Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Warren Kinsella

Statement by
A long-running war has occurred over this page with one side (and his/her/their socks) attempting to paint this person in the best light possible and the other side (and his/her/their socks) attempting to paint him in the worst possible light. Attempts at mediation have been manifold and have met with only limited success. It is time for several accounts to be banned from this article and anything peripheral (including but not limited to Mark Bourrie, who may be editing this article under different names).

Statement by Thatcher131
My involvement I have not edited any of the articles in question. I became aware of the situation when a number of Canadian IP addresses vandalized Requests for checkuser/Case/Ceraurus, adding slurs against Warren Kinsella.

The problem Warren Kinsella and Mark Bourrie are two Canadian bloggers/political figures who are in conflict in real life, including reciprocal threats of legal action. The dispute is spilling over into wikipedia, with tendentious editing, POV pushing and multiple 3RR violations on all sides. Unfortunately, most of the participants are anonymous IP addresses, so the only practical remedy (other than permanently semi-protecting the articles involved) may be to empower admins to block IP addresses that fit the pattern without having to warn 4 times and assume good faith.


 * Mark Bourrie formerly edited as, changed his name to , who was then indef-blocked. A few days later,  appeared, editing the same articles and pushing the same POV (pro-Bourrie and anti-Kinsella).  The article Mark Bourrie has also been heavily edited by a number of IP addresses likely linked to Ellis.  On July 5, Warren Kinsella posted links on his blog to Requests for checkuser/Case/Ceraurus and User:70.51.52.253, which described allegations that Arthur Ellis, was really Mark Bourrie.  Immediately, a series of Canadian IP addresses began blanking the pages and posting slurs against Kinsella, so that readers of Kinsella's blog would see the slurs and not the sockpuppet allegations.  Pro-Bourrie and anti-Kinsella IPs and socks continue to appear.  See Requests for checkuser/Case/Arthur Ellis. Policy violations include WP:NPA, WP:OWN, WP:AUTO, WP:BLP, WP:NLT.


 * Warren Kinsella The article Mark Bourrie has been edited from a highly negative POV by an IP user (different ISP than Arthur Ellis) who is probably Kinsella or a strong supporter.


 * Pierre Bourque is a supporter of Kinsella and thus an opponent of Bourrie/Arthur Ellis. Ellis has alleged that (whose first edit was June 27) is really Bourque, but the checkuser request was declined.  However, a different IP has made a number of hagiographic and personal edits to the article, suggesting that this IP may in fact be Bourque; this has led to more than one edit war between anonymous IPs representing the Bourrie side and the Bourque/Kinsella side.

Reply to Pete Peters I have not studied the situation any more thoroughly than the brief summary above and have no opinion on your identity or behavior, except that in general there has been a lot of edit warring on these articles from both sides. My comment on Mackensen's talk page was in reference to the anonymous IP addresses that began vandalizing Requests for checkuser/Case/Ceraurus after Kinsella linked to it on his blog (said vandalism coming, of course, from the anti-Kinsella side of the conflict).

Reply to JGGardiner I saw the notice on ANI regarding Peters and I agree it looked like Peters was trying to branch out to other areas and was being hounded by the same range of IPs that often make pro-Bourrie/Ellis and anti-Kinsella edits.

Statement by
My role in this matter was quite limited. Having noted the contention displayed by numerous, warring contributors to the page, and that some of that contention was specific to whether certain sources and information provided by those sources was proper or not, I hoped that converting the sources, then all embedded hyperlinks, to more transparent inline citations would have some ameliorative effect. I did so (along with a few minor stylistic changes) first here and after the next reference addition failed to follow suit, again here.

I have not followed the dispute in great detail but a review of the talk page today, including the two archives (A1, A2), shows great effort and patience by a number of users and admins to defuse the situation over more than six months. Despite these efforts, and after over 500 talk page posts, the page is at square one. This early edit shows how charged the page is and is likely to remain.

I leave it for the those more familiar with the active players to explore exactly who should and who should not be blocked from editing this and related articles, but given the active recent warring, blocks appear warranted and necessary.--Fuhghettaboutit 00:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by
I originally came to be involved in the edit war over Warren Kinsella after reviewing and denying this bad-faith AIAV report by User:Arthur Ellis against User:Pete Peters. Since then the edit war simmered on and off on the article talk page. The article was protected and unprotected a total of eight times. Arthur Ellis received two blocks from me, both for 24 hours, for 3RR violations. He's still serving the second block as I write these words. His sock, User:Marie Tessier was indefblocked by me earlier today after RFCU results came back positive. Pete is serving a one-week block imposed today for sustained edit warring, a bad-faith AfD nomination (Articles for deletion/Mark Bourrie) and repeated taunting of Arthur on the article talk page. Please note that I was only involved with these users insofar as Warren Kinsella, and did not participate in settling their other edit wars over different articles. Arthur also nominated for CSD and AfD in bad faith previously. (e.g. Articles for deletion/Hot Nasties etc.)

Both editors have a long history of personal attacks, many coming against myself recently. "Marie" also made unspecified legal-sounding threats against me, which are plainly scary. 

I would like the ArbCom to ban these users and various Ottawa- and Toronto-based socks from editing any article relating to Kinsella/Bourrie/Bourque/Guite - I would be glad to help compile a list if this case is accepted.

I am sorry I did not bring this RfAr a lot earlier. It was a result of my unfamiliarity with and fear of this process, bourne out of my extreme aversion to wiki-politics. - CrazyRussian talk/email 02:59, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Re: the accusations of partiality towards Peters and against Ellis, yes, I did initially treat Ellis more strictly, because he was the one intent on actively slandering Kinsella and Peters looked like he was defending the integrity of the article (this may or may not have been the case, but this was my goodfaith impression. As to the disparity in block lengths, Ellis' 24hr block was handed out earlier, before the RFCU came back, and only on the basis of 3RR. An another situation, I would have certainly extended it after the RFCU, but now that the RfAr has begun, I see no point. As to Peters' block: I continue to stand by it; the length was preëmptively explained; and I vigorously deny making it longer than normal in order to shield myself from allegations of partiality. - CrazyRussian talk/email 16:44, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Arthur Ellis #2: No, I did not "admit[] bias". I was, at all points, not biased, and have no dog in this fight. Also, I did not "stuff[]" any talk page comments into archives - I merely archived the talk page, preserving all the comments. You have a penchant for negative presumptions. - CrazyRussian talk/email 19:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by
I first got involved with this when I noticed Pete Peters had accused Arthur Ellis of being Ceraurus/Mark Bourrie on the Mark Bourrie page. I told him that these were unacceptable edits and that RFCU was the correct place for those accusations. I myself had the same suspicions though, since Ellis' very first edit was to complain about the Ceraurus block. After two RFCU requests, the result came back inconclusive. Arthur Ellis then filed a revenge RFCU against Pete Peters(which was promptly denied). I noticed that Arthur Ellis had been block for 24hrs for edit-warring with Pete Peters on the Warren Kinsella page. The Kinsella page got protected so I went and found citations for everything so that nothing could be disputed and the page could be unprotected. The page got unprotected and was generally improved, but Arthur Ellis kept trying to add material with dubious sources, ie. kinsellasux.com (a website operated by Mark Bourrie). I would remove anything that wasn't sourced properly, and he almost got in an edit war with me. When I warned him that he was about to break 3RR again (and get blocked for a second time that week), he accused me of acting "dishonestly and maliciously". I reworked much of the Kinsella page trying to get a version that pleased both users. Arthur Ellis and Pete Peter got in an edit war again, the page got protected again, and I tried to work things out on the talk page. The page got unprotected and I made a version that they were both chill with.... and then the Ottawa IPs started attacking the page. It got protected again. Other pages that are involved in this whole thing are the Hot Nasties and The Invasion of the Tribbles (both Kinsella related topics). Ellis repeatedly tried to list them for CSD even though numerous admins told him that AFD was the proper venue. During the AFD for those two pages numerous Magma IPs voted to delete. Geedubber 05:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Response to Statement by Arthur Ellis: In Ellis's statment, he claims that he uses a Sympatico (Bell Canada) account to connect, but he even made that claim from a Magma IPGeedubber 19:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Response by Arthur Ellis: First, I listed the Hot Nasties page in good faith in June for quick delete, and, after five days, it was, in fact, deleted. No one had read it or had objected. The page was re-posted a few days later by the original author. I had no reason, after the first delete, to change my mind that the page is a vanity listing with no readership.
 * Geedubber did act dishonestly. I know that's a strong word, but, after looking at the talk page again, I stick to it.
 * "Kinsellasux" is actually www.kinsellasux.blogspot.com. Mark Bourrie does operate in and posts archival newspaper stories on it. You can be sure that the material is accurately presented, since Kinsella would sue him if it was not.
 * I have a Sympatico account. It's possible that in Ottawa, Sympatico owns Magma or some other corporate action goes on. No matter how much Geedubber would like to think this proves something, it doesn't.Arthur Ellis 19:49, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by
My limited experience in this dispute has only been really on the Kinsella talk page attempting to resolve this aggressive disagreement. I have seen the actions of specifically Ellis and Peters take their action on other pages and belligerently attack each other, the subjects of articles and other users. Their behavior is persistent and it appears that they are editing with an agenda, no approachable middle ground has made itself clearly visible and within reach. The situation has extended so far out with minor meticulous edits with different sources and alterations of POV. The current dispute is also extremely concerning due to the fact that users are stating that the main editors involved in the dispute are influenced by outside circumstances, causing a severe conflict of interest. This massive revert war has spread out too far and outside intervention is needed to put it to a halt. Yank sox  11:47, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement of
There have been four pages involved in these on-going and endemic revert and flame wars: Rachel Marsden (which I have been involved in), Warren Kinsella, Mark Bourrie, Pierre Bourque. The participants, it seems, are one or more of these people and their sock-puppets and/or meat-puppets. The strife, as far as I can see it, involves two sides, which is possibly only one individual each.
 * Mark Bourrie, who has published under his own name, as , , a host of Ottawa IPs that resolve to Magma Communications (64.26.128-191.xxx; 69.20.224-239.xxx; 206.191.0-63.xxx; 209.217.64-127.xxx), a small portion of which are listed above.  (He threatens to use IPs for maximum disruption  |here: "Fuck you. My IP changes every six hours. I'll be back. I will cause as much Wikipedia trouble as I can!")  He also seems to have used  as a sock (see [|here], implying that there are more socks to come).
 * A user-check (here) implies that and  and  are "likely" the same person.  (In the absence of absolute proof, I'm inclined to assume that Arthur Ellis is someone close to Bourrie, but not Bourrie himself: their "styles" are different.)
 * User:Pete Peters who seems to have been an account created mostly in order to provoke Bourrie. He may be one of the subjects in the articles under contention or associated with one of them.

Some solutions to be considered:  Response by Arthur Ellis'''
 * 1) Mark Bourrie = Ceraurus = Isotelus = Marie Tessier is currently under an indefinite block; Arb Comm should perhaps set a defined period.
 * 2) user Pete Peters and Arthur Ellis should be banned from the four pages under contention and warned not to engage one another
 * 3) these four pages should be semi-protected since Bourrie, based in Ottawa, regularly forces an IP address reset from Magma Communications, his IP provider.
 * 4) in order to prevent Bourrie and/or Pete Peters from creating new accounts to rejoin the fight after five days, the Arb Committee should probably pre-authorize user-checks on new, disruptive accounts that edit these four pages, with the understanding that any trollishness, vandalism, or disruption coming from the IP addresses identified above will be blocked as presumed sock-puppets
 * 5) National Library IP address should be indefinitely blocked (Bourrie admits to using it [|here], and looking at its contributions, no one uses it to edit wikipedia except him).
 * First, Bucketsofg has his own agenda on the Rachel Marsden page. Bucketsofg, as blogger "Buckets of Grewal", has been conducting his own off-Wikipedia campaign against former Canadian MP Germant Grewal, and has helped edit Marsden's page into an attack article, despite misgivings by Jimbo Wales put on the talk pages in 2005. Marsden was a former employee of Grewal's. Bucketsofg, Bearcat (who, on his talk page, says he is a member of the left-of-center NDP) and Homey (see below) have worked very hard to keep the Marsden entry as negative as possible and have reverted and blocked any signs of change to this incredibly negative bio.
 * I wrote the present Marsden version, which is far lee nasty than all previous ones. To see it in its former glory, go back to a January version, where she's described as being fired from her job, and her father is mentioned as a child mollester. Bucketsofg has consistently protected and co-authored versions in which she is portrayed as a liar..
 * Something to remember: Bourrie (in his incarnations), a new member, always attempted to take attack-negative-cruel material off the Marsden page, not, like the three admins mentioned above, add it. He was accused and punished for vandalism and blanking for doing so by admins who ignored the Wikipedia policy regarding biographies of living people. He knew Marsden had moved to a new city and started a new job. The Marsden page is proof that sourced material, especially from newspapers, can be strung together to create an entry that is an embarrasment to Wikipedia.
 * Second, blocking me and Peters from the pages does nothing to prevent Warren Kinsella (through IPs) from continuiing to post on both the Mark Bourrie (as I showed above, he posts on that page from his office IP) and the Kinsella page.
 * Third, blocking the National Library of Canada would be rather radical. If you read Bucketsofg's footnote 111, you'll see Bourrie does not admit to using the National Library computer. He says someone did reverts from there, and says it's not his personal computer.

And, well, the National Library of Canada is the National Library of Canada (and also the Public Archives of Canada. Someone there might want to post something useful to Wikipedia.Arthur Ellis 22:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As I have pointed out repeatedly, Wikipedia's bottom line is verifiability of information, and removing properly sourced material from an article constitutes vandalism. The bottom line on Wikipedia is not whether the article is flattering to the subject; it's whether the article is factual. At no point does Rachel Marsden's article make any assumptions about her guilt or innocence in the legal matters, but since the accusations have been made, it's fair game for Wikipedia to write about their existence. My political views have absolutely nothing to do with Wikipedia's rules, and you are hereby advised to cease slinging unsubstantiated accusations of bias against me at once. 22:11, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Statement by Mackensen
Good evening. I stand by the Checkuser results and am prepared to answer private queries from the Arbitration Committee. I strongly dispute Arthur Ellis's characterization of the findings, which I regard as fairly conclusive. Cheers, Mackensen (talk) 02:29, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Statement by
I’d watchlisted the Kinsella article some time ago. In late June, I noticed an edit summary from Peters "PISS OFF MARK BOURIE". I had some familiarity with Kinsella so I thought that I could help calm things in the discussion. By the time I began on the talk page, Peters was quiet and it seemed like Ellis was simply being hard to rather than disruptive, disputing every insertion from the other editors. I ended up working more on the Bourrie article, where the same (Ellis-Peters) dispute had carried over. I’d note that while the Kinsella article is now protected and quiet, the same problem continues on the Bourrie article. This morning I removed anti-Bourrie vandalism and note that Magma IPs continue to change the lawsuit section and add vanity material.

While the article was protected, after July 3, I noticed that Peters moved on to other articles but was hounded by anonymous editors and had all of his edits reverted without explanation. I asked for help for Peters at ANI. Ellis appears to use the same Magma IP range, which is apparent from this post, where Ellis re-signs a post made by an IP the previous minute.At the same time, there were AfDs with other articles related to Kinsella begun by Ellis. It seemed like everything had been patched up at the Kinsella article when it was unprotected but the edit wars just continued and were accompanied by the outrageous talk comments. Crzrussian in particular took a lot of abuse. So did HistoryBA, a good editor who seems to have stopped editing for the moment because of this whole mess. The same range of IP’s also caused a lot of trouble at other articles, for example an edit war at Elizabeth May (re-inserting vandalism calling May fat), causing that article to be protected as well.

The responsible editors and admins at work here tried to focus on the content which was objected to. It seemed like things were smoothed over with each issue but I feel now that the objections were not about particular content per se (other than the lawsuit) but were rather about particular editors. My contributions with Kinsella were mostly to ask people to remain civil, articulate their concerns, and to resolve the disputes through discussion. Unfortunately they only wanted to discuss each other. --JGGardiner 19:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Requests for arbitration/Warren Kinsella
I hate to be a pill, but in this case, two arbitrators amended the prinicple with the addition
 * A set of users or anonymous editors who edit in the same tendentious pattern or engage in the same disruptive tactics may be presumed to be one user. The provisions of an arbitration decision may be enforced on that basis.
 * Yes to this when the ArbCom has had time and reason to come to grips with a situation. It is not a great idea for individual admins to apply the same reasoning, on the fly. Mistakes then get made.

is under a 5 day block for disruption and sockpuppetry. today performed characteristic vandalism, including calling Warren Kinsella names and blanking a section of Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement . Two other IPs and, which are consistent with Ellis' venues and manner, also edited articles from which Ellis is banned. Based on the findings in this case, should this IP be treated as an Ellis sock (in which case triggering enforcement against Ellis), or should they be treated as de novo vandals. Thatcher131 20:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Another wrinkle for clarification. The arbitrators' ruling is
 * " is banned indefinitely from Warren Kinsella and articles which relate to Canadian politics and its blogosphere. Any article which mentions Warren Kinsella is considered a related article for the purposes of this remedy. This includes all talk pages other than the talk page of Mark Bourrie.:
 * "Today one of the IPs mentioned above made this edit, removing the Warren Kinsella section from the Bourrie article. This edit raises the question whether Mark Bourrie is still covered by the ban. Buck  ets  ofg ✐ 22:01, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I assume that means he is banned from all related article and talk pages including Mark Bourrie but not Talk:Mark Bourrie. Thatcher131 00:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, the exception is to permit him to comment on the article about himself. Fred Bauder 20:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
 * That is my reading of the remedy. FloNight 05:04, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Still wondering whether to hold Arthur Ellis responsible for the contributions of the IPs. Thatcher131 05:28, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It's the judgement call of the administrator who is familiar with the problem and the edits. If you are reasonably sure it is him, go for it. Fred Bauder 20:21, 4 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Fred. Thatcher131 18:09, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

One more request for clarification.
 * " is banned indefinitely from Warren Kinsella and articles which relate to Canadian politics and its blogosphere.:

Does that include the Rachel Marsden page? Marsden has been involved in Canadian politics. Geedubber 23:16, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes, it does. Dmcdevit·t 15:32, 12 October 2006 (UTC)