent that can later be assessed for consensus and all that. I have a hard time faulting MBisanz for finding it to be urgent, although I'd think "indef" would've been better than two weeks, the choice of length was something that could've been fixed by discussion, as MBisanz and many other were engaged in after he announced it. Wily D  13:51, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As I indicated at least once in the evidence and a couple of times on AE, I was open to changing the time of protection and did participate in the discussion leading to the time period being shortened.  MBisanz  talk 14:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Ryan P's assessment. MBisanz did no wrong here.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride
4) reduced the protection level on Sarah Palin twice in 6 days. On the first occasion, he reduced it from full protection, to no protection. On the second occasion, he reduced it from full protection to semi protection. He made no attempt at discussing the reduction with the original protecting admins on either occasion, and he was aware of the special enforcement after his second unprotection. At the time he unprotected for the second time, there was no consensus to undo the special enforcement. On both occasions he used the summary "this is a wiki".


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride's first unprotection was from semi to zero, leaving Sarah Palin as the only one of the four candidates' articles to be completely unprotected. Physchim62 (talk) 05:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Oops, fixed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 15:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As above, it was different protection changes. Additionally, he did inform the protecting admin in the second occasion on IRC. Ian ¹³  /t  10:19, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Informing the protecting admin means you discuss the change with them, not state you're going to wheel war with them. If the protecting admin doesn't agree, then you take it to a noticeboard to get a consensus, not carry on regardless.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 15:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Per my evidence, MZMcBride did not appear to be active on Wikipedia. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride’s history
5) has previously been involved in mass admin actions without consensus or policy on side  and undoing a large number of other adminitrators protections without consulting them..


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Two instances doesn't strike me as a 'large number', and the discussions indicate that at least some of them were justified. Regarding the log of 'this is a wiki' unprotections - well most seem to have gone uncontested anyway. Not wonderful judgement I admit, but not malicious. Ian ¹³  /t  10:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "Not wonderful judgment", if shown on repeated occasions, is enough to get an admin desysopped, I can assure you ;) The claim I make in my evidence is of no judgment at all concerning each individual case, which seems to me to be even worse. Physchim62 (talk) 12:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * While not explicitly written in policy (I don't think), the way we've historically operated processes like WP:RFPP has made it so that undoing another admin's protection is not even close to being as controversial as undoing a block or a deletion. Mr.Z-man 17:56, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

WilyD
6) blocked MZMcBride for wheel warring after his second reduction in protection. Whilst the motivation is understandable (the wording of Wheel war suggested blocking as a possible measure at the time ), it had the effect of throwing gasoline onto the fire.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Obviously I don't have an objective perspective. But I failed to see the fire actually flare up.  It's one thing to say my choice of action was risky, and could have caused a blow-up.  But to say it ''did' is at odds with the historical record. Wily D  23:49, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think it did any good, and caused people to get upset over it so the net effect of the block was negative. Although it wasn't your intention, it made the situation worse.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 23:51, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think "had no effect" is about the worst you can say. It's hard to gauge exactly the effect, but everyone calmed down and the protection war stopped.  Whether it was this ArbCom case, my block, both, or neither that caused this, I can't know, none of us can.  But since things didn't get worse, we can conclude me action was at best valueless. Wily D  02:21, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I don't agree with this wording at all. Ncmvocalist (talk) 00:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you feel is wrong with it? It might be helpful to give reasons for future proposals.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 00:29, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "Throwing gasoline onto the fire" is obvious hyperbole! The FoF should also mention that the block was perfectly within WP:BLOCK – I for one think it was justified, although it would also be petty to get at Moreschi for overturning it. Physchim62 (talk) 06:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I am not convinced this action had the effect described. I agree a block was an overreaction given there was no evidence MZM would again unprotect the article if not blocked, but I think this proposal makes too much of the block. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 17:58, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Jossi admonished
1) Jossi is strongly admonished not to cite Wikipedia:Ignore all rules when undertaking admin actions in controversial circumstances and not to act when consensus is opposite to what he is planning to do. He is further admonished not to redo his own actions when they have already been reversed by another administrator.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Personally, I view Jossi's decision to revert protection twice in two hours while already an involved editor working on Palin topics as somewhat more severe than MZMcBride's two actions. Jossi's refusal to acknowledge consensus for the protection even two days after the fact  and his willingness to edit through protection  to obscure the protection tag he didn't like also generally lead me to question his judgment.  Even acknowledging MZMcBride's greater history of controversy, I have trouble treating Jossi so much less severely than MZMcBride.  Dragons flight (talk) 23:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I was trying to look past this one incident whilst making this proposal. As far as I can see, Jossi doesn't have a previous history of misconduct here so I'm assuming good faith that a strong admonishment will suffice. That said, I think his unwillingness to acknowledge his mistake here is disapointing, especially considering there's clearly a consensus that his unprotections were wrong. I still stand by this admonishment, and I hope he takes this arbitration case seriously in future actions.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 00:36, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You may have missed this, Ryan. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:00, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Jossi, the problem is that you spent a long time in denial over this - it took you a long time to recognise your mistakes. It's certainly good that you now understand that your unprotections weren't the best idea - it helps me recognise that a desysopping isn't the right course of action. I stand by the admonishment because IAR should never have been used here.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 04:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it took me a while, and after receiving feedback I came to see the situation in a better light. It was indeed a mistake, given the drama that ensued. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Jossi, both this statement and the one linked on Evidence still both bothers me a great deal. You appear to believe that your actions were a mistake primarily because they didn't work / provoked drama.  I would contend that overturning other admins in the fashion you did, especially the second time, would have been a mistake even if it stuck.  Specifically, fighting over admin actions in that way is itself inappropriate regardless of the outcome.  When you have a dispute, the expectation is that we solve it through discussion.  You had a dispute over the protection status of that article and rather than reaching a resolution through discussion you engaged in wheel warring.  That kind of behavior is inappropriate in all circumstances, and I've yet to see a clear indication that you get that.  Dragons flight (talk) 04:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I am sorry to hear that it bothers you. At that time it seemed to be "the right thing to do", and obviously, I was wrong. IAR does not mix well in these circumstances, and when applying it in that context as I have said, it did not work. Now, if it had stuck, we will not be where we are now... ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 04:56, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think an admonishment would be appropriate here. Physchim62 (talk) 06:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree that an admonishment is appropriate, and a step further, feel that it is already quite apparent that Jossi is "feeling admonished" and (correct me if I'm wrong, Jossi) contrite. I do not support any desysoppings in this case, it was an anomaly of "moving too fast", everyone trying to "do the right thing", and keep up with an article that, in my experience, was one of the fastest moving/changing articles I've ever seen.  I strongly believe that the rate of "change" on the article is precisely dictated by the real-life "surprise" that the country felt when Palin was announced as VP.  She was a virtual unknown outside of her tundratic [sic] home state.  Our article, before the announcement, was reflective of several other "governor's articles", some of them mere stubs, when there was no national attention to the subject matter.  The "overnight" sensation, coupled with the sensitivity of the subject, added to the subpar "stubby" article, led to drastic changes in the size and sourcing of the article, heated editing, lack of foresight from many parties, etc.  It was a "stars aligned" moment, a perfect storm.  Overall, it isn't over yet unfortunately, at least not until the end of the election cycle (and will probably continue if McPalin wins the election).  I'm supremely glad that this happened prior to Wikipedia's existence.  It would have made this "pale in" (pun intended) comparison.  Keeper    76  20:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I should be more content if Jossi were to realise that it wasn't that his invocation of IAR did not stick that lead to this affair, but that invoking it was the cause. If the admonishment clarified this, then I would think it would suffice. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment - this is frankly silly and naive. I invite anyone to look at Jossi's contributions to Sarah Palin and related articles, both before his wheel-warring and after. Jossi has, in my opinion, consistently sought to insert anti-Christian POV into the Palin article, and to facilitate others doing the same. At the very least, Jossi should be topic-banned from articles involving religion. Kelly  hi! 18:41, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is specific to Jossi's use of the tools in the context of the wheelwar. Claims regarding POV pushing (of whatever viewpoint) should be made under a separate header. LessHeard vanU (talk) 23:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A note that Jossi has indeed recognised the error of his ways during this incident, admittedly with some assistance from myself and others. What interests me more, however, is what he will learn from this, and how we will improve himself from here on in. The admonishment proposed is justified, certainly, although I have in mind a small number of alternative courses of action, mostly made with Jossi's wider presence on the encyclopedia in mind (some less sympathetic, some more); this certainly is a middle ground. Anthøny   ✉  22:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * With respect, Jossi has said what he did was a mistake, but it is not at all clear to me that he understands why it was wrong. His statements continue to suggests that he believes he was wrong primarily because his actions were unsuccessful.  That attitude is dangerous and totally misses the point.  With that in mind, I don't consider this remedy adequate.  Dragons flight (talk) 01:00, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride desysopped
2) MZMcBride’s administrative privileges are revoked. MZMcBride may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means or by appeal to the Committee.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:36, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Disproportionate if Jossi is only to be "admonished". <u style="text-decoration:none;font:100% cursive;color:#963"><B>Neıl</B> <u style="text-decoration:none;color:#936">  ☄   10:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think this is appropriate. It's even disputable if he even wheel warred. Ian ¹³  /t  10:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * MZMcBride wheel warring is one of the most clearest things about this case. It's a text book example of it.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 15:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * On the evidence available at this point, I don't plan on proposing a remedy involving desysopping. That said, he certainly wheel-warred. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think desysopping is appropriate in the circumstances, given the disruption which MZMcBride's running of deletion scripts has caused. I am convinced that he has also run an unprotection script on his account, which would account for the large number of unprotections (6-a-minute, with identical edit summaries) that I have posed in evidence. We can (or could, or consider to) excuse Jossi for losing his temper; the problems which MZMcBride already had on his back should have warned him not to get involved here. As he did get involved (on two occasions, separated by six days, not exactly excusable by simple anger), and yet again in a manner which went against the consensus of other users, I have no longer any confidence in his ability to use the tools with which he is currently endowed, and especially given his past habits of using them semi-automatically. Physchim62 (talk) 12:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * With regard to Sarah Palin, I would prefer suspension (30 days?). I have no view as regards other actions mentioned above. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Neil, admonishing Jossi and desyopping MZMcBride is disproportionate. That said, Jossi has reached the stage where he has acknowledged his mistake, and it's unclear whether MZMcBride has. If MZMcBride agrees to stop the practice of unprotecting pages without first establishing consensus, then I don't think anything more than an admonishment is necessary. Otherwise, agree with LessHeard vanU, and 30 day suspension. PhilKnight (talk) 21:14, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Both should be admonished, neither should be desysopped over the Palin article. No need to feed the Wiki-watchers at MZM's expense.  Keeper    76  21:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This isn't just about the Palin article wrt MzMcBride. There's evidence of previous problems with his use of tools.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * But this workshop is about the Sarah Palin Protection Wheel War. His actions, in the Sarah Palin Protection Wheel War, do not merit a desysop.  I choose to live in this vacuum.  If you feel there is enough evidence to desysop based on other actions, than start a new case for it with MZM as the subject.   Keeper    76  21:35, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That's not how arbitration works Keeper. If there's questionable judgement from an administrator in the scope of one case, but there's evidence from previous incidents of bad use of tools, it all gets included in the case so all can be considered together.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 21:38, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Struck my comment above. MZM has a pattern of "unprotection", with the edit summary of "this is a wiki", as well as a pattern of "deletion" of userpages and usertalkpages that he perceives as "inactive".  I believe he is using a bot/automated script (unauthorized and unconfirmed) to accomplish this.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, if the actions taken are part of a pattern or not is very relevant. Chillum  21:41, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Has there been any attempt at dispute resolution previously for the other incidents? An RFC? Anything other than ANI? I think using an "emergency RFAR" that conveniently gets to skip all that for one incident to skip all the processes that would normally be necessary for other issues is wrong at best, an abuse of process at worst. Mr.Z-man 17:51, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Wheel warring short of outright libel/defamation/BLP abuse is usually sent to the immediate front of the line, is it not? The Brandt wheel war and others also immediately went right to RFAR, unless my memory is off. Why would this case of wheel warring be any different? <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 18:07, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Rejection of this remedy on the grounds of "but X is just as bad!" is not helpful. The evidence presented to the Committee certainly does warrant this proposal as one possible remedy to the Wheel Warring we sadly witnessed at Sarah Palin; whether it is the most appropriate sanction to be applied to MZMcBride or not, I have not yet concluded. However, as a general rule of thumb on any side of the encyclopedia, including Arbitration Committee decision generation, we take actions on a case-by-case basis, further to appropriate discussion and aforethought—in other words, not under an ethos of "keeping the scales balanced," but rather under one of "how to best improve the encyclopedia." Those opposing this remedy on the basis of Jossi being just as bad and yet not being desysopped would be well advised to either focus on opposing the "Jossi admonished" remedy on the basis of it being inappropriately weak, or to adjust the grounds of opposing this remedy to ones of it being too harsh. Anthøny   ✉  18:35, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Although his removal of my semi-protection was one of the stupidest things I have seen an admin do in recent memory, this is overly harsh. A two-action wheel war where the actions are separated by five days is pretty minimal. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:41, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I support this remedy. It is standard practice for ArbCom to look at cases of administrative misconduct in the context of the record of the administrator concerned. Someone who ends up before ArbCom for wheel warring where there is evidence presented of a history of poor judgment should be desysopped. <strong style="font-variant:small-caps">WJBscribe (talk) 17:57, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose, unless there are findings of fact that show the prior incidents of poor judgment. Work step by step please.  If there is evidence of a pattern of poor judgment, distill them to findings, and show why this remedy is needed. The above finding of fact simply cites the evidence, without any explanation.  You can't just write a conclusion, sprinkle it with diffs and call that proof.  Otherwise, I would support an admonishment and perhaps a short (14 day) suspension of privileges to show that this is serious. Jehochman Talk 14:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

WilyD advised
3) WilyD is advised not to block other administrators for using their tools controversially.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:16, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not appropriate. The wording of Wheel war at the time WillyD made this block implied blocking for wheel-warring was a remedy any administrator could apply (see ). There is still nothing written in policy that states blocking is not an appropriate remedy to prevent wheel-warring.  I note that it did end the wheel-warring in this case. <u style="text-decoration:none;font:100% cursive;color:#963"><B>Neıl</B>  <u style="text-decoration:none;color:#936">  ☄   10:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Neil. WP:BLOCK says that a user may be blocked "when his or her conduct severely disrupts the project; that is, when his or her conduct is inconsistent with a civil, collegial atmosphere and interferes with the process of editors working together harmoniously to create an encyclopedia." Hence, apart from the pretend-rule that "civility blocks don't work", there is no reason to criticize WilyD for the block, which seems to have been an appropriate measure (despite the fact that it was quickly reversed). Physchim62 (talk) 12:45, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Neil also. WilyD was perfectly within his bounds.  Keeper    76  20:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with Neil, if we are not to block admins for wheel warring that was not made clear, nor is it "common sense". The community can make this decision if it chooses to, no need for arbcom to make it. Chillum  21:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As worded, this would mean WilyD need ask another admin to review if a rogue sysop deleted the main page and blocked Jimbo. In any event, it may be appropriate to request WilyD ensure they have reviewed the alternatives before making a similar decision. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:21, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you review the evidence I presented, it's fairly clear a number of admins knew I intended do this. Nobody said word one that it was a bad idea - and responses after the fact are mixed.  I don't think it's necessarily the case that I'd have heard "don't do it" if I'd asked someone (depends on who I asked).  Incidentally, if someone deletes the main page and blocks Jimbo, they're probably compromised or off the deep end - begging some steward for an emergency desysop is more useful in that case. Wily D  00:37, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Using tools controversially does not mean he can't block admins for using their tools abusively. Anyway, this remedy is meant to be advise, not a meaty sanction.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 05:03, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * LessHeard if WilyD blocks somebody who deletes the main page, it would be a very uncontroversial action. The only controversy would be "were they hacked or did they go ape-shit?" but blocking (and desysopping) would be expected in either case. This straw-man objection would not be affected by the remedy, even if it did have teeth. — CharlotteWebb 14:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Bah! Deleting the Main Page? Blocking Jimbo Wales? Old hat, been done already! Now what you really want to do is [the rest of this post has been censored under WP:BEANS] Physchim62 (talk) 14:46, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps it is the grammarian (a word I learned from editing WP!) in me, but as written WilyD is not permitted to perform blocks on editors who use their tools controversially - and using your tools to delete the mainpage is, I maintain, controversial though I may have missed the policy page which indicates it isn't, of course LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:22, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For it to be "controversial" there would have to be some disagreement about whether it is acceptable to delete the main page. You are giving examples of things which are "uncontroversially bad". Let's try not to be silly. — CharlotteWebb 14:07, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Support as written. This was a bad block. — CharlotteWebb 14:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't get it. Blocking prevents you from using page protection/unprotection. This seemed preventative to me. I think admins should be policing each other instead of always going to a higher power. I think admins should be blocked more readily for policy violations, apparently this is not encouraged. Chillum  14:18, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

WP:IAR is not to be used when there are clearly users who disagree
1) WP:IAR isn't intended to say that everything is allowed. It should only be used where it is reasonable to assume that there would be a strong consensus.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Concur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Oppose, trying to put rules on IAR == fail. Mr.Z-man 17:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * When you have to invoke IAR explicitly, most likely you're wrong. IAR is not about justification of controversial actions, it's about the prevalence of common sense over bureaucracy. Usually, you just do something, providing an explanation, and every sane person around agrees with you. Max S em(Han shot first!) 11:14, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I concur with MaxSem here. IAR is not an explicit code to be cited when taking an action, but rather a reflection on a curious but fundamentally necessary phenomenon that occasionally rears its head in the course of non-routine incidents. Anthøny   ✉  12:08, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Pages linked to from the main page shouldn't be protected
2) Although Main Page featured article protection only mentions the daily featured article, it should apply to all pages linked to from the main page. This means that the page should only have any protection in case of extreme vandalism/BLP issues, and never full protection.


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Utterly contemptible proposal. Not only would this be policy writing by ArbCom, but this proposal picks one of the least relevant points in the argument about the Sarah Palin page protection and attempts to raise it to the level of dogma. Dogmatic attempts to enforce imaginary rules are behind many disputes between admins, including this one. Physchim62 (talk) 06:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In keeping with the spirit of the guideline - it is a high profile page, so don't fully protect it unless you are sure consensus states otherwise. Ian ¹³  /t  10:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No. Action in respect of articles should only consider the benefit to the article and thus Wikipedia, per my comment to Doc glasgow. No special dispensations because of volume of traffic or where it is linked from. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No way. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 21:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You might find the protection log for Steve Irwin interesting. — CharlotteWebb 14:11, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

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Speed kills judgment
1) A Wikipedia editor who makes decisions in subsecond time is more likely to make mistakes than one who can take a few minutes to consider the case, check with others and look for consensus. Those mistakes harm the encyclopedia's quality.

This is common to both editors and administrators.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Mea culpa ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Reasonable theory. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:28, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes. The trend for editors to focus on the quanity, rather than the quality, of their actions is alarming. Where due aforethought and consideration of the matter and the consequences of one's actions is sacrificed, the encyclopedia will eventually suffer because of it. Anthøny   ✉  16:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection slows down editing
2) Semiprotection means that fewer people edit an article. Full protection limits it even more. Fewer edits means more time to consider each edit.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


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 * Comment by others:
 * Again reasonable, but this only works if the reviewer does not use the "extra" time to do other things. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:29, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Reverting vandalism on Sarah Palin (unprotected) required split second judgment
1) The volume of edits on Sarah Palin meant that editors had to pass judgment on an edit on a subsecond level, or risk losing out to an edit conflict.


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 * Comment by others:
 * Exactly. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 05:50, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not so much "losing out" to an edit conflict, but facing the possibility of being swamped by subsequent edits. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Heaven forbid people have to revert something without rollback, or *gasp* edit it manually to improve it. Mr.Z-man 17:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Heaven forbid people have to revert something without rollback, or *gasp* edit it manually to improve it. Mr.Z-man 17:45, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection of Sarah Palin slowed down the editing speed
2) The volume of edits to Sarah Palin when semiprotected was less than when unprotected; when fully protected, it was even smaller.


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Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

No enforcement
1) None of the editors have shown bad faith. Unprotecting editors have shown bad judgment. It is believed that they have learned.


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Community encouraged to develop edit-speed brakes
2) The Arbcom should suggest to the community that community standards for braking editing on articles be developed.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Hard and fast rules are probably not needed. Maybe a one-off sentence in the protection policy about such things "when they are necessary". Wily D  13:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * This editor suggests that if edit speed surpasses 10 edits in a 10-minute period, that, by itself, should be enough reason to increase the protection level of the page for a limited period, such as 24 hours. Once that period passes, the article would need careful watching when protection level is decreased, to see if the storm has passed. --Alvestrand (talk) 05:40, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Each case is different - if protection is needed, it is implemented. I don't support this. Ian ¹³  /t  10:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * We arrived at an arbcom case because admins disagreed over whether protection was needed. Why shouldn't we get some guidelines hashed out BEFORE it happens next time? --Alvestrand (talk) 12:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The number of edits alone should have nothing to do with the protection status. Mr.Z-man 17:43, 13 September 2008 (UTC)


 * This is exactly the motivation for my "transcluded subsections" proposal above, and for the "flagged revisions/sighted versions" proposal elsewhere. I suggest that such middle measures - ideally in graduated combinations - have the good effects of managing the tidal wave of edits, without causing the problems of full protection.
 * If full protection is a remedy in such a case, I strongly think that the threshold for implementing an "editprotect" should be lower - consensus should be assumed unless evidence suggests otherwise, problems can be fixed with later editprotects, similar to a normal edit process; admins would be free (and encouraged) to implement editprotects in their discretion that there were no countervailing consensus or policies, but admins could not shortcircuit the editprotect process except for noncontroversial (punctuation) edits. Full protection of this type would just be a brake on too-fast edits, it would not mark a total freeze or a sudden distinction between admin and non-admin rights on the article. (See my discussion with Moreschi below, where I think the admin-elitist attitudes revealed are unhelpful to the project.) Homunq (talk) 22:01, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

3) The Arbcom should suggest to the developer community that once community standards for braking editing on articles exist, mechanisms for automatic braking should be developed.


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No enforcement needed.
1) Given that this proposal has no sanctions, no enforcement is needed.


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Ignore all rules
1) Ignore all rules means that policies and guidelines have no special status, except that afforded to them by the community. Rather, community practice dictates policies and guidelines, rather than the other way around. Accordingly, an invocation of "Ignore All Rules" is an assertion that, while taking an action conflicts with the letter of a rule, it is in-line with community consensus. Consequently, while users and administrators are permitted to ignore policy in favour of community consensus or discretion, using Ignore all rules as a license to ignore community consensus defeats its purpose.


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 * A variation on a theme - highlighting that theme. LessHeard vanU (talk) 13:02, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Werdna's last sentence says it all: "Therefore, while users are permitted to, from time to time, ignore rules, using Ignore all rules as a license to ignore community consensus defeats the purpose of it." Saying you're right never simply makes you right, no matter who you are. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 14:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

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Responsible editing
1) All editors are expected to endeavour to ensure that their edits are not disruptive to the encyclopedia, and should definitely abstain from disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. This applies especially to administrators in the use of their administrative tools and in any discussions regarding such use of administrative tools.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:
 * Seems straightforward enough. Wily D 13:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Proposed as an alternative to havng the Committee legislate on what is and what isn't a wheel war. Physchim62 (talk) 21:38, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I can agree with this. (seems so obvious, though, doesn't it? Tis a shame this actually would have to be "spelled out"....) Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:41, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Or, the capability of more greatly disrupting the encyclopedia requires the more considered use of those capabilities? If so, then Yes! LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:43, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons
1) Articles relating to living individuals remain among the most sensitive content on Wikipedia. As the English Wikipedia has become one of the most prominent and visited websites in the entire world, a Wikipedia article on a given individual will often be among the highest-ranking, if not the very first, page to turn up when an Internet search is conducted for information about him or her. The contents of these articles may profoundly affect their subjects' lives, reputations, and well-being. Therefore, while all Wikipedia articles should be factually accurate, be based upon reliable sources, and be written from a neutral point of view, it is especially important that content relating to living persons must adhere to these standards. All biographical articles must be kept free of unsourced negative or controversial content, unsupported rumors and gossip, defamatory material, and unwarranted violations of personal privacy. See generally, Biographies of living persons (the "BLP policy").
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. See also, Requests for arbitration/Badlydrawnjeff; Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes; for this arbitrator's individual views, see for example, Requests for comment/Doc glasgow; Requests for comment/QZ Deletion dispute; and the DRV log for May 28, 2007. The challenges posed by BLP content, which plainly were not anticipated or provided for when Wikipedia was created, remain the most ethically serious issues facing this project. I will add that these are not problems limited to Wikipedia, but concerns affecting the Internet as a whole. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that "remain" is the best word here, since we don't really expect that they will suddenly stop being sensitive. Kirill (prof) 00:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I meant "remain" in the sense that they still are the most sensitive, just as they were in the committee's prior discussions of this issue. But I will seek a better wording. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Agreed. Wily D 02:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks good.  MBisanz  talk 12:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Yes, an untruth is an untruth and it is not an editors (or admin's) job to determine to what extent an untruth may damage a subject but to simply ensure it's removal - or sometimes, how best to ensure it is not included. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:50, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree with NYB.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

BLP applies to everyone
2) Our policies and standards for biographies of living persons apply to every article or discussion that chronicles the life of, or contains factual assertions regarding, any living individual, regardless of his or her level of prominence or notability. However, the nature and extent of an individual's prominence and the reasons the individual is notable will bear upon what content is appropriate for an article about that person. This factor, as well as the nature of specific BLP concerns that may exist on a given article, may affect the choice of the specific methods by which the BLP policy may best be enforced regarding that article.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * If we start picking and choosing different standards for different articles, the consequences are likely to be bad. New editors often learn through lurking - we should always be acting like we're role models. Wily D  12:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Looks good. I'm reading it as saying to look at all factors and use common sense.  MBisanz  talk 12:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Brad, the wording here isn't accurate. "apply to every article" should be "applies to any page", right? The talk pages here were just as nasty with BLP violations as the articles themselves, to the point there was serious discussion about actually deleting the talk page archives outright to be better safe than sorry. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:08, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added "or discussion" after "article". Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That works perfectly, I think. Thanks. I just was thinking that anything that makes it through a proposed decision ends up (like it or not) becoming policy on some level, and some wonk would end up saying "But the Arbcom said BLP = articles" to some degree. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not entirely happy about the "...what content is appropriate..." language - non verified material, especially of a negative nature, should not be permitted to remain in a BLP article; rather, in the context of this matter, it is the quantity of attempted inclusions of such material over a short period plus the likely viewing traffic in that timeframe that may determine a more extraordinary response than would otherwise be the case. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:26, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection of articles
3) Wikipedia is, and is meant to be, "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit." The norm is that every Wikipedia page, and in particular every mainspace article, can be freely edited by anyone (except for a relatively small number of persons who have been blocked or banned from editing, temporarily or indefinitely, for violation of site policies). However, where necessary as the result of vandalism, edit-warring, BLP violations, or other good cause, an administrator can protect an article for a given period of time, restricting the ability of users to edit the article. "Semiprotected" pages can be edited only by registered users, while "full protected" pages can be edited only by administrators (and the right even of administrators to edit them is limited). An administrator who protects a page is expected to explain the reason for this action in a log summary and (unless obvious) on the talkpage. The duration of protection should be no longer than reasonably necessary to address the specific concern that prompted it. Templates exist to designate pages that have been protected, and to explain what this means for the benefit of new editors. Procedures also exist for users to request the lifting of page protection when they believe the need for it has expired.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment by parties:
 * If protection should never be used, it should not be enabled as a technical feature. So what Newyorkbrad proposes seems to be true. Wily D  12:06, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Well written summary, sounds good.  MBisanz  talk 12:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Can we move this to the protection policy page? Seriously. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:07, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The summary should also mention indefinite protection, and state that it is not "permanent" but merely protection up until such time as there is consensus (or common sense) to remove it. Physchim62 (talk) 12:19, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not fond of the big eyesore templates that announce meta-Wiki procedural things and self-referential bluelinks before the article even starts, especially on highly trafficked articles. (makes us look unkempt IMHO). I "get" the rationale for using them for the benefit of "new editors", they just seem to be of no benefit to the millions of non-editing "readers".  Just one man's opinion.  Also, "semi-protected" limits "registered" users in their editing until they are "auto-confirmed" (4 days, ten edits I believe), but that's really a minor language point.  Overall, very well worded.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  18:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Within context I think the last sentence could be more prominent. I concur with the rest, too. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Pros and cons of protection
4) Whether and how to page-protect articles of unusual prominence can be a controversial matter, for both "wikiphilosophical" and pragmatic reasons. On the one hand, prominent articles are among the most likely to be viewed by Wikipedia readers who have not yet become editors. Many readers first become editors by editing such articles, and it is feared that if they are unable to edit them, an opportunity to introduce readers to editing may be lost. (For this reason, for example, the article appearing as today's featured article on the Main page is generally not edit-protected even though it will inevitably attract high levels of vandalism.) On the other hand, that an article attracts an unusually high number of readers means that that many more people will be exposed to any vandalism or BLP violations contained in the article. Whether to balance these considerations in favor of or against protecting these pages is a matter of administrator discretion, subject to discussion and the consensus process in cases of disagreement.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. And since there was conflicting administrators' discretion in this case I'd say just as FloNight has just said tonight... "Consensus, consensus, consensus". And as a side note, whenever no consensus is reached and where people find themselves between two main extreme --but valid and reasonable-- positions, I'd advice them to stay in the middle at least until one direction is taken. --  fayssal   / Wiki me up® 06:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Interesting idea, seems reasonable to me.  MBisanz  talk 12:11, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Administrative discretion, resolved by discussion in disagreement - this would be hard not to endorse - so I'll agree. Wily D 12:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * To bounce off of WilyD, yes - administrative discretion is hard not to endorse. In live editing, it's also hard to enforce and interpret.  Discretion is subjective.  One editor's boldness is another's brashness, one edit's discretionary caution is another's "failure to perform".  I like the part that says "subject to discussion and the consensus process".  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  18:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur. I would also point out that high traffic articles are also more tempting targets for vandalism, owing both to the high visibility and for its inherent interest reasons. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:31, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Administrators
5) Administrators are trusted members of the community. The work of administrators who deal with complex situations and troublesome problems should be particularly appreciated. Administrators are expected to lead by example and to behave in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others. Administrators are expected to follow Wikipedia policies and to perform their duties to the best of their abilities. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with adminship; administrators are not expected to be perfect. However, sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia is incompatible with the status of administrator, and consistently or egregiously poor judgment may result in the removal of administrator status. Administrators are expected to learn from experience and from justified criticisms of their actions.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Seems straightforward. In the vernacular of the young people, "Duh". Wily D  12:15, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * This makes sense. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Somewhere in one of these first 4 principles (probably the first), there needs to be a very explicit mention/explanation of the fundamental rule of thumb: "do not harm". A link to those templates mentioned in principle 3 would probably also help. Other than that, it's very nicely drafted to this point. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That is the intent. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Plus one.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Use of administrator tools in disputes
6) Administrator tools may not be used to further the administrator's own position in a content dispute or, except in emergency circumstances or cases of blatant bad-faith harassment, in other disputes.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Sure, maybe a link to WP:UNINVOLVED or WP:COI, but yes, true.  MBisanz  talk 12:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is perhaps weaker than some presentations of uninvolved, but I suspect more reflective of practice and good sense. That I wrote the Economic Development section of Economy of North America a year ago needn't prevent me from protecting it if an edit war over image place started now. Wily D  12:20, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Agree, but emergency circumstances? I'd suggest tightening the screws on that wording substantially. There are 1200+ admins and a couple more every week. What level of emergency would require for that one involved admin to wield the tools? There is always someone else. The harassment aspect is, er, longstanding practice for at least two years now, endorsed by the AC several times. I'd suggest divorcing the emergency wording from the harassment bit completely. Great otherwise. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My reservations over the second part of this have already been expressed elsewhere, so I need not repeat myself. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:31, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Never in a content dispute. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:35, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have some problems with WP:UNINVOLVED, but notwithstanding that, this is good.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  21:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus
7) Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of polite discussion. The dispute resolution process is designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked. Administrators, as experienced and trusted users, should be at least as prepared to work toward consensus on difficult issues as other editors.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Flag as needing to be re-worded. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:29, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Yes, consensus discussions and respecting it is important.  MBisanz  talk 12:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Does this wording possibly grant admins the right to go against obvious consensus or am I misreading it? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say "Administrators, as experienced and trusted users, are expected to work toward consensus on difficult issues the same as other editors."? <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I at least read the current wording as saying that the standards for admins are no lower than those for other editors - to me "at least as" is a verbal equivalent to the mathematical "greater than or equal to". GRBerry 02:49, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's what I meant, but I'll try to clarify the wording for the final version. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Some variant of "at least as, if not more, prepared..." may serve to remove the ambiguities here. Anthøny   ✉  22:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * True, but the second sentence might cause some confusion with regards to community discussions. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:27, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Polite discussion may likely facilitate quicker and more complete consensus, but any discussion to a reasoned conclusion is to be supported. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:38, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel-warring
8) In non-emergency situations, administrators are expected to refrain from undoing each other's administrator actions without first attempting to resolve the dispute by means of discussion.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Right now the wheel warring policy seems to read that an action is only wheel warring if an admin does something twice (redoing an action another admin undid). Maybe this principle needs a more precise name ("admin warring"?) or some text to resolve the difference.  MBisanz  talk 13:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Yes. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:03, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah. But I am concerned that the "ignoring all rules" and "know yourself" princpiles have not been noted, as they are of significant relevance in this case. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:46, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I don't like this proposal at all. Its heart is in the right place, but it comes out all wrong. "Without first attempting to resolve the dispute": does that mean it's OK to unilaterally reverse action if you've attempted to resolve a dispute but the attempt has failed? Surely not! "In non-emergency situations" could also lead to a whole range of interpretations. Surely it would be better to put the emphasis on the admin dispute as the potentially disruptive element, which can aggrevated by the reversal of actions: otherwise it falls into the trap of defining all reversals as disruptive, which is patently not true. Physchim62 (talk) 12:31, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, although I would add "...or change the existing consensus..." after "...resolve the dispute..." LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel-warring against BLP special enforcement
9) The norm against "wheel-warring" especially applies where an administrator has acted under the "special enforcement" authority for BLP articles that was recognized by this committee in Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes. That decision authorized administrators "to use any and all means at their disposal," including page protection, "to ensure that every Wikipedia article is in full compliance with the letter and spirit of the BLP policy." The Committee also provided that these enforcement actions may be appealed to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, but specifically stated: "administrators are cautioned not to reverse or modify such actions without clear community consensus to do so. The Committee will consider appropriate remedies including suspension or revocation of adminship in the event of violations."


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Note the minor edit I made for typo etc. I'm not sure 'recognized' would be the right word, but other than that, good. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:23, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The special enforcement remedies in the footnotes case, rest upon the principle of "do no harm" - as Arbcom's own logic makes clear. Since we must always err on the side of not doing harm to biographical subjects, admin actions taken in these areas merit special jurisdiction, and must not be undone without positive consensus  to do so. However, to apply this in the case of an article like Sarah Palin defies common sense, and simply process-wonks a "as to one, so to all" principle to an illogical conclusion. Wikipedia cannot harm subjects of so high a profile, as any libels or bias are almost instantly removed. There may well be reasons for an admin to protect or semi-protect such an article to prevent vanalism, pov, or unsourced material, but those reasons are logically no greater than that which might be applied to "Scientology" or any article that is high-profile. Yes, bad edits to Palin need removed - as bad edits need removed from all articles. But the "do no harm principle" - must be specifically and especially enforces on articles where real harm to living people is possible. Really, why should this article be treated differently from any other controversial article that was on the mainpage?--Troikoalogo (talk) 14:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia and the political process
10) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and is not to be used for ideological warfare or to score political points for or against a candidate for electoral office or political party. Slanted edits motivated by political or ideological factors or by personal respect or distaste for a candidate violate the core policy of NPOV, our guidelines against conflicts of interest, and in many cases the BLP policy as well. Nonetheless, especially as elections approach, many articles relating to candidates for office are subjected to these types of inappropriate editing. Just as readers are cautioned not to rely on the content of Wikipedia articles for medical, legal, meteorological, or other advice, so too, voters should not rely upon the content of Wikipedia articles as the basis for their voting decisions.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Newyorkbrad, a bit of Globalize would be better (i.e. "as elections approach") unless you are referring to unspecified elections. Troikoalogo, you are right but I am not sure if Newyorkbrad's message is directed at Wikipedia users and administrators instead --who may think that their actions may have some influence on voters. And if that's the case then I suggest to have the whole last two sentences reworded to reflect that. --  fayssal   / Wiki me up® 06:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I referred to elections in any country or location. I will revise accordingly if this survives into the final version, which it may or may not. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Yes, Wikipedia is not a voter guide.  MBisanz  talk 12:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Absolutely and 101%, like I said. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 02:05, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Rather than the more forceful "should not", I think using the earlier wording of "are cautioned not to" would be preferrable. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The link should probably be to WP:SOAPBOX. I'm not sure that the last sentence is really necessary. Otherwise, obviously and absolutely agree. Physchim62 (talk) 12:37, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Doh! Brad, the last sentence is a no-brainer. But I wonder that when arbcom start issue advice to (all?) American "voters", it really is in danger of appearing somewhat ridiculous. Maybe it would be better for arbcom to restrict itself to advising wikipedians how to wiki, rather than voters how to vote. The wikipedians are the only ones listing.--Troikoalogo (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Brad, perhaps we should add "tropical fishkeepers are advised not to rely on the content of wikipedia articles when deciding what to feed their fish" as well. I mean you never know. Or we could generalise and just put "Readers are cautioned not to rely on the contents of Wikipedia articles" on every article and leave it at that.--Troikoalogo (talk) 16:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to partially agree. I understand the reasoning for the statement, and do agree with it to some extent, however I think making it official ArbCom decree is going to send the wrong message out to the public, and it's also not really ArbCom's place to tell people how to vote (or rather, how not to vote). I think the statement will have the same effect in the terms of this case if that last sentence is removed. <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:blue">Hers <em style="font-family:Bradley Hand ITC;color:gold">fold  (t/a/c) 17:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * My point is not about message, but about scope. The "public" (the "voters") are not listening to Arbcom. Even the average wikipedia reader has never heard of them. Wikipedians need to stop losing perspective here.--Troikoalogo (talk) 17:09, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's an interesting proposal by Brad that I think is worth keeping. Like it or not we're The authority for just about anything. Even the news media stupidly cites us or cribs from us. Whether or not it's the Arbcom's place doesn't matter per se, they can put it out as an opinion or general tip. Odds are it will be forgotten 10 minutes after the case closes anyway, but its the thought that counts. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 17:25, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Strike everything at and after the "Nonetheless". Encyclopedias don't patronize their readers by lecturing them not to believe everything they read. The arbcom process should stay focused on editor misbehavior, not what voters or readers should or shouldn't do. Professor marginalia (talk) 17:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think that the cure for an ideologically slanted Wikipedia is more healthy debate. I value the tension on the Palin article; although it has not always been easy to negotiate and there have been some clear excesses, I think on the whole the article has benefitted immensely from the attention it has gotten from those with a specific ideology. In fact, I cannot name a single involved editor there who does not have an obvious side in the ideological battle, and while I may disagree with some of them on this basis, I respect their right to be there (and mine - I am not neutral either). If there were some kind of protection that only allowed non-Americans, or only political independents, or whatever, to edit the article, the article would suck. 216.106.170.103 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * First two sentences. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:44, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we could just put a link to "Professor Wikipedia" on every page. That would solve the problem, I think.--Troikoalogo (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Locus of dispute
1) This case concerns disputed administrator actions and a "wheel war" concerning the protection and unprotection of Sarah Palin, a BLP article concerning a prominent American political figure.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Undeniable fact. Wily D 04:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yep.  MBisanz  talk 19:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Concur. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Sarah Palin
2) On August 29, 2008, John McCain, the then-presumptive Republican candidate for President of the United States, announced that he had selected Sarah Palin as his Vice Presidential running mate. Sarah Palin was the Governor of the State of Alaska and the subject of an existing Wikipedia article, but was relatively little-known outside Alaska. Immediately after the announcement, Sarah Palin became the most widely viewed article on Wikipedia and has remained so through the present remained so for about two weeks.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Last sentence revised per Dragon's flight. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Also undeniable fact. Exactly why her biography is so high profile may not be terribly relevent, as noted by Troikoalogo. Wily D  12:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Plus one. Yup.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  22:34, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * It isn't most viewed any more. That state lasted through around the 10th, I believe.  I'll give the exact transition date this evening when I have a chance to look at the logs.  It's still very high on the list though.  Dragons flight (talk) 22:43, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Palin was the most viewed article from Aug. 29th through Sept. 7th, and again on Sept. 12th and 17th. On the other days it has been no lower than fifth.  Dragons flight (talk) 05:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Would it not be better to say "on August 29th, the article Sarah Palin suddenly became a very high profile political biography, with increase viewings and edits" - deal with the wikifacts, and save arbcom from a FoF that basically rehashes US politics. Speaking as a non-US this case has already got the whiff of "OMG she's our goddamm VP nominee, we must do something!". Let's deal with the article, not the politics.--Troikoalogo (talk) 07:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This seems redundant to the PFoF3 immediately below. Physchim62 (talk) 23:14, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "... was relatively little-known outside Alaska" sounds like a political talking point and is not at all relevant to this arbitration. "The article was lightly edited", "the article was not widely viewed", "the contents of the article were not in dispute", etc would be a better finding.  Palin had actually been mentioned and discussed on political message boards for months - going back to at least March that I had seen.  For example, here's a blog entry from March 1 - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=24593 .  A finding of fact about how well she - the person - was known is not relevant and the finding should focus on the article, the content, and the actions of Wikipedia users. --B (talk) 23:00, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Editing of Sarah Palin
3) Soon after Governor Palin's selection was announced, her article was semiprotected to address vandalism from IP editors. This is standard practice for articles concerning high-profile political candidates. After several days of edit-warring and alleged BLP violations on the article, an administrator increased the protection to full protection on September 3, 2008, with a stated duration of 5 days.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Yup. I was the admin that fully protected the article (for the first time in the article's history) based on an ANI report by User:Kelly where he/she begged for assistance to curb the vandalism/blp vios/etc.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  22:36, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I dislike the idea that there's a category for treatment of "high profile political candidates" - can't we compare this to other highly scrutinised and edited biographies? Surely a pop-star, sportsman who suddenly hits the headlines is the same? Again the whiff of special pleading for US elections. Did we do this for Robert Mugabe? (That's a genuine question).--Troikoalogo (talk) 07:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * May 13 - June 2, June 22 - July 6, and July 11 - August 11. (All semis) Profile will scale like the number of English speakers with internet access who care, so Palin's bio profile is higher than Mugabe's. Wily D  12:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, but if I checked the viewing statistics, my guess is that Lindsay Lohan would have a similar internet profile, so again is "high-profile political" any different from "high-profile non-political"? Again, I think both the admin reaction, and the NYB response is far too focused on US elections. Let's form policy based on wiki-generalities and not political specifics.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 23:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Semi-protection is indeed standard practice, and full protection has been used at times, concerning high-profile candidates in upcoming elections. This is why I would like ArbCom to note the action of at 16:16 (UTC) August 29 to remove even semi-protection from the article: it would seem to me to be connected with the later action criticized now by two arbitrators (among countless others). Physchim62 (talk) 23:21, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

First reduction of protection by Jossi
4) At 12:32-12:33 on September 4, 2008, reduced the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semi-protection, with the log summary "High traffic articles should not be protected." There is no evidence that Jossi consulted with the protecting administrator or sought consensus anywhere before making this change. By the time Jossi modified the protection, he had already made a series of substantive edits to Sarah Palin and related articles and their talkpages. Jossi's action was discussed on the administrators' noticeboard. The consensus reached during the discussion was to restore full protection for at least some period of time. Based on that discussion, another administrator restored full protection at 13:52.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To Physchim62: Please be more specific. (Note also that after I added the "locus" proposal at the top, someone updated my numbering.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:36, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Jossi only discussed with me on my talkpage (the initial full-protection admin) after he/she had reduced the protection to inform me that he/she had undone my protection. Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  22:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Errm, aren't we missing someone here? 2&rarr;3 seems to jump two actions which would be caught under the proposed "principles" and PFoF2. Physchim62 (talk) 00:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What did you have in mind? Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Second reduction of protection by Jossi
5) At 14:12-14:13 on September 4, Jossi again downgraded the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semiprotection, with the log summary "WP:IAR - There are times in which IAR is a necessity. This is a highly trafficked page AND a current event. Unprotected", notwithstanding the following:

(A) The consensus of discussion on the administrators' noticeboard continued to support full protection at that time;

(B) Jossi had already undone another administrator's full-protection of Sarah Palin once, so his repetition of the same administrator action constituted the disfavored practice of wheel-warring under any possible definition;

(C) Jossi had not participated on the noticeboard discussion of the protection issue and offered no reason why his judgment on this issue should supersede that of the many other administrators and editors who had participated; and

(D) Jossi had actively edited Sarah Palin and several related articles and talkpages over a period of several days, to the extent that they were almost the sole subject of his editing during that period; therefore, he generally should not have taken any administrator action with respect to that article, and certainly not a highly contentious and disputed action, even once, let alone twice.

We note that in his evidence in this case, Jossi has stated that he would not invoke WP:IAR again in the fashion he did in this situation, and agreed to voluntarily refrain from taking administrator actions on articles involving American politics while the case was pending.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Reluctantly agree with points A, B, C, and D. However, I feel personally that Jossi was doing what he/she thought was best for Wikipedia.  20/20 hindsight says (and Jossi admits) that it wasn't.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  22:41, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Full protection and special BLP enforcement by MBisanz
6) At 1502 on September 4, 2008, restored full protection to Sarah Palin, for a designated period of two weeks. MBisanz stated that he was doing so pursuant to the "Special enforcement authority" provisions of this committee's decision in Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes. This represented the first invocation of the special enforcement authority established in that decision, which had proven controversial after it was handed down.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:32, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * MBisanz has called my attention to use of the decisions to issue warnings in cases previous to this. I have no links - I presume he can supply if they're needed. So "first invocation" may need to be clarified. Wily D  12:30, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I do believe that MastCell had once used the warning message associated with the remedy. (The image used in the special enforcement measure templates is a image used for no other purpose, precisely so the image can be used, via "what links here and the like, to track all invocations if the special enforcement.)  Any other usage of the special enforcement did not use the templates or get logged.  GRBerry 13:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think Brad is referring to the first time ssomething was sanctioned, instead of the first time something was warned, although I think I can dig up a couple of diffs showing warnings if anyone wants them.  MBisanz  talk 12:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Endorse MBisanz's admin action, as a good faith attempt to stop the reversals/warring of admin actions with what he presumably perceived to be a reasonable action/response.  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  01:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure of the benefits (if any) of the last sentence. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe the first part of the last sentence is of import, as it indicates that the provisions might (have) be(en) unfamiliar to a number of the admin community (it was to me) - the latter part I concur appears of little relevance. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Last sentence is irrelevant, especially given the discussion in your PFoF7 immediately below. ArbCom rulings are meant to be enforced, and it could well be argued that the "special" enforcement in the Footnoted quotes case was merely a means of providing a clear and public way of discussing actions which conscientious admins were doing anyway. Physchim62 (talk) 23:28, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Arbcom does lots of controversial things. I agree that the last sentence is superfluous and could be used to support false arguments. Jehochman Talk 14:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Assessment of the BLP special enforcement action
7) Although reasonable administrators could differ as to whether the editing of Sarah Palin on September 4 was problematic enough to warrant invocation of the "special enforcement authority" conferred by our decision in Footnoted quotes, the authority granted by that decision is to be construed broadly and in the interests of full enforcement of the BLP policy. It bears emphasis that any action taken under this authority is not permanent, but may be reversed by a consensus at Arbitration enforcement, and that a vigorous discussion of the protection status of Sarah Palin and related articles began almost immediately at that noticeboard. We find that MBisanz's action fell well within the scope of administrator discretion conferred under our Footnoted quotes decision. Factors weighing in favor of full protection included the ongoing edit-warring and BLP issues with the article. Also germane was the sheer number of edits to the article, which approached one per minute during the period in which it was unprotected. At that pace, efforts to eliminate vandalism and BLP problems from the article would often be thwarted by edit conflicts; and the opportunity to edit the article of which users were deprived by the full protection may have been more theoretical than real, as many users who attempted to edit the article would merely have hit the edit conflict screen. The counterarguments&mdash;that protection of high-visibility articles should be disfavored and that Sarah Palin was so prominent that the harm she would suffer from inclusion of inaccurate political rumors in her article was less than the harm that other BLP subjects might suffer from problematic content in their articles&mdash;were not illegitimate, but were proper fodder for the noticeboard discussion rather than a basis for challenging the decision to protect the article based upon the results of such discussion and with ample time for further discussion. Moreover, the consensus in the ongoing WP:AN discussion as of the time that MBisanz re-protected the article and invoked the additional authority of Footnoted quotes favored restoring full protection in any event, further justifying overturning the recent downgrading of protection. We do conclude that in light of the fluid situation, the two-week stated duration of the protection was probably excessive; however, the ensuing discussion provided ample opportunity for discussion of when it might be reasonable to allow the article to be edited again and see if the problems that arose during the prior period of unprotection would be lessened at a later time.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Yes, I know it's too long and needs copyediting (or maybe subdividing) before I post to /proposed decision, but I want to get the substance down. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Rootology's evidence suggests edits exceeded one per minute in some half-hour intervals. Exceeded and approached are different.  I am picking nits. Wily D  04:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I like how it sounds, if you wanted to break it up, you could break it into "There was consensus", "There was lots of editing", "BLP Protection permissible", "Protection too long", but that is more stylistic than content.  MBisanz  talk 12:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Very well stated, no copyediting needed as far as I can read :-). One difference I have, personally (and take it for the 2 pennies that it's worth), is that I felt that MBisanz's full protection of two weeks was too short, not too long.  I feel the article could have conceivably been "full-protected", based on the level of disruption of new/IP/seasoned but POV/ editors, until post election i.e. early November.  One man's opinion though, and probably "anti-Wiki" (although I personally think it is "pro-Wikipedia" if anti-wiki... Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  01:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh. ;) In substance, very good. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This finding seems a fair assessment of the Sarah Palin wheel war, although there are major paragraphing issues to be resolved (some sentences exceed 5 lines in length) should the text of the final decision meet the minimum readability requirements we expect Arbitration proposals to meet. I do note, however, that Newyorkbrad has stated his intention to re-draft this at a later date; I have full confidence that he will bring this up to his usual high standard of wording. Anthøny   ✉  16:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would prefer that there is some acknowledgement that those attempting to oversee the activity on the article page would likely also be active on the article talkpage, thus making the workload more acute - otherwise it appears to be substantively accurate. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Reduction of protection by MZMcBride
8) At 17:21 on September 4, reduced the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semiprotection, with a log summary stating solely "this is a wiki", notwithstanding the following:

(A) The consensus of discussion on the administrators' noticeboard and on the arbitration enforcement noticeboard continued to support full protection at that time;

(B) Based on the number of protection and unprotection actions that had already taken place on the article within a short period of time, of which MZMcBride has not denied knowledge, MZMcBride's action in reversing the existing protection constituted the disfavored practice of wheel-warring under any reasonable definition;

(C) MZMcBride had not participated on the noticeboard discussion of the protection issue and offered no reason why his judgment on this issue should supersede that of the many other administrators and editors who had participated; and

(D) In the most recent full protection of the article by MBisanz, which MZMcBride reversed, the protecting administrator had expressly invoked the special enforcement procedures established in the Footnoted quotes decision; MZMcBride has not denied that he was aware of this fact and the terms of the committee decision when he downgraded protection on Sarah Palin. In the absence of such a denial, we must conclude that MZMcBride consciously disregarded this committee's decision as well as the consensus of his fellow administrators and editors established in the noticeboard discussions, based on his own individual, albeit good-faith and sincerely held, views of what the proper protection status of the article should be at the time.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * The spirit of the special enforcement (indeed the principle on which the committee itself explicitly based it) was "do no harm", and the realisation that normal wiki-rules did not sufficiently prevent harm to living individuals in certain cases. The patent fact that no wiki article could damage Sarah Palin in the way the special enforcement had in mind (and every chatshow was saying worse) significantly differentiates this case from others covered by the special enforcement. Whilst that's not the only thing that needs said here, it is perhaps more significant that this finding indicates. MZMcB may well be guilty of wheel-warring, or overlooking consensus discussions, but I'm not sure at all he violated the spirit of the "Footnoted quotes" remedy - it is only an attention to the letter of that remedy rather than the intention that is grounds for conviction there.--Troikoalogo (talk) 08:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

(Additional findings)
9) This arbitrator reserves the right to propose additional findings. Suggestions for matters that might be the subject of such additional findings may be placed in this section, with cross references to evidence or other editors' workshop proposals. Such suggestions, as well as comments on the proposals already made, should be submitted by 1800 on Sunday. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:09, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Template
10) {text of proposed finding of fact}


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Proposed remedies
Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

MZMcBride admonished and restricted
1) (A) MZMcBride is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or deliberately disobeying decisions of the Arbitration Committee. MZMcBride is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the suspension or revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) MZMcBride is instructed not to unprotect or reduce the edit-protection status of any article substantially constituting the biography of a living person for a period of 90 days from the date of this decision.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * This fails to take into account his history of bad admin actions. When he ran his deletion script, there were over a thousand deletions that had to be overturned. This remedy doesn't go far enough.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 08:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Although it is outside of the locus, the manner in which he took those other recent actions prior to this incident (outside of the BLP area) was problem-enough to be recognized by the Committee I think, so even a slightly more explicit mention is needed as a bare minimum. Other than that, these are very fair. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would strongly argue that they're too fair.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 12:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * B is not necessary. A is good. Jehochman Talk 14:09, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would go further than Jehochman; with a time limit of 90 days per B the universal restrictions implied by A appears constrained after that period. I feel an indefinite rendering of A is sufficient for the purposes of this ArbCom. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi admonished and restricted
2) (A) Jossi is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or taking administrator actions with respect to disputes in which he is involved as an editor (such as changing the protection status of an article he is actively editing). Jossi is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the suspension or revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) Jossi is instructed not to unprotect or reduce the edit-protection status of any article substantially constituting the biography of a living person for a period of 90 days from the date of this decision. Jossi is permanently prohibited from taking any administrator actions with respect to Sarah Palin or related articles.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * I have already acknowledged that I erred, and hope this is taken into consideration. Note that this is the first time ever I engaged in a wheel war, and that I am an active admin at WP:BLP/N since that noticeboard started. Granted, I will accept an admonition, which I deserve, but restricting my actions in regard of all BLPs is throwing the baby with the dirty water. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If I may Jossi, and please excuse my post here or move it down, but I don't feel that your editing at BLP articles or at BLP/N is being overly restricted, simply that you personally cannot reduce or lift existing protection on an article. And only for three months.  Seems reasonable.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  14:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment by others:
 * Does Sarah Palin articles expand in this wording to anything with the Palin-McCain campaign or the election itself? I'm just asking for a clarification so that no one tries to game anything against Jossi. <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 03:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Is there any indication of a significant danger that Jossi will cause problems on BLPs in the next 90 days? Given his parole to have learned his lesson, and his impeccable record, this looks unnecessary and punitive.--Troikoalogo (talk) 08:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The permanent restriction on Sarah Palin-related articles seems excessive as well. My own feeling is that a 90-day ban in this area would be sufficient, but I certainly feel that the ban should not be "permanent". Physchim62 (talk) 23:36, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes to A. No to B. Jehochman Talk 14:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Permanent restriction on Sarah Palin is over the top. She only became relevant to existence a matter of weeks ago, so there is no evidence that Jossi is incapable of becoming more responsible, especially once the election nonsense (and the combative culture it creates) is over. If we want to play it safe, why don't we have it until January 20th, 2009? BLP wide restriction is a good idea however, it'll give both Jossi and the community some breathing room to come back with level heads and less grudges.--Tznkai (talk) 14:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Again, I see this as the wording of B working against the spirit of A - if Jossi is reminded not to act in an admin capacity in an article (such as Sarah Palin) where he has edited then the wording of B is un-needed. Those articles where he has not edited, but relating to Sarah Palin (and this time echoing Rootology), then the general language of A should suffice to ensure that future admin actions are non-controversial. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Reasonable measure in the circumstances. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Community discussion strongly urged
3) The community is strongly urged to continue ongoing discussions at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons regarding how the BLP policy and its enforcement can be further improved, with a view toward continuing to mitigate the harms caused by BLP violations while also reducing any negative impact created by the necessary enforcement measures themselves. The developers are urged to give priority attention to any needed software enhancements that may be needed to implement new features recommended by consensus of the community with respect to these matters. Topics to be explored in such community discussions may include, but should not be limited to, the following:

(A) Implementing a capability to protect or semi-protect one portion but less than all of a subsectioned article;

(B) Improving the wording of the templates used to advise editors that an article has been protected or semiprotected, with the particular goal of making it clear to new editors that articles are protected only for specific reasons, that protection is generally temporary, and that protection applies at any given time to only a small fraction of Wikipedia articles; ensuring, among other things, that protection templates are reasonable in size and content, as opposed to the garishly disfiguring template that appeared above Sarah Palin during the period in which the special enforcement measures were in effect;

(C) Modifying the procedures of the articles for deletion process so that the default result in the case of "no consensus" AfD discussions is changed to "delete" rather than "keep" where BLP articles are involved, particularly where the article portrays its subject in a predominantly negative light, the article subject is a minor, or the article subject is known to have expressed the preference that the article about himself or herself be deleted;

(D) Authorizing the use of the robots.txt script or the "noindex" parameter within mainspace so as to exclude types of articles with potentially problematic BLP content from search engine indexing, at least while the appropriateness of the article is reviewed and the existence of any BLP violations is addressed; enhancing the robots.txt script and the "noindex" parameter so that they exclude pages so designated from results of other search engines in addition to Google; as a matter of priority, further improving Wikipedia's internal search capabilities so as to alleviate the objection that increased "noindexing" of pages hampers the administration of the site;

(E) Implementing some version of the flagged revisions or sighted revisions process at least with respect to high-risk BLP content such as newly created BLP pages; and

(F) Either through technical means or through communication with the editors of off-wiki sites, taking all possible steps to ensure that articles delected from Wikipedia as attack pages or BLP violations are not included in "scrapes" of Wikipedia's content by other websites or on the newly created website(s) specializing in hosting GFDL content that has been deleted from Wikipedia.

These discussion topics are not presented in any order of priority and no suggestion is made that any or all of them would have specific application to Sarah Palin.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * The community already knows it needs to do this. What it needs is a strong leader to grab the reins on this. Wily D  04:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I pretty much agree with everything Brad says and would endorse proposals to that effect, but, given the past history of the committee extorting the community to consider things, I'd say this proposal will not have the intended effect.  Looking at the results of RFAR/Children's privacy, RFAR/Betacommand 2, RFAR/IRC, and RFAR/MONGO, it appears such past efforts can best be described as total inaction, bordering on failure.  MBisanz  talk 18:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just another point in my reading of archives, nearly a year ago at Requests_for_arbitration/Ferrylodge the committee asked the community to develop a better facility for banning users. To this day I cannot find any change to how bans are done.  I'm really not sure asking the community to try something even more complex is even remotely workable.  Maybe a BLP Working Group is in order.  MBisanz  talk 13:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment by others:
 * Cute but pointless remedy. The community has long since lost the ability to develop significant policy - the community is too large and diverse and in any debate the filibuster is the only remaining effective strategem; consensus is the hostage of the minority. Either ArbCom must mandate change or it will not happen. CIreland (talk) 04:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Agree with CIreland. Let's look at this factually. The BLP policy largely came about through the leadership/intervential of of the God King. It was given its teeth solely by Arbcom, who in previous cases forbade undoing BLP deletions without consensus, and more recently arbcom again supplied the sword with the special enforcement remedies. The community's ability to "legislate" on these matters is entirely theoretical, and palpably unrealistic. Wikipedia is structurally incapable of grassroots-driven change here, and it is time we departed from the myth that consensus discussion on policy changes are even useful. We have a minority veto built in.--Troikoalogo (talk) 08:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Don't think this should be enacted as a remedy for the case, although, it poses something (particularly for those who followed the case) to think about. Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regretfully, I agree that this remedy—whilst on the right track and useful in theory—lacks the teeth needed to be remotely effective in practice. Preferable would be the adoption of novel solutions, such as a committment from the Committee to assign a small group of Arbitrators to assist in guiding the discussion and to maximise the usefulness of the threads on WT:BLP; such a pro-active attitude is what we need here. Anthøny   ✉  17:07, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * A would be cumbersome, F for sure, but it's up to the devs and WMF to find solutions. I disagree with C and D, it's not in hiding or deleting that we'll solve the issue of BLP, many will remain anyway, and I would view this as a failure of our research for knowledge. For E, I intend to submit this proposal of sighted revisions to the community. Cenarium  Talk  18:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Regarding the issue mentioned above, I do not think the community would accept an(other) arbcom ruling on BLP, we can add BLPSE to the list above. It seems to have been used for the second time, today: Special:Undelete/Patrick M. McCarthy, just after Articles for deletion/Patrick M. McCarthy which was kept as no consensus. Our community is broken apart on this...  Cenarium  Talk  18:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Formatting qualm. I think using numbering (1, 2, 3, ...), as opposed to lettering (A, B, C, ...) for the topics that the Community are being recommended to discuss in the above finding, would be more appropriate. This is, of course, a very minor issue, however. Anthøny   ✉  18:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I have brought up Flagged/Sighted Revisions on the Village pump - Policy page, see: Village_pump_(policy). SirFozzie (talk) 02:05, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Who else thinks we should just let ArbCom make policy? Giggy (talk) 02:45, 21 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Wall of text hurts my eyes. Please chop up these very good comments and post them on the talk pages of the relevant policies. Jehochman Talk 14:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Template
4) (text of proposed remedy)


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Template
1) {text of proposed enforcement}


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Template
2) {text of proposed enforcement}


 * Comment by Arbitrators:


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Administrators
1) Administrators are trusted members of the community. The work of administrators who deal with complex situations and troublesome problems should be particularly appreciated. Administrators are expected to lead by example and to behave in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others. Administrators are expected to follow Wikipedia policies and to perform their duties to the best of their abilities. Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with adminship; administrators are not expected to be perfect. However, sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia is incompatible with the status of administrator, and consistently or egregiously poor judgment may result in the removal of administrator status. Administrators are expected to learn from experience and from justified criticisms of their actions; in particular, administrators who have been criticized or admonished in decisions of the Arbitration Committee are expected not to repeat the conduct in question.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * As proposed by Newyorkbrad and used in another recent case. Moved to the top since administrator conduct is the reson for the case. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Endorse. (As a minor quibble; the second portion of the last sentence may be less germane here than in the case from which this was taken&mdash;and yes, I know it was in my draft too.) In general, I agree with the structure of FloNight's draft principles. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I thought about leaving off the last sentence, but was not 100% sure that the involved admins had not been criticized or admonished in any decision. I need to double check that point before I finish my Fof and remedies. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 16:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * According to my memory and confirmed by WP:RFAR/C, MZMcBride has never before been a party to an arbitration case. Jossi was a party in the Prem rawat case, but was not sanctioned in the decision. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That is what I found as well on site. And as far as I know, we do not have any quiet off site agreement with any of them. I want to double check the arbwiki to make sure. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

Use of administrator tools in disputes
2) Administrator tools may not be used to further the administrator's own position in a content or policy dispute.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Reworded. Moved towards the top of principles since administrator conduct is the reason for the case. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm concerned that this formulation may be a bit too simplistic, and that administrators enforcing policy over the objections of disruptive users will be painted as participating in a policy dispute. Merely because, say, a vandal argues that they should be permitted to vandalize does not mean that the vandalism policy is under legitimate dispute, or that anyone blocking said vandal is somehow out of line. Kirill (prof) 20:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's well accepted Wikipedia thinking that claims by an user that an admin is involved does not make it true. The admin actually must be involved prior to the incident. I can't see how applying an existing set policy makes an admin in a dispute. I avoiding defining the word "involved" because this time around a precise definition is not needed. With the view that this ruling primarily applies to this case, I don't see the need to expand it. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Fantastically clear. The problem is why, not where or what. Wily D  15:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Direct, concise, and very quotable.  MBisanz  talk 15:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * I like it. As MBisanz says, it's quotable.  It says the administrator's own position.  We are all humans, we have POVs, and at the same time, we are asked (and required) to put aside our POVs to hold the reins of Wikipedia administratorship.  If I'm using entrusted tools to "further my own position", that's bad.  Kirill's example doesn't hold in my opinion, because stopping a "vandal" isn't furthering "my own position", but instead furthering "Wikipedia's position."  I have absolutely no problem with a "content admin" that blocks an IP for a time (or an account) based on vandalism to an article that is watchlisted and edited by said admin.  That isn't "furthering the administrator's position", it's furthering Wikipedia's.    Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  20:48, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * All parties in this case thought they were furthering Wikipedia's position - does that mean this case doesn't hold? I think that way of looking at it might be too simplistic. Ncmvocalist (talk) 00:26, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Heh, yeah. I'm rather a simplistic person by nature :-).  I think that the actions taken in this case were done in a good faith manner to "further Wikipedia".  Jossi didn't act (by unprotecting) in his own cause: neither did MZMcbride, MBisanz, Fritzpoll, WilyD, or myself.  Yes, a simplistic view.  Sometimes though, the "simple" answer is the right one. And to answer your question, Ncmvolcalist, yes, I think that means that "this case doesn't hold", as far as desysopping is concerned.  I've never seen an article, any article, go through the changes/talkpage changes/ that the Palin article undertook.  Yes, there are politicians' articles, and yes, there are disputed articles regarding "politics".  Palin's article, however, was extremely quiet, because of real world events.  She wasn't even in the running for the VP position (I know this as someone watching the VP choice of McCain, being a Minnesotan, hence being curious about Tim Pawlenty).  This was unprecedented in Wikipedia, to have a stub go from a stub to a VP candidate in a major election.  No one should be desysopped because of what they felt was the "best thing" for wikipedia.   Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  22:38, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't quite agree - the unusual circumstances surrounding this article did not excuse the way in which actions were taken by certain administrators (which is why the case can hold). Where an action is disputed or very likely to be disputed, admins should engage in on-wiki consensus building (rather than immediately using their tools to further their position as to what they feel is best for Wikipedia) - both admins did the exact opposite, and exercised very poor judgement. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Utterly, utterly irrelevant to the case in hand, as far as I can see. We might as well say "Administrators should not use their tools when they are angry, or otherwise inhibited from clear and full compliance with Wikipedia policy, should this be through tiredness, consumption of mind-altering substances (legal or illegal) or sexual frustration." Physchim62 (talk) 23:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Ignore all rules
3) Ignore all rules is one of the project's oldest policies and states that "if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." This is often helpful when encountering uncontroversial situations where the project is helped by avoiding the unintended consequences that would occur by applying a policy. Ignore all rules should not be used to circumvent a consensus decision about the application of a policy.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed from other suggested proposals. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Yes. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:36, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agree although, at the risk of my repeating myself, I would add "in a specific situation" at the end. IAR is meant for novel situations where there has not been time to form consensus (of which there are many every day on WP, not all of which need to specifically invoke IAR). It is not meant to overturn a consensual solution to a specific problem. Physchim62 (talk) 23:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Wheel warring
4) Wheel warring (undoing an administrative action by another administrator) without first attempting to resolve the issue is unacceptable. Administrators who wheel war may be desysopped.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Proposed. --FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * (response to comments below) The definition of exactly what constitutes a "wheel war" remains murky, and for that reason among others I have always found the term unhelpful. Last fall, the committee asked in two or three decisions for the community to try to clarify policy in this area, which it didn't.... The wording of some of my proposed findings above acknowledges some of the continuing lack of clarity in this area. (Note: Also changed "that" to "who" in the proposal.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * (Nyb):I considered not using the term wheelwar. But it is a term that the Community applies. We know the intent of the policy is to stop administrators from undoing another administrators actions without consent of the original administrator or broad community consensus after discussion. A too legalistic approach is not useful in these situations. We always give administrators the benefit if doubt if they show it was a misunderstand of the situation and it will not occur again. For that reason, I do not see interpreting the policy strictly as harmful to the Community. (rootology) 1) Giving each admin on site one free go at reversing another admin was never the intent of the policy. 2) If there is widespread consensus that there are problems with the first action of an admin, then those need to be addressed through RFC or ArbCom. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 16:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Just 1RR is a wheel war? So if I block someone, but you unblock someone, or vice versa, thats a wheel war? I always thought it was "more than once" by any combination of users "quickly". <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 13:26, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The idea behind this is that discussion should occur before any undoing of an administrative action. If an admin disagrees with an action he should go and discuss it with the admin who performed the action, if they can't work it out then they should take it to a board suh as AN, AN/I or AE - simply undoing another aministrators action without discussion is a wheel war because it's not backed up by any consensus.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 13:33, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * And then you hit the gray area that some things shouldn't be done to start with, without consensus (unprotecting under IAR when 24 people tell you not to, for example). What if there was no consensus to protect? Then unprotecting would still have been a wheel war? <span style="color:#0D670D; font-family:Georgia, Helvetica;">rootology ( C )( T ) 13:40, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That is solved by "without first attempting to resolve the issue" - if an admin does something you disagree with, ask him to reconsider, if not seek consensus on a board. If there was no consensus to protect, then a short discussion could easily have led to a consensus either way.  Ryan Postlethwaite See the mess I've created or let's have banter 13:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, if you revert first without discussing it with either the original admin or a larger community beforehand then that is inappropriate behavior for an admin. Dragons flight (talk) 15:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Consensus
5) Wikipedia works by building consensus through the use of polite thoughtful discussion. The dispute resolution process is designed to assist consensus-building when normal talk page communication has not worked. Administrators, as experienced and trusted users, are expected to fully embrace and follow the Wikipedia English custom and practice of working toward consensus on difficult issues.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Rewording of Newyorkbrad idea. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Substituting thoughtful for polite. Better? FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 20:16, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Same disquiet about the prevalence of "civil"; it might be the most desired tone, but any type of discussion that leads to consensus is to be supported. LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Works for me. ;~) LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

On-wiki consensus building
6) The primary venue for consensus building discussion about content and policy should be on-wiki. Discussions about topics that interest Wikipedia users might occur in other venues, such as IRC, mailing lists, and discussion forums; but these discussions should never be a substitute for on site consensus discussions. Lobbying for support of a particular point of view should be avoided both on and off wiki since it may interfere with the interpretation of consensus.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * A factor in this case and other situations that we should address. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Rarely, do we have a situation where someone cites IRC or a forum as a place consensus is reached. Instead, these side discussion have a way of substituting for thoughtful on site discussion where all involved users can weigh in. A better solution could have been found for handling the article with better on site communication between users. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 16:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * As far as I know, this never actually entered into this. I've heard that there may have been discussion on IRC, but at no point did anyone cite any such thing.  While I agree with the principle, I'm not sure it's directly relevent. Wily D  15:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Yes. (To WilyD - I believe that MZMcBride referred to IRC discussion that reached a different consensus, but I will step aside for anyone with better details). LessHeard vanU (talk) 19:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Biographies of living persons
7) Articles relating to living individuals remain among the most sensitive content on Wikipedia. As the English Wikipedia has become one of the most prominent and visited websites in the entire world, a Wikipedia article on a given individual will often be among the highest-ranking, if not the very first, page to turn up when an Internet search is conducted for information about him or her. The contents of these articles may profoundly affect their subjects' lives, reputations, and well-being. Therefore, while all Wikipedia articles should be factually accurate, be based upon reliable sources, and be written from a neutral point of view, it is especially important that content relating to living persons must adhere to these standards. All biographical articles must be kept free of unsourced negative or controversial content, unsupported rumors and gossip, defamatory material, and unwarranted violations of personal privacy. See generally, Biographies of living persons (the "BLP policy").
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * As proposed by Newyorkbrad. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Another good summary.  MBisanz  talk 17:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Hang on! The article in question is evidently NOT "among the most sensitive content on Wikipedia" nor could it possibly be said to "profoundly affect [its] subject's life, reputation, and well-being". That's the whole point of this dispute. Let's be real, what you are saying is that BLP rules have been formed to reduce harm on those articles where harm is a possibility (but not articles like this), however, because rules are rules - we must apply them equally to all. But isn't that process wonking that defies commonsense, and particular judgement. Now, sure criticise people heavily for disregarding consensus and wheel warring - but don't critise them for using common sense by not applying a rule created for harmful BLPs to a BLP that can't possibly harm the subject. Otherwise you are asking for people to start using rules to trump common-sense.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Application of BLP policy
8) Our policies and standards for biographies of living persons apply to all article content or discussion that  contains factual assertions regarding any living individual, regardless of his or her level of prominence or notability. However, the nature and extent of an individual's prominence, the reasons the individual is notable, as well as the nature of specific BLP concerns that may exist on a given article, will affect the choice of the specific methods by which the BLP policy may best be enforced regarding that article.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Rewording of proposal by Newyorkbrad. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * A comma after "regarding" in the first sentence removed. GRBerry 13:41, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As 'do no harm' is the basis of BLP, the likelihood of harm being caused to the subject, should be the key factor in deciding what a proportionate response is.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 15:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Protection of articles
9) Wikipedia is, and is meant to be, "the encyclopedia that everyone can edit." The norm is that every Wikipedia page, and in particular every mainspace article, can be freely edited by anyone (except for a relatively small number of persons who have been blocked or banned from editing, temporarily or indefinitely, for violation of site policies). However, where necessary as the result of vandalism, edit-warring, BLP violations, or other good cause, an administrator can protect an article for a given period of time, restricting the ability of users to edit the article. "Semiprotected" pages can be edited only by registered users, while "full protected" pages can be edited only by administrators (and the right even of administrators to edit them is limited). An administrator who protects a page is expected to explain the reason for this action in a log summary and (unless obvious) on the talkpage. The duration of protection should be no longer than reasonably necessary to address the specific concern that prompted it. Templates exist to designate pages that have been protected, and to explain what this means for the benefit of new editors. Procedures also exist for users to request the lifting of page protection when they believe the need for it has expired.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * As proposed by Newyorkbrad. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * As before in NYB's, it should read : "Semiprotected" pages can be edited only by auto-confirmed users.... Also, I strongly feel that large, self-referential templates on highly visited pages are more distracting and detrimental than helpful, as stated above.  The templates need to be improved (perhaps put in a hidden "show" banner?  As in "This article has been (temporarily) protected from editing"         show )  Templates that benefit "new editors" are good, but not to the detriment of the vast majority of readers/users that couldn't care less about our wiki-processes and who vastly outnumber, in the millions, our editors. My template issues are tangential to the core here though, my apologies for going on about it :-)  Keeper  <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA">&#448;  76  14:21, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Locus of dispute
1) This case concerns disputed administrator actions and a "wheel war" concerning the protection and unprotection of Sarah Palin, a BLP article concerning a prominent American political figure.

Immediately after Governor Palin's selection as a running mate was announced, Sarah Palin became the most widely viewed article on Wikipedia and remained so for about two weeks. Soon after the announcement, her article was semiprotected to address vandalism from IP editors. After several days of edit-warring and alleged BLP violations on the article, an administrator increased the protection to full protection.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Alternative to version by Nyb. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Indisputable facts, sure.  MBisanz  talk 17:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * I would like ArbCom to recognize in its final decision that long-term semi-protection and occasional short-term full-protection is something that is normal for articles such as this, and not simply an approach that one or two admins (perhaps on – shock! horror! IRC) – invented for this particular article. Physchim62 (talk) 00:04, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Reduction of protection by Jossi
2) At 12:32-12:33 on September 4, 2008, reduced the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semi-protection, with the log summary "High traffic articles should not be protected." There is no evidence that Jossi consulted with the protecting administrator or sought consensus anywhere before making this change. By the time Jossi modified the protection, he had already made a series of substantive edits to Sarah Palin and related articles and their talkpages. Jossi's action was discussed on the administrators' noticeboard and based on that discussion, another administrator restored full protection at 13:52.

At 14:12-14:13 on September 4, Jossi again downgraded the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semiprotection, with the log summary "WP:IAR - There are times in which IAR is a necessity. This is a highly trafficked page AND a current event. Unprotected".


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Alternative to Nyb's. I prefer ruling with fewer content ordinated findings by the Committee. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * As noted above, I feel that MZMcBride's deprotection at 16:16 (UTC) August 29 is relevant to the discussion of his later actions. Physchim62 (talk) 00:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Prefer Nyb's (2 Fofs) in this case - the details need to be spelled out. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Concur with the generalities, no preference between FloN/NYB wordings. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Full protection and special BLP enforcement by MBisanz
3) At 1502 on September 4, 2008, restored full protection to Sarah Palin, for a designated period of two weeks. MBisanz stated that he was doing so pursuant to the "Special enforcement authority" provisions of this committee's decision in Requests for arbitration/Footnoted quotes. This represented the first invocation of the special enforcement authority established in that decision, which had proven controversial after it was handed down.

(section to be added about discussion in #admin IRC)
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Alternative to Nyb's I prefer a ruling with fewer content ordinated findings by the Committee. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Either this or Brad's, both are factually accurate.  MBisanz  talk 17:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * As for Nyb's proposal, I don't see that the last sentence is relevant. Physchim62 (talk) 00:12, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Use of the BLP special enforcement action
4) Reasonable administrators could differ as to whether the editing of Sarah Palin on September 4 was problematic enough to warrant invocation of the "special enforcement authority" conferred by our decision in Footnoted quotes. And it bears emphasis that any action taken under this authority is not permanent, but may be reversed by a consensus at Arbitration enforcement. A vigorous discussion of the protection status of Sarah Palin and related articles began almost immediately at that noticeboard.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * I prefer a ruling with fewer content ordinated findings by the Committee. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Prefer Nyb's again (on the condition it doesn't stay that long) as I don't think this Fof is quite as helpful - administrators have seeked guidance on this remedy for some time, and Nyb's finding does provide some. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:34, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Reduction of protection by MZMcBride
5) At 17:21 on September 4, reduced the protection of Sarah Palin from full protection to semiprotection, with a log summary stating solely "this is a wiki", notwithstanding the following:

(A) The ongoing consensus of discussion on the administrators' noticeboard and on the arbitration enforcement noticeboard which indicated at least tempory use of full protection at that time;

(B) Based on the number of protection and unprotection actions that had already taken place on the article within a short period of time, of which MZMcBride has not denied knowledge, MZMcBride's action in reversing the existing protection constituted the disfavored practice of wheel-warring under any reasonable definition;

(C) MZMcBride had not participated on the noticeboard discussion of the protection issue and offered no reason why his judgment on this issue should supersede that of the many other administrators and editors who had participated; and

(D) In the most recent full protection of the article by MBisanz, which MZMcBride reversed, the protecting administrator had expressly invoked the special enforcement procedures established in the Footnoted quotes decision; MZMcBride has not denied that he was aware of this fact and the terms of the committee decision when he downgraded protection on Sarah Palin. In the absence of such a denial, we must conclude that MZMcBride consciously disregarded this committee's decision as well as the consensus of his fellow administrators and editors established in the noticeboard discussions, based on his own individual, albeit good-faith and sincerely held, views of what the proper protection status of the article should be at the time.

(E) (Adding section about #admins IRC discussion)


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Will add section about using IRC instead of on site consensus building. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:

MZMcBride blocked
6) blocked MZMcBride for 3 hours after his second reduction in protection, and then WilyD returned the article to full protection. Moreschi unblocked MZMcBride.
 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Controversial block and unblock that brought the case to a head, I think. The case might have stayed at AE or been a request for clarification except for the block. Also reversing MZMcBride after blocking him is not ideal use of tools. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * To be more specific, I think the "threat" to block was not helpful and brought the situation to a head. While well intended, I firmly think that the threat to issue blocks for changing protection levels was not helpful and escalated the problems. It was one symptom (there were others) of how far the situation had deteriorated away from good communication. The situation needed mediation to stop users from climbing Reichstag dressed as Spider-Man. There were two valid points of view that both embraced important Wikipeia concepts in letter and spirit. Both sides of the content/policy dispute needed to have their point of view validated as important. Threating to block someone rarely help someone to continue productive discussion. Blocks of well established members of the community that disagree with each other are rarely useful and in many cases harmful. Also, blocks are a technical method to stop an user from editing, intended primarily to stop vandals. Blocks do not stop an admin since they can undo the block and edit. If as a true last resort, someone needed to ban an administrator from a topic discussion, and a voluntary agreement was not deemed sufficient, then ArbCom needs to be consulted to remove the tools (or in an emergency a Steward).


 * And I do not think it is "standard" to revert during a content disputes and I advice against doing it in content disputes and most types disputes since it usually gives the appearance of the administrator taking sides.


 * Also, keep in mind that I've read the #admin log and I'm taking into account the comments made in that channel about the block and unblock as consider this case. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 12:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that either asking for ArbCom's help sorting out the disagree between admins through a new case or doing a request for clarification about our "Footnotes quotes" BLP ruling would be an appropriate solution to a the problem of administrators not able to solve the problem due to poor communication when outside events overwhelmed usual practices. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 13:08, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * It's a standard action to revert any action that's so disruptive it requires a block. While you might reasonably accuse me of being heavy-handed (or even reckless, but I don't agree with that), I think reversion was a natural course of order.
 * Moreschi's unblock wasn't particularly contraversial - while he was making it, I was opining that an unblock was probably in order, given that an arbitration case had been opened. Moreschi also pre-emptively offered to not object were I to restore the block, an off I declined.  While I can't deny that my decision to block was contraversial, I don't think the same can be said of Moreschi's unblock; not one person has (that I've seen) said word one about it being inappropriate.
 * And per below, I can't help but think MBisanz's decision to file an arbitration case brought it to the head at which it arrived. My own goal had been the same - to prevent further warring and bring the issue to a discussion; by the results seem to have come mostly from MBisanz's approach to the problem. Wily D  12:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It was when sanctions were promised (by various parties) for continuing to war over the issue that a good discussion opened up - the evidence that a good discussion was taking place is clear enough on the evidence page. Indeed the paired "threats/warnings" of BLPSPECIAL and blocks forced a head - and that head was good discussion at AE. This case ended up stiffling discussion for a while, though - having to follow through was very counter-productive in that regard. The point has also been made the blocks regular do not stop vandals - we continue to block people who've had hundreds or thousands of sockpuppets.
 * To the best of my knowledge, no one has said anything about #admins being involved in the block or unblock - certainly I had not been there for a few months before this case opened. Wily D 13:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * As to the arbitrator's arbitrary comments: WP:CRYSTAL. As the action was highly disruptive, and there was every reason to believe that it would be repeated, a block was in order. That such actions brought the attention of this Committee to the problem, all the better, as it doesn't seem that it was getting sorted out any other way. Physchim62 (talk) 22:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * @FloNight: This RFAr was already filed by MBisanz before MZMcBride was blocked. Dragons flight (talk) 00:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For clarity, MBisanz filed the RFAr one minute before WilyD blocked MZMcBride .  So they were essentially parallel and independent responses to the same conflict.  Dragons flight (talk) 03:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I was unaware that MBisanz was filing a Request for Arbitration while I was blocking MZMcBride, yes. I think it'd have been nigh-impossible for me to be aware.  If I had been aware that the ArbReq had been opened, I'd have probably left it, figuring that would also be likely to prevent further disruption at Sarah Palin. Wily D  12:13, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * More commentary is needed on this one in the finding itself. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * With regards to Flo's statements that reverting [a blocked party] during a content dispute, or even reverting a protected page during a content dispute: either situation is normally true. However, doesn't the ArbCom special enforcement provisions for BLP situations overrule this?  I hate to be blunt, but Where editors fail to comply with BLP policy after being counseled and warned, administrators may impose sanctions on them, including restrictions on reverts or other specified behaviors, bans from editing any BLP or BLP-related page or set of pages, blocks of up to one year in length, or any other measures which may be considered necessary.  WilyD has insisted his block was preventative in nature and not intended to be punitive, and I see no reason not to accept this on the face of things.  I believe it was intended to grab the attention of an admin who had not been participating in discussions (5C above), and didn't appreciate the severity of the situation.  While I agree it didn't do much to deescalate the situation, I don't think WilyD forced anyone up the Reichstag either.  --InkSplotch (talk) 13:45, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * While it may have been an apex, and possibly caused a sufficient reaction from Arbs to readily accept the case, it was not an event of itself that necessarily would have been resolved via ArbCom; the blocking and unblocking admins, with input if required, might have resolved this issue. I consider ArbComs focus on this aspect out of line with the rest of the matter - the edit war over the protection and unprotection of the Sarah Palin, and the related issues of IAR (not) transcending consensus. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

#admin IRC channel
7) A discussion about the proper level of protection and the block and unblock of MZMcBride occurred in #admin IRC channel among the involved administrators during the wheelwar.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * In my view, a proper on site consensus discussion was hindered by off site discussion. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I was logged into #admins prior to, during and after the wheelwar. I put the log on the arbwiki for other arbs to review. I plan to add something specific to other admin specific Fof, also. (E. see above for place holder) FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 22:26, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:


 * Comment by others:
 * Generally speaking, IRC logs are not currently published on Wikipedia, but are assumed to be readily available to the Arbitration Committee. Is this finding of fact based on such logs that are in the committee's hands?  If so, should that be mentioned in the finding of fact?  GRBerry 22:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * If this finding has any relevance, then Flo's comment needs to be part of the finding. That a discussion happened is not relevant unless arbcom take the view that the discussion was improper. Personally, I think it is best to ignore IRC discussions altogether. There are admin actions taken with the backing of wiki-discussion, and then there are admin actions taken without such. Any and all other discussion (for good or ill) should be beside the point.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:17, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The arbitrator making this proposal is a regular attender at #admin, although she rarely actually participates in discussions. This proposed finding of fact is not only bad English (in the form that it is drafted as I write my comment) but also completely pointless. You have a bunch of admins on an IRC channel in the middle of a "wheel war" and you expect them not to "discuss about the proper level of protection and the block and unblock"!!! This proposal says more about the person making it than it does about 'administrating' Wikipedia. Physchim62 (talk) 00:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As I recall, the admins in the channel heavily disagreed about the protection. This isn't an IRC conspiracy, but quite the opposite. If there is a failing it is that discussion in IRC failed to stop the wheel war. If the admins hadn't been in contact in IRC then there would have been even less chance of this being averted.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 00:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If you were logged in to IRC, Flo, did you type something like "/me grabs admins X, Y, and Z by their ears and drags them over to WP:ANI where they can have a proper on wiki discussion to form a valid consensus." ? Jehochman Talk 14:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ugh, IRC... <tightens grip on good luck charm (effigy of Bishzilla carved from pink kryptonite) to help ward of evil spirits possibly emanating from that dark space> LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Parties instructed
1) The parties are instructed to carefully review the principles and findings contained in this decision. Each of the parties is strongly urged to conform his or her future behavior to the principles set forth in this decision.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Instructions similar to recent case. I do not think all involved admins need to be named specifically in the ruling, but I think they need to carefully read the ruling for feedback about their actions. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Based on my knowledge of some users with past sanctions, I think we need to emphasis to users that get written warnings and cautions from the Committee that reading the case ruling and following the content of the sanctions is expected in lieu of other types of sanctions. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 18:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * I've reviewed the evidence and workshop pages and will keep them bookmarked to refer to for future feedback on my decision making process, sort of expected I'd hope.  MBisanz  talk 17:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * Seems a bit redundant - all parties of a case are expected to do so at its conclusion anyway. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Parties instructed
2) The parties are instructed to:
 * (i) Avoid the use of administrator privileges in disputes as to which the administrator is involved in the underlying dispute.
 * (ii) Engage in on site consensus building discussions. Avoid editing that indicates that administrative action is being taken based on consensus established off of Wikipedia English.
 * (iii) Use discussion to reach consensus rather than using their administrative tools to express a point during contentious discussions.
 * (iv) Avoid using administrative tools to undo another administrators actions during a wheelwar and avoid blocking an administrator to end a wheelwar.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Basic but needed reminders for these parties and other administrators. Again, I do not think all involved admins need to be named specifically in the ruling, but I think they need to carefully read the ruling for feedback about their actions. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * I don't believe (ii) is at all relevent to this case. In no instance did it appear that any off-wiki consensus was invoked - everyone's actions were either entirely their own or based on on-wiki discussions. Wily D  13:41, 25 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by others:
 * re (ii), I would suggest that consensus, per the WP meaning, is only that which is established on wiki, and that agreement is the correct terminology for that which is reached off wiki. (iv) is just... ill-considered in my opinion; if use of admin tools is avoided in reverting another sysop then there is no wheelwar, and WilyD has pointed out that blocking appears to be a legitimate way of pausing a wheelwar - so I cannot support. (i) and (iii) are fine! LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride admonished and restricted
3) (A)  is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or deliberately disobeying decisions of the Arbitration Committee. MZMcBride is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the suspension or revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) MZMcBride is instructed not to unprotect or reduce the edit-protection status of any article substantially constituting the biography of a living person for a period of 90 days from the date of this decision.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Offer Nyb's alternative for voting FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * An admonishment without the additional instruction to voluntarily abstain from from altering protection could be a reasonable sanction in this case, and likely we should vote on it. Over the next few days, I plan to discuss with Nyb how to combine and reduce the proposals. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 15:40, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * What's the point of B? If he does so controversially he'll be in deep shit, he knows that. Why prevent him doing so uncontroversially? If the committee doesn't trust him to know the difference then they should desysop him altogether! Looks punative rather then preventative.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What's the point of B? If he does so controversially he'll be in deep shit, he knows that. Why prevent him doing so uncontroversially? If the committee doesn't trust him to know the difference then they should desysop him altogether! Looks punative rather then preventative.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:20, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes to A. No to B. Jehochman Talk 14:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Same as my response to NYB's similar wording. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride admonished and desysopped for 90 days
3.1) (A) is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or deliberately disobeying decisions of the Arbitration Committee. MZMcBride is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the permanent  revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) MZMcBride administrative privileges are revoked. After a period of 90 days from the date of this decision, the use of administrative privileges will be returned.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Offer as alternative to Nyb's voluntary wording. I support involuntary removal of the tools rather than voluntary. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * What's the point? Either he knows what's required now, or he doesn't. What changes in 90 days? Punative.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Contrary to Scott MacDonald above, I think this reinforces the concern that the community has in MZMcB's sysop actions here and elsewhere and indicates the consequences of future poor use of the tools; I consider this a preventative measure. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Contrary to Scott MacDonald above, I think this reinforces the concern that the community has in MZMcB's sysop actions here and elsewhere and indicates the consequences of future poor use of the tools; I consider this a preventative measure. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

MZMcBride desysopped
3.2) administrative privileges are revoked. MZMcBride  may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means or by appeal to the Committee.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * I feel the admin actions were egregious to the point that a vote for possible desysop is a valid. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * Overkill.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 22:23, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Would be overkill if these were the only faults expressed against the admin. Personally, I no longer have faith in this admin's judgment – on the basis of this and of the actions summarized in my evidence – and so a desysopping seems appropriate to me. I'm much more willing to forgive parties who misact occasionally under anger (etc., see above) than those who do so systematically and at substantial intervals between the events. Physchim62 (talk) 00:37, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Perhaps this is merited by other instances of poor jusgement, but that needs FoF to support it. Based on the one wheel-war this is overkill. I admit I've not reviewed the other evidence - but arbcom would need a finding about it, and would need to reference that finding to support this remedy.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 00:44, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think so - the actions were egregious, and, the special enforcement remedy was unambiguous - administrators who modified an action taken under the remedy without a clear consensus at the noticeboard may be suspended or desysopped. Ncmvocalist (talk) 02:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The special enforcement remedies were to do with harm to living people - as arbcom made clear. Thus although the letter was broken, the spirit was not, which is the essence of WP:NOT a set of rules and IAR. The problem is to do with wheel waring and ignoring consensus NOT special enforcement (unless you're in to hitting people with rulebooks for their own sake - which would be a different project altogether). One instance of wheel-warring does not merit desysopping - UNLESS there's a problematic admin history. Maybe there is such a history - but arbcom need to find that there is.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 07:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Is there a history of prior admonishments? We should use the least amount of force necessary to get the desired result.  If an admonishment may work, that should be tried. Jehochman Talk 14:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Excessive. 3.1) strikes the right balance. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Excessive. 3.1) strikes the right balance. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi admonished and restricted
4) (A)  is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or deliberately disobeying decisions of the Arbitration Committee. Jossi is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the suspension or revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) Jossi is instructed not to unprotect or reduce the edit-protection status of any article substantially constituting the biography of a living person for a period of 90 days from the date of this decision.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * Nyb's alternative. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * A is okay. B is not good. Jehochman Talk 14:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Per my response to NYB's similar wording. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Prefer Nyb's - this proposal misses one line. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Prefer Nyb's - this proposal misses one line. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:43, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi admonished and desysopped for 90 days
4.1) (A) is strongly admonished for his conduct in this matter and is instructed to refrain from any further incidents of wheel-warring, taking administrator actions in disregard of on-wiki consensus, or deliberately disobeying decisions of the Arbitration Committee. Jossi is warned that any further such incidents are likely to lead to the permanent  revocation of his administrator privileges.

(B) Jossi's administrative privileges are revoked. After a period of 90 days from the date of this decision, the use of administrative privileges will be returned.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * I prefer involuntary desyop over voluntary request not to use tools in this instance. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In this case as well as the above, an admonishment without the additional instruction to voluntarily abstain from from altering protection could be a reasonable sanction in this case, and likely we should vote on it. Over the next few days, I plan to discuss with Nyb how to combine and reduce the proposals. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 18:27, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * Not a bad idea, but I think 14 days makes the point just as well as 90 days, and is less disruptive. Jehochman Talk 14:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * What changes after 90 or 14 days? Isn't this punative?--Scott MacDonald (talk) 18:06, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that Jossi does now understand where and why his actions were inappropriate, and the admonishment thus suffice; I agree with Scott MacDonald that - in this instance - suspension would be punative. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * There is such a thing as deterrence. Wheel warring is absolutely not allowed and can result in immediate loss of privileges.  It is not unreasonable to suggest a consequence greater than admonishment for wheel warring, as a deterrence. Jehochman Talk 15:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I am supporting a temporary desysopping of MZMcBride, which may be considered a deterrence also, as there seemed to be a desire to wheelwar over a point of principle - but Jossi has an otherwise good sysop record and has latterly come to recognise his error; I cannot support equal sanction against two admins who appear to have subsequently reacted differently. LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just noting that Jossi does seem to recently (past 24 hours) be involved in another dust-up being discussed on WP:ANI, namely blocking Kelly in response to Kelly's at best unwisely chosen comment in the context of a discussion of the conclusion of another arbitration case. There seems to be building consensus that Jossi's action in that situation was at least unwise. I don't think anyone has any desire to go on any wide-ranging witch hunt against well meaning editors and administrators, nor is there any indication of a need of arbcom involvement in that minor dust-up, but I think it is legitimate to query whether a narrowly worded admonition and restriction in this case will play the desired role in a situation where one could argue that the party in question is continuing to exhibit a tendency to unilateralism and snap reactions in another arena. Whether or so that argument is fully true in this case is something I have no firm opinion on based on a 5 minute perusal, but I raise it since I feel it is a relevant issue to determining the best remedies in this case. (Phew! I think my language is being polluted by NYB and FT's writing style) Martinp (talk) 15:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That was me, Martin.--Tznkai (talk) 15:29, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Doh, struck out with apologies to all. I still vaguely recall Jossi's involvement in some way, but clearly I don't multitask well. Martinp (talk) 15:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Jossi made a comment on Kelly's talk page after Kelly was blocked by Tznkai that might be read as ill-advised taunting, as well as several comments to the ANI thread .  Jossi did not take any admin action however, and so these actions probably have little bearing here.  Dragons flight (talk) 15:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Jossi made a comment on Kelly's talk page after Kelly was blocked by Tznkai that might be read as ill-advised taunting, as well as several comments to the ANI thread .  Jossi did not take any admin action however, and so these actions probably have little bearing here.  Dragons flight (talk) 15:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Jossi desysopped
4.2) administrative privileges are revoked. Jossi  may apply to have them reinstated at any time, either through the usual means or by appeal to the Committee.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * I feel the admin actions were egregious to the point that a vote for possible desysop is a valid. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 21:50, 22 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:
 * Comment by others:
 * Has Jossi been admonished before? Unless you can show prior incidents, I think this would be an extremely unwise precedent. Jehochman Talk 14:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Without comment on the merits of the present case, the precedent has been that no prior admonishment is needed for desysopping in certain circumstances. Administrators don't get a free pass for one wheel war at an article where they're actively editing, and it would be an invitation to trouble to create an illusion that such things were permissible.  Durova  Charge! 17:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I admit to being a softie. Jehochman Talk 15:28, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
 * True, but desysopping is not punative. So the question is not "did he do bad?" but "is he likely to do more harm than good if left a sysop?". That means we have to look at the record overall - unless the one offence is SO BAD and the risk of re-offending too high to run.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 17:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I no way would I support a "permanent" desysop sanction, but would allow the return of the tools either by a successful RFA or appeal for review by ArbCom. If Jossi has the trust of the Community then the tools will be returned promptly through a RFA. An desysop with option of RFA or review by Committee is not punitive but seeks to re-establish that there is trust after an incident of inappropriate use of admin tools. FloNight&#9829;&#9829;&#9829; 18:24, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Ideally, yes. But we all know that a great number of admins, which the committee would never wish to desysopp, have stood on enough toes that they would struggle to pass RfA. I also think it is passing the buck, the question that should determine desysopping is "does the committee judge that this person having the tools is a net gain to the project?".--Scott MacDonald (talk) 18:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not commenting on this proposal, but on Scott MacDonald's reply. "Net gain to the project" is much too low a threshold, as it would permit a considerable amount of disruption by an active contributor. We don't say that editors can violate rules as long as they create new articles. Nor do we say that admins may wheel war as long as they help out on vandalism patrol. ·:· Will Beback  ·:· 20:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not whether the person is a "net gain", but whether them having the tools is beneficial to the project or not. There comes a point where it is likely to cause more drama than it is worth. And certainly, if arbcom believe that an admin is unlikely to be cowed into better behaviour by an admonition, or has such poor judgement to be unlikely to learn from clear mistakes, then I'd say that point has been reached. If arbcom can't be reasonably sure of acceptable use of the tools going forward, then it would not be a net gain to the project of allowing the tools to stand. But one swallow seldom makes a summer.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 20:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It is not whether the person is a "net gain", but whether them having the tools is beneficial to the project or not. There comes a point where it is likely to cause more drama than it is worth. And certainly, if arbcom believe that an admin is unlikely to be cowed into better behaviour by an admonition, or has such poor judgement to be unlikely to learn from clear mistakes, then I'd say that point has been reached. If arbcom can't be reasonably sure of acceptable use of the tools going forward, then it would not be a net gain to the project of allowing the tools to stand. But one swallow seldom makes a summer.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 20:54, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

or The death of common sense and consistency. Choose your caption. Durova Charge! 21:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)]] (outdent) It's worth pointing out that there are two different ways of defining preventative. One is whether an action is necessary to prevent a specific Wikipedian from repeating an action; the other is whether an action is necessary to discourage other Wikipedians from trying the same thing. In other words, would Jossi retaining the tools have an unintended effect of giving other admins the notion that they could use the tools in a similar manner and come away with a warning? Would some of them be likely to try brinksmanship if that happens, and what would the cost be in time/drama/arbitration? I've never sat on the Committee so this is speculation, but it wouldn't surprise me if these are considerations they've weighed in past examples. Having followed and read dozens of cases, the impression I come away with is that desysopping is the routine solution for clear-cut instances of wheel warring. If ArbCom intends to depart from that custom then it makes sense to consider the implications for both perspectives of preventative. Durova Charge! 21:16, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In jurisprudence, that's not called prevention but indirect deterrence.--Scott MacDonald (talk) 21:26, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * With a sysop record like Jossi's, such a response to one (sustained but now recognised) instance of impropriety with the tools may well chill with prejudice some admins willingness to use the tools in grey areas - and will baffle other people who consider that some other admins do not have anything like as clean a record as Jossi are still able to use the tools without the appearance of concern. Nope, very, very bad proposal. LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:14, 23 September 2008 (UTC)



Contradictory directives
1) Allowance is given for editors who attempt to follow written policies and guidelines or Arbitration decisions that may be contradictory, or confusing.


 * Comment by Arbitrators:
 * This proposal bears a family resemblance to the principle that "[a]n administrator or other editor who takes an action in reliance on a good-faith, reasonable interpretation of an Arbitration Committee decision should not be subject to sanction for that action." (From Requests for arbitration/Zeq-Zero0000.) However, I am not certain that this is applicable here, at least not to the two administrators mentioned in my proposals. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:07, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This is a reply, not a comment. I am thinking of MBisanz who is not mentioned, yet, and hopefully won't be. Jehochman Talk 15:31, 24 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Comment by parties:

Anthøny  ✉  22:05, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment by others:
 * I think this incarnation of WP:AGF needs to be stated. If people do the wrong thing because policies are poorly drafted, we should not sanction them.  Instead, we should fix the broken policies. I am thinking of the conflict between WP:WHEEL and WP:BLP, fueled especially by ArbCom's special enforcement provisions.  Less is often more.  By adding extra enforcement provisions, the situation becomes muddled and more bad situations, like this one, happen. Jehochman Talk 14:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I concur in principle, but note that I am concerned that this principle is by its nature very gameable; perhaps it may be a net benefit in not voicing this, to avoid a rocker of a BEANS situation.

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Analysis of evidence
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General discussion

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The following section is about further fallout: Administrators%27_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement. Though I think it is in good faith, I suggest that any remedy should be clear on whether this kind of thing is OK, and try to handle the perverse or unclear policies which lead to it. Homunq (talk) 23:02, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Incoherence, protection, and BLP
Here are some of my thoughts in full:

1): If full protection is to be used in these scenarios - which should only be done in clear emergencies - then we need to be quite clear about what sort of full-protection this is. It is either "nobody edit" protection (except via edit-protected, which in practice means minor changes only) or it is "admins only editing" protection. In the case of Sarah Palin, where the fully-protected version contained sections that everyone could agree were problematic and indeed to me and others BLP-dubious, it makes no sense to install "no editing" protection to protect BLP: we simply wind up violating BLP to a greater degree than if the article had been unprotected.


 * Agreed that option 1 is bad. But I also think this editor's own actions (which clearly ignored a developing consensus and angered several people, including me.) show that option 2 is just as bad. I have proposed multiple times another possible principle: apply all good-faith editprotecteds, (added)and make admins use the same editprotected mechanism for non-minor edits(/added). Good-faith means not obvious violations of principles or consensus, have at least two supporters (that is, one seconder), and are not simple reverts. Do not wait for consensus, but approach it asymptotically, as with a more normal edit process. This means that admins should be ready to implement editprotected requests even if they feel the requests are flawed (but not violations of principles or well-established consensus). I believe that Moreschi's suggestion of "admins only editing" is a clear violation of Admin. Homunq (talk) 10:58, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If we go down that route then we might as well not have protected the article at all. I'm sorry, but adminship 2008 simply is a very big deal. It was different in 2004, yes, but times have changed. Moreschi (talk) 11:05, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * "As of 2008... it does not add any extra voice in consensus decisions." Homunq (talk) 11:27, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Somethings just aren't open for discussion, though. Moreschi (talk) 11:46, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

2): As a general principle, high-profile articles like Sarah Palin or 2008 South Ossetia war should be immediately semi-protected the minute they become high-profile (which I did myself on the South Ossetia article, and also on all articles relating to that conflict). The autoconfirmed limit should be both by time since account creation and by number of edits. Otherwise we just won't be able to keep up, Wikipedia is so high-profile these days.

3): The principles underlying the notorious Footnoted quotes remedy were incoherent. In the case of previous "discretionary sanctions" remedies, such as WP:ARBMAC, WP:ARBAA2, Requests for arbitration/Martinphi-ScienceApologist, WP:ARBPIA, and WP:ARB9/11, arbcom knew they were handing the situation over to either a small group of admins who were already familiar with the situation and knew what they were doing (ARBMAC) or that there was widespread consensus among the admin corps about what to do on these articles (everyone agrees that pseudoscientific fringe theories should be written about as fringe theories: sure, the devil is in the detail, but pretty much everyone signs up to these basic principles. And no one seriously backs the 9/11 truth brigade). In the case of BLP articles, there is no widespread consensus about what the best approach is on BLP articles: approaches range wildly from just "include anything and everything" to "report what the damn sources say" to "do absolutely no harm at all" to outright BLP fascism (putting it bluntly). Therefore passing said remedy was simply a formula for wheel-warring.

4): On the wheel-war itself: MZM's initial unprotection to take the protection level down to [move=sysop] was clearly thick and counter to common sense. "This is a wiki" - what nonsense. Wikis are the be-all-and-end-all, are they? His second unprotect was clear wheel-warring. Jossi also wheel-warred by twice reinstating edit=autoconfirmed against consensus to the contrary.

5): On the ending of the wheel-war: personally, I would have asked an arbitrator to emergency demop MZM and then reprotected, rather than block and reprotect, but I find it rather hard to actually call WilyD evil. Controversial, yes, but what he did certainly worked. It was ballsy and courageous: certainly contrary to some policy or other, and I still think blocking for 3 puny hours was pointless, punitive and potentially dangerous, as it could have led to the wheel-war spiralling right out of control - which is why I reversed that block - but we shouldn't complain too much. It worked. Moreschi (talk) 09:26, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * For an admin that makes a massive edit to a protected article] outside of process, I would expect a more circumspect behavior here rather that making assessments on the behaviors of others. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I posted something to JzG's page earlier today, and now that I think about it, I think I'll copy it here, and see what other people think on the issue too. I think it's one of the core issues behind what happened here (that, and absolutely horrid decision-making by at least a couple people involved.


 * Where do we strike the balance on being a wiki, and being an encyclopedia? I'm sure there's no hard and fast rules that "This level of vandalism is ok, but this level of vandalism means the article needs to be full protected..." etcetera.


 * A couple folks I really respect seem to fall on the left side of that scale.. that the highest priority of Wikipedia is being the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. I fall on the other side of the scale, I guess you could say, being a free encyclopedia.


 * Obviously, the way you view this scale affects how you read the policy. One of the unprotects of the main article states "This is a wiki". Meaning that despite the things going on at the time (which I would call large-scale edit-warring with a large amount of BLP Violations for good measure), the best benefit to Wikipedia is to have the access available for editing for the maximum time possible. I couldn't disagree more with it, that by keeping a page unlocked during such activity (on a large scale), it is NOT a positive for Wikipedia, and in-fact, can be a gross negative.

(sorry, apparently forgot to sign) SirFozzie (talk) 11:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * This project has succeeded so far due to enabling anyone to edit, and not by restricting editing. A world-view that dismisses our core principle of An encyclopedia that anyone can edit will not serve this project well. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:49, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As I said before, there seems to be a fundamental disconnect. Taken to its logical extremes as you seem to be implying, we shouldn't ever ban or block users, because they won't be able to edit, as well as never protecting an article. SirFozzie (talk) 21:42, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Block disruptive users? Absolutely. Protect a page so that it cannot be edited? Only for short time. Protect a page that is a current event and about which new information is emerging and reported in almost every newspaper and media outlet in the world? Absolutely not. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:38, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the problem you're missing, Jossi, is that many, if not all of us, agree with you that protection should be temporary. The issue here is that there was an ongoing community process to determine how much longer to protect the article.  The overwhelming consensus at that time, though, was to continue the temporary protection.    user:j    (aka justen)   23:24, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Moreschi; I still don't really follow your thoughts about my choice of three hours. In all truthfulness, I picked it from the drop-down menu.  15 minutes struck me as seeming silly, and I didn't think a longer block would accomplish anything a shorter block wouldn't - that strickes me as a longer block being more problematic/abusive/whatever.  If I had thought about the length in great detail (I did not spend a great deal of time agonising over that detail), I might've choosen 1 hour or 2 hours or something - but short.  I believed (and still believe) a long block wouldn't have done anything a short block couldn't, and thus a long block would've been abusive.
 * I've hear a rumour from my highly reliable source (the rumour mill) that this line of thinking might be related to the use of really short blocks to get them to expire before they're overturnt. Is this true?  Or is there some other line of reasoning?  I'm curious. Wily D  18:57, 7 September 2008 (UTC)

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comments by others

 * I mostly agree with Moreschi. I think wiliD's action was fine, though a request for emegency deadmin would have been appropriate also.  --Rocksanddirt (talk) 15:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Clueless and infuriating post by Moreschi regarding his own actions. We are quite clear what full-protection is, just you aren't. You assert that edit-protected in practice means minor changes only, this is nonsense. Of course you were not on the talk page at all prior to your edit, nor subsequent to it to any meaningful degree, since it is where the peons were attempting to improve the article. The idea that full-protection = admins can edit how they like is novel, and an interesting position to suddenly assume and act on. Especially since admins were proving themselves such impeccable wikipedians at the time, hence this case. Had you thought it prudent to familiarize yourself with this article's history before barging in, you would have seen stuff like this and this . You would also have been aware of the disruption and contention various undermining unilateral admin actions were causing to the talk page, which was busy and contentious enough without it, though working quite well, as many have attested. In addition and just for spice, your edit, though greeted at first with relief by some for replacing a list-ish point-by-point section to prose overview, was objectively terrible, making as it did several dubious, serious assertions with incredibly tenuous connections to the crappy source given to support them: "Palin is known for ... her support for the minimal state and economic opportunity of classical libertarianism: she is known in Alaska for her strong opposition to excessive government spending and corruption" sourced to this op-ed, for instance. Editors weighing up a decision to use IAR as a flash admin manoeuvre are asked to factor in the disruption such use would cause. Unbelievably, it doesn't seem like they are doing this.  86.44.27.111 (talk) 07:25, 15 September 2008 (UTC)