Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Non-Notability

Statement by uninvolved User:Andrew Levine

 * Fresheneesz has been involved in a personal quest to get his own WP:NNOT proposal adopted. Radiant, Doc Glasgow, and others began by making attempts to understand the vaguely worded proposal, and Fresheneesz's attempts at explanantion have made nothing clearer. We have tried to make Fresheneesz understand that his proposal (which would upend long-held consensus regarding deletion guidelines) will never be accepted by the community as a whole, but Fresheneesz refuses to accept the lack of interest and continues trying to promote it. Radiant and Doc acted in accordance with Wikipedia's principles. I apologize to the arbitrators reading this for the time he has cost you. Andrew Levine 05:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * For what little I have seen of this dispute, I completely agree with Andrew Levine. -- RHaworth 23:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by semi-uninvolved observer User:DavidHOzAu
I try to steer clear of arbitration cases, but I think it is important that we do not shoot the messenger here. I can't speak for the issue about notability as I believe that is a separate issue. From what I can see, most of the misunderstanding stems from different interpretation of wording. It has been a week since I have had anything to do with the affair.

First, on the talk page of voting is evil I provided two lengthy posts to explain that discussion and voting are not mutually exclusive. These were ignored by most parties involved. I understand that every editor is not obligated to take any post of mine into account.

Second, I have made two edits to WP:STRAW, and they were to remove the text that is current cause of contention. Note that in both cases I did not object to the reason behind Radiant wanting to make such an addition per se: I first objected to his undiscussed change to the guideline per WP:PAG, and then I removed it 3 days later because it was still an undiscussed change on Radiant!'s part. My opinion that the addition was rather nonsensical given the context of the original page is another reason, as stated in the edit summary of my first revert; I later elaborated on that opinion on the talk page over several posts. I since went on to more important things such as finishing my responses to a a feature article candidate's objections, writing a script for tabulating results of the approval voting process, and giving gatoatigrado some suggestions for implementing the sidebar redesign which I was involved with. (For details, see my talkpage.)
 * My first edit was re-reverted by Tony Sidaway within hours 11 claiming that he couldn't understand my objection despite my descriptive edit summary. I understand that Tony has had similar sort of trouble in the past and I discussed it with him on the talk page.
 * My second edit was reverted by Alphax who decided that the guideline was rejected. At this stage I left a note on the talk page and gave up.

In closing, I would like to say that this post of mine summarizes the entire issue rather nicely.

Statement by half-involved User:Ccool2ax
I am only somewhat involved, and everyone else is doing a great job of explaining what's going on, so I'll try to keep this short. I am an opponent of notability, so when I heard that some users were drafting a third Notability proposal, I planned to wait until a consensus-gathering stage, as I think/thought there was for guidelines. That never happened, since RaidiantI changed it straight to guideline. After this, I changed it back to proposal, but I was struck down. I left a nice comment on the talk page, but RadiantI struck me down by stating that there is a consensus. I responded with this stating that he can't make up consensus (which is what she seems to be doing). After that, I gave up, modified my anti-notability user box to match the new status, and went back to real life.

Statement by Jersyko
I have been involved in discussions at talk on both WP:NNOT and WP:NN. I am troubled by the fact that WP:NN is now a guideline, as I do not believe consensus favors it. I find it somewhat perplexing that Fresheneesz has been rebuffed in trying to conduct a straw poll. However, arbitration seems inappropriate. I see little evidence that other steps in the dispute resolution process have been utilized. I see little evidence of bad faith from editors, only evidence of sharp disagreement. This is not an issue that needs to be decided by arbitration, but by continued discussion. &middot; j e r s y k o   talk  &middot; 14:15, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I've added some evidence of other dipute resolution steps taken. I've only left out mediation. I hope this wasn't a wrong move. Fresheneesz 18:43, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by User:Blue Tie
There appear to be some personality conflicts here and I am no judge of those.

It appears to me that the problem is that some users just do not like Fresheneesz and it has looked to me like some admins were piling on. He or she may bear some blame in that but long-time users and admins may, by virtue of both their position of responsibility and experience, bear more responsibility for abruptness that leads to a general disruption.

There is a problem with consensus on wikipedia. It is undefined and unclear. When it comes to policies this is a more critical area. Claims of concensus are simply gorilla dust now days... there is no way to confirm that concensus exists. Is it concensus if everyone agrees EXCEPT for one person? Two? How many? Or is it by percent? Or if not percent than what is the standard? IT DOES NOT EXIST. So people get to claim that they have it and off they go. Others do not agree. This leads to conflict. That is what you are seeing. It is not that anyone is "bad" here. It is that the system is dysfunctional.

Claims of having concensus have no validation. Older editors with experience and connections claim concensus when it is far from clear that they have it. It is a kind of intimidation of newer users.

As wikipedia grows, these types of problems will increase both in frequency and fervency. --Blue Tie 19:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)


 * (Adding further thoughts) I have found that one of the pages in question is being advocated as a guideline. I have found that the page has been aggressively promoted and owned by Radiant.  Apparently Radiant has been involved in low level and high level edit warring over this page for a while. It appears that User:Fresheneesz is not long-suffering with this.  Thus the dispute.


 * User:Fresheneesz listed 4 people involved. At least 2 agree in almost all matters and their edits work together toward the same end in many venues, not just on the issues of concern to Fresh.  It is worthy to note that almost exclusively on the weight of these four editors, changes to a variety of related guidelines guidelines are being made and new guidelines are being raised.  I believe that the heart of the objection by Fresh (and there are others) is a possible covert steamrolling effort on several fronts to make polls forbidden.  This may not be according to concensus.  Some have said that Arbcom should not be involved but I disagree:  I think ARBCOM must become involved because these editors are apparently all admins and the people who are opposed to their views are not.  This bears scrutiny.  Admins should operate a step higher than others.  Certainly they should not edit war.  I think Arbcom should evaluate whether the charges in either case are correct and what should be done about it.--Blue Tie 05:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Final short comment: Voting is a tool.  It has been and may yet be one of several to help achieve and validate consensus.--Blue Tie 00:30, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Stephen B Streater
I'm not a disputant here, though I have contributed to some of the pages discussed here, in particular with this edit. On the underlying issue of notability, my view is probably closest to Centrx, with whom I have had constructive discussions leading to edits on various policy pages.

I've spent some time resolving policy/content/people issues involving Fresheneesz in the past. His demands of respect for both him and his views (even equal weight for his views) from more experienced Wikipedians has caused friction in the past. Fresheneesz has been working to improve Wikipedia by changing what he believes are over-aggressive deletion practices on the grounds of non-notability, and this has gained some support. This has led to his insistence on some verifiable proof as to the actual consensus on notability. Deleting his straw poll and calling for a block or ban was not an appropriate step in a fairly important, though probably one-sided dispute.

I would like to see Stephen B Streater 20:01, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Whether notability should be a guideline clarified
 * Fresheneesz to consider WP:OWN with respect to notability policy pages
 * editors to bring in new entrants to a discussion rather than engage in revert wars
 * Fresheneesz to have his straw poll, which could demonstrate the level of interest in his proposals
 * An end to hostilities between Radiant and Fresheneesz with appropriate apologies
 * All views to be heard in the discussions on notability guidelines

Comment from Tawker
Just to put the above comments into perspective, Fresheneesz made some notify spam posts requesting comment on quite a few user pages.

Hey, I noticed you were appalled that WP:NN is now a "guideline". It simply doesn't have a clear consensus, and I just put together an arbitration case at Requests_for_arbitration that shows misconduct in the way a few users have been misconstrewing more than just one guideline. I would greatly appreciate your input. Fresheneesz 05:19, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Fresheneesz was apparently was unaware that posting messages looking for support was a shunned upon policy by the community (per stuff copied from my talk page)

I didn't realize I was spamming. Was I really? I was notifying all the people I thought were involved enough in the arbitration case that they could give an informed opinion. I would guess that if what I did *is* spam, the users I spammed would not take it as such. Did you remove any of my messages? Fresheneesz 18:23, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Ok thanks for letting me know. Just one question.. whats an "opt-in"? Fresheneesz 18:47, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Ahh, ok. But how would one let people know of a place to opt-in? Well, really my question is: what should I have done to let people know about the arbitration case? Fresheneesz 19:31, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

But it might have a sway on the commenters that may be posting above and as such, is probally a good idea to take said information to light when deciding to reject this or not. -- 22:00, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by marginally involved User:JzG
In the early days of Fresheneesz's non-notability guideline I attempted to introduce wording which clarified the policy basis for requiring a notability bar (WP:NOT indiscrimiinate; sufficient reliable sources to ensure that content and neutral point of view can be verified), in order to support the use of policy rather than subjective judgments as a criterion. These were removed. The current draft bears every impression of being an attempt to subvert long-standing community consensus and do an end-run around the various subject specific inclusion guidelines.

It may be a coincidence that this page was created shortly after a protracted dispute over coverage of UniModal, a hypothetical implementation of an unproven class of transport system. See the differences between Fresheneesz' version and my latest edit:. This article was at some point deleted as being a non-notable hypothetical commercial project, and I do believe that Fresheneesz' opposition to notability as a standard may have started there. We also disputed the inclusion of various facts in various articles due to their significance and the problem of undue weight. This, too, may be related.

In my view this RFAr is both premature (previous attempts to resolve?) and pointing the wrong way: the editor who refuses to accept consensus appears to be Fresheneesz, and this RFAr is just another example of that. When a lot of experienced editors tell you that you are wrong, it's wise to consider the possibility that you are wrong, rather than accusing them of harassing you. Guy 12:03, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by barely involved User:NuclearUmpf
I just want to say I was first alerted to part of this through AN/I. The part pertaining to the Non-notability proposal. Fresh has posted on AN/I basically stating he was being prevented from proceeding with his proposal. I went and read over part of the talk page there and noticed soon after an influx of admins telling Fresh he could not have a straw poll because there was no concensus on his proposal. This seemed a little backwards to me as a straw poll is used to help garner concensus and find out what needs to be worked on etc. It seemed like there was no policy or guideline being spoken of that prevented him from making one, just people stating that he had no support and shouldnt bother. Lots of talk later I kept asking what the harm would be in letting him make one and if there is no support, it would show. I personally have to say I believe firmly in Notability as a guideline and that it should be one of the most important aspecs of crafting an encyclopedia, so I am not on Fresh's side, was just perplexed at how numerous editors, many admins, could spend 3 days arguing over how he should not have a poll, when a poll could have been created in 10 mintues and WP:SNOW would have taken over, if it had the little support the admins and editors claimed. I even cast my hat against his proposal, just felt like people were being a bit bossy and almost attempting to shut down a proposal they didnt like because they didnt like it. --NuclearUmpf 13:00, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by
I described the page as part of Fresh's silly crusade, to "write new rules that will let him shoehorn his articles about personal mass transit into Wikipedia." I stand by that. It's a fairly typical example of a user who got his pet article deleted and now wants to rewrite the rules to make it so he can remake it.

That proposal has long been spinning and spinning and spinning its wheels and gaining no significant support and generating nothing but people repeating the same arguments. A proposal to change current practice which does not have the support to actually change that practice is why we have rejected.

Basically, Andrew Levine has it. Should this be accepted, I'm not interested in pursuing it further save in the exceedingly unlikely case I'm named in a remedy. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 13:50, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved User:CBDunkerson
When Radiant! asked on AN/I for advice on how to deal with this situation I suggested doing nothing and continue to think that would be the prudent course. I agree there are problems with the proposed changes which make them unlikely to achieve consensus. So what's the problem? Leave 'em be, they won't garner a widespread consensus, the issue dies and goes away. If the user tries to make sweeping changes based on support from a handful of users it can be discussed and dealt with then, but forcibly preventing them from trying to develop a proposal just annoys everyone involved. When two admins find themselves in the position of having to parse semantics ('we removed a request for people to state their opinions in a poll... that's not "comments"') to explain why their actions aren't vandalism we've got a problem... because the user impacted certainly isn't going to agree with that semantic distinction and it isn't reasonable to expect that they would. Why so much effort to 'stomp out' something that was barely a fizzle to begin with... and how such 'surprise' that there are objections to the stomping? I haven't looked into every action by all parties, but the root issue here is that Fresheneesz is trying to gather support for a proposal and others are opposing... vigorously. Which I don't see the need for. Even a proposal to write all articles 'sdrawkcab' off somewhere in the wilds of the Wikipedia namespace isn't harming anything. Leave it alone, maybe say, 'I do not agree with this because most people read forwards', and deal with any actual problems which come up. As to this RFAr... it seems to have turned into more of an RfC, and that IMO is where it ought to be. --CBD 13:18, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by concerned User:Rednblu
Surely I need not recite here an example of "heated Wikipedia editing"? Surely, we can think of our own live example of heated Wikipedia editing.

Operationally, the heated Wikipedia editing is done by voting. But the voting in heated Wikipedia editing is the chimpanzee politics version of voting, organizing a faction to overpower what officially Wikipedia colorfully calls "the crank" who does not bow to the consensus.

In this particular case, User:Fresheneesz will not bow to Wikipedia consensus, where consensus is "general agreement among the members whose vote counts in a given group or community in which each member exercises some discretion in decision making and follow-up action." And User:Fresheneesz has a solid right to complain that there is no rational definition for Wikipedia consensus. For the WP:CON page itself lacks any useable definition for what consensus is, thus leaving each of us to our own chimpanzee devices of organizing some localized consensus faction of our own to get any problem resolved.

So how do we fix this situation? I would suggest that all of us appearing here at User:Fresheneesz's bidding should retire from this RfAr, which is pointless. We need to reconvene at a Wikipedia ProjectPage to clarify the text of the Wikipedia policy pages to be self-consistent. For example, since heated Wikipedia editing is actually done by voting, we should define in an orderly fashion some progression of experiments in various proportional voting formats that we 1) test and 2) select because they actually work in practice. Alternatively, if we want to continue the current sham of making policy according to the chimpanzee politics of the current consensus, we should define clearly the current mix of sockpuppets and cliques that are required to stabilize pages, defend quality, and keep the peace. What do you think is best? --Rednblu 07:48, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by concerned User:ATren
I would just like to point out that there is no policy against conducting straw polls, but there is a very definite policy on talk page vandalism, which is defined as removing someone else's good faith comments. There are certainly exceptions for certain types of comments, mainly personal attacks (which can be generally removed without being considered vandalism), but a simple straw poll does not seem to meet any of the removal criteria. I believe it was inappropriate for Radiant! and Doc Glasgow to remove the poll - it only served to inflame the situation and caused Fresheneesz to perhaps overreact by seeking help from others.

At the very least, I would hope that this arbitration would clarify the policy on removing another editor's talk page content, specifically with respect to straw polls. From my personal experience on Wikipedia, removing a non-binding straw poll is unjustified and overly aggressive. If that is an incorrect assumption, then it needs to be clarified in policy. ATren 20:53, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by concerned User:Daniel.Bryant
Although I disagree with the main content of this application for arbitration, it appears that there is one or two users whose behaviour needs to be reviewed, especially in relation to WP:OWN. As per ATren, this arbitration is a perfect chance to "clarify the policy on removing another editor's talk page content". Daniel.Bryant 03:26, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Ansell
Although I know I told Fresheneesz I didn't have time for this, and I don't really, I feel I need to make a statement at least about it. From my perspective, the Non-notability page appears to have been "bullied" into the ground by editors who have not assumed good faith and attempted to reduce the page to what it is, an alternative to current practice. The aim of the page is to introduce a rigour into a process, specifically AfD, which is currently damaging to Wikipedia. I have been told by User:A Man In Black that the page is just a "silly crusade," despite the page being developed also by other editors, and is hardly a civil statement either way, demonstrates to me the lack of good will currently surrounding the entire topic. Ans e ll 11:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Saxifrage
I definitely have concerns about WP:OWN being ignored. My involvement in this is related soley through as I have been butting heads with them at WP:DDV over the status of the page. Radiant seems to consider it their "baby", personally responding to every objecting editor and engaging in edit warring (with other editors who are not blameless) over whether the page should be tagged a guideline or not to the point of it requiring protection. Taken together with the unprecedented action of removing straw polls (which they still claim to be justified in deciding unilaterally) and working to demote Straw polls, this worries me. For the record, in all other contexts unrelated to voting, Radiant seems to me to be an upstanding, valuable, and hard-working admin. As Everyking demonstrated, even good admins can lose perspective and judgement when it comes to pet projects. &mdash; Saxifrage ✎ 23:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)