Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/AndriyK/Proposed decision

Proposed ban for one month(?) from creating irreversible moves?
One of the current proposed decision of ArbCom reads:
 * "AndriyK is banned for one month for creating irreversible page moves."

Please correct me if I am wrong, but creating irreversible page moves is very much against the Wiki-spirit. Anyone has the right to move articles, true enough, but adding an artificial history to the redirects that makes moves irreversible is a dirty trick. The decision implies that after one months AndriyK may return to this tactic and I will have to set aside another many hours to prepare the second arbitration.

I respectfully request the arbitrators to take into account that so called "irreversible" page moves, may only be done on purpose by a bad-faith user who thinks that his preferred article names will not be approved by consensus. As such, they should be discouraged without any time restriction or better yet prohibited.

I would go the Village Pump to propose the Policy ammendment that would make artificially irreversible moves automatically reverted by any admin because such moves are clearly made in bad faith. Overturning AndriyK's page moves made with a sneaky trick in toto by ArbCom would create a good precedent for such a policy ammendment. Having said that, I agree with some of his moves, and once they are overturned purely because of the way they were made, we can move some of the articles to AndriyK's location, but in a normal way, rather that with his trick. Thus, these moves would be subject to a normal discussion by the community.

To summarize, I respectfully request the ArbCom to voice its opinion on whether such moves are indeed a dirty trick. Additionally, I request the ArbCom to consider overturning the bad-faith moves and redirects by AndriyK, leaving the normal one-step moves he made to date intact.

Respectfully, Irpen 00:17, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm comfortable with what I proposed. Any administrator can help move them back without going through the rigamarole of a vote. Fred Bauder 00:45, 12 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Having been banned for a month for doing it, I doubt he will want to do more. But I will clear up the ambiguity. Fred Bauder 00:46, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing this up. However, the clout of ArbCom's decision to undo all dirty-trick moves as part of this case, if ArbCom makes such a decision of course, would make it clear for admins that they are allowed to undo such moves on sight in the future. Additionally, the precedent of ArbCom's decision would be helpful to work out a general policy amendment that would make the reversion of such moves automatic. This should apply not just to AndriyK's moves but the moves by any user who would use the same trick. Thank you. --Irpen 00:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe ArbComm decisions are not used to set precedents. Each case is individual.  It may be regrettable in this particular case, but overall, I think, it is beneficial.&mdash;Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 16:12, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

I believe not only an admin but any user can undo it with simple "cut and paste" as you've seen it here. It's only a technical issue of tediousness of doing this. --Lysy (talk) 07:21, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
 * No, the history is not preserved by cut and paste moves and this is a problem. When the article is moved, the history goes to a new title. If a non-admin cuts and pastes the article back to the first location and places a redirect to the second one, the history and talk remains at the second location while the article is at the first one. The correct way is to delete a redirect with a frivolous history (useless anyway) and move an article back to an emptied entry. Only admins can do that. --Irpen 07:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Sockpuppets, anons with similar patterns of edits
I would like to voice the following proposal to the arbitration committee regarding the proposed decision. There have been several sockpuppet allegations raised by user:Ezhiki (in connection with vote fraud) and by myself in connection with revert warring and 3RR avoidance.

The editing pattern of user:Dovbush is particularly suspicios if his edits and edits of AndriyK at the particular day are compared. When AndriyK's 3RR "allotment" (as he perceives it) ran out, see and  reverts by user:Dovbush came in "handy" to pick up from then. So, first of all, I respectfully request the ArbCom to employ the checkuser function to check up this strong suspicion of sockpuppetry.

There were several anons or other newbie users about whom I am less certain and yet unprepared to voice my suspicion.

So, if the check shows up positive, or other sockpuppets are found, please consider to apply the ruling similar to the ruling of the notorious Zivinbudas case. That ruslling read: "Any edit by Zivinbudas using an anonymous ip (exhibiting his trademark immature Lithuanian nationalism) may be removed by any user." In this case that would be of course not "any edit" but only "any edit exhibiting the trademark immature Ukrainian nationalism that reduces to plain name change without discussion..."

If such a ruling would not be made, we may soon end up at the new similar arbitration to mull the same arguments all over. And it would have to be an arbitration, since an RfC has no mechanism to come up with any rulings or enforcements. Thank you in advance, --Irpen 03:42, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Several comments and questions from AndriyK

 * 1) The Arbitration Committee is going to punish me for something what was (and stil is!) not forbidden by any rules (creating artificial histories of redirect pages). I did it to prevent disrupting Wikipedia and violating the Policies. Why not simply to say "do not do it anymore" instead of punish me for something which is not forbidden? How could I know that I was not allowed to do it if none of the policies forbids it?
 * 2) In view of the Arbitration Committee, the existing policy about Ukrainian geografic names do not address the question of names associated with the Kievan Rus. How could I know it? There is no any restrictions to particular historical period in the policy about Ukrainian names. How could I know that spelling of Ukrainian names in Wikipedia should be different from Britannica and other English language encyclopedias? Which policy says it? It seem the policy states the opposite.
 * 3) It's very funny that for a single revert of copivio article made by mistake I will get the same punishment ("Warning") as Ghirlandago will get for multiple insultigs and personal attack made on purpose!
 * 4) It's very surprising if I will be forbidden to correct Ukrainian names and those who were distorting them and ignoring the naming convention are allowed to do it further.
 * 5) It's very strange that multiple edist of my opponents that disrupted Wikipedia: broken links, sneaky vandalism, POV-pushing etc. were completely ignored by the Arbitration Committee.
 * 6) The group of users that has been squeezing Ukrainian editors out of the Community by persisting and scoffing trolling, insulting and personal attacks now is about to succseed to use the Arbitration Committee for this purpose. I called this group "Russian Mafia". It was not a personal attack. It was merely a stating of the fact. Is there a more appropriate name? I do not think so.
 * 7) The Arbitration Committee voted for decissions that were not discussed in the Worshop. And if any of them were discussed, the discussion has been ignored. As the result, the decissions contradict each other. The proposed enforcement #1 refers to Russian names, while #2 refers to Ukrainian names. What have I to do with Russian names? I did not change a single Russian name since I am here. What is the reason for this strange decision about Russian names? Can somebody explain me?
 * 8) Nearly all my statements, comments, evidence, proposal were ignored. It would be OK if the Arbitration Committee would discuss them and then reject. At least I would see a fair procedure. But I did not see anything but silent voting.

Even a serial killer has a right to be heard in the court. You deprive me of this right just for the attempt to protect Wikipedia against pushing of Russian POV and distorting Ukrainian names!--AndriyK 21:58, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Comments to "Several comments and questions from AndriyK

 * I agree with AndriyK -- Bonaparte  talk  11:17, 2 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to add a couple of sentences here. The issue is not a simple as the accusers are trying to portray it. The ArbCom members have to be very-very careful when submitting their votes. AndriyK did NOT violate any existing WP policy when he did those alleged "bad faith" moves. First of all, I understand he engaged for weeks in the discussions with the accusers, who were bluntly reverting his changes. Second, one of the "accusers" used exatly the same tactic as AndriyK did. Third, AndriyK clearly asks for a policy change on Ukrainian names before you start punishing him in advance. He does not want to and I am sure he will not violate any naming convention in bad faith. Punishing someone may not be even necessary. It creates many other problems like percieved unfairness among quite a few wikipedians who were defending AndriyK. --Andrew Alexander 18:12, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

A couple of things need to me said. First, I am not calling for a 1 month or any other ban for AndriyK. In fact, I don't care whether he is banned or not and this part of the proposed remedy is the one I am least concerned about.

As for "one of the accusers" doing exactly the same, as was pointed out above that "one of the accusers" did it just once. I talked to him after that and convinced him that it was a mistake. The consequences of that page move have been sorted out by an admin cleaning up that one particular confusion with several article titles. That person has already apologized for getting caried away. AndriyK still insists that he was doing the right thing. That one move by "other person" doesn't come even close to mess with two dozen article created by artificial histories created by AndriyK

That this was not specifically written in the policy is presented as an excuse makes me really laugh. The spirit of our policies is an important part of them and this is a blatant violation of the very spirit on which WP is based. Immediately after he started his moving frenzy AndriyK was contacted by many members repeatedly (see evidence) to stop it. He ignored it because he had an agenda and felt like this was a way to fulfill it.

AndriyK notoriously revert warred and very likely used sockpuppet accounts see messing up up to 80 articles within two hours and using the 3RR as "allotment" (except cases where he violated it and was blocked) at dozens of more articles.

As such, I am most concerned about the ruling that would make undoing of artificial history moves automatic and would call for WP:RM listing instead. WP:RM listing is designed to determine a consensus, artificial history is designed to impose one's views over the consensus.

I am similarly concerned about the limitation of AndriyK's right to revert for a specific parole period to whatever number of reverts per week or per day the ArbCom finds reasonable. Yes, it takes at least two to revert war, but AndriyK has by far outstripping anyone in that and using socks for that is a totally condemnable action.

Judging from AndriyK's contributions to this moment, if he is not allowed to change names and revert, he would be left with almost nothing to do because besides this massive "contribution" he actually wrote something for, perhaps, 2 or 3 articles only. So, unless he changes his pattern of editing, ban to change names and to revert war would be the same as ban from Wikipedia, as far as this editor is concerned.

If, however, ArbCom sees the chance that imposing the limitations above over his editing without actually banning him is all that's necessary, I would wholeheartedly welcome such decision.

The activity of AndriyK alone was a reason of huge disruption for the community and this was the only reason why this case was brought forward by the community. --Irpen 21:34, 3 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It seems Irpen is asking to ban or limit AndriyK's ability to revert. Yet, Irpen, you yourself revert often. This is the first reason AndriyK started moving those pages, because you and your friends were reverting without any discussion or arguments. I experienced this treatment in the Holodomor article on myself when I've been begging you for weeks to come up with relevant references for your POV tag insertion and other changes you made there. Yet you bluntly reverted, ignoring the discussion. If that's the way WP article are written, so be it. What I am missing here is the fairness in punishing AndriyK and rewarding you for blunt reverts.--Andrew Alexander 23:58, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Dealing with inveterate POV pushers sometimes includes reverting them when they try to impose their will over the community by saying "I am right and you are all wrong". As for Holodomor conflict, I could talk about it here but its talk is available for examination for anyone. The discussion there is still ongoing and if my opinion would end up being overruled, I will not try to impose is by moving the article to, say, Hunger in Ukraine, which I don't think is right anyway. --Irpen 01:03, 4 January 2006 (UTC)