Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war/Workshop

Idea and Opinion
All administrators involved should be desysopped and put back up for RFA immediately. Situations like these are why administrative recall is so necessary, many of these people should not be administrators and the community, not just some elites, should have the ability to rescind the trust that has been granted onto these people that has been betrayed. Just Heditor review 00:16, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Basically the same thing was tried with Stevertigo and worked poorly, I doubt the same measure will be taken again. Christopher Parham (talk) 01:15, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia's government is really a mess, isn't it? I have no clue otherwise how this can be fairly fixed. Just Heditor review 01:46, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

THey'd fail if it was done immediately; see Everyking's desysopping and an almost-immediate RFA, which was a snowball failure. Chacor also attempted an RFA after his desysopping, which gained just 56% consensus. Hbdragon88 05:29, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Loss of administrative tools for W weeks or M months
I know this idea is warmed over. Here is Geogre's essay. What I am proposing is similar, less specific in global scope, but more specific here.

At present, the remedies available are insufficient. Blocks, Bans, article probation, civility probation... and desysoping. But desysoping will require a new RfA, and it seems fairly obvious that few if any admins would survive a 2nd RfA. ArbCom could resysop, but that is not within thier normal purview, and would leave the community out of what is and should be a community decision.

All of the other possible remedies are too little, or too much, and are specifically devised to deal with misbehaving editors, not admins. None of them are designed to deal specifically with abuse of admin tools.

The community will be poorly served if admins who have abused tools are simply warned. And the community will be poorly served if good admins should lose the admin tools permanently for what amounts to a serious but uncharacteristic exercise of poor judgement.

Why not try: ''For wheelwarring, X's administrative tools will be removed for a period of W weeks / M months. Assuming that X edits productively over that time period, at the end of that time, the administrative tools will be automatically returned to him/her.''

I don't know what's right here, 2 weeks? 1 month? I do feel that the community's interests will be served in that serious misconduct will have proportionate consequences, but that good admins will have the tools returned so they can resume serving the community. Jd2718 04:19, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * In the userbox wheel war one year ago, this remedy was implemented. I think two of the admins involved received their admin tools back a few weeks after case closure without an RFA. Sjakkalle (Check!)  12:18, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, El C was resysopped at the close of the case, Borghunter had to wait 2 days, Ashibaka had to wait 2 weeks, and Karmafist and Carnildo had to go through RfA. Proposed remedies similar to this one were discussed during that case too. NoSeptember  14:54, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you, NoSeptember. I didn't know this (have been around almost a year, but only took an interest in these sorts of things in November). In any event, I'd like this to be considered as a remedy for some of those named (though 2 days?? what's the point?) Jd2718 15:11, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps 2 days may be considered a reprimand of sorts, which matters to some people. I'd be curious to see longer temporary desysoppings (2 or 3 months) prior to automatic resysopping, to see what sort of effect it has. (This is a general curiosity, not specific to this case)  NoSeptember  15:40, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Indeed, and thanks for the suggestion. We'll certainly keep that option open as we start to look into this. Flcelloguy (A note? ) 15:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This would be a good time for me to mumble about how everyone assumes that desysopping is the only concievable remedy for any sort of admin misconduct. Mumble. -Amarkov moo! 05:31, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Are you suggesting alternates? Jd2718 05:41, 25 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, there could just be a ban on deletions and undeletions, or some sort of probation (any bureaucrat who believes admin powers were misused may request desysopping?). As much as I detest wheel warring, I don't want any of these people desysopped for it. And I'm not convinced that temporary desysopping will work, because you'd have to convince a bureaucrat to ignore longstanding prohibitions against resysopping people when there's some sort of cloud. -Amarkov moo! 05:55, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Bureaucrats have restored rights after a proscribed time before, why wouldn't they now? ArbCom is the committee that defines what controversial circumstances are, there should be no problem following a remedy chosen by ArbCom.
 * I think it is good for ArbCom to experiment when necessary with different remedies. Sometimes they will not work so well, as in the past when they mandated an immediate RfA for someone. But mistakes are Ok if they learn from them. Never trying anything new is worse. Continuing to require a new RfA in marginal cases is a poor choice, given how hard desysopped admin reapplications are, and the big controversies that have grown out of them. NoSeptember  15:15, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought the cloud language just dated back to the Giano RfArb and that beaurocrat discretion in such cases hadn't been defined before. If such resysoppings are automatic rather than "the user may request the bit be restored without an RfA starting in 3 months" I don't see what the problem would be since no individual judgement is required; ArbCom has made the judgement.  On the other hand, I prefer sending malefactors back to RfA in most cases.  Yes it is very hard to regain the community'a trust but people who arent trusted should not by sysops.  Eluchil404 00:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with you, if the re-sysop is automatic. If I want to make sure that the admin remains an admin, this might be best (with a suitable value of M or W). If I don't care? RfA. Whenever they want to try. It'll be a while. Jd2718 00:37, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it just me...
... or is it odd that long-time contributors and ArbCom members are opposing a statement copied from the undeletion policy which has been there for three and a half years? Zocky | picture popups 12:36, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the statement directly contradicts both established practice and previous arbcom rulings on wheel warring. Policy pages are not legislation - they should reflect not dictate practice. It looks to me like the policy page is out of date and should be amended immediately.--Docg 12:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * But it could be taken into consideration as mitigating circumstance. Agathoclea 13:02, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Eh it pretty much fits current practice. Given the current throughput of CSD and the list mistakes will be made and putting them through DRV would be a waste of everyone's time.Geni 13:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Let's not get into reflect vs. dictate debate. If policy merely reflected practice, there would exist no way to act against policy - if actions and statements don't match, it's always the statements that are wrong. And people are obviously regularly disciplined based on them not following written policy.

The point is, that's the existing agreement about undeletion that we have. It's also in the expected place. We generally agree that one undoing of an admin action is not a wheel war, bogus or mistaken speedies are undeleted all the time, mostly without incident, and we generally agree that WP:NOT a bureaucracy. So why suddenly require a debate for undoing mistakes? Zocky | picture popups 13:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Reverting another admin's actions without discussion is wheel warring according to arbcom. I'm willing to allow that pulling some deleted article off the logs and restoring it can be OK, if the circumstances are not controversial - admins make mistakes. I've done it myself. But not when the deletion and undeletion are contraversial and likely to be opposed - then discuss first - and certainly don't take unilateral action when there is already a DRV discussion as to whether the article should be undeleted. Join he debate.--Docg 13:16, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * about two years ago I came up with a jokely way of abuseing process. You delete someing out of process and then insisted it had to go through DRV (with it's different bar for non deletion) rather than AFD. I was rather disspointed to discover that people were takeing the joke seriously.Geni 13:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Doc, I agree that when there's already a DRV going on, full restoration of the article and sudden closing of the DRV is a wheelwar. But that's not what happened here. If DRV decided that the article is to be deleted, it would have been deleted after the DRV anyway. There was no urgent rush to keep this article off wikipedia.
 * The other thing, one revert being a wheel war: Leaving aside for the moment that ArbCom can't legislate policy, please stop and think about what this would mean, and how it would advance wiki-lawyering and process-wonkery. I thought you opposed those. Zocky | picture popups 13:26, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I've no problem with someone undeleting my speedies and putting them on AfD. But they should ask me first - I may have a damn good reason they have not considered - and indeed it may be a waste of everyone's time having a debate when I can say 'oh, let me give you a fuller explanation for my decision' - and challenger may actually be convinced by it. There is never an urgency to undelete anything. Once a discussion has begun on DRV, let it run (I regret my support of the SNOWballing of this - it was inappropriate). Terminating debates is never a good idea. If a deletion is outrageous - then you'll get a line of 'speedy overturns' and you can act on that. I'm NOT saying every undeletion must process-wonk through DRV, that's absurd. First place to go is to the deleter and say 'please reconsider' - if he refuses then DRV - if there's no reply, then by all means undelete, but not if a DRV discussion has already begun - and certainly not if a number of experienced users are endorsing the deletion, since in such cases there is obviously a debate to be had about whether to undelete or not. Unilateral actions are fine, but only where you think they'll be uncontroversial (and yes, on reflection, I think the original deletion was unwise on those grounds - so I endorse only its effect and and not its process). --Docg 13:35, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That is what AFD is is for not DRV. There is a reason for this.Geni 13:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * My guess is that's what this case is about, so we'd both better wait to see what arbcom things. But I'd still say that when a discussion is ongoing for an admin to ignore it and enforce his opinion of process - in the teeth of the views being expressed - is unacceptable. You were welcome to express that opinion in the discussion, and you chose not to. Consensus and discussion are always more important than enforcing process.--Docg 13:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Basically, Yanksox tried to pull a fast one, and some people opposed him, and others foolishly jumped in and supported him. Foolishly, I say, because whatever one thinks of that particular article, effect of such deletions is more likely to be an ArbCom like this one than the article being deleted. I'm not sure that the current state of the workshop reflects that fact. We may also have a wider policy problem here. It seems to be easier to keep a page deleted on DRV than to get it deleted through AFD. If we bless this way of doing things as normal, we're bound to have more admins try to get rid of pages they dislike through the shortcut. This would give admins the upper hand in content issues, which would cause all sorts of accusations and other unpleseantries.Zocky | picture popups 13:51, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Some people thought the deletion should stand (despite its irregularity), some people didn't - solution - debate it. That's what we were doing.--Docg 13:56, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The problem was that we couldn't agree where and under which rules it should be debated. It was a perfectly reasonable opinion that because the deletion was irregular, it should be undeleted and relisted at AFD, and debated under AFD rules. It's not simply a matter of where the debate is physically located. They are two different kinds of discussion, each appropriate for its own set of circumstances. Zocky | picture popups 14:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Whilst that may be a perfectly rational opinion, the correct thing to do was discuss it. Enter the current discussion and say 'hey, I suggest we take it elsewhere'. Not simply close the discussion and unilaterally undelete an article in the teeth of a lot of people endorsing the deletion. That's inflammatory. Discussion is alway the best way in situations where you are well aware others think differently.--Docg 14:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Whether we say so explicitly or not, every process creates precedents. It's arguable that editors who were supporting this particular deletion in the DRV were acting against accepted practice and interests of the project. IMO, the optimal way to handle this was for one of the admins that found out about it first to talk to Yanksox, undelete the page and list it on AfD and close the DRV before the discussion developed. If it was done by somebody who supports the deletion of the article, it would even get bonus points for regularity and the AFD would have been approached with a more open mind. Zocky | picture popups 14:50, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * CoolCat found it first, and started a discussion on what we should do. Discussion is much better than unilateral action in controversial cases. That, if anything, was what was wrong with Yanksox's action. Closing the DRV and undeleting was of the same 'I know best, sod discussion, mentality'--Docg 15:43, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll disagree with this and go do other stuff. AFD and DRV have different scopes and different methods for calculating the outcome. Trying to push a content decision through DRV instead of AFD is gaming the system and it would have been better for everybody if that path was abandoned before we got into a conundrum. Zocky | picture popups 15:47, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, no worries, we disagree. Good job we have an arbcom - I suspect we'll both be interested in their analysis. I hope it clarifies things either way. Peace. --Docg 15:49, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I endorse/I oppose
Maybe people should stick to discussing the merits and flaws of each proposal and dispense with the "endorsements" and opposition declarations. ArbCom has made it clear in the past that they will make unpopular decisions if need be, and I can't see this sort of pseudo-voting going anywhere but down if a decisions passes that has a lot of "opposition". And I'm sure no one wants to act like they have some sayso here and then find out that they don't... Milto LOL pia 22:39, 27 February 2007 (UTC)