Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2/Evidence

Response to Evidence presented by Casliber
Wow, that's uncalled for. If TTN only want to work on one area of the wiki, that's his right, and he's not doing anything wrong by doing that. -- Ned Scott 04:32, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


 * working on generally means adding content. It also generally suggests that you should have a reasonable knowledge of the subject area.Genisock2 (talk) 15:20, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily. WP encourages everyone to participate regardless of their level of expertise.  Yes, if you are going to add content, you should be aware of the topic, but there's other things besides adding content, including copyediting, cleanup, peer review and article evaluation, and many more, none which require knowledge of the specific topic.  --M ASEM  15:28, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I looked over all contributions - no mainspace edits for one whole year apart from his pruning. Everything is focussed on this. What would you call it? Not even looking for the odd ref himself. I mean, if one is so concerned why not add some references for topics you know about? It isn't that hard. This is why I am concerned that for TTN, and possibly some others whose sole contribution appears to be deleting and merging, their interest isn't in 'pedia building but something else.cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 22:27, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Again, if those edits weren't disruptive or contested, there is absolutely nothing wrong with this behavior, and attempting to force any editor to do specific tasks breaks the purposes of being a volunteer work. Mind you, I don't disagree that TTN's edits are disruptive or contested.  --M ASEM  22:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Contribution range
The page says "Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions..." Seeing Ned Scott's evidence, I'm assuming a link to a range of contributions is allowed? --Pixelface (talk) 04:58, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I've used an offset, so it is pointing to specific contributions, and not just a generic contribution link. If desired, I can individually link each and every one of those diffs. -- Ned Scott 05:06, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * No, I think it's fine. If it's okay, I was planning on using such a link myself. --Pixelface (talk) 05:51, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Rebuttal to Evidence presented by Pixelface
"It is common practice for articles about episodes and fictional characters of notable works to not assert notability". So are you really saying "We've gotten a free pass in the past, so we get one forever"? Also, giving the age of an article means little, since Wikipedia has changed quite a bit in the last few years. I think a good example are two AfDs for the same article: Articles for deletion/Stupid Ninja Game from 2004 and Articles for deletion/Stupid Ninja Game (2nd nomination), which closed recently. The difference is dramatic, to say the least. A keep in 2004 is an obvious delete in 2008. Subjects are not considered notable because nobody has gotten around to nominating it for deletion or a merge. You need to show that the articles you list are actually considered notable, rather than merely existing. --Phirazo 04:38, 21 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it's true that those episode and characters are considered notable. The fact that the articles have existed for so long suggests to me that they are considered notable. I suppose I could remove "The episode is still considered notable.", "The character is still considered notable.", "yet the episodes are still considered notable." from my evidence if you'd like. --Pixelface (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Do I even bother
Arbcom is pretty smart and can see past the hype, which is largely why I wasn't concerned with building up an evidence section for the first case. It seems everyone already knows what's going on, and what has happened. I'm seeing some of the other evidence here by others and.. I mean.. are you guys joking? What are you asserting by saying that TTN used Twinkle to list some AfDs? Did you know that was a feature? Did you know that's not a bad thing? "80% of TTN's edits removed stuff" So what? That's allowed, ya know. Or "Crappy articles are common", that's a great one. Like I said, we all know what really has been going on, and all the action has been taking place on the workshop page.

I'm sorry for being a bit snippy here, but for crying out loud. Even if any of you arbs are mad as can be about this, (I'm pretty sure Rebecca was pissed about a lot of what TTN did) you have to admit some of the stuff on this page is just wasting everyone's time. More so than usual. I just don't want to run the risk of one of the arbs actually having not followed what's been going on, and using the evidence page to come to any real conclusion. So do I bother expanding my evidence at this point? -- Ned Scott 07:44, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * How about you work on your own evidence Ned? I'm still waiting for anything to appear under your TTN's actions have strong support in the community heading. And can I use an extended evidence page like you did? --Pixelface (talk) 08:01, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * So I can prove something that I'm 90% sure the arbs already know? You did notice how bare the "pro TTN" stuff was the last time, and yet the arbs weren't going after him with pitch forks? -- Ned Scott 08:14, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Ned, first let me say that you are a true gentleman and a scholar. Nevertheless, I don't know how you can extrapolate "TTN's actions have strong support in the community" from the fact that the last ArbCom did not pass a ruling sanctioning him.  If this were true, one could say Pixelface, White Cat, or any other editor had strong support in the community.  They came close but did not have enough votes to put any sanctions over the top.  Regardless, I think the most that could be said is TTN's actions have some support in the community and the forbearance of some administrators.  Ursasapien (talk) 09:22, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, I was aiming for something more along the lines of "TTN's actions have some support in the community". I guess I wasn't playing much attention when I made the heading. -- Ned Scott 01:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll respond briefly since part of the original statement here was clearly directed at my posting, as I am the one who had mentioned the use of Twinkle. What I am asserting is not that Twinkle is bad in and of itself, but that making extremely rapid semi-automated deletion nominations with minimal to absent discussion with those articles' editors, knowing that such nominations are a currnet subject of community contention, and while an ArbCom case is in progress to determine whether or not such action is disruptive (or, at the very least, hinders communication), is worth examination.
 * For my part, I don't know TTN. I don't have any real interest in whether he gets sanctioned, or commended, or ignored.  I know that I disagree with the way he nominates some articles at AFD, especially when he refers, without linking, to previous discussions that don't seem to be in any of the places I'm used to looking for discussions.  I do know that there are some real policy questions at hand here (Do article spinouts have to meet the same notability standards for their specific aspect as the parent article does for the topic as a whole?  Does the consensus determination that the released albums of notable musicians are notable conflict with recent activity in other popular culture categories?  And so on.)  And I don't expect those to be decided at ArbCom; on the other hand, no one is talking to each other at the moment (when I, as an uninvolved editor, took less than 20 minutes to find one of the case principles arguing at AFD that he edit-warred because another case principle edit-warred first, that means no one is talking), so I think that ArbCom hopefully enforcing some discussion might allow these questions to be addressed. Serpent&#39;s Choice (talk) 15:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Point taken. And to everyone, sorry about my little rant last night. If anyone wants to take this as evidence of my own hot-headedness, you would be within your right to do so. -- Ned Scott 01:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Main evidence
I have a question about this statement "Please limit your main evidence to a maximum 1000 words and 100 diffs..." I've separated my evidence into subsections, but I assume "main evidence" refers to all of the evidence I've presented (and does not count replies to other evidence). My evidence section currently contains 100 diffs (over 40 of them are links to oldid's actually), but I was wondering if I can include more diffs in reply to other evidence? The page says "Never link to a page history, an editor's contributions..." but can I link to a range of my contributions, such as this? --Pixelface (talk) 09:52, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * It's really a question of courtesy. You should present your case in a succinct manner; to go overboard only increases the likelihood that you will be ignored — or that a clerk will trim it down for you. Oh, presenting oldids rather than diffs won't win you any points, either; you expect anyone to go read 40 old versions of pages and attempt to discern your meaning? Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:44, 26 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your comment Jack. --Pixelface (talk) 18:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Response to Evidence presented by sgeureka
This page says "Never link to a page history" and I see Sgeureka linked to this page history. --Pixelface (talk) 18:42, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Response to Evidence presented by Firsfron
I don't think it's ok to call someone's edits vandalism, even if you believe that these people are wrong and are being disruptive. We have a rather clear definition of vandalism, and that is acting with the intent of damaging Wikipedia.

However, your second assertion, TTN's actions have caused other users to misinterpret WP:EPISODE brings up very good points. It clearly wasn't TTN or anyone else's intention to have this effect on WP:EPISODE, but these actions, right or wrong, have caused one hell of a backlash, causing users to blindly oppose a rather good guideline. It's frustrating for many of us, but we must find better ways to deal with these situations. Now, a lot of this is unavoidable, and that's not TTN's fault, but there are things we can improve, and for some situations we really need to do that. -- Ned Scott 05:51, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Rollback (response to Ned Scott)
Yeah, it seems there's currently no consensus regarding the rollback policy. I can understand your point, but I expected better from the admins, especially since the admin page warns against using the admin tools in a content dispute. Having said that, I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to get caught up in one of these revert wars, and can understand why the tool was used. I only brought it up because of the warnings on Requests for rollback and WP:ADMIN about using rollback/admin tools in content disputes, and because it had been mentioned in passing on one of the talk pages but not presented as evidence. Kamek (talk) 21:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Response to Evidence provided by User:Krator
You've presented 6 instances where TTN engaged in useful discussion, compared to the 300 or so diffs presented above in the evidence. Looking more broadly, I see about 2000 edits in January. About 1800 of them are merges, reverts, removal of material or templates from articles and talk pages, or nominations for deletion. How useful his contributions in talk were--as compared to repeated stereotyped defenses of his actions, I leave to others to analyze. I'm just counting. In the 48 hours just before the injunction, over 200 articles were merged, or redirected. Again, I leave others to speculate.DGG (talk) 21:07, 15 February 2008 (UTC)