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Amendment request: Antisemitism in Poland (May 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by TonyBallioni at 23:18, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Antisemitism in Poland arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. Add additional remedy

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• TonyBallioni (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)

Information about amendment request

• Add additional remedy

• Requesting an additional remedy be added by motion to include a general prohibition

Statement by TonyBallioni (Antisemitism in Poland)

This is coming out of the frustration that is Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Icewhiz/Archive. As a bit of background, since Icewhiz's ban we've had a myriad of accounts come out of no where with a sudden interest in this topic area. Invariably they are on proxies and pretty much any account that remotely resembles Icewhiz is being reported to that SPI. Some of them are likely him. Some of them are likely some other banned editor editing in violation or a block, and in some cases might actually be a legitimate alternative account that agrees with Icewhiz's positions, but is editing under a new account and a proxy for privacy reasons in an area where there may be legal consequences off-wiki. The thing is, we can't tell, and this is an issue. I sent this in an email to Berean Hunter, Mkdw, and Joe Roe about the ongoing Icewhiz case, but I only see two possible ways to deal with the influx of new accounts in the areas: either we apply 500/30 to the topic area like we do for the Israel-Palestine articles, or we start blocking obvious sock accounts on the proxies in this area until they declare the account owner to ArbCom/the blocking CU. Neither is a particularly fun option and they both have their downsides, but I think 500/30 has the advantage of not blocking individuals who may have a valid reason for an alternative account or may be a legitimate good faith user on a proxy or VPN. It is also pretty likely to work for the specific Icewhiz related part of this problem: his other main area of interest was Israel-Palestine articles and we've had zero problems with him showing up there. Note that I don't think all of these accounts are him, I think there are likely a fair amount of users using sockpuppets in this topic area. We just can't connect them to the original account because of the technical limitations of CheckUser. Employing 500/30 in the area that's probably had the most issues with socking and content disputes in the last year would pretty much put a stop to it. I know it's a fairly big step to take, but the area is smaller than Israel-Palestine, and the positive impacts in my view would likely outweigh the negatives.

• SoWhy, not trying to be flippant here, but the problem with the PC idea is that pending changes doesn’t work from a purely technical level. It’s a clunky system that usually leads to more problems on an article than just leaving it unprotected, and also doesn’t prevent anything from the edit warring perspective. There’s a reason the existing PC1 is the least used form of protection: it usually just creates more work for people than dealing with live vandalism. Compare the pending changes log to the protection log. The last 50 entries for PC go back a week. For protection it goes back ~12 hours. There’s a reason for that.TonyBallioni (talk) 12:14, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
• Bradv going off of Nigel Ish’s point, maybe go with The history of Jews and Antisemitism in Poland, including the Holocaust in Poland, broadly construed which I think would both expand the scope to areas where the current wording wouldn’t help, and also narrow it to get away from stuff like random Polish army brigades. TonyBallioni (talk) 18:14, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
• Bradv, that’s no different than we have now with DS. The issue here is that we can’t tell where these users (and it’s not just Icewhiz) will show up, and they’re causing a real strain in the topic area. On the WW2 vs. “Jews in Poland” scope: I think WW2 is a bit broad, because what you’re really fighting over is the historical relationship between individuals who are Jewish and Poland as a whole. This of course includes the Holocaust, but you have other articles where there have been flare ups and socks are likely to show up at some point: Paradisus Judaeorum and Jew with a coin being non-WW2 era articles where this conflict has extended. I think you can change the scope to be that to address the valid concerns about WW2 being very broad, while also addressing the area that’s at the core of this conflict. TonyBallioni (talk) 19:46, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Piotrus

I support this. Please note that yesterday I presented new evidence and analysis of patterns at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Icewhiz that is (at this point) not yet archived in the link Tony provided. I will also concur with Tony, wearing my hat of an editor active in this topic area for ~15 years, that I have never seen any significant socking until Icewhiz got banned - then boom, dozen+ possible socks appear. Yes, this TA has been problematic for ages, but socking is a new and unwelcome twist here. My only concern is that WP:500/30 may not deal with the more invested socks; ex. the one Tony just blocked, I dream of Maple (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), reached the 500/30 threshold before being blocked. A number of other reported accounts are past 500/30. Extended semi will help weed out some fly-by-night socks, and we had a few of those appear, but I feel, overall, that the other solution ("blocking obvious sock accounts on the proxies in this area until they declare the account owner to ArbCom/the blocking CU") will need to be implemented as well since IMHO most of the disruption (see linked SPI) came from accounts that would not be stopped by 500/30. This TA has sadly seen enough recent socks immune to 500/30 that "guilty until proven innocent" seems necessary for a few years. And after all, we don't generally allow Wikipedia:Open proxies, TOR, or such; and those policies say that users "in good standing" can apply to CU for exemptions per Wikipedia:IP block exemption - so if some Chinese dissident is really interested in this topic area, they can follow the procedure, can't they? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:45, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

PS. Just noting that the SPI above has ended and ben archived, with another block for Icewhiz sock KasiaNL (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) that would not be stopped by 500/30 (that account did not reveal its "true nature" until passing the 500/30 threshold). Again, I think 500/30 will help, but it will not stop the most disruptive and dedicated attempts to disrupt the TA. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:15, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bradv: I concur with Nigel that we should not cast the protection net too widely. Crucially, most of "Polish history in WWII" articles do not intersect with Polish Jews, and have not seen any problematic editing. The disruption is limited to the topic of Polish-Jewish history, mainly related to WWII (which, btw, for Poland starts in 1939, not 1933; there were no Polish Jews or Poles in China or Japan...). I suggest the scope of whatever remedy is here to be limited to "Polish-Jewish history in World War II". I don't think articles related to this topic before or after the war were significantly affected (ex. ghetto benches or Polish 1968 political crisis), though there was some disagreement re the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance, but that article wouldn't be covered by your proposed wording anyway, and I am not sure if a remedy for "Polish-Jewish history 1939-present" or even wider would be justified. I think PJ39-45 is enough since most of this is really related to what happened during the war (or immediately afterward, Kielce pogrom, hmmm, but it didn't see disruptive editing yet). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by François Robere

Full support. There are a lot of IPs, "socks", newbies and other unfamiliar "faces" around who are very definitely not Icewhiz,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] who for whatever reasons rarely get reported.

For the sake of everyone's sanity, get it going and stop complaining about editors who are long gone.[11] François Robere (talk) 10:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Zero0000, Nigel Ish, and Nosebagbear: The definition of the TA by admins (and later ArbCom) was always lacking. The scope of these discussions goes beyond WWII both towards current affairs (LGBT rights, Islamophobia, Law and Justice) and historical events (Paradisus Judaeorum, History of Jews in Poland). A better definition of the TA would be "World War II and the history of Minorities in Poland, including current affairs". François Robere (talk) 13:31, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

• @SlimVirgin:

1. I also ran "Wikiblame" on the Anti-Polish sentiment edit.[12] The account that added it was active for less than a month, and made one more edit that bears the same characteristics - suspiciously anti-Jewish and unsourced.[13] That edit is still in the article.[14]
2. The Numerus clausus bit was first added by PeterC in 2004,[15] but the source was only added in 2016 by Zezen.[16] I couldn't check it, but given that the Numerus Clausus is fundamentally antisemitic and the publisher is a Jewish institution, I find it difficult to believe that it stated it as-is.
3. The addition to Polish Armed Forces in the West has some issues around WP:APL#Article_sourcing_expectations and WP:PRIMARY, but seems interesting enough that it should've been brought to Talk rather than removed as WP:UNDUE.

It's true that none of these would've been done had it not been to some IP or "sock"; but given the preponderance of destructive edits from these classes of editors (including plenty of right-wing ethno-nationalists), as well as the fact that the community has few tools to deal with editors for whom Icewhiz (and anything that vaguely resembles Icewhiz) has become such a major concern that the question of content has been pushed aside, I think that some sort of PP (whether 500/30 or something else) would serve an important role in stabilizing the TA. François Robere (talk) 10:18, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by MyMoloboaccount

I support making sure Icewhiz socks are finally dealt with, this individual attacked people's families and personal lives in real life and has manipulated numerous articles on Wikipedia that will need years to be corrected, even going as far as claiming that Nazis in Poland only killed Polish "political dissidents". The numerous socks that have been active show a unprecedented level of obsession we know only from some very determined sock masters like English Patriot Man and have already attacked users on their personal talk pages. This shouldn't be happening on encyclopedia. Any form of sock puppetry or meat puppetry for Icewhiz should be dealt with firmly to avoid further manipulations and harassment for the good of the project. --MyMoloboaccount (talk) 11:50, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Beyond My Ken

(As perhaps the only commenter so far not really involved.) I think that TonyBallioni may be correct, that of the two options offered, 500/30 is the least disruptive. Some editors may worry that 500/30 is becoming too widespread, but my observation is that it's really only used for the most controversial subject areas, and it's largely on our presentation of information in these areas that Wikipedia will judged by our readers. We need to be as squeaky clean as possible on those topics, so that our reputation for accuracy, neutrality and relevance remains as strong as is possible. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:24, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Levivich

Sarah made a good point here. Also, WP:PC should be considered as an alternative to 30/500. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 03:58, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by K.e.coffman

I've been involved in the topic and I'd encourage Arbcom to adopt this amendment. At the very least, SEMI should be applied to remove disruption from IPs in the mainspace, with 30/500 applied to BLPs; see for example my post to RFPP in re: Barbara Engelking:

• A BLP that is a subject of antisemitic editing, such as [17] from an IP or incoherent, also vaguely antisemitic confirmed accounts such as [18].

Still, given the amount of apparently dedicated SPAs and socks, ECP seems the way to go across the board. It works in the Israel-Palestine area and will work in this topic area. It's simply not an area for newbie accounts to cut their teeth on. Good-faith accounts would still be able to post comments and request changes on Talk pages. --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:24, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Zero0000

I don't edit in this area, but I have a lot of experience with the 500/30 rule in the ARBPIA domain. Any restriction will discourage some good editors, but overall 500/30 has been of benefit to the area. It doesn't prevent all disruptive socking (a particularly bad one was blocked just recently) but it raises the effort enough to keep away all but the most dedicated. Good editors who want to contribute before achieving 500/30 can use the "edit request" feature on the talk page and such requests that are reasonable are usually performed. That also gives us a chance to teach newbies about things like NPOV and RS before they are allowed into articles by themselves. Zero^talk 14:26, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Regarding the scope, it should include events in the aftermath of WW2 such as the 1946 Kielce pogrom, and it should include modern debate on the subject. I don't know if that follows already from "broadly construed" but any motion should make it clear. Zero^talk 02:53, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Nigel Ish

The problem with the proposed amendment is that the potential scope is colossal - it effectively prohibits IPs and new registered editors from editing anything to do with World War Two in Europe - because Poles fought almost everywhere in Europe, or from editing any article on Polish towns and cities that have a history section that touches on the Second World War - and all this to stop what appears to be a single editor? If this is passed then the disruptive editors will have won. Note that if low traffic articles are locked then edit requests on the talk pages either won't be seen or will be ignored. If you have to use ECP - then you need to make the scope tight to minimise the damage that it causes, otherwise the disruption to the encyclopedia will be too great.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:08, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Reply to Bradv - The difference is that in practice that the existing rules aren't applied to the whole impossibly diffuse and broadly construed topic area - the actual disruption which this proposal is intended to stop doesn't occur on articles like ORP Błyskawica (Polish warship - "Fewer than 30 watchers") or Supermarine Spitfire (flown by Polish pilots), or SMS M85 (German warship sunk during the invasion of Poland - again "Fewer than 30 watchers") which under this proposal would be under permanent 30/500 protection, which on little watched articles would be an effective prohibition on new editors from editing.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Guerillero

I would ask Arbcom to consider forwarding Icewhiz's past conduct to T&S. They seem to be a good candidate for a SanFranBan and WMF action if they refuse to comply.

That being said, I am slightly worried by the new-found use of Icewhiz's involvement as a "grandma's nightshirt"-type defense by people who, have more than a decade of history editing in a battleground-like way. Icewhiz's socking and harassment are horrible and deserve a SanFranBan, but he showed a clear nationalistic POV and a deficiency in our article on Warsaw concentration camp. I am worried that rolling out 30/500 here will further entrench that POV here on Wikipedia in ways that Israel-Palestine did not because of the smaller pool of interested people. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:21, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Nosebagbear

If we must have one of these two awful solutions (and yes, despite a couple of comments, ECP definitely is being used too much), then 30/500 should be applied to the narrowest possible branch. The history of Jews and Antisemitism in Poland, including the Holocaust in Poland, broadly construed, is more preferable to the slightly broader one below in the Arbs' section. It's not that it would be applied to every random Polish brigade, but that it will be applied to anything not firmly justified by the case. If it could be handled by usual processes, it should not be handled by a more severe method.

I'd suggest The history of Jews and Antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. as the narrowest viable route, and hope it would be considered. Nosebagbear (talk) 10:12, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by SarahSV

The Holocaust historian Jan Grabowski wrote an article about Wikipedia for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in February. He alleges that Polish nationalists are distorting Holocaust history on the English Wikipedia. The newspaper has a daily print circulation of 107,000 and 110,000 digital subscribers (as of 2017). Is it not possible that some of these new accounts are people in Poland responding to that article? Poland's Act on the Institute of National Remembrance makes it a civil offence to imply that Poland shared responsibility for the Holocaust, which could explain the use of proxies.

Recent examples of good edits that would not have happened with 30/500 protection in place:

1. On 20 May at Numerus clausus, a one-edit account removed what seemed to be a justification for antisemitism (because of the way it was written), supported by a link to a Polish-language book with no further citation details. Piotrus reported the account as an Icewhiz sock and called the edit "POV-pushing".

2. On 19 May at Polish Armed Forces in the West, a new SPA, Semper honestus, added a paragraph about a Polish WWII concentration camp in Scotland and the antisemitism faced by Polish-Jewish soldiers. I haven't checked the edit or the sources, but it has the potential to be an interesting addition to the article. Piotrus removed it. Semper restored. Piotrus removed. Semper followed up on talk, then restored and expanded it.

3. On 12 May at Anti-Polish sentiment, an IP removed an unsourced/poorly sourced and arguably antisemitic passage. It was supported by a bare URL that leads to several articles in Polish, so it's unclear what the source is. The edit concerned a saying, "our tenements, your streets" ("Wasze ulice, nasze kamienice") that was attributed to Jewish landlords in Poland: you own the streets, but we own the buildings (source). This saying was apparently very damaging. It was added in 2012 without a source by Cambrium, a little-used account. The bare URL source was added in 2019 by Xx236.

Piotrus restored the edit. KasiaNL, now blocked as an Icewhiz sock, removed it with the edit summary "source abuse". Piotrus restored. Another SPA removed it. Folly Mox, a sporadically used account, restored. François Robere removed it as unsourced and started a discussion on talk.

50/300 would have prevented all of the above, and there are many more such examples in this topic area. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:19, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Antisemitism in Poland: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Antisemitism in Poland: Arbitrator views and discussion

• Noting that I (and I'm sure other arbs) have read the thread, but I'm waiting a couple of days for more input before commenting. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:38, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
• I find the proposal reasonable. Maxim_(talk) 13:11, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
• Waiting for more input like NYB. Both PC and SEMI do not require any ArbCom motion and can already be applied under WP:PP where disruption allows for it although of course that won't stop autoconfirmed socks. While I'm not a fan of flagged revisions as used by other projects, maybe these kinds of problems make it worthwhile reconsidering authorizing WP:PC2 as a tool like ECP (i.e. only to be used with strict ArbCom oversight and authorization)? Regards SoWhy 08:37, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
• This is a very reasonable request. Since the ban of Icewhiz, good-faith editors in this topic area have spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with edits from new users and trying to figure out whether they are legitimate new users or a very experienced editor pretending to be new, and we need some new tools to be able to deal with that. Even without the sockpuppetry aspect, it makes considerable sense for new users not to be able to edit the content directly given the extra sourcing expectations in effect. I also concur with TonyBallioni's assessment that pending changes is not the blanket solution here – while it may work for some low-traffic articles, the system completely falls apart when the article is subject to edit warring or edit conflicts, particularly between autoconfirmed and non-autoconfirmed editors. I shall work on a motion. – bradv🍁 16:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nigel Ish and TonyBallioni: this is the same topic area that is currently subject to the article sourcing restriction of this case. Would it not make sense to keep these two in sync?

  I realize that this is going to prevent some good-faith editors from making their edits directly, but it's a trade off against the amount of disruption present in this topic area. Extended-confirmed edit requests usually get tended to quite promptly, and there is a much larger pool of editors capable of dealing with these requests than there are admins familiar with the behaviour of Icewhiz socks. – bradv🍁 18:51, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

  @Nigel Ish: Rather than change the topic area, the other option would be to only authorize this for areas with a history of disruption or sockpuppetry, or where an uninvolved administrator believes that such disruption will be likely. I agree that an article about a warship isn't likely to cause a problem. TonyBallioni, thoughts? – bradv🍁 19:32, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

• Also waiting for some more input, but I hear the complaints about disruption and I'm leaning toward supporting Bradv's motion as something we should try. @Guerillero: T&S has been aware for some time. Katie^talk 15:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Motion: Antisemitism in Poland

The following is added as a remedy to the Antisemitism in Poland arbitration case: 7) 500/30 restriction: All IP editors, users with fewer than 500 edits, and users with less than 30 days' tenure are prohibited from editing articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. This prohibition may be enforced preemptively by use of extended confirmed protection (ECP), or by other methods such as reverts, pending changes protection, and appropriate edit filters. Reverts made solely to enforce the 500/30 rule are not considered edit warring.

• • Editors who are not eligible to be extended-confirmed may use the Talk: namespace to post constructive comments and make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive. Talk pages where disruption occurs may be managed by the methods mentioned above.
  • Standard discretionary sanctions as authorized by the Eastern Europe arbitration case remain in effect for this topic area.

Enacted - Moneytrees🌴^{Talk🌲Help out at CCI!} 18:57, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

For this motion there are 11 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 6 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0–1	6
2–3	5
4–5	4

Support

1. Proposed, per my comments above. – bradv🍁 16:49, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
2. Reluctant support. Reluctant because 500/30 represents a serious step back from our general policy of welcoming new editors to contribute to the encyclopedia, and it's a shame it is ever necessary to impose it. Support because I accept the consensus of those most experienced with this topic-area that such a drastic step has become necessary in this instance. I hope that it won't be necessary to continue this level of protection permanently and that at some point we will be able to relax it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:37, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
3. Basically what NYB said (more eloquently than I could have). Regards SoWhy 19:23, 19 May 2020 (UTC)
4. Maxim_(talk) 19:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
5. Support. unfortunately seems to be the best solution. DGG ( talk ) 18:08, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
6. Katie^talk 17:51, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

• I've wordsmithed this a bit so as not to provide overlap with DS already in effect for the Eastern Europe topic area. Blocks, topic bans, and other remedies should be handled through DS – the intent of this motion is to allow preemptive extended-confirmed protection of articles in this topic area. Further comments and wordsmithing welcome. – bradv🍁 17:58, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

  I think we should adopt Nosebagbear's suggestion of a narrower topic area. We can always add new areas if it proves necessary but I agree with Nosebagbear that there are sufficient examples of articles that this would apply to that are not (currently) the focus of these disruptive activities and are also unlikely to become the focus in the future. Regards SoWhy 10:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

  Amended to use Nosebagbear's wording. I know this is still a bit broader than Piotrus suggests, but this should also cover the rise of antisemitism prior to 1939, which has also been a point of contention. – bradv🍁 15:17, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: Palestine-Israel articles (July 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by Zero0000 at 17:15, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• Zero0000 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Statement by Zero0000

In accordance with the ARBPIA General Sanctions, non-extended-confirmed editors are permitted to edit talk pages of ARBPIA articles under certain conditions. However, "This exception does not apply to other internal project discussions such as AfDs, WikiProjects, RfCs, noticeboard discussions, etc.". My question is: Is a formal move proposal, as made using the {{requested move}} template, an example of "other internal project discussions"?

My opinion is that a move proposal is very similar to an RfC and so should be treated the same.

Thanks for your time. Zero^talk 17:15, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

To editor Bradv: I think your interpretation of "content" is narrower than intended. The very fact that the rules for talk space editing, AfDs, etc, are called "exceptions" proves that "content" is intended to include them. I believe that "content" just means "all content" in the ordinary English sense and it isn't a specific reference to article space. Zero^talk 04:14, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Also, there is nothing to stop non-ECs from discussing the topic of an on-going RfC on the talk page; they are only prohibited from taking part in the RfC itself. I believe this is important because of the number of new accounts or IPs that come out of nowhere just to "vote" in RfCs. I expect that a large fraction are socks, people editing while logged out, or people responding to off-wiki canvassing. Zero^talk 05:04, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by selfstudier

The question came up here, I thought RM is not allowed and at first @El C: thought it was OK and then decided it wasn't. Perhaps it should be made clear that it is not allowed (in practice, it is similar to an RFC).Selfstudier (talk) 18:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Beyond My Ken

I see RMs as being very similar to RfCs in nature, so my feeling is that if RfCs are disallowed, RMs should be as well. The question of how to title an article is, after all, an "internal project discussion". Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:46, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Can I Log In

I've been following this clarification request since the beginning, and it seems like bradv pointed out interesting information that the 500/30 restriction applies to editing content only. So as worded, non-500/30 users may participate in "other internal project discussions".

Now let's look at WP:ARBPIA3, finding of fact No. 3

3) The Palestine-Israel topic area has been continuously plagued by sockpuppetry. (Kingsindian's Evidence)

Passed 11 to 0 at 15:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, that was from ~4.5 years ago, but when you consider this to be a long-term problem, it's likely that the problem persist.

So with this underlying fact and intention/principle, I think that the 500/30 restriction does apply to RM as well as other internal project or vote-like discussions in any ArbCom/community areas of conflict. Sockpuppetry is small, but when discovered, is huge. 01:00, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Narky Blert

There is a general legal principle that exceptions are to be construed narrowly. This is to provide legal certainty to people who might be affected. The topic in question is an exception to an exception, and the same principles apply.

I find the wording "such as AfDs, WikiProjects, RfCs, noticeboard discussions, etc." unclear. What are its boundaries? I suggest that "such as" be replaced by "including but not limited to".

In the case at hand, I consider that a WP:RM is of the same nature as the things already listed, and should be explicitly mentioned. Narky Blert (talk) 09:30, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Palestine-Israel articles: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Palestine-Israel articles: Arbitrator views and discussion

• My understanding of that clause is that "other internal discussions" refers to discussions that take place in locations other than the talk page of an article. Requested move discussions, as with other talk page discussions, can be managed by the methods listed in paragraph b, but only when disruption occurs. – bradv🍁 15:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

  GorillaWarfare, my understanding is that non-extended-confirmed editors are permitted to edit talk pages and other discussions, "provided they are not disruptive". They are only prohibited from editing the articles themselves. So they can contribute to RMs and RfCs, but if they are disruptive they can be banned from the talk page, but not from other internal discussions. – bradv🍁 16:30, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

  I suppose there's another interpretation of the General Sanctions that says that non-edit-confirmed editors are prohibited from participating in "other internal discussions". Perhaps someone can clarify the intent of the word "exception" in paragraph B-1, as I might be confused. – bradv🍁 17:25, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

  Follow up, having read this more carefully:

  ARBPIA General Sanctions, as currently worded, only applies the 500/30 prohibition to "editing content". There is an exception (extension?) to apply that rule to talk pages in the case of disruption, but that clause does not apply to "internal project discussions".

  As worded, this restriction does not prohibit new editors from participating in RMs, RfC, AfDs, or any other internal discussions, as they are not "editing content". If that was not the intent of the motion, it should be reworded. – bradv🍁 14:09, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

• I'm a little split on this one, given that they are very similar to RfCs. As to Bradv's point about discussions happening away from the talk page, RfCs fairly often happen on the articles' talk pages and my understanding is that non-30/500 users are not allowed to participate then either (though please correct me if I'm wrong—my particular editing interests do not take me into the area of Palestine-Israel articles very often). GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:05, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

  I don't think I agree with Bradv's interpretation of "editing content"—I don't think "content" is meant to refer to "article content", but rather is just a vague term to refer to any editing. I agree with my other colleagues that RMs would seem to be prohibited, as are RfCs. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

• I think the prohibition applies here, they're similar both to RfCCs, and AfDs; a title move in this area can be very consequential, and tend to be disruptive. DGG ( talk ) 17:12, 22 June 2020 (UTC) .
• In the interests of a conservative reading to avoid disruption and the problems with the topic area, I'd agree that the prohibition would apply. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 18:06, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• I see where bradv is coming from and I agree that interpreting that exception it seems to be limited to discussions that are about more than just a single page even with the "RfCs" wedged in there. Moves can be controversial, yes, but so can changes in content. It makes no sense to say "You are allowed to argue for the change of everything but the name is off limits". Consequently, I would argue that the "RfCs" reverse-exception currently does not cover RfCs that are limited to the page in question and are held on the talk page because those RfCs do not fit the "internal discussions" definition (unlike AFDs, WikiProjects etc.). To take another example: WP:DAILYMAILRFC was an "internal discussion" because it was about whether to qualify a newspaper as a reliable source. The RfC held at Talk:Daily Mail/Archive 5#RfC on adding substantial number of lawsuits was not an "internal discussion" because it was only about what to include in this specific article. Regards SoWhy 08:03, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
• To me a Requested Move is short hand for Request for Comment on a Move. Seems fairly obvious that the rules should be the same Worm^TT(talk) 17:28, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
• I can't see how an RM discussion isn't an "internal project discussion." If that's the only question here that would be my answer. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:22, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
• Uphold prohibition/ restrictions in this case. Seems just as contentious as warring over content. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:02, 3 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: India-Pakistan (July 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by Shashank5988 at 16:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/India-Pakistan

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. AE Appeal of Mar4d

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• Shashank5988 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Mar4d (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• RegentsPark (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• El C (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Black Kite (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Bishonen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• TonyBallioni (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Mar4d
• RegentsPark
• El C
• Black Kite
• Bishonen
• TonyBallioni

Information about amendment request

• AE Appeal of Mar4d

• Appeal's result should be overturned

Statement by Shashank5988

As WP:ARE comes under the jurisdiction of Arbcom and Arbcom has the authority to overturn and/or modify any of the enforcement made on WP:ARE, I am bringing to your attention a case related to a topic ban appeal by User:Mar4d at the above-mentioned board, in which the evidence of a number of violations was not taken into consideration while granting the appeal.

It is important at the outset that I clarify that there are no issues with the closing admin's closure, as he merely carried out the agreement amongst administrators.[19]

However the problems, which are major in nature, pertain to the way the appeal was handled, which I deem to be not in consonance with the relevant Wikipedia guidelines and policies. I shall enumerate them below:

• To begin with, the very first sentence of the user's appeal was not borne out by facts. It read, and I quote: "I would like to humbly appeal for lifting a topic ban restriction which dates back to May 2018. The restriction in question was applied collectively amongst at least nine other editors at the time, with the option to appeal in 6 months' time, which I did not choose to exercise until now."[20] (emphasis mine) The veracity of this statement was never tested or questioned and the user was taken at his words despite there was a glaring prevarication in what he stated because Mar4d was amongst the users who had collectively appealed their sanctions to Arbcom on WP:ARCA,[21] and was notified of the subsequent rejection thereof.[22] This revelation was never made in the appeal and the user thereby committed open perfidy; the failure of the admins to see through this betrayed a lack of due diligence on their part.

• Several instances of unambiguous topic ban violations, misrepresentation of sources while adding text to articles committed by the user were bought to the attention at AE, none of which were addressed by the admins who took part in evaluating the appeal.

Recent topic ban violations and source misrepresentation as presented on AE

Two edits by Mar4d were mentioned on AE which dealt with the subject of Partition of India, per here, here, and here. A page move of Persecution of Biharis in Bangladesh, a subject which is much about 1971 Bangladesh genocide and Bangladesh Liberation War was also mentioned here, [23] and here. Misrepresentation of sources in the recent edits by Mar4d was also brought into attention on here, here, here as per these edits by Mar4d: [24][25] where the sources do not support the controversial information added by Mar4d.

Note that the topic ban concerns "conflict between India and Pakistan, broadly construed" and "any further disruption or testing of the edges of the topic ban are likely to be met with either an indefinite IPA topic ban or an indefinite block".[26] WP:BROADLY is very clear in this topic ban from the beginning.

• The very first comment under the section devoted to the "uninvolved admins" was made by RegentsPark, an involved party who commented in the aforesaid section in disregard of WP:INVOLVED, and even when the same was pointed out to them they didn't pay any heed to it and nearly all other admins who commented based their views on Regentspark's comment.[27][28]

The fact that the user deliberately omitted any mention of past appeals, and in fact denying having appealed in the past at all, coupled with a series of topic ban infringements, among other issues, and the failure of administrators to address these issues before granting the appeal makes this case ripe enough to be considered by the Arbcom. Shashank5988 (talk) 16:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Mar4d

@JzG: Please take a look at the closure of the said appeal dating to June 2018, of which Shashank5988 gives the impression that I was substantially involved in. Of all the editors who received the TBAN, I was the only user who didn't lodge a single statement there or verbally challenge the sanction. I could have easily chosen to get involved, but that's besides the point. Shashank5988 only got one part right, I did indeed add my name to the "List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request", and even that was a procedural edit and because the filer had left a message on my talk a week earlier. That was my only edit to the "appeal". Shashank5988's claim that I "committed open perfidy" is laughable at best. Mar4d (talk) 18:38, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Dear RegentsPark, El C, Black Kite, Bishonen, TonyBallioni, JzG, Vanamonde93 etc.: In my ten plus years of editing, I have had virtually zero direct interaction with this user (Shashank5988) across a single article, discussion, you name it, anywhere. That hasn't stopped Shashank5988 from appearing first at an ARBIPA-infested ANI thread in December 2018 to oppose me, then at my recent arbitration enforcement appeal out of nowhere, and if that wasn't enough, this fresh ARCA despite the admin who closed my AE advising them otherwise. Given this won't be the first or last time I've been frivolously hounded (to wit), I just don't understand why can't we topic ban this user already for wasting everyone's time? I hope I haven't committed blasphemy by suggesting so. I'm not even touching yet the other deliberate, obfuscating accusations. I've been largely patient, honestly. Mar4d (talk) 19:06, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@SoWhy: Thanks for your closing view. In my comment above, I had expressed concerns regarding possible hounding from the filer. Could you advise what would be the correct course of action if this pattern were to continue in the future? Many thanks, Mar4d (talk) 16:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

SoWhy: Noted, thanks. Mar4d (talk) 18:15, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by RegentsPark

I don't consider myself involved re Mar4d but do apologize to Shashank5988 for not seeing their comment on the AE page (I see a ping in there, which I somehow missed, so the fault lies with me). Regardless, doubtless the other admins did look into the various allegations I see on the AE thread and made their decisions independently. I don't really see a big issue with not removing the ban from Mar4d. As I said on AE, they've complied with the spirit of the ban and we can't ask for a whole lot more from an editor. --regentspark (comment) 19:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by El C

I don't really have much more to add beyond my evaluation at AE. The risk of further disruption by lifting the ban seems low enough to be worthwhile. El_C 17:08, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't see how some previous interactions with Mar4d make regentspark an involved party. That assertion has not been established to my satisfaction. El_C 17:33, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Black Kite that the basis for this request could be viewed as problematic. The Committee may wish to impose sanctions on the filer themselves for making a frivolous request. El_C 19:32, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Black Kite

Just a thought, but perhaps the admins at AE did actually look at the alleged "several instances of unambiguous topic ban violations (and) misrepresentation of sources while adding text to articles committed by the user" and decided that they either weren't violations or were very minor? And perhaps they did look at the claim that User:RegentsPark was WP:INVOLVED, and dismissed it? As I said at the AE, I take a very dim view of people that spend a significant amount of their time on Wikipedia trying to keep ideological opponents banned from articles, something which the filer of this (and a number of other editors in this area) have done recently - though I certainly didn't expect them to double down on it by taking up many people's time with an ARCA request as well. It suggests to me a battleground mindset rather than one that is dedicated to actually improving an encyclopedia. Black Kite (talk) 19:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Bishonen

Black Kite puts it so well I can only agree with every word he says. Plus a technicality: sorry, but it itches me to see RegentsPark apologising for "missing" Shashank5988's ping, when the ping wasn't correctly done and therefore didn't work.[29][30] Shashank5988, please see Help:Fixing failed pings for how to fix a faulty ping. Bishonen | tålk 21:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC).

Statement by TonyBallioni

I’ll just say what I said on my talk page: I don’t think there are any procedures allowing the committee to overturn a successful appeal of a discretionary sanction if there’s actually consensus to do so (I guess I could see it if the closing admin badly misread, but this was unanimous.)

On the merits, this was an older sanction and there was consensus to lift it to give them another chance. I’m typically very anti-ROPE and think any argument that relies on it is usually a bad argument, but here we had a user who was generally constructive and demonstrated that the potential benefits outweighed the known risks. That’s my standard, which I think was met here. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:09, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by JzG

Surely the simplest thing is to let matters stand, and move for another ban should Mar4d resume disruptive editing in this area? If Mar4d is as deceptive as Shashank5988 says, surely they will be back at this board in short order, with past sanctions being taken into account. Guy (help!) 17:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Mar4d note the word "if" in the above ;-) Guy (help!) 20:59, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Ivanvector

The original topic ban should be extended to Shashank5988 for this bad-faith request, which has no purpose other than to harass someone they perceive as an ideological opponent. What else could possibly be the point of this admin-shopping request? We have ARBIPA DS and WP:GS/IPAK general sanctions to stamp out exactly this sort of drama-mongering and battleground behaviour, which has plagued this highly contentious topic area for years and years; we should use the tools available to us here. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 00:28, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Guerillero

Arbcom could theoretically impose the same exact sanction as the one lifted at AE as a sua sponte action of the committee, but that is the only way, under the current procedures, that a lifted sanction by a consensus of AE admins can be reversed by the committee. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 17:17, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Nosebagbear

This is already heading the general way I agree with, so I just want to make a more specific aspect: I question whether ARBCOM have the right to overturn appeals made on the grounds of misapplied factual judgements, as opposed to incorrect cited policy or a poor close. Still, that aside, I would generally say that ARBCOM not only should lead most judgements to AE but a higher limit must be reached before they start overturning successful appeals than either overturning blocks or unsuccessful appeals. That's somewhat on a reading of the applicable appeal policy but also on a sense of balance. The arb comments seem to suggest that it's hardly a bizarre viewpoint. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:17, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

India-Pakistan: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion

• I trust the consensus of the five very experienced AE admins who reviewed the appeal. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
• Decline. There is nothing to clarify or amend here. While I do not think ArbCom is completely barred from overruling AE as an ultima ratio, the whole system is designed to not have ArbCom interfere in the day to day operations. There is no evidence presented that was not already mentioned (and rejected) at the AE that would require us to step in and revert the consensus of these very experienced admins to lift the restrictions. Plus, as Guy mentions, lifting a topic ban does not mean it cannot be reimposed swiftly if the editor in question again displays the kind of behavior that lead to the first ban. Regards SoWhy 07:21, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

  @Mar4d: If you believe there is a conduct issue, WP:CONDUCTDISPUTE outlines the possible steps to address this. As a last resort, you can request arbitration. Regards SoWhy 17:06, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see a reason for ArbCom to get involved. The appeal got plenty of attention. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 19:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• If there was some indication that the appeal was mishandled, it might make sense for us to review it, but with multiple experienced admins reviewing the appeal in detail I see no reason for us to step in. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:15, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
• I'm seeing this as falling within the admins bounds for decision. Decline. Worm^TT(talk) 17:29, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
• There would have to be a very compelling reason for us to overturn a consensus from AE, and I'm just not seeing it here. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:11, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Anti-harassment RfC (July 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by EllenCT at 15:11, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Anti-harassment RfC

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

Proposed diff

1. Topics on which comment is requested

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• EllenCT (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Information about amendment request

• Topics on which comment is requested

• The RfC should request comments on all of the topics of its mandate.

Statement by EllenCT

Dear Arbcom,

As discussed at its talk page I ask the Committee to amend WP:AHRFC such that the requests include all portions of the mandate as given: "focus on how harassment and private complaints should be handled in the future."

At present, private complaints are covered but there is no section, for example, where discussing long-term harassment issues and solutions would be appropriate.

Dear Clerks, the section heading levels on that RfC are odd, too.

Thank you all for your kind service. EllenCT (talk) 15:11, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

@Worm That Turned and David Fuchs: I'm happy to create a supplemental separate RFC, especially if you think it would be better than amending the one which has been running. When I came upon it it said that you hadn't opened it, but someone else apparently had. EllenCT (talk) 16:56, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

I withdraw this request in favor of this proposed supplemental RfC outline. EllenCT (talk) 15:04, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Anti-harassment RfC: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Anti-harassment RfC: Arbitrator views and discussion

• Ellen, I'm one of the Arbs that was actually involved in the Fram case... indeed, I wrote most of the initial decision. The intention of the RfC was to plug the "hole" that plausibly existed about "on-wiki" behaviour that needed to be handled through "off-wiki" mean, due to the points raised in the RfC. There were some side questions that were also raised as part of that and the RfC that has been published has posed those too. It was never meant as a general RfC on harassment on Wikipedia and how to handle that. While a general RfC may well be worthwhile, this should be community led, not Arbcom led and so I'd encourage you to consider raising a separate one about the concerns you'd like covered in the future. Worm^TT(talk) 09:00, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
• Having read your specific query on the talk page I don't see how that's singularly relevant for the terms of the RfC. It's not about grinding personal axes; its framing is rather deliberately not totally open-ended. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: Brahma Kumaris (July 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by BlackcurrantTea at 07:13, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Brahma Kumaris arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• BlackcurrantTea (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Statement by BlackcurrantTea

One of the remedies in this case was that Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, since renamed Brahma Kumaris, was placed on article probation. A notice was added to the talk page.

Article probation is now obsolete. I've recently replaced notices on other talk pages with {{Ds/talk notice}}. These notices require a decision code (topic= ) for the associated case, and there isn't one listed for Brahma Kumaris in the template documentation. I haven't found any indication that the sanctions have been lifted; however, the case is from 2007 and my search may have missed it.

Have the sanctions been lifted, or do they remain in effect? If they remain in effect, the notice should be replaced by a new discretionary sanctions template; if the sanctions have been lifted, the article probation notice should be removed.

I don't think the article needs ArbCom-level sanctions. I looked at edits from the last three years, and the community has been able to handle the disruptive editing that's occurred. Ravensfire has regularly reverted non-neutral and unsourced changes to the article, and I've left a note on their talk page mentioning this request for clarification should they wish to express their opinion.

Although the pace of editing has increased slightly since the beginning of the year, in the last five years it's been less than a tenth of what it was in 2007 at the time of the case. The article has only had protection added once during that time, for two weeks in 2015. Were Brahma Kumaris brought up at a noticeboard right now as needing some form of attention, it's unlikely that it would get anything more than a few people adding it to their watchlists, if that.

I found Brahma Kumaris and other articles which still had the probation template by using Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:Article probation. It looks like there are a few other pages left with different notices, e.g. Talk:Naked short selling#Article probation, and more with a section like Talk:The Masked Avengers' prank on Sarah Palin#Article probation that refer to a now-archived subpage. I've only taken a quick look at those.

Statement by Ravensfire

I've had the article on my watchlist for a bit but really only revert the obvious POV edit from one side or the other. It's pretty rare at this point to see edits to the article. I think the restrictions did their job and it's time to retire them. If something starts up again, I think there are adequate resources available to handle most problems. Ravensfire (talk) 04:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by L235

My thanks to BlackcurrantTea for bringing this up and for looking through the list of active restrictions. If anything else comes up, this would be a good time to get the housekeeping out of the way. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 23:33, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Brahma Kumaris: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Brahma Kumaris: Arbitrator views and discussion

• This arbitration case was decided more than 13 years ago and none of the current arbitrators will be familiar with it. It is so long ago that our occasional reviews of old discretionary sanctions will have missed it, because it predated the change in terminology. At this point, are there current problems with editing of the article that warrant having ArbCom-level sanctions in place? Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
• Given how long article probation has been obsolete, and that this is only coming up now, my feeling is that discretionary sanctions are probably not needed here. However I'm open to input from those active in the topic area if they feel differently. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:08, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
• A quick review of the article's editing history does not reveal any problems that would require ArbCom-level sanctions and I cannot find any (recent) entries for this case in either the log or AE (the last time enforcement was requested based on this case was in 2010 (incidentally by now-arb Beeblebrox)). As such, I support formally rescinding the remedies of this case (at least the article probation, although the ban on the 195-IP probably is worthless after 13 years as well). Regards SoWhy 07:20, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

I thought this sounded vaguely familiar but I couldn't remember why. If that was the last time this was even brought up I have to agree, we probably don't need it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:28, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

• I think it would be reasonable to remove the arb sanction. Any subsequent disruption can be dealt with by the community DGG ( talk ) 21:00, 15 July 2020 (UTC)

Motion: Brahma Kumaris

Remedy 3 of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Brahma Kumaris, "article probation", is hereby terminated.

For this motion there are 13 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 7 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0–1	7
2–3	6
4–5	5

Enacted: Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 18:18, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:37, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
2. SoWhy 15:49, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
3. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:57, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
4. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:59, 11 July 2020 (UTC)
5. Katie^talk 12:13, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
6. Maxim_(talk) 12:21, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
7. Worm^TT(talk) 13:52, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
8. DGG ( talk ) 21:50, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
9. – bradv🍁 13:54, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
10. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 17:02, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

• Copyedited, hopefully non-controversially, to substitute "terminated" (meaning "it's ended as of now") for "rescinded" (which could be read to mean "it was never good," although we haven't always used it that way). Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:57, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• Plus "terminated" just sounds cooler. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:29, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

• Are there other stragglers like this that were missed in the DS cleanup? GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:59, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Falun Gong (August 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by Marvin 2009 at 05:27, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Falun Gong arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• Marvin 2009 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• PatCheng (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• PCPP (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Guerillero (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• diff of notification PatCheng
• diff of notification PCPP
• diff of notification Guerillero

Information about amendment request

• indefinite topic ban from Falun Gong, broadly construed

Statement by Marvin 2009

Can an editor who has been under a topic ban use a sock puppet to report another editor to arbitration enforcement? Clearly not. And if the editor do so before the sock puppetry is uncovered, should any sanction arising from his or her complaint be nullified, after the sock puppetry is uncovered?

By the end of June, I was informed for an indefinite topic ban from Falun Gong in response to PatCheng's arbitration enforcement request. On July 27, both PatCheng and PCPP were blocked, as PatCheng has been confirmed to be a sock puppet of PCPP who has been topic banned on Falun Gong since Nov 2011. I am requesting a clarification that whether the topic ban enforced on me due to PatCheng's AE request should be nullified? Thanks. Precious Stone (Marvin 2009) 05:27, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

@Tantusar: In response to PatCheng's complaint, yes, in the beginning one admin was concerned about edit warring and aspersions casting.I replied to the admin right away at that time explaining how each of my altogether 7 edits in June was not edit warring (even not 1RR), and nor did i cast any aspersions in communicating with others. On the contrary, I was the one who was attacked by POV editors. After that, there has been no further response from that admin. Thanks. Precious Stone (Marvin 2009) 13:38, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by PatCheng

Statement by PCPP

Statement by Guerillero

You may also want to take a look at

• User talk:Guerillero/Archives/2020/July#It seems that the AE report against me was from a sock puppet account (posted 17 July 2020)
• Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log#Falun Gong 2
• Ongoing ANI thread
• AE Thread that lead to the existing sanctions

Marvin 2009 has been trying their darnedest to reverse their topic ban; this is the fourth try in a month to reverse their topic ban. I stand by the topic ban and point to the fact that each of the 4 have failed to follow WP:NOTTHEM. Marvin 2009 interacts with dispute resolution as if it was a court or justice system instead of as a system to prevent disruption. The topic ban is from an area that is plagued with edit warring, aspersions, and general intractability. The whole area may need an additional arb case shortly to do another round of site/topic bans and place 30/500 over the topic area --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 15:02, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Newslinger

See the following discussions for context:

• WP:AN § Appealing my topic ban – posted 27 July 2020
• User talk:Guerillero § Could you please consider to cancel the topic ban added on me? – posted 28 July 2020

This amendment request is Marvin 2009's third appeal of their topic ban this week. — Newslinger talk 09:46, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Tantusar

That PatCheng was a sockpuppet seems to me to be largely irrelevant to whether Marvin 2009 should or should not have received a topic ban. The administrators on the enforcement request found that Marvin was edit warring and casting aspersions. PatCheng's behaviour does not change these findings. Suggest amendment request be denied. Tantusar (talk) 11:18, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Seraphimblade

I do not see any particular relevance to the fact that the AE complaint was brought by someone later found to be a sockpuppet. Even at that request, the three of us who discussed it did note that the PatCheng account seemed awfully fishy in the way they were behaving, and for that reason (among others) they were sanctioned as well. Marvin 2009's sanction has already been subject to, and upheld by, community review at AN, so I think it is shown to be valid. It is not unusual, at AE, for a filer of a request for sanctions to themselves have engaged in misbehavior too, but that cannot mean we just ignore what they bring up if the concerns are indeed legitimate. It may mean, as in this request, that both parties wind up sanctioned.

That aside, I'll reiterate my concern that there has been a lot of unusual behavior in regards to Falun Gong, including sleeper accounts popping right back to activity the moment a serious dispute starts. I still think that warrants a closer look, and finding the sockpuppetry here makes me think so even more. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:47, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by JzG

I think Newyorkbrad is right. Socking to report other users is a high risk strategy, and any report is unlikely to result in sanctions unless the behaviour merits it. Which in this case it seems to have done. Marvin was edit-warring to advance a POV, and his only excuse was "but look at all this bias". He has under 5,400 edits, over 11 years, and FG topics dominate. I don't think he's here to be part of the wider project. Guy (help!) 21:50, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Falun Gong: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• This request seeks to overturn an arbitration enforcement action. I have therefore reformatted this request as an amendment request for the original case and named the administrator who imposed the sanction as a party. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:43, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Falun Gong: Arbitrator views and discussion

• This would be akin to fruit of the poisonous tree if this were a judicial system. Since it's not, overturning an AE topic ban for that reason alone is not required (and from what I understand, the appeal has already been declined for other reasons). Looking at it another way: If a non-topic banned party had requested the enforcement, would it still have been applied? Since the sockpuppetry was not known to the placing administrator at the time, the answer seems to be yes. –xeno^talk 16:42, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• For convenience, link to the topic-ban discussion is here. My approach is similar to Xeno's (and continuing the American legal metaphor for a moment, the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine has its inevitable discovery exception). We obviously don't want people creating or using sockpuppets in edit-wars or to get people sanctioned at AE (or for any other reason), and if the editor's problematic behavior was largely provoked by the since-revealed sock, that fact might be relevant to a sanction decision. But if an editor is behaving so poorly in a DS area that he or she would have been brought to AE by someone else in any event, then it would be pointless bureaucracy to vacate the existing sanction and wait for another AE complaint to be filed with the same result. Pinging the other admins who participated in the AE discussion (@JzG and Seraphimblade:) in case they have any thoughts to share. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:04, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• Broadly agree with the above remarks. The topic ban was imposed based on the sanctioned editors behavior, who did the reporting doesn't change that, this is a website, not a court. The best way forward if you want a topic ban rescinded is to completely ignore said topic for a prolonged period while making positive contributions elsewhere. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:03, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• Agreed with Xeno. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:03, 1 August 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with all the above. Katie^talk 20:28, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
• I also agree with those who commented above. There is no indication that the reporting user being a sock in any way influenced the sanction (as NYB points out), so overturning it just because of that seems to be bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Regards SoWhy 07:13, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Climate change (August 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by Hipocrite at 12:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Climate change arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. Hipocrite topic-banned

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• Hipocrite (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Information about amendment request

• Hipocrite topic-banned

• Termination

Statement by Hipocrite

I have successfully not edited this website for over 1 year at this point, and have, to first order, not edited for over 4 years. I would like this stain removed from my record going forward. I have no present intention to edit this website, but if I were to edit again, I would not, in the future, be nearly as combative with people I disagreed with - instead relying on the wisdom of crowds, as opposed to feeling sole ownership to do the right thing. I have successfully demonstrated this by not editing in large bulk, for the past many years. Over the past 10 years, I have become 10 years more mature and realised that this stuff is mostly meaningless anyway. The one block I received as a result of this sanction was determined to be in error - [31]. I will respond to any direct questions anyone has for me, but otherwise, leave it in your good judgement. Hipocrite (talk) 12:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

@SoWhy: The evidence presented of my not editing for years demonstrates my ability to not get involved and/or walk away from conflict, which was the key failure I believe I needed to fix a decade ago. While I currently have no intention of editing, that might change - however, I'm not very excited to edit with an albatross around my neck. You can review my edits post the case for 5+ years of semi-active participation - I am in no way saying that I did not edit at all - noting that in those 5 years I was not blocked once, while never requesting this restriction be modified. Hipocrite (talk)

@Joe Roe: I don't mean to be smarmy or hypocritical, but you'd review the case if I merely said "I'd like to edit climate change articles again?" Can do. "I'd like to edit climate change articles again, if that's the only way I can get this topic ban lifted." I will pledge to make 15 good non-controversial edits to climate change articles as soon as the topic ban is lifted - here's the first edit - in the "Discovery" section of Global_warming, the first reference to Edme Mariotte refers to them only by Mariotte. Alternatively, the reference to Svante Arrhenius uses his full name. I would attempt to normalise this to full name first time, last name future times unless there's a failure to be clear (S. Arrhenius if there's also an A. Arrhenius). If there's push back, I'd try to go the other way. If there's further pushback, I'd just leave it in the non-normalised state it's in. I continue to have no intention to get in any arguments about Climate Change, regardless of the abject wrongness of anyone else. Best wishes. Hipocrite (talk) 10:15, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Climate change: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Climate change: Arbitrator views and discussion

• If you have not edited at all, what evidence should we have to consider that the topic ban is no longer necessary? Also, if you have no intention of further editing, what would be the point of formally removing a remedy? In general, I don't think there is a point to repeal a remedy for editors who are not interested in returning to editing and in this case in particular the very fact that editing ceased means there is no evidence to judge whether the remedy is still required. Regards SoWhy 12:56, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Oh, I don't know – that case was in 2010, and while there's certainly not a lot of recent editing, Hipocrite does have a track record for us to view. I'd like to hear from some others, but I'd be willing to consider vacating it. Katie^talk 15:47, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Pretty much what Katie said, I'm open to the idea but would like to hear a bit more before making any decision. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:24, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not particularly interested in entertaining an appeal from someone for whom the point is some sort of "honor". Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:03, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
• Unless something unexpected is brought to our attention soon, I would grant the request. Ten years is a long time under any circumstances and certainly with respect to this topic-area. (By way of disclosure, although it's not especially relevant now, I was the only 2010 arbitrator who thought the sanction was probably too severe in the first place.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• I would support vacating the old remedy absent evidence it remains necessary. –xeno^talk 17:20, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• If you don't even intend to return to editing, isn't this a bit of a waste of time? You can not edit just as effectively with a topic ban than without. I think we should dismiss this request for now and look at it again if/when Hipocrite actually wants to edit climate change-related articles. – Joe (talk) 08:17, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• The appeal has shown that the restriction is no longer necessary, and while the net effect to the encyclopedia seems the same regardless of whether the restriction is active or not, it remains that the continued restriction does bother the appellant, and thus I see a convincing case to remove it. Maxim_(talk) 12:01, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Motion: Climate Change (Hipocrite)

The restriction imposed on Hipocrite (talk · contribs) by Remedy 14 of the Climate change case ("Hypocrite topic-banned") is hereby lifted.

For this motion there are 9 active arbitrators. With 2 arbitrators abstaining, 4 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0–1	5
2–3	4
4–5	3

Enacted: Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 03:30, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. As no longer necessary. –xeno^talk 12:37, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
2. Per my comment above. Maxim_(talk) 18:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
3. Per my comment above. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:53, 8 August 2020 (UTC)
4. While I fully understand the position of the arbs who think this isn't necessary, I'm generally in favor of lifting older restrictions if there is no demonstrable need to keep them. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:44, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
5. Per my comments above. Edit wisely, Hipocrite. Katie^talk 21:23, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
6. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:52, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

1. Per my and SoWhy's comments above. – Joe (talk) 18:26, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
2. Per above. Regards SoWhy 08:25, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Genetically modified organisms (August 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 21:33, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Genetically modified organisms arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically_modified_organisms#1RR_imposed

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• ProcrastinatingReader (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Information about amendment request

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Genetically_modified_organisms#1RR_imposed

• That the scope of the 1RR remedy be changed to "genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed"

Statement by ProcrastinatingReader

Apologies in advance for the upcoming wikilawyering. In the GMO case, in 2015, the Committee authorised DS and 1RR with the same scope, "all pages relating to genetically modified organisms, agricultural biotechnology, and agricultural chemicals, broadly construed". That was amended in this motion, as a result of a clarification request, and the scope was narrowed to "all pages relating to genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed." That motion only changed the scope for the DS; the 1RR remedy retains the old scope. I suppose if one wanted to wikilawyer this, the 1RR remedy currently has a broader scope than the DS itself. I'm assuming that this was an oversight, rather than intentional?

Statement by Kingofaces43

I was part of drafting both the original ArbCom and the clarification request language on the non-arb editor/subject matter expert side of things. To clarify for ProcrastinatingReader, the second motion did not functionally narrow the DS. It just clarified that yes, agricultural companies related to the locus of the dispute, genetically modified organisms and/or pesticides, were included in the DS. There was no intended change in scope, just tweaking the wording to prevent wikilawyering on scope that as going on at the time. "Agricultural biotechnology" that was also dropped and just treated as being lumped in with GMO in terms of meaning assuming broadly construed would handle the rest. "Commercially produced agricultural chemicals" was basically added to avoid a really WP:BEANS situation of someone saying water was covered by the DS. In short, a lot of care went into clarification on precise wording as opposed to scope changes.

I'd also be curious where ProcrastinatingReader came across this in terms of if there's an area that needs to be looked at further where this became an actual issue, or if they're just being preemptive. I haven't seen anything pop up on my watchlist, so I'll definitely be glad if there isn't a fire to put out.

Functionally, there's no real difference between the two right now since the motion clarifies that the companies are part of the "broadly construed" language of the original, but that also means there's no harm in updating the 1RR language to match the motion. Kingofaces43 (talk) 23:30, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Genetically modified organisms: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Genetically modified organisms: Arbitrator views and discussion

• On an initial reading the request seems logical, but awaiting additional statements. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• Absent arguments against doing so, harmonizing the two seems appropriate to eliminate confusion. DGG: you voted on that 2015 amendment. –xeno^talk 17:18, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
• no objection either. DGG ( talk ) 02:24, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Sounds sensible. I've proposed a motion below. – Joe (talk) 08:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

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Genetically modified organisms: motion

Remedy 2 ("1RR imposed") of Genetically modified organisms is amended to read as follows:

Editors are prohibited from making more than one revert per page per day on any page relating to genetically modified organisms, commercially produced agricultural chemicals and the companies that produce them, broadly construed and subject to the usual exemptions.

For this motion there are 11 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 6 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0–1	6
2–3	5
4–5	4

Enacted: Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 16:33, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. As proposer. – Joe (talk) 08:27, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
2. The reason for the amendment is to match the scope of 1RR with the scope of the discretionary sanctions covering the same subject area. –xeno^talk 12:04, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
3. Per the request above and per Xeno. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:39, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
4. Per above. Regards SoWhy 19:30, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
5. Katie^talk 21:22, 9 August 2020 (UTC)
6. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 13:53, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
7. Maxim_(talk) 13:57, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
8. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:33, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
9. DGG ( talk ) 16:15, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: North8000 (August 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by North8000 at 14:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=756686514#Motion_regarding_North8000

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=756686514#Motion_regarding_North8000

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• North8000 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)

Information about amendment request

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=756686514#Motion_regarding_North8000

• Remove all restrictions. I believe that the older case restrictions were replaced by incorporation into this, but if not, then them too.

Statement by North8000

Request for removal of older Arbcom-placed restrictions.

I have topic bans on tea party movement, gun control, the homophobia article, and post 1932 american politics and a limitation to one account. Most of my restrictions originated in the 2013 tea party movement 2014 gun control cases and the newest (american politics) was placed in 2016 as a sort of “add on” condition when I came back. All were appeal able starting in mid-2017 but I’m just first asking now. I learned and wiki-evolved an immense amount from the entire process, as well as from time and experience. The newest event that any of these were based on was over 6 years ago.

Since (2016) I’ve been active in Wikipedia in wide ranging areas with an additional 12,000+ edits (now 53,000+ total) in article creation & improvement, GA reviews, helping folks out, and very active at NPP / new article curation, policy and guideline page discussions and a range of other areas which provide a diverse “proving out”. . This has all been with zero issues and zero drama of any type. This has not been due to any of the restrictions, it’s just how I roll throughout that period and now. I’m requesting that you remove of all of the restrictions to give me a clean slate. The “clean slate” aspect is more important to me than any restrictions in particular. Thanks for your consideration and of course I'd be happy to answer any questions.North8000 (talk) 14:48, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

responses

• I've treated libertarianism articles as political science, not American politics. That was not an edit war, and Davide King and I respect and compliment each other and value each other's presence and he has thanked me I'd estimate 40 times for my edits. The extraction and characterization of this as something else says much.North8000 (talk) 19:26, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
• Black Kite and others; my view and basis then was that phobia means phobia and that anything else was a then-neologism. But I left voluntarily and never went back even when my promised 1 year was up and no longer had even a self-imposed restriction. Also I no longer want to and don't participate in high-drama debates such as that. I also don't want to ever edit the homophobia article; after all of these years (that was 8 years ago) I just want to have a clean slate. North8000 (talk) 10:01, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

I've considered it to be a mark of impartiality when, for the sake of the article, I disagree with folks who hold the same general real-world POV as my own, and that article was one of those. Also, my view would be the opposite now compared to then due to evolution in the usage of the term over the 8 years. North8000 (talk) 13:42, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

• GorillaWarfare On the Libertarian article, I think I screwed up, but I was treating libertarianism articles as political science rather than politics. Also, the main discussion is at an article that is clearly about political science topic in general but then moved a bit into the "in the US article" and I followed it there and my edit was suggesting keeping it out of there, for other reasons. In hindsight it was a blunder. Also, I still have little experience with that whole general discretionary sanctions area which defined it. That restriction was a proposed add on when I came back which I agreed to, easily, because I never was active on such articles and so also also had no history of issues there. I think that having such an extremely broad restriction (from everything covered by discretionary sanctions) in an area which was just an add-on and not due to past issues supports my request being a reasonable one. North8000 (talk) 02:24, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Springee, I've not requested anyone to weigh in here; I've not even mentioned this on my talk page. I don't know the protocol for this page. I've had 12,000+ diverse edits of pleasant interactions since 2016 and would be confident of the results to ping the last 10 or 200 editors that I've interacted with.North8000 (talk) 02:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Xeno, IMHO the common meanings are different, and also the IMO nature of what happens to those in Wikipedia is very different. If I didn't think so I would have been coming here 3 years ago. Nevertheless, I think that following that one political science discussion when it started spilling to that so-titled artcle was a blunder. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:56, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Re: RFC on source reliability at RSN noticeboard. Practically everything in the US has some connection to US politics. "some connection to" does not equal "IS". The RFC wording is at the top where it should be, and that was what I was discussing, and even then just on a structural problem. The wording indicated was not it or there. North8000 (talk) 02:16, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
• @Newyorkbrad: The timing of my request is a combination of "want to move towards get a clean slate/clean start" and "not in any particular hurry" and "finally got around to asking". I have an interest in almost everything, but regarding editing articles, I have no interest in, and actually a strong aversion to participating in drama of any type. A clean slate would be a very safe and successful move. You have my word on that, but beyond my word, this has already been proven out with very active and diverse participation since 2016 with zero drama. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:20, 16 August 2020 (UTC)
• Springee and Newyorkbrad. Anything that auto-expires to a clean slate in 6 months or a year if all goes well I'd be happy with and IMO should reassure. Like 1RR in article space and only brief light conversations on talk for everything previously under topic bans. For clarity, the US politics would be for when the topic is clearly / specifically US politics. My concern there is that it could otherwise be interpreted to include practically everything, plus I've always been active on political science articles where we have substantial friendly discussions (= not "brief and light"). Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:07, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

However, I can assure you that a simple 100% immediate removal of all restrictions would go very well, and have proven that with zero drama while being active in the rest of wikipedia since coming back in 2016. Also note that the US politics restriction was not from any of my activities, it was an "add on" when I came back. North8000 (talk) 14:32, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by MrX

The committee should reject vacating North8000's topic ban on Homophobia. Although it was eight years ago, his contributions there were entirely disruptive and wasted a great deal of editor's time.[32][33] There is no reason to believe that North8000 has some unique perspective or skill that will benefit this fully developed article. The risk greatly outweighs any potential reward.

At this point, I have no opinion about whether the Tea Party topic ban should remain. Regarding gun control and post-1932 American Politics, I can only say that that topic area has settled down quite a bit in the past few years as a direct result of several editors having been topic banned and editing restrictions having beed imposed on several articles. I may have more to add later. - MrX 🖋 17:44, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Relatively recent edit warring on an American politics article does not help the case:[34]
• These six edits were violations of the gun control topic ban: [35]; Warning:[36]. (To my knowledge, North8000 never responded.) - MrX 🖋 18:10, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Springee

I have only limited engagement with North8000 but I've seen no issues between them and other editors. The tbans are 8 years old, if they haven't caused trouble since I think its safe to assume they have learned better ways to deal with editorial disagreements. If problems return it's not like the tban's can't be reinstated. In cases like this we should always err on the side of assuming good faith. Springee (talk) 17:54, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

• Follow up comment: I'm sorry to see this request has received limited comments. Remembering that the reason why tbans are put in place is to protect Wikipedia, not as a punishment, I'm seeing a clean block history for the last 4 years. This certainly isn't an case where one could argue blocks are obviously needed and the bad behavior continued in other parts of Wikipedia. At what point does a protective tban simply become punitive? What is the risk in erring on the side of unblocking? Worst case, bad behavior resumes and the block returns. However, if the tban is really no longer needed, if the editor really has learned from their mistakes, then this is a punitive block. We can never know for certain what would have happened but it's easy to reverse a tban if behavior warrants. We can't return the time an editor was tbanned if it turns out the ban was not needed. This isn't an editor asking just 6 months after the tban was instated. This is 44 months later and is almost certainly more punitive than protective at this point. Springee (talk) 01:17, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

• Newslinger, I don't see how any of those can be considered a violation of AP2. In cases where there is some level of cross over between AP2 and another topic I think context and scope matters. For instance, an AP2 topic ban would apply to comments about Ronald Reagan's political work/life. It wouldn't apply to comments about his acting roles. Fox News was being questioned in part for politics but also for things like coverage of scientific topics, environmental/climate change topics etc. None of the cited edits are specific to Fox's political coverage. Really, I would be far more concerned if we were seeing confrontations in new topic areas. So far we have edits that look like they are not over the line (Fox News RfC) or over the line but mildly so (Libertarian). These are old topic bans. Nothing shown here is sufficient to say lifting the tbans would result in new disruptions. That should be the standard here because anything else means this is punitive rather than protective. Springee (talk) 20:50, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad:, what about a 1RR limit on the previously restricted topic areas. That generally prevents article edit issues. I'm not sure if talk page restrictions would be needed. Allow the restrictions to expire after 6 months if there are no new issues. I admit this doesn't address talk page but it would prevent article level issues. Perhaps a strict talk page CIVIL restriction on the affected topics? Springee (talk)

Statement by Black Kite

I haven't much knowledge of the other topic-bans so I'm not going to opine about them, but I would definitely oppose lifting the topic ban on Homophobia, on which North8000's 266 talk page posts wasted vast amounts of other editors' time arguing for the article to be completely re-written to include a WP:FRINGE definition of homophobia (that using the word which includes -phobia denigrates opposition to homosexuality), and accused other editors of being "activists" [37]. He eventually exhausted everyone's patience (as an example, try this conversation. It's one article, there are 6m+ others. Black Kite (talk) 20:29, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Newslinger

In June 2020, North8000 made three comments criticizing the highly-attended 2020 Fox News RfC after the discussion had been active for over two weeks:

1. Special:Diff/964433983
2. Special:Diff/964434623
3. Special:Diff/964616404

Fox News, which is categorized under Category:Conservative media in the United States, is a contentious subject in the field of American politics, with active arbitration remedies on the Fox News article itself. One of the RfC questions was "Is Fox News reliable for US Politics?", and the RfC had been listed under the "Politics, government, and law" RfC category. I was not aware of this topic ban when I responded to the third comment. — Newslinger talk 20:11, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Tryptofish

I genuinely believe that North means well and is clueful enough not to repeat previous mistakes. Broadly speaking, I think it would be right to lift at least some of the restrictions on a trial–WP:ROPE basis. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:41, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Thryduulf (re North8000)

@Xeno: I would change "Unless modified by further motion, the restrictions will automatically expire at the end of the one year period." to something like "Any restrictions not reimposed will automatically expire at the end of the one year period." to avoid ambiguity; arbcom can always modify any restriction they placed at any time, with or without explicit provision. I'd also a clause along the lines of "Any restrictions that are reimposed may be appealed at WP:AE one year after their reimposition if no alternative time frame is specified." Thryduulf (talk) 15:51, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

@Xeno: I think you might have misread the second part of my comment? It is about restrictions that have reimposed at AE. I'm not sure what you mean with "Do you think it's better for AE to be tapped for concerns?". Basically my suggestion is:

• Restrictions that are not reimposed at AE: Expires 1 year after this motion passes
• Restrictions that are reimposed at AE: Appealable at AE 1 year after reimposition (unless AE says differently). Thryduulf (talk) 16:33, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
  • @Xeno: ah the confusion is my misreading ARCA as AE - your comment makes sense now. If you're going with ARCA then the second part isn't needed. As for the actual question of ARCA vs AE, IIRC suspensions like this usually allow an individual administrator and/or AE to reimpose the sanctions if the person ends up causing disruption during the year's probationary period. I think AE is generally preferable to ARCA for speed and efficiency in such matters, so I would argue in favour of the former. If you go down that route though then venue for appeals of reinstated sanctions should be specified, but I've got less strong feelings about that - possibly allow North8000 to choose (although hopefully nothing will need reimposing and all this will be academic). Thryduulf (talk) 19:17, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

North8000: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

North8000: Arbitrator views and discussion

• Awaiting additional statements; generally amenable to lifting old restrictions if it can be demonstrated they are no longer necessary. –xeno^talk 14:58, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
  • Isn't political science just a subset of politics? –xeno^talk 12:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
• Frankly I don't see how it's possible to argue that Libertarianism in the United States is not covered under the AP discretionary sanctions as a contemporary American political topic. I'm not as worried about the NRA edits because of their age, but the March 2020 breach of the AP TBAN does concern me regardless of whether or not it's edit warring. You are not restricted from edit warring on AP topics, you are restricted from editing them. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:20, 10 August 2020 (UTC)
• I am still thinking about this request. I suspect that it was inspired by a request that we granted a few days ago, in which we vacated an old remedy against a user who convinced us it was no longer needed. But that request involved a single topic-ban from 10 years ago, whereas this case involves multiple topic-bans against North8000 that culminated in a ban from the entire site. To his credit, North8000 abided by the ban for years, eventually made a successful appeal, and as far as I can tell has generally edited appropriately since. I do not see the alleged topic-ban violations as deal-breakers here, but they do show that North8000 retains his interests in areas in or adjacent to those where he has had problems in the past. I wonder if there might be an alternative path forward here that would fall somewhere between denying the request completely, which would show no recognition of the editor's improvement, and granting it completely, leaving him entirely unrestricted all at once. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:45, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

  Newyorkbrad, I agree with your analysis. I wonder if suspending the topic bans for a year would be a viable solution. North8000 would be free to edit in areas he is presently banned from; if there are problems, a report can be made to AE and an administrator can reimpose the topic ban(s) as appropriate. If all goes well for a year, we vacate the topic bans entirely. Maxim_(talk) 22:33, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

---

North8000 restrictions: Motion

North8000 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) was restricted by motion in December 2016 (Motion regarding North80000). Recognizing North8000's productive contributions and renewed voluntary commitments, the restrictions are suspended for one year, during which time the restrictions may be re-imposed (individually or entirely) upon request to WP:ARCA if warranted. Any restrictions not reimposed will automatically expire at the end of the one year period.

For this motion there are 12 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 7 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0	7
1–2	6
3–4	5

Enacted - Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:49, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. Maxim_(talk) 16:12, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
2. I feel like this is a good "middle road" that can allow North8000 to show they are able to avoid the mistakes of the past while leaving a quick path back to being sanctioned should that not prove to be the case. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2020 (UTC)
3. I copy-edited the motion by adding "if warranted," although I certainly hope that would have been understood anyway. I'm open-minded on whether any future issues (although I hope there won't be any) should be raised at ARCA or AE. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:37, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
4. This works for me. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:51, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
5. Katie^talk 13:22, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
6. SoWhy 15:02, 22 August 2020 (UTC)
7. With regards to question of ARCA vs AE for modifications, this seems sufficiently nuanced that ARCA felt like the best port-of-call should any concerns arise. (With thanks to Thryduulf for the suggestions) –xeno^talk 13:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)
8. Noting that North8000 has stated they will stay away from the homophobia article. Mkdw ^talk 16:12, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

Abstain

Discussion

• For consideration, per suggestions of Maxim and Newyorkbrad. Tweaks invited. –xeno^talk 15:31, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

  Thanks for the suggestion Thryduulf, I've implemented the first part. For the second part, wouldn't it need to be re-imposed at AE to be appealeable at AE? Do you think it's better for AE to be tapped for concerns? –xeno^talk 16:00, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

  Thryduulf I haven't used AE since this is a motion, not a remedy. Would we still consider it a "remedy in a decision", and do you think AE is better than ARCA for concerns? (Essentially, there's no restrictions to violate during the suspension period except a general agreement to keep the peace, so it's a bit more nuanced and might be confusing at AE) –xeno^talk 16:36, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Civility in infobox discussions (September 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Initiated by Barkeep49 at 22:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Civility in infobox discussions arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

Clauses to which an amendment is requested

1. [38]
2. Role of consensus in arbitration enforcement

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request

• Barkeep49 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
• HAL333 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Cassianto (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Mclay1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• SchroCat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• JzG (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Vanamonde93 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Guerillero (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• HAL333
• Cassianto
• Mclay1
• SchroCat
• JzG
• Vanamonde93
• Guerillero

Information about amendment request

• Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all discussions about infoboxes and to edits adding, deleting, collapsing, or removing verifiable information from infoboxes.

• Whether discrestionary sanctions should be enacted against editors other than I-82

• Role of consensus in arbitration enforcement

• Whether discretionary sanctions were correctly utilized based on the consensus of uninvolved administrators when the AE request was closed (clause from Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement)

Statement by Barkeep49

On September 1, Ritchie filed an AE request for I-82-I about an Infobox RfC at Frank Sinatra. In subsequent discussion, diffs were brought forward concerning the actions of HAL333, Mclay1, Cassianto, and SchroCat. On September 4 TonyBallioni issued a Checkuser block against I-82-I for disruptive editing while logged out. On September 5, Cassianto opened a thread at ANI accusing Hal of harassment. Approximately four hours later, JzG closed the AE thread with an infobox Topic Ban on I-82-I. Prior to that close, 9 uninvolved administrators (including myself and JzG but not counting Tony) had participated in the discussion. At least three administrators, myself, Vanamonde, and Guerillero had supported sanctions against some of the other editors. A fourth, Ealdgyth, indicated that she saw incivility but did not wish to deal with the people involved [39]. The other uninvolved administrators had not commented on these sanctions pro or con - one administrator feeling that sanctions should not only be applied to one side and two of the uninvolved administrators were participating in a discussion about whether Guerillero's use of "Ok boomer" towards Cassianto was a slur and not Infobox Civility itself. Subsequent discussion with JzG clarified that he had indeed closed the thread as no sanction against any other editors. As this seems to fly in the face of the considered consensus of multiple uninvolved administrators, with ArbCom being the only place to apply an AE decision, and given the sprawling nature of this conflict (which also includes, at minimum, [40] and [41]), I am filing this appeal in regards to both Infobox editor conduct and JzG's close of the AE thread. Barkeep49 (talk) 22:26, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Kingofaces43: according to a previous ArbCom case, the decision to close at AE with no sanction is is a decision that can only be appealed to ArbCom. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration_enforcement#Dismissing_an_enforcement_request_(alternate). As such those of us who felt other sanctions shouldbe levied cannot apply those sanctions.Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:34, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• @Newyorkbrad: I am glad Vanamonde replied first because they said my feelings better than I would have. Pinging you to formalize what I am looking for from ArbCom here and why I think in the name of comity we don't just move on. I think this gets at what you were asking also Kingofaces43. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

  Newyorkbrad, the people I had mentioned were Mclay1, HAL, Cassianto, and Schrocat (who I know is gone but I have hope might return one day even if under a slightly different account name owing to a password scramble). HAL, Cassianto, and Schrocat have all been a part of Infobox disputes before. So their promise to "stay away" from Sinatra is good - I mean that sincerely - but the sanctions in my mind were more about whatever the next Infobox skirmish is going to be as it is Sinatra. So the only one I would be willing to reconsider in light of a kept promise to stay away is Mclay1. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:55, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Newyorkbrad: I have always thought that clear. What isn't clear is the ability of an editor to unilaterally shutdown a conversation of colleagues about whether sanction is appropriate currently rather than in the future. You seem to be telling me that it is appropriate which is a reasonable outcome. That will inform my choice to try and get involved in thorny AE discussions in the future. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:50, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Vanamonde93: I think what Newyorkbrad is saying is that if there were new misconduct the old conduct could still be considered when forming a sanction. So essentially no editor could be sanctioned for anything that happened at Sinatra (or previously) but if there is misconduct again at the next infobox front then Sinatra and earlier could be considered when responding. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:42, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

• As to bradv's suggestion that a full case could be beneficial, maybe? I mean we have two different administrators whose actions have been criticized by a range of editors. We also have Cassianto feeling that the ANI thread did not offer him from the harassment he was perceiving from HAL and which wasn't really being discussed at AE. However, I'm not sure, as evidenced by the desire of many people here for this to go away (I mean I got more than one good laugh when I explained to some people close to me what DS is and that we have DS for things like American Politics, Palestine/Israel, Race & Intellegence, and Infoboxes) that a full case is going to bring things forward that an ARCA would not. Now if the structure of a case would be helpful in dealing with these desperate parts then sure go for a case. Just don't expect it to turn into too much more than what has already been presented here. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC
• JzG I had formally notified everyone but Cassianto who had indicated to me such a notification was unnecessary. I agree with you that such notification is important. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:37, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by HAL333

I am so thoroughly tired of this. The original ArbCom request was against I-82 and no one else. That editor retired, abused IP accounts, and was then CU blocked. Case closed. Additionally, SchroCat retired due to this whole ordeal. Can we please just stop here and not lose anymore editors.

Since being warned of the sanctions, I have not responded to a single opposing editor on that thread. I only asked an editor who supported the proposal to clarify his statement. Beyond that, I reverted edits by 73.193.59.165, who was repeatedly closing the RFC and claiming that there was a consensus to uncollapse the infobox (which they did and I reverted). I reported them for vandalism, and they were banned. A diehard pro-infoboxer (Which I'm not - I've gotten several of my works up to featured status without an IB) would have sat back and watched gleefully. I have agreed with SchroCat and Cassianto before, siding with them at Dispute Resolution and have even opposed the addition of an infobox with them.

Regarding the ANI discussion opened against me, here was my defense:

Earlier today, Cassianto referred to me, LEPRICAVARK, and two administrators as "messers". I was not familiar with this term: Cassianto often uses British slang. Oxford's Lexico defines it as "A person who makes a mess, or who messes about; a muddler, a bungler." According to Urban Dict, it is "Irish slang for a sloppy or messy person; someone who fails to take things seriously; a hopeless amateur, a gobdaw." Wiktionary defines it as "someone who messes". Accordingly, I respectfully asked Cassianto to strike through this personal attack. Cassianto was annoyed by my pinging him (which plenty of other people were doing at arbcom) and left a message claiming that I was harassing him. I responded courteously, without a ping. Cassianto then corrects the personal attack to "messrs", which, according to Google, is "used as a title to refer formally to more than one man simultaneously, or in names of companies." I found this a clever solution and it actually made me laugh. The barnstar of good humor was an expression of good faith. I was being genuine and met no ill will. I figured it would ease up tensions, but here we are....

• Note I have previously given Cassianto a barnstar after a disagreement, and it seemed to have improved our relations. I was trying to do the same thing again and assumed he would respond similarly to last time.

Everyone has moved on. I have not revisited any infobox discussions. There is no reason that we can't just let sleeping dogs lie. ~ HAL333 22:53, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• Genuine confusion This enforcement request was brought because people were edit warring over collapsing a section of the RFC (I was not involved in that). That has been resolved. Why is this continuing? Also, why is SchroCat included in this? He has scrambled his password and no longer edits on Wikipedia. Any sanctions or penalties directed to him would be ineffectual and for image only. Sysops have expressed that they would want to penalize the supposed pro- and anti-infoboxers equally. Cassianto has already been placed under sanctions. How can this be impartial if sanctions would just be applied to two "pro"-infoboxers? Furthermore, other editors commented just as much (and perhaps were much more uncivil) as I did in the RFC: just look at the discussion. (I should note that my colorful signature doesn't help lol) Why am I being singled out? ~ HAL333 02:20, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Cassianto

Statement by Mclay1

This whole thing seems pointless. The issue is over. I was not aware at the time of any specific rules about infobox discussions (which I'm still not clear on) and only made a few comments. I got into a very short and very mild disagreement with SchroCat, who was being quite rude to a number of people, but that conversation is long over and he's retired, so it's no longer an issue. My involvement in the discussion was not in any way unusual for a discussion on Wikipedia. As soon as I was informed of the infobox discussion rules (long before the ArbCom in question), I stopped commenting. I don't care about it anymore and have no need for sanctions. I have no intention of continuing the argument. I agree with HAL333. MClay1 (talk) 02:27, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by SchroCat

Statement by JzG

An AE was opened against I-82-I. That user subsequently used logged-out editing to evade scrutiny and was indefinitely blocked. Others used the AE filing as a vehicle for discussing (eentirely valid) long-standing issues with other editors who were not, I think, originally notified of the AE filing.

It seems to me that the subject of the original filing is effectively complete with the indefinite block of I-82-I. I have no strong view of what dispute resolution processes should be undertaken in respect of other editors discussed in the thread, other than that there should be some, but it seems to me that an AE on an obvious bad actor should not morph into sanctions discussions on long-standing good-faith editors without at least some effort to de-escalate or resolve the dispute. This would be my view regardless of the personalities involved.

As I said at the time and subsequently, if anyone wants to undo the close or spin out the separate discussions they are welcome to do so. I have no beef with any of the other parties here, admin or otherwise. I closed the AE in good faith because the outcome in respect of the original subject was clear, and it seems to me that AE discussions should be narrowly focused (because enforcement). I could be wrong. I am happy to leave this to others to decide because my views on the secondary parties are not strong, and because of a sudden worsening of C7 radiculopathy which means I am as of yesterday in too much pain to deal with this any further. Guy (help! - typo?) 07:25, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your patience, friends, the pain has subsided over the last couple of days.

I have proposed a change to the admin guidance at WT:AE. This entire thing comes from two groups of people looking at the same facts from different bases. I closed the AE because the result for I-82-I was obvious, and he was the named party. I took insufficient note of the way the thread had morphed, partly because I was viewing it in the context of a request against I-82-I. This was probably naive. That said, I think there is a basic fairness issue about sanctioning other parties without the formal notification requirement, and I hope that I am not alone in this.

If we look at WP:RFAR, there is a process for adding parties. At WP:AE, there is not. I'd internalised the idea that parties have to be formally added in arbitration, and I recognise that this may be incorrect in this context - and whether it's right or wrong, others may see it differently or may be viewing this through an arc that intersects with AE but is not solely AE (Vanamonde has made some good points here and recently pointed out to me some precedent for not viewing AE as I have always viewed it). Guy (help! - typo?)

Statement by Vanamonde93 (Infoboxes)

I will not rehash the summary Barkeep49 has provided, but just add the following points. First, editors who are parties to a dispute brought to AE are explicitly also subject to sanctions, assuming they have been appropriately notified, which isn't in question here. Second, in this AE report, there was agreement among at least three administrators as to sanctions against editors other than the one being reported. Third, JzG's closure, while made in good faith, clearly does not represent the consensus of administrators at AE. Fourth, the issue has been discussed with JzG, and he has stated that he has no objections to further discussions about the other editors, but not that he was willing to reconsider the closure of this discussion. ARBCOM has previously rules that a single admin may overrule a consensus of other admins recommending no action to take an action at AE; does this now mean that a single admin can overrule a consensus of other admins recomending action, to prevent any action from being taken? In other words, if I (or Barkeep49, or Guerillero) wish to implement the actions we agreed upon, are we prevented from doing so by the minutiae of procedure? Vanamonde (Talk) 01:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

• As a general principle, I'd agree with JzG that a report against someone editing in bad faith shouldn't result in widespread sanctions. In this case, most of the problematic behavior I found occurred before the bad-faith editor even appeared on the scene, and so the subsequent block of I-82-I does not affect my assessment of anything; and I don't see why it should affect anyone else's. Vanamonde (Talk) 14:21, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• @Newyorkbrad: I don't think anyone wants the AE opened again, but if that would be the only was for sanctions to be applied against the other editors involved, then what you are in effect saying is that any administrator can overrule a consensus of their colleagues to prevent discretionary sanctions from being placed on any problematic editor. If that's not what you mean, then any administrator still has the ability to impose sanctions for the behavior discussed at AE; which is the clarity I am looking for. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:04, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Newyorkbrad: At this moment, I would not impose a sanction, because the principle participants have walked away from the conflict. I am firmly of the opinion that at the time the AE discussion was closed, the proposed sanctions were necessary, and that any willingness to step back on the part of the participants was because of the unfavorable attention they received here and at ANI. This feud went on for months, despite several attempts by uninvolved participants to calm things down. I would be very unsurprised to see further disruption, and if that occurs, any sanctions would need to take the episode discussed at AE into account to be useful. As things stand, it seems as though any sanctions cannot be levied on the basis of the behavior examined at AE already. There is also the issue of precendent; going forward, I would be much less inclined to engage with a contentious AE report, knowing that even a consensus among me and my colleagues could be overruled by a single admin. Vanamonde (Talk) 00:06, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Newyorkbrad: I don't think that's obvious, based on the wording of previous rulings about AE; whether the closure applied to other editors or not was also not clarified until we came here (JzG have since discussed the matter and are no longer at loggerheads over this, but he didn't actually answer my request to clarify this before the ARCA request was filed). Other users on JzG's talk page also argued that an admin placing a sanction on the other users from AE would be in violation of an ARBCOM decision. So, I appreciate your clarification, but I do think it was necessary to come here for that clarification. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:23, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Barkeep49: I think I was disagreeing more with the second part of what NYB said, in that there did seem to be serious disagreement as to what the conclusion of the first AE meant, and it was not clarified till we got here. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:08, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

• Rather to my own surprise, I think a full case may not be the worst idea. A situation like this shouldn't need a full case. There's no substantively new behavioral issue here; AE can deal with it, but only if the discretionary sanctions are allowed to operate as they should. Unfortunately, as with many of our previous civility-related cases (GGTF; TRM) this has just exposed the deep-running rift among administrators with respect to how interactions between editors are perceived and responded to, and that has led to the enforcement of ARBCOM sanctions being hamstrung. If, in dealing with this sort of dispute, individual administrators face difficulties not only with the editors whose behavior is being investigated but also their fellow administrators, it's unsurprising that the dispute seems intractable, and is going to end up in ARBCOM's lap. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:06, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
• Neither SchroCat nor Cassianto meets the formal requirements for a RTV; SchroCat's actions were being discussed here, and Cassianto is under infobox probation. I would be fine with IAR RTV, if that is implemented with the understanding that they are truly leaving, and would explicitly not be eligible for a clean start. SchroCat's use of an IP suggests this isn't really the case, and that's unsurprising to me; if you've been invested in this community for as long as SC has, walking away isn't easy. And for the record, I do not want either of them to leave; they're fine writers, and will be missed. But we should not be letting them "walk away" in a manner that may make things worse in the future because they cannot resist the temptation to return, but aren't able to do so in a legitimate way; at the very least, we need to make it clear that if they were to return, they would have to create an account and disclose the connection publicly. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Guerillero

My only thought is that JzG's close ran in the face of the consensus of the admins there. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 22:57, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Bradv: I don't think this rises to the level of a whole case --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 15:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Maxim: there was also the review in 2016 --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 19:52, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Ritchie333: this would be easier to believe if one of them wasn't editing as an IP within hours of vanishing. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 22:30, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

  Can one of the arbs collect the CU data for both SchroCat and Cassianto and either post it to ArbWiki or CUWiki so they can be identified in the future? SchroCat is already a double clean start and was IP socking. I CU blocked Cassianto about 5 years ago for editing while logged out to avoid scrutiny. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 15:34, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Sluzzelin

In my opinion (as a mere observer of info-box disagreements for more than a decade), any debate on info-boxes should be ignored by the entire community of editors. In most cases, the relevance of including or omitting an info-box is low. Good editors are wasting time and energy on something insignificant, but that doesn't mean they need to be punished for their exasperation. ---Sluzzelin talk 22:53, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

See also Wehwalt and Davey2010's comments. Was this really worth it? ---Sluzzelin talk 20:31, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Moneytrees

I'll wait for other statements before I get into deeper specifics, but this has been a rather aggressive, tense dispute with many noticeboard visits over the past few months. I highly encourage arbcom to look into it. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 23:03, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

• @Bradv: I think this does rise to the level of a full case. This has been an issue that the community has not been able to resolve through discussion and AE, and I think these disputes will continue even if this one had died down a bit. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 15:51, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Kingofaces43

Barkeep49, it's not really clear from your initial comments, but what is the issue being presented here that needs ArbCom? JzG closed the AE because the main subject was blocked and made no other sanctions that would have to be "overridden". If any admin felt someone else involved needed to be sanctioned through DS, they simply just need to do so and do not need AE consensus to do that. If anyone felt more discussion was needed to fine-tune a specific sanction on another editor, there's nothing stopping you or anyone else from opening another AE focused on the editor(s), and that's probably a better more focused option anyways to piece apart multi-editor issues. Kingofaces43 (talk) 00:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Barkeep49, to be more clear, I'm wondering why you feel that principle applies here (and hopefully give arbs something even more pointed to address)? That might apply if the close dealt with more than the named subject of the AE or if I-82-I wasn't sanctioned and you thought they should be. Right now, only I-82-I sanctions would fall under the dismissing principle if that had happened. No one else's behavior was the subject of the close. At least from my read of the comments, it looks like you inadvertently set yourself down a slippery slope thinking you couldn't act. JzG's close looked pretty standard in the sense of the named editor has been sanctioned, other issues in the subject can be dealt with separately if warranted. That's how AE has always worked when multi-party issues come up that don't get a sanction all at the same time, which is why I'm finding some logic presented here at odds with how AE normally works.

Simply because the behavior of others was mentioned (and how often is it not?) in an AE request, that does not mean a request being closed against the primary named editor gives immunity to those other potential problem editors in the subject that were not addressed in the close. Editors just need to a bring a separate case focused on the specific editor if they feel DS enforcement is warranted. The infobox drama is foreign to me, but I agree it looks like there are problems outside of I-82-I. If that is dismissed, then the principle applies there for reopening. Otherwise, this approach is setting up problem editors to say their behavior was already "dismissed" at AE citing an early tangential request not focused on them where they were discussed.

Also, none of the above matters if you personally feel as an admin DS should be enacted as AE isn't needed to do that. Even if a request was closed as no action, you can later look at the (assumedly) partial evidence on the other editor(s) there while taking in other background information to place a sanction. "No action" is the default of every admin the moment they are made aware of a potential issue, so there's nothing to really override there (kind of a null hypothesis problem). The dismissing principle seems to be focused on reopening requests rather than making a no action decision on periphery editors (relative to the AE request) prevent future placing of sanctions. If arbs really do intend the latter, especially when it's not the main subject of a request, then it would be good to clarify. Kingofaces43 (talk) 16:22, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Comment by Gerda

Please offer a minute of silence, and think about if anything of this matters. Jerome and I were friends from 2010. We disagreed on infoboxes about composers (not about compositions), but always respectfully. Amendment request: let's forget about sanctions, and imagine any comment came from a friend who has good intentions. I believe that if we all did, these unholy wars were over. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:24, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

I reinstate the comment. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:30, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Comment by GoodDay

The AE report-in-question had morphed into something it wasn't suppose to be. The individual who was the topic of that report, was blocked. PS - Can't we get back to the ongoing RFC at old Blue Eyes? GoodDay (talk) 14:30, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Am I being too bold in recommending that this ARCA request be rejected? GoodDay (talk) 18:59, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

Well, so now two editors have retired over this infobox stuff. I hope they return or un-vanish soon, which ever name they choose to reappear under. GoodDay (talk) 14:43, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Thryduulf (re Infoboxes/AE)

With regards to the general issue of consensus at AE would be to establish a principle that while a consensus is not required to act, administrators may not unilaterally act contrary to a consensus if one does exist, nor close a discussion in a manner that prevents other administrators from acting in accordance with that consensus (e.g. closing as "no action" if there is a consensus for action, or closing as "action" when there is consensus that no action is required). This would not compel admins to act - if they disagree with a consensus they may express their view in the discussion or simply leave it for some other admin. (I am explicitly not opining here on how this relates to the specific discussion in question). Thryduulf (talk) 01:00, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Ritchie333

In case anyone is interested, I have been contacted off-wiki by SchroCat and Cassianto, who have both decided to quit the project and courtesy vanish, which I have enacted. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:56, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

I reject the suggestion that vanishing can be used to avoid scrutiny; to that end I have blocked the IP in the section below for blatant sockpuppetry. Furthermore, in my view Cassianto and SchroCat should now be considered de-facto banned, and I will support any admin who feels the need to enforce that view with blocks. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 05:42, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

@MJL: I'm not sure I understand your concerns entirely, but I keep coming back to this seminal piece of work : "One who sometimes makes good edits, but endlessly bickers, threatens, insults, whines, and is eventually banned, will have taken hundreds of hours from other users who would have better spent that time building the encyclopedia." Specifically, while I have tried to work with Cassianto, I am utterly sick and tired of the way he dishes out personal attacks to other people yet complains vociferously when somebody does the same to him, and really wish he could just ignore people. Furthermore, I once blocked Cassianto for edit-warring and personal attacks; I got abuse heaped on my head and the block reversed by another admin about three hours later. So, you might think I haven't maybe taken as strong as action as I could have done in order to keep the peace and avoid being called an "abusive admin", but I feel in this instance, blocks and sanctions seem to cause more problems than they solve. As Vanamonde has said, and as you suggest here, increasing temperature and sanctions at WP:ARBINFOBOX2 doesn't seem to have done any good, and the community in general is at a complete loss for how to proceed. The RTV was a way of trying to remove them from the project with the minimum of fuss and with their full agreement; it was never intended to be a "get out of Arbcom free" card, and if they think this is a mechanism for them to "lie low" for a bit and come back editing as if nothing had happened without anyone's concerns being addressed, well more fool them. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:38, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: As per User:Ritchie333#One revert guarantee : "Admins, if you think an administrative action (including, but not limited to protecting or deleting a page, or blocking a user) is not an improvement, just undo it." Do you want me to revert the RTVs? As I understand it, both Cassianto and SchroCat have scrambled their passwords and won't be using those accounts again (though I can't prove this). By "good standing" I simply mean they were not blocked or banned at the point the action was taken. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:38, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: I won’t be able to get to this until probably Tuesday; I’m away for a long weekend at the mo and need an hour in front of the computer with no distractions so I don’t mess up. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:18, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: I can't revert the vanishing of SchroCat, as it complains the name clashes with Schrocat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) (note the lower case 'c'). Can you (or anyone else) offer further advice? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:03, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Maxim: Okay, thanks, I've reverted the RTV on SchroCat. I'm currently working on the assumption there is no consensus to RTV SchroCat (as two Arbs have objected) and there is a possible consensus to RTV Cassianto (as one Arb has objected but one has not). Before doing anything else, I think it would be helpful if more Arbs gave their opinion on this so the action taken has a more accurate reflection of what would be considered best for the encyclopedia. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:13, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by PackMecEng

I have to say I was surprised by the vanishing given they are named parties in this, with one being considered specifically for sanctions. Also I think the deletion of their talk pages are probably inappropriate as well. PackMecEng (talk) 15:30, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by OID

Ritchie I am going to quote parts of WP:RTV with some bolding and will leave it to you to justify the amazingly stupid decision to RTV two editors currently involved in an arbitration request.

"A courtesy vanishing may be implemented when a user in good standing decides not to return"

"for whatever reason wishes to make their contributions harder to find or to remove their association with their edits"

"When there is no administrative need to retain the information, a permanently departing user"

"It is not a way to avoid scrutiny or sanctions."

"Vanishing is not a way to avoid criticism, sanctions, or other negative attention"

So you have extended vanishing to two people who RTV explicitly calls out as not being eligible for the courtesy. You have deliberately made it harder to identify their contributions in the middle of an arbitration request, which is nothing short of disruptive and a disgustingly offensive slap in the face to editors who have been on the recieving end of their past actions which led to this point. Only in death does duty end (talk) 00:16, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by MJL

Am I the only one getting some weird Déjà vu here? It's kind of freaky. Either way...

Cassianto had a significant editing restriction placed against him. While SchroCat was also restricted, I can see a charitable interpretation may say he was in good standing as it was only a pretty weak account restriction which only requires him to disclose future accounts.
Cassianto, though?
In this economy?

Users here were actively looking at his behavoir. Whether that was justified or not is another story, but at the very least HAL333 made a somewhat substantial accusations against him here. Looking at the AE request, it would seem other accusations were made against a lot of people (including SchroCat).
At this point, I think it's pretty dang clear that Administrative response to this contentious area was utterly poor. You have:

Richie333

1. Richie333 warning SchroCat about incivility but admitting he wouldn't take any action because it'd help ensure a no consensus RFC close and if he blocked anyone else he'd also have to block SchroCat for the obvious incivility.
2. Richie333 filing a report against I-82-I who was in a dispute with SchroCat and Cassianto.
3. Richie333 making this comment clearly stating he didn't want to deal with the drama of blocking Cassianto again and that he is involved.
4. Richie333 courtesy vanishing Cassianto and SchroCat despite being involved (thus inadvertently allowing them to avoid scrutiny).

JzG

1. Guy commenting that he felt: [t]he trajectory of the dispute is towards sanctionable behaviour but it's not there yet
2. Guy replying to Masem with a soft anti-infobox editorial position.
3. Guy closing the AE report with a one-sided sanction over the concerns of the other commenting admins.

Unsurprisingly, I don't think these two are the only ones at fault. While Guy and Richie are well known exceptional admins on this project, I'm not a fan of this kind of thing. Clearly if even our best admins are capable of messing up this poorly, then Arbcom needs to rethink its approach to Civility in the infobox disputes and arbitration enforcement. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:50, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I disagree with Richie's conclusion they are de facto banned. I find that would be incredibly unfair to both Cassianto and SchroCat and against the spirit of our banning policy. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:53, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

@Ritchie333: I think what you describe is a problem systematic on Wiki and that it wasn't right for a user to essentially complain and bully his way towards forcing you into unfortunate positions. I hope that makes more sense? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:15, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Guy's proposed addition to WP:AE seems like a good way forward. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 00:27, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by isaacl

I disagree that an editor who has chosen to vanish can be considered to be de-facto banned, even if they return. A request to vanish is a voluntary request to superficially disassociate the requestor's edits from their user name. The remedy for returning is to reassociate their edits. Sanctions may or may not be warranted for other reasons, such as evasion of scrutiny or previously imposed restrictions, but this has to be determined by community consensus or through its delegated authority (such as via enacted policy). isaacl (talk) 14:52, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

@Levivich: what you're describing is a clean start. Vanishing is about disassociating oneself from all previous edits, and isn't necessary to perform a clean start. isaacl (talk) 02:00, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by We hope

The last 2 infobox cases really only scratched the surface of the issues. They did nothing permanent (restrictions lifted) about those who believe infoboxes are necessary to respiration, leaving those who believe life without them is possible to fend for themselves. The pressure produced pushback but it seems as though those who need to push back are viewed as the villians most of the time; those who instigate the issues don't seem to receive their rightful designation.

I began cutting back work here in 2016 because of the disruptive nature of the disputes. At the time of the last case, I no longer did text work and dumped hundreds of bookmarks for expanding & beginning articles. My only mainspace work since 2018 has been as favors to editor friends since I have no interest in working in an environment where only one side holds sway.

Two of those friends have now vanished. One was unjustly accused of editing thereafter (an apology would be nice). The other has been revived for some obscure reason; no longer here ought to be enough.

The infobox problem can be solved in one of two ways-the editors can leave-in ways other than being blocked or banned-saying "to hell with this place"-or enough decision-making people can obtain sufficient backbone to come up with a ruling which fully recognizes more than the pro-box side. We hope (talk) 16:38, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Levivich

To take one example, one of my complaints about SchroCat was the (ab)use of OneClickArchiver to shut down a thread. Cassianto's last edit was using OneClickArchiver in this manner. While vanishing might be out of process because both editors are parties to this ARCA, I think I agree with Ritchie and WP:OWB: vanishing resolves the issue. As new accounts, if they use OneClickArchiver in this manner, they will be sanctioned quickly; no one will defend them or ignore it. So if they come back as new users and are disruptive, that'll be easily dispatched; if they come back as new users and are not disruptive, then it's win-win. Either way, problem solved, with little or no further editor time needed from arbs, admin, or anyone else. Lev!vich 17:35, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Dave

We've lost 2 fantastic editors who have done nothing but put hard work into our articles, Wikipedia will now be worse off without them. –Davey2010^Talk 18:34, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Comment by Wehwalt

As usual staying out of the merits of any infobox discussion, but I will say this. SchroCat and Cassianto have earned the right to leave in the way that they desire, if that is how it is going to be. People casting around for reasons to deny them this, when one doesn't pan out going to another, doesn't have the best appearance.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:56, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Civility in infobox discussions: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

• Recuse Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 22:34, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
• Recuse --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 22:54, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Civility in infobox discussions: Arbitrator views and discussion

• *sigh* I'll do my best to refresh myself with the situation and respond presently, but I will just note that one thing does stand out to me and that is Guerillero's "Ok, Boomer" comment. That was not Ok, especially for an admin who is dealing with a case as uninvolved, in an area that has a specific Arbcom case titled "Civility in [the area]". Worm^TT(talk) 09:19, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

  I am sorry that I simply haven't had the time for Wikipedia recently and so have let a few things slide. I just want to note publicly the unpopular opinion that I agree with RTV being offered to these editors. I can extol for a while about why RTV is such an important part of any online community, it is a fundamental right to be able to leave something that is not good for you. However, invoking "RTV" and then instantly returning as an IP address is not vanishing and only goes to erode people's confidence in such an important right. I would fully support undoing the vanishing in such cases.
  As for the underlying dispute, it does appear to be a bit of a storm in a teacup, with some explicitly problematic features. I'm not sure that a full case per bradv is needed, and I'm sick to the back teeth of infoboxes - but I'm certainly willing to consider it. Worm^TT(talk) 14:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

• I understand why this request has been filed, and I suppose that in principle it is possible to appeal from an AE closure that didn't sanction one or more editors. That being said, I can't recall any time when we've granted that type of appeal, and I'm not sure this is a sensible place to start. I followed the discussion on the collapsed Sinatra infobox, and one thing that seems to have collapsed there, hopefully temporarily, is the level of civility. However, the logical remedy if this appeal were to be granted would be to direct that the AE thread be reopened. With the temperature on Talk:Frank Sinatra having cooled, and several of the disputants having stepped away, I think that could be counterproductive. If problematic infobox-discussion-related behavior resumes, on that page or elsewhere, a new AE request can be filed and the past behavior can be considered in the context of any ongoing issues. I hope this will not be necessary—and I hope that this hope is not ... hopeless. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:31, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
  • @Barkeep49 and Vanamonde93: I note JzG's comment above, which I read to mean that he wouldn't object to someone imposing sanctions against one or more of the other editors who were being discussed before the AE thread was closed. But, if you felt authorized to do so, what sanctions would you seek to impose at this point and against whom? In considering this with respect to any specific editor, you might wish to consider, among other things, whether the editor promised to step away from the dispute several days ago, and whether the editor has kept that promise. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:41, 9 September 2020 (UTC)
  • @Barkeep49 and Vanamonde93: To be clear about one thing, the fact that an editor isn't sanctioned in one AE discussion doesn't mean that that behavior can't be taken into account as part of a pattern if there is a later discussion. Maybe that would be true if the discussion concluded "these editors are absolutely innocent," but that was hardly the conclusion anyone reached here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:09, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
• AE is intended as a place to request intervention from an uninvolved administrator. While consensus discussions certainly happen on that page, it is not a forum designed to settle disputes between administrators, and so it is appropriate that this matter has been brought here. With regards to the underlying dispute, I am considering whether to propose a new case to investigate the conduct which led to the AE request, the conduct at the AE thread, as well as this related ANI thread, or whether we can solve this with a couple of motions. Given the level of disagreement that exists between enforcing administrators on how best to handle this, I am leaning toward the former. – bradv🍁 15:26, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
  • @Ritchie333: I'll second Joe's request that these two accounts be unvanished, as they have both been caught editing logged out after their disappearance. I'm also disappointed that their requests to vanish were granted unilaterally, given that they both have active ArbCom sanctions and were being discussed here. As for my ideas above about opening another case or set of motions, we can probably put them on hold at this time. – bradv🍁 15:14, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
    • @Ritchie333: I appear to have been mistaken about Cassianto. Technical evidence has revealed that Cassianto has not been caught editing logged out, and that the edits in question actually belong to a different logged-out editor. Please just reverse the vanish of SchroCat, not Cassianto. – bradv🍁 01:23, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Newyorkbrad that it would be perhaps odd to grant an appeal on whether to overturn a lack of sanctions. I'm uncertain on whether we need a case. My first reading of the request and surrounding pages was that there was a lot of disagreement between enforcing admins and overall an atmosphere that could charitably be described as trainwreck. That said, should we open a case, it would be third (or fourth if counting review) on infoboxes since 2013, and I'm not sure if that would do much good. I have a few questions:
  • Both infoboxes cases (1,2) each recommended a community wide discussion on infoboxes. Did this happen? (I'm unable to find anything, but perhaps it's because I'm trying to search for something on the scale of WP:AHRFC.)
  • Are the current remedies effective and/or readily enforceable at AE? From the 2013 case, the restrictions, which were only individual editors, have been rescinded. From 2018, we generally have infobox probation and a DS regime.
• If a case were to be opened, I'm not sure what alternatives we would have if "bespoke"-type sanctions are ineffective or difficult to enforce. While I can only speak for myself, the best alternative I can thinking of is a modified infobox probation but more as a topic ban from any infobox-related (no discussions, no adding/removing, only exception is to add an infobox when first creating an article), imposed on named parties to such a third case. Maxim_(talk) 19:47, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I would suggest that if this continues to be disruptive, and the community declines a discussion, that we reopen the case, and see if one of the other suggested remedies can get a majority. The panel of arbs is different, and I can imagine a few possible alternatives. DGG ( talk ) 00:23, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
• In the context of an enforcement request that covers the behaviour of multiple parties, a "no action taken" result for one or more parties, where deliberate, should be explicitly mentioned in the closure rather than remaining silent on others mentioned. This is to make it clearer that the closer adequately reviewed the behaviour those parties and specifically chose not to take an action, while also signalling the closer felt sufficiently uninvolved to decide not to take a action against any given party. Alternatively, they may have not taken an action because they felt involved with respect to any given party (that should be particularly noted as well). The proposed handling changes to make it clearer when an enforcement request extends to look into the behaviour of other parties, or to allow an administrator to implement a partial action (severed from the discussion of other parties) look appropriate as well. –xeno^talk 18:06, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
• Ritchie333 I don't think those vanishing were a good idea. Apart from this ARCA, both SchroCat and Cassianto have active editing restrictions and a long history of blocks for disruption. I don't see how either can be considered "users in good standing". SchroCat's should definitely be reversed per WP:RTV, since they haven't actually left the project. But I would also suggest Cassianto's is too. These are accounts and talk pages that the community needs unobfuscated access to, even if they have ostensibly stopped editing, to monitor further disruption. It will be unnecessarily difficult to enforce your de facto ban otherwise. – Joe (talk) 13:23, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Ritchie333: If you don't mind reversing both, yes I think we should, since Cassianto has also now returned to editing as an IP and invalidated the good faith assumption behind WP:RTV. I can also do it myself, but I've never done a vanishing before so might mess up some of the technicalities. As you prefer. – Joe (talk) 08:54, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

  It seems the apparent Cassianto IP-sock was someone else. I still think his RTV should be reversed, though, on the basis that he really wasn't eligible for it to begin with @Ritchie333:. – Joe (talk) 06:25, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

  @Ritchie333: Thanks. I agree that what we have here is a lack of consensus about Cassianto's vanishing. But I also don't think it's particularly an ArbCom matter, so maybe the best thing to do is to ask for outside opinions at WP:AN? – Joe (talk) 15:44, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not really opposed to the RTVs of either user; if this is what helps them disengage, particularly from conflict areas, then the vanishing does more good than harm. Ritchie333, if you do intend to reverse a vanishing, you need to override AntiSpoof, which you should be able to do as a global renamer. If you still intend to reverse either vanishing, let me know which one(s) and I can attempt it myself. Maxim_(talk) 12:08, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: Abortion (September 2020)

Original discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Initiated by ProcrastinatingReader at 21:12, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Case or decision affected

Abortion arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

• ProcrastinatingReader (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (initiator)
• Callanecc (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• [42]

Statement by ProcrastinatingReader

It appears in 2011, the community added sanctions for the entire abortion topic area. This included a topic-wide 1RR.

ArbCom later took over the Abortion sanctions in WP:ARBAB. They authorised DS for the topic area.

In 2015, a clarification request was made asking whether 1RR was to be made a case remedy, as it was enacted by the community. 5 arbs agreed to this. I don't believe that was a majority at the time, and there was no motion made, and there remains no amendment to the original WP:ARBAB case to specify 1RR exists for the topic area, and if so, what the scope of 1RR should be. Thus I don't believe that ARCA duly resulted in any change to the status quo. At the time, a clerk (Callanecc) noted that ArbCom did not take over the 1RR.

I have brought this to ARCA following advice from clerks at their noticeboard. The talk notice, {{ArbCom sanctions - abortion}}, and the editnotice {{AbortionGSEN}} indicates the 1RR is a ArbCom remedy. However, Wikipedia:General sanctions/Abortion/Log says it has been superseded, whilst Wikipedia:General_sanctions#Arbitration_Committee-authorised_sanctions says "See this November–December 2015 clarification request, whereby the previous community 1RR was incorporated into the ArbCom DS". A topic-wide 1RR can't really be part of a DS?

Can the Committee please clarify:

• Has the Committee terminated the 1RR remedy from the community's 2011 abortion sanctions?
  • If yes, has it been replaced by an ArbCom topic-wide 1RR remedy?
    • If yes, should a motion be passed to amend WP:ARBAB, adding such a remedy and deciding on its scope?
    • If no, (but the 1RR from the community is still terminated), then I presume 1RR should be applied on an article-by-article basis? And in such a case, what's to happen to any 1RR enforcement blocks/sanctions prior to this ARCA?

Just a note that split logs overlapping with an ArbCom DS aren't completely abnormal, e.g. WP:GS/IPAK. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 01:26, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

• Worm That Turned indeed, but what about any 1RRs after the case?
  I don't believe it's possible for that topic-wide 1RR to be a DS, as I think Thryduulf's statement implies, since (as the ARCA above is suggesting) 1RR case remedy and 1RR DS have totally different requirements. Even if that difference is desired here, it would not be compatible with the community authorisation. DS is somewhat the opposite of NOTBURO in general, such a decision needlessly complicates the system even more and creates inconsistencies with eg IPAK imv. I don't feel like this question should be overcomplicated: do we need a topic-wide 1RR for abortion or not? If so, please just amend the case and make it a normal 1RR like every other case, for consistency and clarity, rather than make abortion a special case. If we don't need one, then some kind of collective statement clarifying that ArbCom doesn't have a 1RR in place would seem helpful to put the matter to rest. Personally, considering WP:AELOG (zero topic 1RR sanctions in 5 years; two DS 1RR sanctions in 2019), I feel the 2nd option is better.

Statement by Callanecc

This is hazy in my memory but my thinking is something like this. In the case, ArbCom didn't mention the community-imposed 1RR restriction but did take over the community-authorised discretionary sanctions (number 2 in the ANI proposal). The Committee needs to take affirmative action to override the community and they didn't in this case. Additionally, they also imposed 1RR on individual editors which wouldn't have been necessary if they took over the 1RR restriction. The clarification request from 2015 asked where community-imposed 1RR violation be logged and the agreement amongst the arbs was that only 1 log should be used (for simplicity and NOTBURO). I see three options for the Committee here: (1) take over the community-imposed 1RR restriction (effectively as a drafting slip from the original case), (2) vacate the community-imposed 1RR restriction (effectively taking it over as a drafting slip in the original case, then vacating it as no longer needed), or (3) leaving the status quo (1RR stays as a community-imposed restriction but is logged at WP:AELOG for simplicity (and NOTBURO)). Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 09:29, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Nosebagbear

Personally I find it amazing that the ARBCOM at the time felt they had the authority to make retroactive decisions with regard to general sanctions, but that's neither here nor there.

The question might be worth asking, but I would note, that if ARBCOM has not implemented a 1RR remedy, then I'm not sure they have the authority merely to terminate a community one as a sanction. There is of course a question against this that they could have implemented one in 2015, and removed it now, which would have had the same effect. However, they missed that boat: just doing it at once is akin to ARBCOM just deciding they felt a community sanction was a bad idea and canning it, rather than as part of a conduct method. Nosebagbear (talk) 08:35, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by Thryduulf

The 2015 clarification request asked a very specific question - where should violations of the 1RR be logged. The five arbs who answered (I was one of them) said in the central DS log. This, and the other comments in the discussion, imply that everyone was, and should continue to, treat it as a discretionary sanction under the provisions of the arbcom-authorised discretionary sanctions. Thryduulf (talk) 23:39, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

• It might be worth making explicit that any existing specific remedies placed under the DS authorisations, including 1RR restrictions applied to specific articles are not affected and that it also does not preclude the placing of any new 1RR restrictions in this topic area. Thryduulf (talk) 21:52, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

Statement by {other editor}

Abortion: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Abortion: Arbitrator views and discussion

• Is the community-authorized 1RR restriction still necessary? A look through WP:AELOG for the past number of years shows 1RR applied to certain articles as a discretionary sanction (such as Talk:Abortion in the United States), but it doesn't show anyone being sanctioned for violating the general 1RR restriction. I suspect that this blanket remedy is no longer being used, and if my assumption is correct, perhaps we should vacate it for simplicity and consistency. – bradv🍁 23:50, 3 September 2020 (UTC)
• Hm, this is a bit of complex question. The way it reads to me is that the ArbCom replaced the general sanctions with discretionary sanctions, but did not address the 1RR. Therefore I would say community-imposed 1RR in the topic area remains in place. The clarification request was about where sanctions should be logged, and it seemed to be agreed that the DS log made sense so there weren't two separate logs for the same topic area, but I wouldn't say that as a result of that clarification request the ArbCom took over the 1RR—that would have to be done more formally, I think. As for what to do now, the ArbCom could either decide to formally take on the 1RR restriction as an amendment to the abortion case, or we could leave it as is. Given the general disuse, I'm leaning towards the latter. However I would oppose us vacating the community-imposed 1RR, as I think that's a decision that should be left to the community. GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:30, 4 September 2020 (UTC)
• To my eyes, The discretionary sanction remedy states All sanctions enacted prior to this case under the terms of the community authorization shall be logged under this case as though they had been enacted under the new authorization. I would therefore have thought that the 1RR application should be considered under the Arbcom banner. What's more, as DS are in place, I would prefer a blanket 1RR is removed, and applied where needed. Worm^TT(talk) 08:54, 7 September 2020 (UTC)
• I don't have a strong view on the specific clarification that is being requested, other than to suggest we not do anything that makes the rules governing discretionary and general sanctions any more complicated than they already are. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:17, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Motion: Abortion

The one-revert restriction on all articles related to abortion, authorized by the community here and modified by the Arbitration Committee in the Abortion arbitration case, is formally taken over by the committee and vacated. Discretionary sanctions remain authorized for all pages related to abortion, broadly construed.

For this motion there are 14 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 8 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Majority reference

Abstentions	Support votes needed for majority
0	8
1–2	7
3–4	6

Enacted - Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 16:53, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Support

1. Proposed, in the absence of any evidence that this is still required or commonly used. – bradv🍁 15:47, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
2. Per bradv. No indication that DS is not sufficient. Regards SoWhy 18:40, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
3. we seem to be the right place for determinng conflicts between procedures like this one. DGG ( talk ) 04:25, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
4. Maxim_(talk) 19:27, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
5. The procedural question (whether we have the authority to vacate the 1RR restriction or whether the community should be asked to do so) is a close one, but based on the history that's been summarized above, I think the ArbCom decision is broad enough to allow us to make this change. I would be hesitant to do something that could even arguably be construed as overruling the community if the 1RR rule were still being actively used, but it seems that it isn't and that this is more of a "clean-up" request than anything. If any problems recur, 1RR can be restored as needed under the authorization for discretionary sanctions. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:22, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
6. I understand the logic of the opposes but I basically agree with NYB, this is more along the lines of cleaning up an old mess, as opposed to overruling community will. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:47, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
7. I understand the position of those opposing, while recognizing there have been no additional concerns raised following a note to AN about this open motion. –xeno^talk 12:42, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
8. weakly (I nearly voted in the oppose column) but it strikes me as simplifying things slightly by taking over the 1RR Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:48, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
9. I also see this as uncontroversial tidying, and it's cleaner if we do it. – Joe (talk) 07:46, 22 September 2020 (UTC)
10. I believe this was the intention and reasonable housekeeping Worm^TT(talk) 10:04, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Per my above comment, since this was imposed by the community I think the decision whether to vacate it should be left to the community as well. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:54, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
2. I agree with GW in this instance. If it's a community sanction they can remove it themselves. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 20:03, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• Should we should note at WP:AN that this is being considered? –xeno^talk 14:53, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
  • That's a good idea. Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:31, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
    • (clerk) I've gone ahead and left a note. Best, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 18:41, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

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The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.