Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Cities and towns in the war in Iraq and the Levant

Cities and towns in the war in Iraq and the Levant

 * Editors involved in this dispute
 * 1) – filing party


 * Articles affected by this dispute


 * Other attempts at resolving this dispute that you have attempted
 * Pretty much the entire talk history at Talk:Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War

Issues to be mediated
Some background:
 * Primary issues (added by the filing party)
 * This is a very notable issue, however there is an extreme lack of independent press on the ground for logistical reasons.
 * When information from the war makes it into the outside world, it is almost always done by a party with an agenda.
 * Outside sources, including this article and press outlets, are thus forced to rely on parties loyal to one faction or another. This is a very difficult process as much of the information is a false rumor, propaganda, etc.; still, much of the information does prove to be correct, and is thus used by outside sources.

Issues:
 * 1) What guidelines should we use for inclusion of a town for one camp or another?
 * 2) What guidelines should we adopt for edit warring? Even though there is already a 1RR restriction, parties still sometimes flout it (and are blocked), or purposefully tier their edits to barely avoid 1RR.
 * 3) Are there any concrete steps we can take to address the lack of civility on the talk page (e.g., enforceable blocks) (side note: if I had a dime for every time an editor refers to another as a vandal, I'd be richer than Scrooge McDuck). Editors continue to behave this way despite being warned.

Final note: I do believe that most editors on this article only want what's best. But I am worried about the megalomanical POV.

Thanks. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 04:33, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi. I think you're missing the point of why I opened this mediation. I stated only that enforceable sanctions were a possibility among many (apparently they are not; lesson learned). However, a good part of this mediation is still about how to provide proper sourcing. In fact, I'd say the majority of it. Please don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. We need mediation on these articles. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 02:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Additional issues (added by other parties)
 * What guidelines should we adopt for the screening/usability of known sources? And how can this be applied to Twitter and to new sources as they are introduced? What recourse exists when such governing guidelines are flouted? Boredwhytekid (talk) 17:09, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * The basic rules for editing the map are clear (see Talk:Cities and towns during the Syrian Civil War). The objective here is to figure out how to make all editors respect the rules all the time. Tradedia talk 15:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * A requirement to post on the talk page the source being used to justify an edit should be added and for discussion to take place to ensure its reliable. Some sources just repost propaganda and need to be discussed and corroborated first. Also all maps see large changes what a source being posted for discussion, mostly on the Iraq Map where areas around Ramadi were changed to ISF control with no sources and all current IS sources show it to be IS held except a short stretch at 18 Kilometer to al-Asad. Tgoll774 (talk) 23:58, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I fully agree with Magog. Many articles are seeing hot-tempered editing using sources that are at best Propaganda. I quote one here from the Rojava article:


 * "19-YEAR-OLD HERISH ALI, a British-Kurd, said he requested to join the YPG along with five other European Kurds in August but YPG border guards rejected them on the Iraq-Syria border.


 * "We met the YPG fighters and stayed with them at their Sihela border crossing to Iraqi Kurdistan. They were nice and we thought it was awesome to join them, but they rejected us when we revealed that we are students and we have dual nationalities," Ali said.


 * He added: "We told them that we feel degraded because it was like we are not capable men for this fight, but they kept refusing our arguments and said we should go back to Europe and study. Then, they drove us to the nearby Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga checkpoint where the peshmergas too rejected taking us as volunteers.""


 * BTW, this quote is present like this in that article :)


 * Let alone the name for that article, which is propaganda by itself forced by a handful of users who disappred after that renaming campaign. No major international body, media agency, or state adopts that name. still we have adopted that here becuase some local political entities or belligerents use that name. Again, it comes down to what's an acceptable reference and what's not. Amr ibn Kulthoumعمرو بن كلثوم (talk) 04:55, 16 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Which sources are reliable in what circumstances. I believe this issue should be within the scope of Mediation. Banak (talk) 12:22, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Parties' agreement to mediation

 * 1) Agree. Magog the Ogre (t • c) 04:33, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) Agree. Rhocagil (talk) 11:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) Agree. Boredwhytekid (talk) 17:03, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 4) Agree. XJ-0461 v2 (talk) 22:16, 11 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 5) Agree. AlAboud83 (talk) 02:58, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 6) Agree. NightShadeAEB (talk) 03:01, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 7) Agree. Banak (talk) 10:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 8) Agree. Tradedia talk 15:24, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 9) Agree. DaJesuZ (talk) 16:53, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 10) Agree.3bdulelah (talk) 17:27, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 11) Agree. --8fra0 (talk) 22:32, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 12) Agree. tgoll774 (talk) Tgoll774 (talk) 10:42, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 13) Agree Jafar Saeed (talk) 15:34, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 14) Agree. Pbfreespace3 (talk) 17:11, 13 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 15) Agree. GreyShark (dibra) 16:45, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * 16) Agree. Amr ibn Kulthoumعمرو بن كلثوم (talk) 05:06, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Decision of the Mediation Committee

 * Chairperson's note: (If you wish to comment on what I'm about to say here, please do so above either in the Other Issues or Agree/Disagree section, not in this section, which is limited to Committee use.) I am not at all certain that the issues for mediation which have been brought forth so far satisfy prerequisite for mediation #3, "The dispute is not exclusively about the behaviour of a Wikipedia editor." Here's the problem: All Wikipedia editors have the right established by general Wikipedia policies and guidelines to edit all articles, templates, userboxes, etc., under the same general standards established by those policies and guidelines. Attempting to set up rules or guidelines for how a particular article is to be edited, if they're to be more than mere suggestions and/or are to be enforceable in any way, is a restriction on the behavior of editors. (And may not even be possible, even if adopted by a full, hard consensus: see WP:CONLIMITED, which says, "Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale.") I'm not going to close this immediately, but unless someone can convince me why I'm wrong about this, or unless someone decides to add issues about particular content questions which only involve the application of current, general policies and guidelines, not the formation of new rules or standards (in which case the mediation will likely be limited to those new issues, not the formulation of standards or guidelines), I will reject the case for the reason I've described above. Let me note that if conduct at the article is as bad as alleged here — and I'm neither saying that it is or is not, just "if" — then some of these restrictions might be able to be adopted through one of the conduct processes such as AN, ANI, or MEDCOM ARBCOM or perhaps as an RFC seeking to establish those article-based limits as an IAR local exception to CONLIMITED. For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 15:04, 14 July 2015 (UTC) (Chairperson)
 * Oops. MEDCOM ==> ARBCOM fixed. — TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 20:58, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I've read, considered, and moved the responses out of this committee-use-only section to more appropriate places above and have also noted Banak's addition to the issues, above. I'm going to let the matter rest until after the time for participant responses expires at 04:33 UTC, 18 July 2015‎. For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 15:52, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Reject. Failed to satisfy prerequisite to mediation #5, "A majority of the parties to the dispute consent to mediation." For the Mediation Committee, TransporterMan  ( TALK ) 20:25, 19 July 2015 (UTC)