Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Winter Soldier 2/Proposed decision

Arbitrators active on this case
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How broad is broad?
In the remedy, both TDC and Xenophrenic are to be banned from editing any page connected with Winter Soldier Investigation "broadly defined". I think the committee should be careful to lay down some guidelines, because some administrators may wish to adopt a very broad interpretation of "broad". Specifically, I am concerned with the fact that Winter Soldier investigation covered events in the Vietnam War. Would the restriction catch any page relating to that war? Perhaps where the content is related to allegations of war crimes being committed by U.S. forces this would be reasonable. There is plenty of scope for 'wiggle room' in arguing that other articles about the anti-Vietnam war movement either should be included in the restriction, or should not be. Some more specific scope is, I think, needed. Sam Blacketer 10:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The short answer is really "as broad as it needs to be to stop the edit-warring". If the two start edit-warring over a topic in the gray area, administrators should feel free to warn and then block them.  Ideally, both parties should try to step back from this particular subject and find something they're able to edit without engaging in such levels of editorial conflict. Kirill 16:09, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, centering the remedy on the Winter Soldier Investigation and related articles is a lose-lose situation. That article has direct ties to War, Politics, Protest, Famous Persons, Environment, Government and as of the most recent edits to that article, Current Events (a contemporary WSI is to be held again in March). If you lay down specific guidelines, as Blacketer suggests, you make the remedy easier to game. If you leave the remedy broadly defined, every article on Wikipedia can be connected to WSI with fewer than a couple degrees of separation. Regardless, the WSI article is not the cause of edit warring, as the present wording of the remedy implies.

As you know, TDC was placed under identical sanctions by the Committee in a past case. How well do you suppose that remedy worked? Within a month, TDC was embroiled in yet another ArbCom case that would result in more sanctions upon him for edit warring. Banning him from certain articles has no effect on, and is not a remedy for, edit warring behavior. His interaction with me is also not the cause of edit warring, as you will note I was not involved in his other edit war cases. The "particular subject" is not the cause, since TDC displays the same behavior across unrelated articles. Even as I type this, he is engaged in low-speed revert wars with several different editors. Was this article ban proposed purely as a punitive action? Xenophrenic (talk) 22:45, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

SPA, Copyvio and Sockpuppetry
I would appreciate it if these were addressed in the ruling. I can still provide more evidence, privately as before, if need be to bolster the case, but I don’t know what is an is not "crossing the line". Torturous Devastating Cudgel (talk) 04:57, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


 * TDC, why not provide the evidence now, publicly? If it is quality evidence, it won't wither when exposed to daylight.  If the Committee is going to make rulings against me based on private evidence, the evidence will have to be made known to me eventually.  Too private to post publicly?  If it is about me, you have my permission to post it here, in the open, regardless of how personal it may be.  If it is private information about someone else, well, the Committee shouldn't be using that to rule against me anyway.  I have reviewed your publicly presented evidence:
 * You claim sock puppetry without ever citing an actual violation. Why have you never opened a suspected Sock Puppet case against me?  I know you have helped identify actual Sock Puppet Policy violators in the past, but that does not give you license to harass users that fall under your suspicion — especially when there is no policy violation (i.e.; Ban evasion, Vote stacking) to justify your hounding.  So if you want a ruling on Sock Puppetry, I hope you gave the Committee some really great private evidence and a violation to work with, or the only ruling they are going to make is "TDC should cease harassing suspect users."


 * Your public evidence in support of charges of Copyright Violations and also Edit Warring with users, all 39 carefully laid out Diffs, are three years old, TDC. All that same evidence was raised in past arbitrations years ago, and discussed, and evaluated, and sanctions were imposed, and penalties served — despite your claims to the contrary.  You've shown no evidence, publicly, that I have edit warred with any of those people or broken any copyright rules.  The only purpose served by your rehashing dead arbitration cases, as far as I know, is to convince the Committee to give out elevated sanctions due to alleged past behavior. Xenophrenic (talk) 05:23, 6 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Since we do not know what your main account is, its impossible to say what you are in violation of. As far as the evidence I presented, its private, and not fit for a public airing, which would put you in a bit of a Catch 22, the only way that the material can be posted is If you admit that you are the anon (which by now everyone is certain of), but you cant because that would undermine your claims that you are not. Torturous Devastating Cudgel (talk) 02:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's just like the prisoners in Guantanamo: they can't see the secret evidence against them unless they confess their guilt in advance, which means they must be guilty. Which makes perfect sense as long as you don't apply logic or reason. Dlabtot (talk) 02:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Little clarification
Just one thing: the remedies restrict TDC and Xenophrenic from editing any page relating to WSI. Is this including article talk pages? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 18:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)


 * While you are at it, can you also clarify that Depleted Uranium, and related articles, are not part of the restricted articles? There may be some confusion, since it was part of the 3RR report raised by Heimstern here, and appears extensively in case evidence from Dlabtot, Xenophrenic, etc. Xenophrenic (talk) 19:01, 8 December 2007 (UTC)