Wikipedia:Requests for comment/168 and Mav

(User:168... | mav)

This matter has been accepted for arbitration. Evidence is at Requests for arbitration/Mav v. 168/Evidence. Discussion is at Requests for arbitration/Mav v. 168.

Requests for comment/168 - Requests for comment/Mav

End of mediation
As of 29 of feb 2004, I indicate that mediation between Mav and 168 is over. No peaceful solution could be reached per discussion, and I do not think it is resolvable amicably. 168 is requesting arbitration upon the conflict he has with Mav. SweetLittleFluffyThing
 * And I request arbitration against 168. See: Requests for comment/168 for the issue I wish to have resolved. What I seek is a reasonable assurance that 168 will not do those things again in the future. I in fact think that 168 is a good contributor who happened to do some bad things to make a point, but the issue backfired onto 168. --mav

Versions of events by various editors
''NOTICE: This article continues to undergo changes. The reputations of many people are affected by this portrayal of events, including the reputations of 168..., Mav, Lir, Peak, Stewartadcock and others. In making edits to this article, these users should be regarded as facing potential conflicts of interest. You may wish to check the Edit History to see who edited it most recently and what changes they made.''

Below are several versions of events. The first version has been written primarily by mav, who along with other community members regards 168... as having acted improperly (in whole or in part). The second version is based on the one by Mav, but has been extensively edited by 168... with an attempt to present all the facts necessary to assess the rightness or wrongness of 168...'s behavior during the long course of events described.

---

''If all parties agree to say that the above text is an accurate, complete and fair report of the past events, I would like to suggest that it be extracted, put in a new page, and protected (at least officially not open to edition any more). This would then constitute an agreement between all parties involved. I think it is important that you all think this is fairly representing what happened then.''

It is in particular important that Mav and 168 both agree on this text. 168 indicated he now was. I would like Mav opinion (but would prefer that he first indicate privately any major disagreement). Would this seem ok to you ? :-)

User:Anthere


 * [Peak:] I don't have time to keep up with 168...'s many edits, and I doubt that many others do. You might consider asking each party to write a separate statement, and then asking each party which statements they endorse. Peak 18:49, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Here we are :-) It would be best if these two statements were stable now. Anthère0

Version of what happened primarily written by mav
As a participant in a multi-party dispute over one much-discussed paragraph in DNA, 168 reverted to an old version, which he favored. When User:Lir undid the reversion, 168... reverted again and protected the page. Other admins said protection was called for, but said the fact that 168... had done it made the act improper. 168... also protected Conflicts between users while a participant in a brief multi-party dispute involving Lir over that page then unprotected it again two minutes later.

Days later he used the rollback feature to revert the protected page Nucleic acid (another article he was in an edit dispute over) to his preferred version. He then engaged in a full revert war using the rollback feature with 3 other admins (168... used the rollback feature in that revert war more than 10 times in less than 20 minutes). Other admins also used the rollback feature to revert 168...       (this last one was a self revert) (Nucleic acid history One of his edit comments was "so de-sysop me." At the same time he also used the rollback feature to repeatedly remove warnings on his talk page about his behavior.     (User talk:168... history Also at the same time he was in another revert war at Possible misuses of admin privileges. There he repeatedly used the rollback feature to revert a note by Lir that 168... had reverted a protected page (Nucleic acid). During this revert war another admin protected the page hoping that that would stop 168... but 168... continued to revert. Other admins involved in the revert war also used the rollback feature on 168...            (Wikipedia:Possible misuses of admin privileges history A poll was then started asking whether or not 168... should be desysoped but no action was taken at that time.Wikipedia_talk:Possible_misuses_of_admin_privileges

During this episode 168... explained that he was doing this "to irritate Lir and keep him and the need for ban enforcement topical." He called this a kind of "civil disobedience." 

Between February 12th and 13th 168... repeatedly reverted DNA, removing the first two paragraphs that were voted on and passed (4 to 1 with Lir being the 1 and 168.. not participating in that particular vote but instead voted for the version he would later revert to) on the talk page (see vote at Talk:DNA/archive_4 ; four people were reverting him).       On the 14th he again reverted DNA to his favored version and then protected the page. Note that Lir also would later revert the voter version of the intro to his own version. 168... also claims that the vote had no power since it was not listed at Current polls.

At around the same time he was using the rollback feature and regular reverts to revert all the most recent updates to this page (five different people were reverting 168).         After one revert 168... protected his version of the page twice but that page protection was lifted by another admin. Note that the above diffs may no longer work due to the fact that version numbers were reassigned after each deletion.

On the 14th he also deleted this page 11 times and blanked it four times. Based on a clear majority at 168...'s desysoping poll, Tim Starling then temporarily desysopped 168... and asked for a review of the situation. 

Mav requested mediation on the above points at Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation#168..._and_maveric149 but mediation later failed and the item was de-listed by Anthere.

On February 20th a new poll was conducted on whether or not 168's sysop user rights should be reinstated. The next day Angela added mention of that poll at Current polls. Less then a day later on February 22nd Tim Starling resysoped 168 when there were 10 votes for reinstatement and 5 against (67% in favor). In the days following more users voted and as of March 6 there were 10 votes for reinstatement and 9 against. 

On March 5 DNA was unprotected by Kingturtle. On the next day, Anthere asked Kingturtle for the article protection to be restored at first sign of necessity. 168's first edit to that article was a revert to his favored version the next day. Mav reverted the article back to the version most people who voted on the February_5_Version liked. 168 reverted the article to his favored version again. Mav responded with a proposed compromise version that combined the information contained in both versions. 168 reverted that as well. Mav tried another compromise, but 168 reverted back to his favored version again. Bryan Derksen then reverted 168. Mav saved another proposed compromise version, which 168 reverted (marking the revert as a minor edit and not giving an edit summary). Bryan Derksen reverted 168's revert. 168 auto-reverted Bryan and protected the page. 

Note that that was a total of 6 reverts by 168 in a 24 hour period and that a poll that would make a 3-revert per day limit policy has 45 votes to 6  Jimbo has not decided yet whether to allow admins the ability to block users for 24 hours for breaking this rule.

For discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/168

Talk about mav's version

 * Note that 168... considers the above portrait of events as biased, because it is selective and superficial. 168... will write another version when 168... has more patience and is less pissed off.168...|...Talk 06:57, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Version of based on the above and edited primarily by 168... and somewhat by Peak
As a participant in a multi-party dispute with User:Lir over one much-discussed paragraph in DNA, 168 reverted to a long-standing older version, which 168... favored. When User:Lir undid the reversion, 168... reverted again and protected the page. Other admins said protection was called for, but said the fact that 168... had done it made the act improper. 168... also protected Conflicts between users while a participant in a brief multi-party dispute involving Lir over that page then unprotected it again two minutes later.

Later 168... used the administrators' "rollback" feature to revert one sentence fragment of the article Nucleic acid, which had been protected due to a revert war between 168... and User:Lir about a vocabulary issue that had been fruitlessly discussed at length on talk: DNA, in the context of which Lir demonstrated disinterest in reaching a resolution through reasoned dialogue. 168 reverted the sentence fragment to an earlier version that had been stable for a long time until Lir made his change. The page was protected at the time. When others tried to revert 168...'s reversion, 168... reverted theirs using the rollback feature. The others included 3 other admins and 168... used the rollback feature more than 10 times in less than 20 minutes. No one has recorded how many times the other admins may have used the rollback feature during this dispute. Note there is evidence to suggest that 168... was engaging in this behavior in order to provoke political action. (Nucleic acid history. "So desysop me" 168... posted as summary of one reversion. 168...'s use of the rollback feature resulted in the removal from 168...'s talk page of accusations that 168... was violating rules and commands that 168... submit to the will of other administrators and decist.     ([http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:168...&action=history User talk:168... history]

Note that it is rare, if not unprecedented, to read about a user's removal of content from a user's own talk page in the context of alleged misbehavior. Pages in a user's personal directory tend to be regarded more or less as the property of those users. Note also that use of the rollback feature seemingly has not been presented as a kind of misbehavior in the evaluation of any other administrator prior to 168.... Some might take the citatation of these two behaviors in the case of 168... as reflecting presuppositions about 168... that are not usually made when the behavior of other sysops is raised for public scrutiny. 168... claims that Mav and others are behaving in the manner of a lynch mob.

At the same time 168... was using the rollback feature to revert a posting by Lir to Possible misuses of admin privileges, in which Lir made a complaint he had already made on two other public pages. 168... offered this is a reason not to allow Lir's post, but 168... was reverted without discussion again and again.

A poll was then started here asking whether or not 168... should be "desysoped" (stripped of administrator powers). The poll was not widely advertised (e.g. not on Current polls)

Between February 12th and 13th 168... attempted to preserve the much-discussed intro paragraph of DNA described above. A new paragraph had been produced by a multi-day open polling procedure, which allowed voters to move their votes around until the arrival of a deadline which had been set previously. Although 168... and Lir had objected to voting, no one expressed objections to the specific deadline proposed. The process produced a paragraph that emerged with the support of more than a two-thirds majority of the witnesses who made their presence known on the talk page (-- see Talk:DNA/archive_4). The vote was not advertised widely (not e.g. on Current polls) which some consider a requirement for voting, according to 168.... Absentions were not solicited, and no one explicitly posted that they were abstaining. Prior to the start of a 72-hour final voting period, 168 reintroduced the original long-standing version of the paragraph and voted for it. No one else did. 168... says this posting was an attempt to redirect the process and to poke fun at the proceedings, which at the time (as can be examined in the page history) showed few voters voting for the same choices of phrase. As more votes came in and people moved their votes around, however, support converged on a single version.

The emerging paragraph had the support of five participants united in their opposition to Lir. 168... acted to prevent implementation of the voter-approved paragraph by reverting attempts to post it and calling for discussion. During 168...'s actions to preserve the long-standing older version of the introductory paragraph, four people were reverting it to the voter-approved version. Ultimately 168... protected the older version.

Before and during the vote, 168... had posted multiple times (e.g. ) that 168... would not recognize the vote's outcome. Lir also indicated that he regarded the vote as having no authority. Still, participants were surprised by their behavior afterwards.

According to Peak, who called for the vote, his intention and the intention of other vote-supporters was to try to produce a paragraph that a wide majority of participants could feel allegiance to, and which they could collectively defend against changes by uncooperative participants. The prior weeks of discussion had touched on all of the phrases in question and produced a variety of alternatives that could be evaluated by voting. 168... and Peak both believe that the weeks of discussion preceding the vote were done in the spirit of "consensus decision making" as per Consensus decision-making. The process described in that article does not strictly require unanimity, but User:Cyan, the sysop who was protecting DNA, had called for it.

168... had offered arguments against holding a vote, saying that the various options incorporated many accomodations to Lir, but in the end would neither satisfy nor be recognized by Lir. 168... proposed "reasoned discussion" as an alternative. This proposal was not seriously debated, partly because attempts toward reasoned discussion with Lir had already been tried in vain for weeks. In calling for reasoned discussion, 168... explicitly proposed that Lir be excluded from the process. According to Peak, this seemed meaningless, in the sense that without banning Lir could edit the talk page anyway, or trivial, because if 168... wanted to ignore Lir 168... was free to do so. 168... ignored Lir as others continued to discuss issues with Lir and to strike compromises with him. In the end, the call for unanimity was rejected by the five voters and their supporters in the community, who think the results of the vote should be binding without further discussion.

At the same time as 168... was blocking immediate implementation of the voter-approved paragraph, Lir was making his own edits to the article, acts that suggest Lir did not consider the outcome of the vote as any constraint on how editing or discussion should proceed. It is unclear whether Lir would have paid more respect to the vote if 168... had treated the results as binding. According to Peak, many doubt he would have. Because 168...'s expectations of Lir's response to the vote were correct, it might be argued that 168...'s proposed alternative to voting--a reasoned discussion excluding Lir--would have been the better option to pursue. This does not say whether 168... was obliged to go along with the choice of most others to hold a vote and treat the results as binding.

Peak and others respect 168...'s preference for the old version of the paragraph in question, and 168... respects the voters' decision to pursue a compromise by voting. Both are disappointed with the other. Voters are surprised that 168... put a campaign to end tolerance of users like Lir ahead of efforts to deal with Lir in a somewhat more conventional way. Peak says what 168... did was contrary to the democratic principles of Wikipedia, and he says he is disillusioned that 168... would act in such a way.

Many Wikipedians called 168...'s protection of the older paragraph an abuse of sysop powers. Policy says that administrators should not use their powers of protection on articles they have edited. 168... had reverted Lir's edits to that page many times in the past and still farther in the past had been involved in its editing. 168... had also been an active participant in discussions on the talk page several weeks previously and had made recent posts. It is not clear how many Wikipedians, if any, took the time to personally evaluate the extent to which 168...'s involvement with the article constituted "recent editing." Nevertheless, it was widely publicized on Wikipedia that 168 had protected a version of page that 168... had recently edited and engaged in "edit wars" over and which 168... preferred. Following a previous campaign by Mav to call attention to 168...'s behavior, the recent charges were widely and rapidly embraced as accurate in detail. 168... claims the details paint a different picture from the characterizations that circulated, which 168... calls coarse and slanted.

Mav, and others have repeatedly used the phrase "consensus" to describe the vote (Peak described it as "near-consensus") and described 168...'s intent as to simply over-rule it (rather than to introduce an extra step of discussion prior to implimentation). This is important to mention, because the manner in which 168...'s behavior was described may account for the swift and widespread condemnation of 168... and subsequent stripping of sysop status. Many expressed outrage that 168... had used sysop powers to block the immediate implementation of an edit that had received overwhelming support from voters. Peak adds that 168... had said Lir should be ignored, so that it was hypocritical to regard the vote as other than unanimous. 168... does consider the vote unanimous among the reasonable participants in the vote, but does not consider the vote a legitimate final stage in the process of agreeing on a paragraph. As the final stage, 168... called for a reasoned discussion of the merits of the voter-approved paragraph vis-a-vis the long-standing older paragraph, and 168... used sysop powers to try and force this course of action.

At around the same time 168... was using the rollback feature to revert the addition of new, undiscussed accusations to this Requests-for-comments page, which was created to address a distinct but related episode of behavior that is decribed above at the top. Five different people were reverting 168. 168... protected the old version of the page twice but that page protection was lifted by another admin. 

168... went on to delete this page 11 times and blank it four times. Based on a clear majority at 168...'s desysoping poll, Tim Starling then temporarily desysopped 168... and asked for a review of the situation, which has yet to take place

Mav requested mediation at Requests_for_mediation.

For discussion of the original issue for which this page was created, see Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/168

Version of based on the above and edited primarily by Lir...
um, ok... Lirath Q. Pynnor

Talk about Lir's version
You are a very talkative girl Lir :-) SweetLittleFluffyThing

Version of based on the above and edited primarily by Anthere
Anthere agreed to try to mediate between Mav and 168 on the 16th of february During about two weeks, many mails were exchanged with 168, Mav and most of the users primarily involved in the discussion and poll/vote (perception of whether that was a poll or a binding vote varies). On February 20th a new poll was conducted on whether or not 168's sysop user rights should be reinstated. The next day Angela added mention of that poll at Current polls. Less then a day later on February 22nd Tim Starling resysoped 168 when there were 10 votes for reinstatement and 5 against (67% in favor). In the days following more users voted and as of March 6 there were 10 votes for reinstatement and 9 against. 

On the 21th of february, User:Lir requested mediation over nucleic acid article, where she was in a conflict with 168. She also requested that the article be protected to promote discussion and avoid an edit war. Anthere agreed that if there were again reversion between her and 168, she would protect the article.

No one has answered Lir request for mediation among mediators. With the feeling the discussion between Mav and 168 was not going to proceed to a general agreement with regard to Mav and 168 respective requests, Anthere finally asked 168 his opinion. On the 28th of february, 168 answer was "I know this will disappoint you, and I'm sorry for that, but I'd like to go to arbitration". At this point, Anthere indicated the mediation was over to Mav, the mediation committee, Jimbo (per email), updated the mediation page on wikipedia and told the english mailing list that mediation failed and that 168 was requesting arbitration.

She listed the request for arbitration on the relevant wikipedia page on the 29th. This was seconded as expected by Mav on the same day. It should be mentionned that what Mav requested from 168 had rather community value (ie, he asked in particular a pledge from 168 with regards to his sysop position) while what 168 requested from Mav was a personnal issue (ie, unfairness from Mav). On the same day, in a public discussion on IRC, User:Camembert said to Anthere, that they would consider the request, but it would require a couple of days likely, since other cases were under way. At this point, Anthere considered the direct request to the committee was valid and did not need further input from her.

On 5th of march, Anthere protected the nucleic acid page per Lir request. Lir had requested protection of that page a few days ago in the talk page, as she felt 168 would revert her participations. On the 5th, 168 reverted the Nucleic acid page, so Anthere decided to protect it, in an attempt to delay article resolution, while arbitration was taking place. She considered that 168 knowing that arbitration going on the way, would be more likely to discuss quietly the nucleic acid article.

On the same day (5th of march), in a irc public discussion with User:MyRedDice, Anthere discovered that her feeling was entirely wrong, and that no request for arbitration would be taken into consideration (contrariwise to what she had been led to think 6 days sooner) unless Jimbo specifically referred it. She would like to note that not only Camembert led her to think just adding the request would be enough, but no one thought of telling her the current request she added on the request for arbitration would never be taken into consideration. Out of exasperation, she unlisted the request and suggested to both user to request arbitration themselves.


 * It's probably not important, but this isn't how I remember things. As I remember it, I said on IRC that Anthere could make a request for arbitration, but it may take a few days for us to consider it because officially we were still only taking cases on referral from Jimbo. That "few days" turned out to be overly optimistic as the policy wasn't actually ratified for another month (roughly). My apologies if I had not made it clear that we wouldn't be able to consider the case as things stood. Apologies also if the notes on Requests for arbitration which said "Currently, the arbitrators accept referrals from Jimbo Wales only" and "Just to remind folks: we're currently not taking requests for arbitration, except from Jimbo Wales" were not clear enough. --Camembert

Since Anthere had just discovered no arbitration was gonna occur, she sent a new mail (so, the second one as request) to the english mailing list, specifically asking that Jimbo please hurry and refer the case to the arbitration committee. 

Later on the 5th, User:Kingturtle decided to unprotected DNA. Anthere expressed her regret for that decision, and asked him to protect it again at first sign of issue. A couple of hours later, Mav, Bryan and 168 entered a new edit war on the article, with 6 reversions from 168, a couple from Bryan, and arguably perhaps 3 from Mav. Mav also proposed at least 2 alternate versions, trying to find a compromise with 168. 168 finally reverted a last time and protected the page. It is to mention that Mav did not requested immediate unsysoping, or banning, did not unprotect and revert the page again. He just walked away. Bryan Derksen on the other hand, mentionned the case in a few places, and in particular on the mailing list. No other person commented 168 move on line.

On early 7th, Anthere asked again to Jimbo if he could please sent the case to arbitration. This was seconded by User:Sannse a few hours later.

At that point, Jimbo indicated he was wondering whether the case really required arbitration, and asked for more input.

On the 8th, Anthere seing that arbitration was not gonna go anywhere, decided to propose a new scheme on the DNA talk page, in an attempt to find a solution at least to the DNA case, dropping the arbitration request in despair.

She suggested that the DNA page be open for edition, to avoid blocking it for too long, but that the disputed paragraph be virtually protected. She said she would soft ban any user who would edit this part...and actually had to do so less than 10 mn later (she considered the attempt a deliberate provocation).

A few hours later, without any poll, User:Eloquence unsysoped 168. He mentionned it to Anthere by irc (thanks !) and indicated it to 168 on his talk page. No poll or public discussion was started by Erik, nor did he mentionned the unsysoping to anyelse than Anthere and 168.

Later than day, 168 blanked his user page and his talk page.

Talk about Anthere's version
I would like to point out that the "various places" I mentioned my involvement in this were DNA's talk page, here under the heading building on a comment that I'd made last time this problem arose, and two brief responses on the mailing list to questions about this situation that Jimbo had already brought up there. I know I probably sound a little defensive, but I just wanted to make sure it didn't sound like I'd done anything inappropriate. Feel free to move this comment somewhere else on the page, Anthere, since it probably doesn't belong tacked onto the end of this description in the long term. Bryan 16:41, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Relevant links
Requests for comment/Lir

DNA

Nucleic acid