Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2/Proposed decision

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerks: L235 (Talk) & Callanecc (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Guerillero (Talk) & NativeForeigner (Talk)

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Clerk notes

@DHeyward and MONGO: Hi, please see the banner at the top of the page. Statements are only allowed in your own sections. Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 00:50, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Statement by DHeyward

Workshop?

Not a single arbitrator posted or participated in the workshop. It seems odd that there is anything of significance that would be in a proposed decision if it wasn't significant enough to elicit community input. --DHeyward (talk) 14:06, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

MONGO evidence

REally? These are [1] and this [2] are examples of incivility? This edit from my talk page was cited [3] as evidence but there is no doubt that PeterTheFourth is a SPA and his first edits were to GamerGate arbitration. How is that any more inflammatory than actually tolerating SPA's? In what universe and what context? Had arbitrators bothered participating in a workshop there wouldn't be these trivialities. The first is a request to leave Collect alone (and isn't incivil) and the second is about the quality of sources in a recently deceased person that hasn't even been established to be political. I was unaware that serviceman that gave their lives for their country only came from one party. perhaps the committee can enlighten us as to how they reached these conclusions as it is not apparent from their Workshop comments. --DHeyward (talk) 05:05, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

More importantly, unlike others, there is no evidence of disruption. The committee seriously needs to review exactly what a topic ban is supposed to accomplish. Indeed the only person presenting evidence against MONGO has asked for a close with no action.[4] --DHeyward (talk) 05:15, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

While it shouldn't need saying

Arbitration is intended to serve Wikipedia: Arbitrators focus on the risk and benefits for the future, not on past issues. Arbitration aims to find the best way to move users beyond the dispute. For this reason, the committee is more likely to consider if a user can change, or what restrictions would be of benefit to the project, than on who said what in the past. If only. --DHeyward (talk) 07:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

MONGO's Contributions and false equivalence

This [5] encompasses MONGO's contributions. No blocks, no edit wars. Occasional incivility over 10 years. Over 65,000 edits and 30,000 are mainspace [6] over 18,000 unique pages. What percentage of edits are incivil and who else lives up to that standard? It seems like the punishment is for volume of edits. This isn't whack-a-mole game. In contrast, he is being held against Ubikwit as if there is barely a difference [7]. Ubikwit has a total of 6,300 edits of which less than 20% are mainspace edits and only over 530 unique pages. Let me repeat, you are considering the same sanctions for an editor that has ccontributed 20x to the mainspace (arguably the only objective) and to 30x the number of total pages. I am not qualified to speak about Ubikwit's contributions or his prior history with Arbcom. I do know false equivalence when I see it, though, and this is it. How many example edits of 65,000 are representative of a 10 year contribution? Ubikwit's talk page edits is 2,300. MONGO's is 11,000. Those numbers equates to Ubikwits largest contribution at 37% but is less than 20% of MONGO's despite the 5x difference. Yes, I would hope it's easier to find more incivility with an editor that has so many more contributions. Do what you think is appropriate for Ubikwit (I would hope nothing) but the false equivalence in analysis is false. --DHeyward (talk) 04:46, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

MONGO wasn't named a party to the Tea Party case

@NativeForeigner: as far as I can tell, MONGO wasn't a named party to the Tea Party Case or discussed. Also, apologizing for the United States article issues when neither of the two named subjects were recent editors is hollow (okay I admit, MONGO edited the geography and climate section in 2007 [8] - I didn't bother to check if his 8 year old edits were civil). Ubikwit was a Tea Party Case member which makes the false equivalence even worse. Why did the committee not deal with Ubikwit in the the Collect case? That is the obvious IBAN and twofer opportunity. MONGO is unrelated and not involved. Why apologize for the United States article when neither appear to be involved and there is no remedy? The lack of a Workshop phase has made these errors very obvious. This case doesn't address anything related to United States and sanctions on MONGO aren't extensions to the Tea Party case unless I missed something. This reeks of false equivalence. Even complaints of MONGO's talk page edits of Robert Kagan lack any sign of incivility [9]. I don't see where MONGO ever edited the article, just questioned the negative label being added to a BLP on the talk page. Even topic banned editors get a pass for BLP - and on a talk page no less. --DHeyward (talk) 08:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: What's not been demonstrated is that punishing these two editors will do anything to improve the project. The lack of proposals is an indication of a lack of need for solutions against editors, not a call to action by Arbcom. MONGO is a prolific editor. Without AE requests, without Workshop participation and without ANI requests as backdrop, it is difficult to conceive what problem these solutions are searching for. What exactly can't go on and why was it so difficult for Arbcom and the community to formulate them for a Workshop? The examples given wouldn't even warrant an ANI admonishment, let alone a topic ban. This case was broken out from Collect but wasn't dropped when it became clear the only community interest was Collect. These proposals offer no solution, it's merely whack-a-mole regarding a prolific editor. For months, since this was opened, there has been no complaints regarding MONGO nor in the months prior. Why is it suddenly so pressing to topic ban a prolific editor that has no sanction history of disruption in the area? --DHeyward (talk) 14:00, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposals

Proposed: Formulate new DS for the topic area if arbcom believes the old ones are not working. Leave MONGO out of it. There is no need to make examples of MONGO which will only chill contributions. It's pretty clear (to me at least) that it's the shear volume of edits, not a disproportionate amount of incivil edits, that has occured. Certainly there has been no evidence of disruption by MONGO. --DHeyward (talk) 14:13, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed A "write for the enemy" discretionary sanction. It's generally pretty clear where political boundaries line up. If an editor appears to be overly negative in tone for a particular article, create a DS that allows the editor to only make positive edits to that article (and talk) and a 0RR restriction. Example: After an editor insists on adding negative material, or only adds negative material (or one-sided if preferred) to a political article (sourced or not, BLP or not), AE can limit their contributions to that article to only positive material if it causes a dispute. The problem isn't the single editor, it's the atmosphere (it can be seen on the Anthony Watts page today as the bickering over "denier"). Problems arise when one group of editors want to characterize something as negatively as possible whilst another, equally polarized, does not. It's rare to see one group being extremely positive and the other being extremely negative but it is quite often the case that disputes arise when a group decides to make something negative and another group is defensive. The Santorum neologism dispute is an example. Use DS to stop editors that egregiously focus on adding negative material in either talk page discussions or articles. They can add positive material but are still limited to 0RR after DS is enacted. It can be page/person/topic specific. We are about to enter the 2016 election cycle and there will be plenty of editors seeking to add negative material (i.e. the NRA is evil, planned parenthood is evil, hillary clinton is evil, mitt romney is evil, etc). For most cases, the disputes will be about adding negative material. If you want an example from this case, the use of "neocon" being added by Ubikwit. It wasn't that the opponents to that label were arguing for hagiographic terms, rather they simply opposed the perceptibly negative "neocon" label. A DS that prevented Ubikwit from adding that label (or adding negative material about those persons) stops the dispute. Another example would be labeling a group as "terrorists." When consensus cannot be reached and there is a dispute, the negative material should be stopped - regardless of the politics involved - edit warring to add negative material to political topics should lead to a "write for the enemy" type of restriction. --DHeyward (talk) 15:20, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• Vanamonde93 You are of course correct about NPOV, UNDUE and RS's and writing for them. However, these disputes arise out of disagreements over NPOV, UNDUE and RS's. It's when those disagreements become unproductive or are repeated by the same editor over multiple pages/topics, it would be nice to have a method to keep passionate editors without the disruption caused by conflict. It's pretty easy to see negative/positive light disputes. We do it in BLP articles all the time. The idea that they are worked out in consensus is the goal but what I see as the problem is persistent attempts to add negative information that is resisted. It's usually not hard to spot. Where consensus is achieved, negative information is fine and there is nothing wrong with it. It becomes problematic when it's a singular focus of a specific editor that will edit war it into the article. This case started exactly as I outlined, with negative information being added and resisted by others and armies grew. HAd there been a way to stop it until consensus is reached, we wouldn't be here. Instead, it spiraled into this. Anthony Watts is headed to the same place (and that's a BLP). I'm proposing the way to stop it is similar to how we stopped it in BLPs: stop the negative side first. Those that have restraint to abide by it have no problem, those that can't get the "Write for the Enemy, 0RR" sanction (rather than a topic ban, though it could progress). It's a way to retain passionate editors, teach consensus and stop edit wars and POV pushing. Negative information will not be excluded, it's just the starting point for stopping escalating disputes by picking a side as an extension of WP:ONUS. --DHeyward (talk) 18:50, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• Vanamonde93 it's not intended to solve disputes. Disputes are part of consensus building. What it does is stop unproductive disputes that escalate. There are editors that compromise and can work together to create articles from various viewpoints. They work their differences out. The issue here is that a few editors insist on insertion of negative material that is very visibly negative (i.e. constantly using "Barack Hussein Obama" or "denier" or "misogynist" as examples). All of those undoubtedley have their place and eventually get worked in where they belong. The problem isn't that they are negative, the problem is editors that insist "because it's sourced it must be everywhere." Those editors create the conflict that draws people to a side or they drop out. You can see the sides build when these editors arrive and push. I only propose a way to stop those editors, not stop the process. Negative material should and will be in the encyclopedia. It's much better when it's written by people that can work together. Negative is rarely hard to spot and your example "X does not believe in anthropogenic climate change" is not the type of statement that draws ire or creates conflict. It's when people somehow believe "X" was named by their parents "Climate Change Denier X" and should be used as far and as wide as possible. Virtually no one believes that use of the word "denier" isn't negative. Both those that want to add the label and those that want it removed would agree that it's negative. For different reasons, but still negative (ie. either you believe it's deservedly negative or it's negative and not deserved). Edit warring, conflict generating, and infinite insertions of these terms is what leads us to ANI, AE and here. Most editors will have a general belief and can live with a middle ground but when someone starts adding it everywhere, another starts removing it everywhere. Moderates get involved because if it's not NPOV, they pull it back and it's a full blown edit war. The goal isn't to remove negative material, it's to curb editors that create the conflict by pulling articles with negative information. Stable, well-written articles don't have this problem. Dynamic political articles do and they are inflamed with rushes to add negative information. We had this debate for BLPs and raised the bar. We can do the same for articles. We still have negative information in BLPs, we just don't let it disintegrate the topic. Wait until 2016 and it will get ugly as it does every presidential election year. By now, things like the Santorum neologism have worked itself out into something with more neutral coverage. If we repeat 2012, we will see editors arguing that neologism has equal weight and footing with the candidate and will constantly link, add, disambiguate, whatever, to make their view known and which will then create violent flip-flops where it's removed entirely and endless RfC's that leave no middle ground to work in. We have policies like WP:ONUS and WP:OWN that address them but we are not very effective at applying them in political content debates. --DHeyward (talk) 00:41, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

• Guerillero Liz highlights on a good point though. The U.S. has major foreign policy and major domestic policy periods that don't lend itself to centuries. There would be debate about other breaks (post-vietnam vs 1980, etc,) and there are other significant breaks but that's neither here nor there. The problem is this: articles like Redwood National and State Parks which MONGO helped bring to a Mainpage featured article - we learn that native Americans were forcibly removed and slaughtered to a third of their population in 1850 through 1895 and by 1919 wiped out. In 1911, Rep. John Laker propose redwood national park to preserve the redwoods that were being logged. California legislated state parks in the 1920's. It became a National Park when LBJ signed legislation in 1968. In 1980 it became a World Heritage Site. There's politics wrapped in all of it from U.S. expansion, to nature conservancy to logging to legislation. If anyone thinks that detractors won't drag MONGO to AE for "topic ban violation" based on any date chosen because there are politics involved in creating national parks and forests, hasn't been here very long. Same thing with Retreat of glaciers since 1850. There are editors that oppose having the expansion of some glaciers from 1950 to 1980 or so mentioned because it's politically tied to AGW. the point is that politic dates and epochs start and stop randomly. AGW goes back to 1750 but reliable temp record starts at about 1850. Satellite era in 1979. I think he'd quit before facing that nonsense. That's when hostility and incivility happens and we really don't need a dated political topic ban to drive away a prolific editor. MONGO is not Eric. No blocks. No endless ANI's. No AE's. He can be abrupt and incivil but usually only with people that are also abrupt and incivil and it's rare. Not enough to attract a block. --DHeyward (talk) 23:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment

Contrary to the claims made, it's an indication of confirmation bias, not a conclusion of "fairness." In fact, it's usually an indication of a false conclusion. Really, though the particular merit of any one decision, indeed even the merit of hearing a case, is how it impacts the future of the encyclopedia. Is the encyclopedia better off before the case was accepted or after it was decided? - is really the only question worthy of an answer when deciding its merit. --DHeyward (talk) 07:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Comment on closing with 4-4 vote on sanction 3.4

EvergreenFirBeyond My Ken It looks like it's ignored but if you follow some of the arbs vote changes and cleanups, it's administrative and not indicative of ignoring it. Like many proposals, some are outdated and some are superceded. For example, if you follow Seraphimblade's votes on 3.2, it's clear there was a transition to admonishment only and it took a week or so to clear the other votes they made. When something is not passing, it's not necessary to weigh in on every bit if the result is acceptable to the arb. We're not a bureaucracy so if an action doesn't change the result, what's the point? Four votes is not passing in any scenario so updating "oppose" or "abstain" votes is not necessary. It takes more votes to close it so it's easy for arbs to stop the process if they think an item might pass with time. Nobody has abstained so far and it appears that voting for that remedy would not change anything if even 5 arbs can't be bothered to support it. It's pretty clear though that 3.3 "admonishment" is what has been chosen as the remedy for that editor whence the support for closing. --DHeyward (talk) 05:01, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

@Euryalus: If you are talking about the last remedy against MONGO and not the two open remedies against Ubikwit, please note all the votes in the "Admonished" remedy. It seems quite the stretch given the Ubikwit events in the last week that this decision could ever be an admonishment and topic ban for MONGO vs. only topic ban for Ubikwit. Unless all those votes are reconsidered, it's unlikely you are doing anything but prolonging the long overdue case. NativeForeigner for example crossed out his topic ban vote at the same time as Seraphimblade, and commented here about his discussion with them, to be in favor of admonishment as his only support vote. He hasn't voted in a number of remedies but they had majorities and hasn't participated in a number of weeks. He is listed as inactive now but that is certainly not the case. It seems unlikely they will vote and if they do, it seems likely to be a clarification similar to Seraphimblades as a Oppose topic ban. Why is there this hope that a topic ban + admonishment will pass against MONGO? If they haven't bothered to support it in the weeks this case has been in PD state, what's the rationale to keep the sword of Damocles over his head or the rationale that they will reconsider the admonishment vote? It's pretty simple math to figure out that NativeForeigner plus 2 other arbs would have to support the remedy for a 7 vote pass and if he is out, his last vote was for admonishment. Is he going to come back just to clarify as Seraphimblade did or is there pressure for ill or non-participating arbs to "Abstain" to lower the threshold for only this remedy? --DHeyward (talk) 19:56, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Update: It appears that two more have voted 'Oppose' in the Mongo Topic Ban section. Are we then waiting for the Ubikwit open remedies? Sanction 2.2 is still open and seems just as valid as the MONGO sanction (note, that it's a no brainer that the other sanction is preferred, just as it was a no brainer that MONGO's sanction was admonishment). --DHeyward (talk) 20:02, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@DHeyward: I was waiting on the final vote on 3.4. I support the principle of getting majority votes for or against effective remedies, as leaving them half-voted on is a recipe for future lawyering. As we are there now, I've supported the close. -- Euryalus (talk) 21:07, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for sniping as my reaction was before the final oppose votes. I'm not sure how voting would lead to future wikilawyering as the other admonishment remedy had already passed. It seemed to me, the only possible outcome for 3.4 was defeat as passing would have opened more issues about the admonishment remedy and having multiple passing remedies that conflicted. Even worse would be an abstention based 5 or 6 vote "pass." Looking at all possible scenarios, the least wikilawyering would be "oppose" which is in fact no different than "not passed." The most wikilawyering would have been a last minute pass based on abstentions when no other remedy had abstentions. The medium cluster would have been sorting the admonishment from the topic ban. I'm glad it turned into a majority oppose (which I think was the only plausible outcome), but had the 3.4 "Support" votes succeeded in delaying closing and achieved the remedy they sought, it would have been worse. So in the prisoner's dilemma set of choices, "Close," even without majorities, would have been the right decision with no major downside that wouldn't be addressable with DS. The worst possible decision would be passing that remedy after the net+4 close period had elapsed and with abstentions as the "Oppose close" comments indicate they would like instead of a lack of votes. This was a case where keeping the door open for a hasty vote can only lead to more problems. Just an observation, IMHO, the only wikilawyering ArbCom faces now with this case is the Topic Ban vote for Ubikwit that changed drastically after his block. There will no doubt be arguments that it unduly tainted the vote, was not related to the case or American Politics, and will be the basis for an early appeal - regardless of its merit, it will be argued and there will be supporters for lifting the topic ban earlier than 18 months (realize that he will have supporters just because days end in the letter "y" but these are more concrete arguments). So be it, but shutting the door with the same sanction passing 7-5 before the block would have been better than shutting it 11-0 after the block so "waiting" isn't always the best course especially when the effective result doesn't change. I am glad ArbCom didn't change to "Site Ban" after the block as that would have opened it to even more wikilawyering. I realize some may disagree. --DHeyward (talk) 22:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by MONGO

Clerk note: this was made in response to DHeyward. I think this could have been handled by motions at the other American Politics case which I never even heard of.--MONGO 19:57, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

@Caspring...While edit warring is bad, many content disputes only lead to better articles.--MONGO 16:48, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

I admit that there have been times I have been incivil and hostile and for that I apologize. Even so, I feel since all my efforts have been dedicated to defending BLP and I rarely edit articles about those I may be in political disagreement with one should be able to see that I've been defensive on issues, not offensive in trying to add negativity. Case in point is my statement at the Hillary Clinton FAC...[10]...in which I stated that while I was no fan of the subject, I supported promotion of that article to featured level. I'm not a threat to American Political articles and will adjust my tone to better serve the pedia.--MONGO 03:57, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

The diffs support a civility warning in my case. I believe that is an issue where I am definitely guilty. I rarely edit articles on politics that are not congruent with my own, and while my incivity could be seen as disruptive in the political arena, I'm not edit warring overall nor trying to damage article space. I realize the diffs provided in my finding are only representative but they do not convey, as I explained earlier, my work on things that cross party lines where I am also oftentimes in the defense posture. My efforts to follow the verdicts of science rather than my politics is more than apparent in Retreat of glaciers since 1850, which I shepherded to FA and have been working on as of late to keep it from going to FAR. I can't see any reason to stick around if I'm cornered in a minefield that prohibits me from working on articles that could easily attract polarized politics such as the Retreat of glaciers article...as that article clearly demonstrates that glaciers everywhere are in Retreat and the scientific consensus is that this is caused primarily by AGW, a subject that is a polarized American Political issue. This is but one of many examples where my editing will be possibly hampered by this remedy. In others, I've been at the forefront of keeping conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 articles minimized and heavily participated in bringing several related articles in that venue to FA level. Broadly construed, 9/11 articles are definitely in the realm of American Politics because of the events that led to them and what happened afterwards. In one diff cited in my finding, it's suggested that I created hostility by informing Collect that he should gather evidence because I knew he was going to be taken to arbcom. Alerting another to prepare for their defense is hostile in what way? While one diff surely is hostile, that one isn't. I have no topic bans....few attempts to remedy my alledged topic disruption has been attempted either at noticeboards through AE. I haven't been blocked since 2008 and that event was a major contributing factor that led to the blocking admin losing their bit. While I respect that the committee is making a sincere effort to put an end to the bickering on American political articles...why am I singled out? It's shortsighted to assume that only myself and Ubikwit are causing all the troubles. A remedy that draws a line in the sand for everyone involved would have allowed for strong discretionary sanctions to be applied for any future flare ups.--MONGO 01:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I am taking this into account and posted the diff on the PD page --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 03:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't think anyone would say that my editing history indicates that I am a POV pusher or that I wreck articles with synthesis or unsubstantiated claims. However, many editors I have had disagreements with would likely say I have been rude, short, in civil and some may say I have engaged in personal attacks or failed to AGF. My limited engagements with Ubikwit do not indicate we need an interaction ban between us...I don't harbor any ill will towards him, and my comments to him on one talk page were out of place though I was curious if he did have anything else to add or subtract that wasn't related to possibly controversial (negative) issues...that's all.--MONGO 17:31, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• I have to say to the committee and the community that I hear you. I recognize I'be been difficult to discuss some matters on, mainly due to my rudeness. I'm self imposing a moratorium for a year on editing or commenting on any mainline political issues excepting global warming and 9/11, and I'm not very active anymore anyway. I'll also strive to keep my cool and pretend that anyone I may be conversing with on a talk page is sitting right next to me. In most cases, people are kinder to each other when face to face.--MONGO 20:51, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

• @DGG: here you state that both myself and Ubikwit are claiming the other is being treated more favorably...I have never said that. Where did I state that?--MONGO 18:02, 6 June 2015 (UTC)
• @DGG: Thanks for doing nothing about your false claim! I've had enough and have officially retired. I've asked a crat to vanish my pages immediately or if that is not possible, at the conclusion of this case. This is my last edit on this website.--MONGO 05:44, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

MONGO, considering that the decision is still being voted on, and may very well turn out to be different from my own preferences, you are according me a much greater degree of influence than seems to accord with reality. FWIW, as things go at the present, I seem to be voting in the middle of the range of possibilities, as has been the case for almost all my votes this first half year. But you are right that discussing this here has little purpose: it's the votes themselves that will matter. DGG ( talk ) 07:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

MONGO, In the hope of clarifying some previous remarks:

(1) I normally assume that in good faith disputes each person is generally convinced of the rightfulness of their position, and is generally of the opinion that unless the decision in the matter essentially conforms to their position, they are being treated relatively unfavorably, especially if symmetrical sanctions are imposed on both themselves and their opponent. I interpreted your remark that "The diffs support a civility warning in my case " as an indiction that you thought nothing more than that was warranted, and that consequently giving you a similar topic ban was unfair treatment. But I also see that you subsequently said in effect that you would undertake a voluntary topic ban, and that you therefore regard the result as fair. I should have more fully considered both statements.

(2) However, I was puzzled at the offense you seem to have taken at my remark--I was not assigning you any particular guilt other than usual human reactions, I was not accusing you in any conceivable sense of dishonesty. I now see that you may have been offended that I had not realized the extent to which you recognized your contribution to the difficulties.

(3)I still thing it very much of an over-reaction to withdraw from editing Wikipedia altogether on account of this case, and particularly unfortunate that you would want to do so because of what I said here. DGG ( talk ) 02:46, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

A self imposed sanction beats one imposed by an authoritative power any day. Why do I now want to leave...not because of anything you have said or done, so lets be clear on that. Nor is it because of this case in general, in which some sort of further sanction will likely be put on the MONGO wall of shame. I'm probably just using his case as an excuse to break a bad habit. I have come to realize that I cannot meet my self imposed obligations to update old FAs I helped write because I don't have the time due to work and life to do it, so now is an excellent time to vahmoose. So no, not you, not this case in general and posting this here publicly so my sentiments are visible.--MONGO 04:11, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed decision delayed

The proposed decision has been delayed. The arbitrators have stated on the clerks' mailing list that they will have something by next week at the latest. Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 16:05, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, and I'd also like to apologize on behalf of the arbitrators as requested by email. Thanks, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 16:06, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Ubikwit

Thanks for the update.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:08, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: First, it's disappointing to not see a finding about competence, as the issue is prevalent in this topic area, where editors vote their politics and ignore or misrepresent sources regularly. If there were to be anything preventative in the findings, one would surely imagine that the politically motivated conflation of religion and politics should have demonstrated a need for such a finding in this topic area.

While I've admitted that my conduct has not been perfect, there is a difference between calling a spade a spade and making personal attacks. I don't think that calling a spade a spade is necessarily hostile, and I'm not sure what other hostility you are pointing to in the diffed edits. One point that you may have overlooked is that Xenophrenic first made a veiled threat about Arbcom on my Talk page here, though he tried to deny it subsequently[11]. That was before I filed the request about the article, which was turned down. Are you asserting that threatening to take conduct to Arbcom (after opening two indecisive AN/I threads) and then following through is hostile?

And I'm rather curious as to why none of the personal attacks made by Mongo were diffed? Contrary to the false assertion by DHeyward above, I also diffed the personal attacks made against me by Mongo at the Robert Kagan article talk page, for example.

Meanwhile, it seems to me that there is more egregious conduct raised everyday at AN/I and closed without sanctions, so the proposed topic bans seem draconian to me. That is more so the case considering that this case was opened as a second thought to the Collect case in the first place, against my protestations, and saw minimal participation, with a mere single post by me during the workshop.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 10:04, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

In terms of competence, if you could indicate such need with diffs I'd consider it. I saw issues with civility, with some misunderstandings. But competence allows for mistakes. Your conduct, as far as I saw it, was calling a mistake a straightforward attack. I think all too often in this project the inverse of Hanlon's razor is applied. In terms of the format, I tend to agree. The evidence here wasn't that representative of the case brought about Collect, and although they were two separate issues, the need to separate them was minimal. The affect was far more attention was spent on the Collect case than this. Some of what delayed the decision being posted was my general dislike of the evidence provided. (It wasn't representative) but we make decisions based upon evidence submitted. I am in no way asserting that threatening to take conduct to arbcom is hostile. The other route we could have taken was a Tban between parties but as Sceptre concluded at one of the ANI threads it would likely be like putting a band aid on a geyser (or something to that effect). I share their concerns. NativeForeigner ^Talk 00:36, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Sceptre uses she/her pronouns --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:54, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, I wasn't familiar with that.

There are a lot of issues at play, so I'll try to simply address a couple, and will have to take more time to examine the diffs you provided in light of your above comment.

The primary issue is of ADVOCACY/ACTIVISM, and Collect was the primary motivator of misconduct on political articles on Wikipedia. By that I mean that wherever he showed up and started engaging in the kind of tactics demonstrated by the reams of evidence presented against him, he kindled the fires of partisan feuding instead of policy-guided editing. I was often a target for his invective, and that drew attention to me and my edits from other like-minded (conservative) editors.

Collect, was competent, but a partisan advocate that mobilized the activists.

One sign of that is the appearance--out of nowhere--of Mongo at the Robert Kagan page simply to level personal attacks at me to dissuade me from editing according to the scholarly sources I was citing. I find it somewhat incomprehensible that the diffs of those blatant personal attacks have not been cited in the FOF against him, as they tie together this aspect of the editing environment in the American politics topic area.

LM2000 and Jweiss11's pronouncements equivocating religion and politics, however, are signs of sheer incompetence. I tried to point that out, they refused to compromise, and that article, structurally and content wise, is still broken, especially in relation to the existence of the "Social and economic politics" section. I tried to remedy the situation at AN/I, twice. Here, while I would agree that incompetence is related to ignorance, initially, at least, after it has been pointed out, there should be an acknowledgement of an issue, which there wasn't. There was only a tendentious maintaining of the invalid position, and much to my surprise, no where on Wikipedia has that been addressed, even in these proceedings. I've seen editors refer to a systemic bias toward religion on Wikipedia, and this would seem to be an example supporting that.

As for Xenophrenic, there is no way I can recognize anything corresponding to ignorance in his POV pushing. His edits belie more sophistication than LM2000 and Jweiss11, for example, and he never even responded to my query regarding the equivocation of religion and politics. I believe that I did query him regarding a COI, but he denied having one. And his multiple false invocations of Godwin should not have escaped scrutiny here.

The most offensive comment I made would have to be that to Mr. Jensen, but telling an academic that your not impressed with his dismissal of peer-reviewed academically published works is in the neighborhood of calling a spade a spade in order to bring his attention to what he was doing, which was not policy-compliant and not what one would expect of an academic. In retrospect I would certainly have not made the comment in the same poorly phrased manner, as it was unintentionally overly personal, and I apologize for that, but it was not a personal attack. It was meant to be a comment about his editing (as an academic), not about his person. He responded in a somewhat reflective manner that he too had published on Oxford, etc. Note that I have interacted with Mr. Jensen on other articles subsequently, and he has apparently come to agree with me on the relevant material in the neoconservativism article in general.

I didn't notice any comment by a use named Sceptre, so I will have to check when I have some time.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 04:10, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't see a comment by user Sceptre, but I understand the gist if it is in reference to Collect (i.e., an IBAN).

Meanwhile, I should state that regarding Mongo, though I don't feel that he or me committed offenses egregious enough to warrant a topic ban, I do feel that he deserves a stronger admonishment for deliberately resorting to the tactic of making a false recourse to BLP policy and simultaneously advocating that RS and NPOV be violated in the name of his partisan advocacy of BLP defense of a public figure whose work has generated great controversy in the public sphere. That is the type of conduct that is particularly problematic in the topic area of American politics, and it is related to WP:ACTIVISM, for which there is also a conspicuous lack of a statement of principle. If discretionary sanctions are to be implemented, there is a need for such statements of principle so as to facilitate the resolution of conduct issues at AE.

I've yet to go through the diffs in my FoF.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 09:35, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• Edit warring

Though I didn't protest the block as I am aware that the definition of edit warring is more expansive than 3rr, an examination of the circumstances of the complaint filed by Collect (as a tactic to eliminate the competition) is illustrative of the fact that this case is somewhat superfluous because Collect was the main force driving the disruption.

To be brief, though I had reverted Collect's edits, there was an emerging consensus against which Collect was intentionally inserting the material with respect to which the emerging consensus was against including so as to goad me. That was described by Fyddlestix (talk · contribs) in the 3rr report per the above-cited diffs. I don't intend to make excuses, but I have seen the goading mentioned as a mitigating circumstance in such cases, and editing with consensus to improve the article is also a factor worthy of considering, per WP:IAR. Admittedly, I could have handled the situation with more composure, but after several failed An/I threads against Collect, it had become exasperating to deal with him and his repeated and deliberate attempts at obstruction. I don't foresee having such problems going forward in this topic area thanks to Collect's absence.

• Sanctions

If it is deemed that I should be sanctioned, per TomHarrison's suggestions, at most a revert restriction would be in order.

I had never interacted with Mongo as far as I know until he started lobbing personal attacks at me due to his political affiliation, apparently. Moreover, I have never been uncivil toward him. Accordingly, I don't believe that an IBAN (at least a 2-way IBAN) would be in order, or even necessary, as it wouldn't benefit the encyclopedia.

I would not object to an IBAN with Xenophrenic, on the other hand, though he has stopped editing the Harris article.

It bears noting that Collect was topic banned for a large number of egregious offenses, and the proposals to topic ban Mongo and me are based on evidence that would not even be sanctioned at AN/I, let alone merit arbitration.

• Harris article

In fact, I filed two An/I threads and a request for arbitration about the Harris case, all of which resulted in no action, yet there are three diffs related to that article cited as misconduct by me.

The first diff should probably have been used in an FoF against Xenophrenic for misrepresenting sources, falsely invoking Godwin's law, crying BLP, failing to respond to the query about competence and the statements of LM2000 and Jweiss11 (violating WP:TALK), etc. Xenophrenic was obstructive on every aspect related to American politics in that article, and while there are three diffs in the FoF on me, there is no FoF on Xenophrenic. This was a comment made after having already filed one (or both) AN/I reports regarding Xenophrenic's conduct, and before filing the related request for arbitration, which NativeForeigner invited me to bring back to Arbcom should the problems continue.

The second diff is not a diff but a link to a section from an AN/I thread addressing misconduct. It is not clear what I'm being accused of here, and once more, no action resulted from the report.

The third diff is another link to a section on the Talk page related to readability, where Collect pretended not to read what I wrote and responded to a non-point (violating WP:TALK), and Xenophrenic is called out for falsely invoking Godwin's law, which has consistently met with absolutely no repercussions.

@NativeForeigner: Am I to understand that you drafted this FoF? Do you recall the request for arbitration I filed regarding the Harris article? --Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I did most of the drafting of the FoF about you. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:46, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Guerillero: OK. I see the note that you were taking over the drafting from a few days ago, which makes me wonder how much of the relevant material you were able to read beforehand.

First and foremost at issue is the request for arbitration regarding the Sam Harris article that I filed a month before the case request against Collect was filed. NativeaForeigner's last comment is here.

It might appear that the tone of my comments in the diffs you posted in the FoF are too brusque, but the background to that article involves three separate filings related to conduct matter, primarily focused on Xenophrenic, but also Collect.

At the top of my statement in the arbitration request I linked to two AN/I threads, one BLP/N thread and two RFCs. Together with the Talk page and article itself, that represents a substantial amount of material detailing various forms of tendentious editing on an article in which I was virtually the sole editor trying to incorporate scholarly RS to balance the POV unduly self-serving self-published statements (eventually removed en mass). There were also a couple of SPAs at the article, and the diff to the AN/I discussion addresses contradictory edits by one who subsequently edited in a more consistent manner (after I'd queried him on their Talk page[12], etc.). The editors that had bloated the article with unduly self-serving promotional statements Harris posted on his blog were obviously engaged in ADVOCACY, and another editor engaged in content disputes with me has subsequently removed similar from the The Moral Landscape article.

I managed to improve that pathetic promotional screed of an article to a substantial degree, though it still needs much more work.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 04:02, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

arbitrary break

@DGG: That's an interesting take on things, but seems problematic insofar as the case request was focused solely on Collect. I don't recall that there was any evidence presented against anyone other than Collect.
In other words, the case against Collect was the only business that the community brought to Arbcom; meanwhile, EvergreenFir's proposal, which I'd supported, was ignored, as were my protestations, so I tend to think that Rich Farmbrough's comment is somewhat enlightening and spot on.
While I appreciate your admitting, in retrospect, that this case wasn't necessary, as a result, an FoF has been presented against me that includes three diffs (two of which are links to threads) related to the Harris article and AN/I pertaining to conduct there (which resulted in no action by the community) that I consider to be somewhat nebulous, particularly in light of the related dispute resolution steps initiated by me with little effect, and which, again, stem from a request for arbitration I submitted in relation to that material that was was declined.
Meanwhile, the most egregious evidence in the for of diffs of blatant personal attacks by Mongo against me at the Robert Kagan talk page, which were presented by two different editors, have been utterly ignored. I'd like to query Guerillero about the rationale for that. Those diffs are far stronger than anything you put in the FoF against me, though that FoF has garnered a number of supporting votes. There was actually more misconduct by Mongo across a wider swath of articles/ and user talk pages, yet half of the evidence against him has been ignored. Let me just say in advance that this is a challenge to you, because there is no justification for it, as far as I can tell. Maybe you'll be able to convince me otherwise.
While I appreciate that Mongo has been more apologetic than me, I really don't feel that I have much to apologize for in relation to the FoF, for the above reasons. The fact that Mongo is being apologetic is not a reason why he should be treated less harshly than me, even though I don't believe that either of us have committed offenses anywhere near the offenses by Collect that resulted in the initial request.
--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 12:12, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Both you and Mongo think the other is being treated more favorably; such a contrast of views is often taken as an indication of a fair decision DGG ( talk ) 15:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, but no, that is neither a rational criteria, nor and adequate explanation.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:11, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I saw them and didn't find them as part of a wider pattern or particularly egregious --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 01:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Guerillero: Thanks for keeping it simple. You are, of course, entitled to your subjective opinion, as entrusted by the community in your capacity to arbitrate.

As a member of the community subject to this process, I'm entitled to my opinion as well. I may revisit this later, but suffice it to say, that without addressing the question of "a wider pattern", the diffs are clearly more egregious than anything you were able to present against me. For example, the second diff in your FoF on me occurred after two AN/I's filed against Xenophrenic as the primary disruptive editor on the article, and though it is terse and mentions requesting arbitration, there is nothing blatantly hostile in it. To imply that it is, instead, part of a "wider pattern" is an outright misrepresentation on your part. As you can see, I'm not here to grovel before Wikipedia's arbitration committee. In fact, it appears that this Committee needs to be taken to task and brought up to spec.

The reply you left below in "sua sponte matters" fails to address the primary point raised by Rich and seconded by myself that the case you have issued these FoF in was adopted in a manner that exceeded the remit of the Committee in the first place, and that has been irrefutably demonstrated by the result, with acknowledgement from one arb (though I imagine he doesn't want that to be repeated).

In that regard, either it was contradictory for you to use material related to the Harris article, which one assumes is what NativeForeigner was referring to with

"When drafting we consciously avoided sanctioning a couple parties who had good evidence submitted against them because it was so far separate from the american politics case we set out to solve."

or the Harris material should have resulted in an FoF against Xenophrenic (and whoever else). In other words, there is entirely to much "selective hearing" on the part of the "consciously" deliberating Committee that reflects clear violations of what one assumes is a rational, as opposed to arbitrary, arbitration process. In fact, there never was an "american politics case" to begin with, because the community did not request one. I'd say that after absolutely zero participation by the Committee or anyone in the community aside from yours truly in the workshop stage, there's was a need for reflection by the Committee before handing off the responsibility of drafting to you after two months. What was the reason for that, by the way? Is this some sort of convoluted effort to cover up the mistakes?

In regard to the Harris material, I am, of course, of the opinion, along with several professors from the US (and UK?), that the material addressed by sources examining Harris's writings and statements implications does so in terms of politics, public policy, etc., and is therefore directly relevant to American politics. I have made reference to the statements of Jackson Lears, for example, regarding the "national security state", for example, but there are also statements on 'state violence', imperialism, "torture as collateral damage" (which is now in the article), the 'war on terror', 'Muslim profiling', "political bigotry", etc., as is plainly evident in the article history and talk page discussions. At any rate, suffice it to say that the Committee also has a duty to respect community policies on content during arbitration. Accordingly since it is clear (to me, at any rate) from scholarly reliable sources that the aforementioned subject matter directly pertains to American politics, there is a contradiction.

Moreover, the Committee refused to accept the case that I requested regarding that article, but now apparently admits that there was plenty of evidence presented against Xenophrenic for findings and probably sanctions, yet it has not ignored that under the false pretense that the material is out of scope, while conversely applying that same scope to me.

The internal contradictions are piling up.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 02:19, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I was referring to America:_Imagine_the_World_Without_Her NativeForeigner ^Talk 03:12, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: I just went through every diff posted by Casprings and noted that they are all against VictorD7, accounting for only one editor, though you referred to multiple editors that the Committee consciously precluded from sanctions on the basis of scope. Meanwhile, note the following reply I received after requesting permission to exceed the evidence limit from Seraphimeblade

I'm afraid Harris is still rather out of scope here, as he's primarily notable for his religious (or anti-religious, as may be) work and views, and he's really not primarily a political figure. We'd rather keep this to political figures and issues than to people who are primarily notable for other things but happen to have talked about politics. The scope will get impossibly overbroad otherwise, as almost everything can be said to touch politics in some way or another, and many people express political views sometime or another.[13]

In the world of "broadly construed sanctions of Wikipedia, it is simply disingenuous to assert that the Harris article and the movie are out of scope. That is further evidence that this case was a mistake that you people are unwilling to admit. Sorry, that's pathetic. Perhaps you an Thryduulf have an answer as to why you failed to draft the PD and turned it over to Guerillero, who apparently drafted something the entire Committee had agreed to in advance in a week?

@GorillaWarfare: As far as I'm concerned, the behavior evidenced in the FoF against me is marginally disruptive, at best and not sanctionable, so I beg to differ. Don't worry though, I won't be editing this website after being topic banned in these proceedings. I'm sure that will make Courcelles happy. he was part and parcel to the ludicrous TeaParty case that saw me sanctioned for nonsense as well, and I can't assume good faith at his suggesting a site ban based on superfluous nonsense and negligence in the Committee's declining the Harris case initially, while lamenting that Collect had to be topic banned for extremely egregious violations.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 10:04, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

I can check my notepad to be sure, but it is possible that we only excluded VictorD7 and the movie as being out of scope. Things dragged out, Thryduulf had prior commitments after things dragged on a certain period. The PD here is a synthesis of what Guerillero had, and what I had drafted myself, which I'll admit were rather similar. Todd was a drafter but had other obligations interfere. In my limited conversations with @Seraphimblade: I think we both had some concerns about the Sam Harris bit, he can correct me either way. On balance I found it to be narrowly admissible, although that is something that needs to be reconciled. To imply we agreed in advance, however, is simply disengenuous. I had concerns that it wouldn't be accepted (in fact, we have changed dates and added sanctions to accomodate for some other arbitrators.) I had some health issues come up and simply found myself behind in school, work, and life. Upon returning I wasn't sure that my draft respected the scope and parties as it should. I asked for more assistance. Guerillero provided his draft. They were very similar, and we decided to go ahead and post. That is why it was late. I agree with you this is imperfect. The scope changes and addition of parties complicated the case. But when I review the evidence (and discuss it with fellow arbitrators) the consensus is that in this particular case these proposed sanctions were justified. The fact that admonishments are being opposed as being too weak would indicate that many on the committee view a topic ban as necessary because of the provided evidence. If I told you "This is a great PD with no substantial problems or questions about scope and party changes, etc" I'd be lying. But if I told you I didn't think it would solve issues in the topic area and limit disruption, I'd be lying as well. NativeForeigner ^Talk 11:29, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

For the last ~10 days of May I was on a long-planned family holiday (ISTR mentioning it in my election candidacy) and had essentially no access to Wikipedia (with a bit of preparation beforehand and catching up afterwards). Before that I'd had a series of real life events that limited the time I could spend on Arbitration matters to short 10-15 minute stretches here and there; but I found (for me at least) that pulling together everything to write a proposed decision I need to be able to dedicate at least hour-long (ideally more) stretches to the task and I wasn't able to do that. I handed over the task when I realised that I wasn't able to complete it - the PD would only be being posted around this weekend had it been left to me. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Guerillero: After reviewing the diffs and your FoF against Mongo, I don't see how a couple of the diffs I presented could be seen as anything but a part of "a wider pattern" of personal attacks evincing partisanship targeting editors deemed to be adding negative material (based on a prevalence in peer-reviewed scholarly sources, as it were, but I suppose that is a point that also doesn't matter to you). These comments are cut from exactly the same cloth as the others.
That seems to indicate that you are simply evading responsibility for your actions with the above response, a responsibility that encompasses representing the evidence presented in a fair and comprehensive manner. I do understand that the arbs who have voted in support of the FoF are simply acting in accordance with advance deliberations, and inasmuch as that is the case you are a scapegoat of a sort in this legalistic spectacle staged for the plebians.

The proof is in the pudding, as they say, so, no offense to Mongo, but I will post a couple of the comments you have declared not to be part of "a wider pattern", presumably to make me look like the aggressor here.

Anything else the article needs, or just a desire on your part to add negativity? Seriously ask yourself what your motivations are for even caring if the man is labeled a neocon. Liberals toss that label around like some kind of epithet. Considering your intent here, I'd say that such an effort is a BLP violation....we should approach all BLP's with neutral compassion, not with malice.--MONGO 03:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
There are no personal attacks in my comment. I stated an obvious observable fact...your sole effort here is to discredit the subject of this bio. The talk page is filled with little more than various ways you wish to add negativity. That's not writing an encyclopedia...its misusing it in an egregious manner.--MONGO 05:15, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 14:07, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@DGG: By the way, I've noted that you never responded to Mongo's query about your misrepresentation of his statements in your irrational response to my question.
Don't you think you have a responsibility to maintain a certain degree of probity during these proceedings? Or do you think that arbitrators are above the law, so to speak?--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 14:13, 7 June 2015 (UTC)
@Guerillero: Exactly what "closed case" is this supposed to be "revisiting"?--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 00:48, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@DGG: Apparently, the statement

...if symmetrical sanctions are imposed on both themselves and their opponent

reflects a preconceived schemata that it is the job of an arbitrator to demarcate "opponents and impose "symmetrical sanctions" on the basis of some sort of moralization of what this dispute resolution process is about. That is clearly errant, given the specifics.

That is to say, I never said anything directly to Mongo that could be deemed to qualify a characterization of "opponents". I simply responded to his unwarranted remarks attacking my motivations, period, full stop. You may have been thinking aboutthe content dispute, but that does not seem to be directly irrelevant to your comment about the findings and sanctions related to conduct. Calling me an "opponent" is an accusatory remark with no apparent basis. I'll AGF that you were not aware of the implications and were mistakenly transferring the relationship pertaining to a content dispute to this conduct dispute, but I'll request that you carefully differentiate between the two. In other words, there is no provision for a "sanction" for engaging in a good faith content dispute, so there is nothing "symmetrical" about the interaction between Mongo and me. Please take care not draw such errant and misleading inferences.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 03:40, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Try asking again

Since Guerillero has not responded in a timely manner to my above query regarding the "closed case" being "revisited" by this case, I'm going to open it up to all members of the Committee.
I'd like to know how, specifically, this case is related to the closed case referred to by Guerillero in a manner such as to legitimate the characterization of "revisiting".
I adduce that she is referring to "American Politics" case, which was a case involving a sole editor as party, Arzel, and in which the name was subsequently changed. I see this statement, but since I was not a party to the case, nor even on the list of those submitting statements, I fail to see how this case represents a "revisiting". I note that it appears that the Collect case was not described in such a manner.
I note that I did present evidence in that case, against Collect, but only Arzel was subject to an FoF in that case.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:35, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

The scope of the American Politics case was "The scope is "Misconduct in the area of American Politics by recently-active editors"." The finding about the locus of dispute was "[articles relating] to political or social issues in the United States. This is at least the fourth arbitration case in the past year related to American political and social issues.". Thryduulf (talk) 17:14, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the reply.

I think I'm grasping the concept here. Essentially, the Committee has asserted that, even though it declined to place the topic area under DS because it is too broad, it can essentially create a case out of thin air from anywhere in the topic area, even if one is not brought by the community, strictly speaking.

That seems like a contrivance of the scope aimed at abusing of the trust of the community by short-circuiting the normal AE process, and now we see how.

There is absolutely no justification for that. The pending AE request in the Climate Change area demonstrates that. Is the aim to avoid overloading AE? That is the only effect I can think of that might be an objective.

Let me just point out that all of this would have been unnecessary if Collect had been topic banned at AE for his disruptive editing on articles related to neoconservativism, which definitely falls under the topic area, even narrowly construed. Thanks.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 17:42, 18:24, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

I believe all your queries have already been answered in responses to Rich Farmbrough elsewhere on this page. Thryduulf (talk) 19:28, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Remedies, etc., for the record

@DGG: The remedies are not proportionate to the offenses; the topic ban is draconian.
You have indicated, not intentionally, that you view this case as some sort of oppositional proceeding between me and Mongo in which you are sitting in judgement as some sort of moralist overseer.
That is not the way I see the process as being defined. Furthermore, remedies (sanctions) are supposed to be preventative, yet only the Committee seems to feel that the topic bans were intended to serve that purpose as opposed to being punitive and implemented because you collectively weren't willing to admit the collective mistake in launching this arbitrary arbitration case in the first place.
This case was the result of my being harassed by a right-wing advocate for a number of years, including several Arbcom cases and requests. There was nothing remotely immoral in anything I have been accused of here, and though I regret the phrasing of my comment to Mr. Jensen, he deserved strong criticism for his unjustifiable attempt to dismiss a scholarly book without legitimate grounds.
The Committee ignored substantial evidence against right-wing advocates on the Sam Harris article, and I'm astounded by that, as it evinces a systemic bias with respect to both politics and religion (as not wanting to censor an "evangelical atheist", and not wanting censor the illegitimate invocation of Godwin's law), and anti-intellectual, in general, insofar as wikipedia's top dispute resolution body has given a pass to advocates allowing them to censor criticism from academics of a "prolific pundit" promulgating "political bigotry" (terms in quotation marks taken from RS characterizations).
You all ignored suggestions to post alternative remedies as well as various other substantial criticisms of the entire proceedings, which presented some novel aspects regarding the definition of the "scope" of the case on which it depends, and the creating of the case without it having been requested by the community, apparently due to a deliberate contrivance to avoid implementing DS in the "American politics" case.
--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 15:41, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I made an analogy with making a judgment, but I regret using one that had such implications. I personally make no judgment about relative guilt;what I meant to imply only was what the findings said, that both the editors contributed to the problems with this topic area DGG ( talk ) 15:52, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, fair enough.

I don't deny the mild offenses demonstrated by two of the diffs (nothing regarding the Harris article is legitimate), but it bears repeating that the source of disruption common to almost every article or Talk page related to the diffs in both FoF was Collect, in one form or another.

Furthermore, though I presented evidence of flagrant and repeated misrepresentation of sources, other violations of WP:TALK and disruptive WP:CRYBLP etc., evidence against Xenophrenic, it was completely ignored, as were the diffs that both me and EvergreenFir presented against Mongo on the Robert Kagan article. I don't have a persecution complex, but it is difficult to see how I have not been singled out by this Committee in an unfair, unbalanced manner for excessive sanctions that can only be read as punishment, because the level of disruption evidenced in the FoF against me pales compared to misconduct addressed at An/I everyday, generally not meeting with sanctions. In effect, this sends the message not to bring complaints to Arbcom, even if there is a legitimate reason. The massive amount of evidence presented against Collect and his long overdue banning from the topic area vindicates my pursuit of his misconduct here, but the results of this case call the functioning of this Committee into question.--Ubikwit ^連絡 _{見学/迷惑} 16:17, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Revised PD Date

Sorry, a couple drafters have been busy, I've had a nasty stomach flu. Regardless I have a rough draft set up. Upon being reviewed by the other drafters, I'd expect a full PD out by this weekend. Apologies for the delay. NativeForeigner ^Talk 09:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Casprings

But content disputes are now happening to one of the most viewed pages on Wikipedia, United States. Many similar faces and such. Casprings (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Vanamonde93

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this question, but I haven't participated at ARBCOM before. I've been following this case, and been wondering whether it's still active. Nobody seems to have edited any of its subpages in more than a week. Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:26, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Oh, the arbitrators have definitely not forgotten the case or anything, just real life things have unfortunately come up. Thanks for the inquiry. --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 04:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Real life is, well, real. Thanks for letting me know. Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 07:00, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

• DHeyward, such a restrictions does not seem workable to me, because what constitutes positive and negative material is highly dependent on personal POV. "Socialist" is mildly offensive to a democrat, the worst insult imaginable to a republican, and a term of pride for the few socialist politicians (which certainly exist). "climate change denier" is seen as negative; but "climate change believer" is seen as equally negative by other people. No, the way forward is what it has always been, iron-clad adherence to the RS and WP:DUE, without trying to "balance" source POV by cherry-picking sources from "opposite" political views. If editors are unable to do so, they need to be separated from the topic, or at least from each other. Vanamonde93 (talk) 17:51, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• DHeyward, I can see where you are coming from, but I'm not certain I agree. Yes, the locus of the dispute is about the interpretations of WP:DUE and WP:RS, and a couple of others; but a fair amount of the dispute that I have witnessed (to be certain, I've only been here a couple of years) has been about a) labels and b) whether "negative" material is relevant. To me, your proposal does not address either of these, because a) a statements such as "X does not believe in anthropogenic climate change" is considered negative by some people and positive by others and b) by saying that we will require you to "write for the enemy," we are likely to head towards far more white-washed articles than we already have, and we already have too much white-washing. I think a 1RR restriction or something similar would work far better, and general discretionary sanctions are certainly warranted. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:09, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by RightCowLeftCoast

Due to the lack of the majority of editors involved in this arbitration in the evidence portion, and the lack of participation by the arbitors in the workshop section, why should any ruling be created from this case? Perhaps it is best to just close the case without any action taken.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 02:53, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

I would like to raise concern with the statement made in "3.1.6 Neutrality and sources". I believe I understand the reasoning behind this, however IMHO this might backfire, as it might be not keeping with WP:BIASED. It also might be used to invalidate the reliability of sources that some editors may not agree with such as Huffington Post, Breitbart, The Daily Beast, Salon, Washington Free Beacon, etc.
On Discretionary Sanctions, reading it. It appears to be a tool to be feared, especially given that topic banning (or total blocking (up to a year)) some editors for a year, while not banning others may lead to imbalance in articles given that some editors may prefer certain sources over others, leading to a good faith unintentional bias to be built up reflecting those sources. Perhaps a better process maybe to create a fast tract to a binding mediated dispute resolution process.
Perhaps it may become due to some editors and admins assuming bad faith of certain editors or groups of editors (which has caused WP:RIGHT for instance to wither on the vine, while WP:SOCIALISM has remained strong and active). If this is the feeling of some editors and admins it is hard for editing to be done in a "atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual respect". I may disagree with others politics, when editing articles related to politics, but that does not mean that I don't believe that they are coming from a point of view where they believe that they are doing what is best for the project. Even if that point of view means that they have bad faith of my edits because I do not share their political opinions.
As shown by a study discussed at Criticism of Wikipedia#Partisanship, while some articles maintain a liberal bias coming from earlier days of Wikipedia, more active editors lead to more neutral articles, which IMHO is what we should all be striving for, especially in the subject being discussed in this arbitration. If we the community create an atmosphere for new editors that favor new editors of a certain political leaning than another, it will lead to a perhaps unintentional move towards an ingrained bias in the project.
Perhaps to attract new editors, especially those interested in articles within the subject of this arbitration, a guide could be written, teaching these new editors the rules of the road. This way they don't quickly become involved in edit warring and incivility. They learn how to utilize dispute resolution processes, and become well meaning, constructive, mature editors overtime gaining experience.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 01:51, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Clarification

What remedies have passed? The result section list 3.3 but not which remedies listed in 3.3.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 04:39, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Ubikwit topic ban III is passing, making the other variants of this proposal redundant. -- Euryalus (talk) 06:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by EvergreenFir

Separating from RightCowLeftCoast's section per instructions. Sorry about that.

I have to agree at this [RightCowLeftCoast's] point. Just close without action. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 20:54, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

• Given MONGO's comment above ([14]), remedy 3.4 seems like the most severe any remedy should go. Restricting MONGO from editing in areas they have demonstrated much effort and ability in (e.g., glaciers) does not seem like a fair solution. Though I do wonder about the 9/11 stuff given some of the behavior at the American Sniper page. Moreover, as MONGO mentioned, they do not have the same history as in arb cases as Ubikwit, so I wonder if equally harsh remedies are called for. I honestly don't know about their behavior on the Collect case or other things that might inform such a decision, but just from this evidence it would seem like there is less history here. If the arbs think that MONGO needs a mandatory "break" from political pages to prevent some of their passionate stances from becoming disruptive, then the narrow scope of 3.4 achieves that without unduly restricting their other productive editing as far as I can tell. As I don't know much about Ubikwit, I won't comment on their remedies. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 03:37, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: - Thanks for commenting. I trust the arbs have spent a lot more time reviewing the evidence, accounting for past behavior, and considering past precedent than I have. I trust they will make a reasoned decision. Just wanted to add my partially-informed opinion. Thank you! Also I have to laugh at wasn't a party to tea party. Just humorous wording EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 18:28, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Closing is premature. Section 3.4 has 8 votes... if the other arbs have no opinion, they should vote abstain. But at least vote. How much does this need to be delayed? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC) Copied from #Closing? below. L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 04:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC) Clerks: totally forgot about the "stay in your section" rule. Move this around as you see fit, or just erase it. Sorry about that. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 04:35, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Proposed decision date

The PD date of this case has been adjusted to May 31, 2015. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 16:58, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I have taken over the drafting and we will 100% hit that date --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 20:56, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Working with Tom on this. We will definitely have it out in the next 24 hours. He's posting the principles right now, and as soon as we have an improved scope for a couple topic bans we will be proposing, the findings of fact and remedies will be posted. NativeForeigner ^Talk 02:50, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

We have everything up. If any users have feedback regarding the scope of the topic bans or discretionary sanctions feel free to comment here. We will try to be as responsive as possible. NativeForeigner ^Talk 03:08, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

And on a purely personal level I'd like to apologize for the amount of delay. It is largely my fault, and I apologize for any issues it may have caused (ie the issues on United States.) NativeForeigner ^Talk 03:10, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@EvergreenFir: Although it definitely seems that we are drawing equivalence between these two users (Mongo, ubikwit) I don't think that their behavior was identical. I think it was similar (incivility, prodding at times). One way to deal with this would be to simply iban the users. But with both users in the area, and with the issues not being strictly bilateral I was concerned that would be inadequate. Largely behavior has continued from Tea Party (2013) Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tea_Party_movement#Ubikwit. The number of voices objecting is certainly something I'm considering, I've read all the concerns on this page. Regardless we've drafted something which we thought would have a good chance at passing, and some concerns were raised that it was potentially not strong enough (see addition of full ban for ubikwit.) NativeForeigner ^Talk 08:07, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Short Brigade Harvester Boris: I'm not happy with the closely broadly wording. I don't think anyone particularly is. If anyone here has any suggestions, they will definitely be considered. NativeForeigner ^Talk 08:09, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@DHeyward: Yes, I'm aware Mongo wasn't a party to tea party. I am aware of the parties involved in the United States dispute, the decision does nothing to directly involved parties, but DS in the area could have been applied, potentially. (Although I'm not sure they would in the formulation we have presented) This case dragging on so long did nobody any good. I'm on mobile, but if I did say mongo was a party, I meant Ubikwit. I'll look into the Kagan stuff at earliest convenience, but I don't believe that was used in any findings of fact. As for why it wasn't dealt with in Collect? That was split off, and quite frankly it shouldn't have been in retrospect. The evidence provided wasn't focused on the same disputes as I would have expected from the Collect request, and as we saw this case had a lot less community interest/community contributions in the workshop phase. Again, we should have posted in workshop, but what's done is done. I can see your concerns about the false equivalence, severity wasn't equivalent. I suppose we could modify the decision with adjectives describing hte exact severity, but at the end of the day when we were drafting it was generally concluded that a topic ban for both should at least be on the table. NativeForeigner ^Talk 10:49, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@Tom harrison: We did discuss an iban but thought it wouldn't be adequately strong. Were you thinking about a two way iban between them, or something more specialized than that? NativeForeigner ^Talk 10:53, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Typo?

Finding 2, last sentence, is there a "not" missing (or equivalently, should "effective" read "ineffective"?)? Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:45, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Fixed, I think. NF and I were trying to use the word ineffective --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 03:58, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Tom Harrison

Topic-banning Mongo and Ubikwit for, essentially, mutual incivility in articles about contemporary politics, seems disproportionate to the offense. It's also likely to further discourage experienced editors from contributing in difficult topic areas. Something narrower and more specifically tailored to the offense might lead to better work in the area. Tom Harrison ^Talk 11:44, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

@NativeForeigner: If not only that, something narrowly tailored (I share Boris' view about "broadly construed"); restrictions on reverting for edit-warring, with an interaction ban for chronic incivility. These are likely to be effective, while not discouraging experienced editors from working on controversial pages and BLPs. Tom Harrison ^Talk 12:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by BusterD

The dearth of participation in this process demonstrates that few agree with the value of such arbitration. Strong agreement with Tom Harrison. Wikipedians' disagreements are by their nature adversarial and sometimes, unfortunately, lack civility. IMHO Mongo and Ubikwit are hardly the most uncivil offenders in the arena of American politics. The evidence against them is below the threshold for administrative action, much less arbitration. I urge Arbitrators to vote against remedies presented. Admonishment is the most drastic remedy I recommend be applied. BusterD (talk) 14:20, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

I apologize for not making a statement in my own subsection. I am unused to making statements in this sort of process. BusterD (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Strongest possible support for MONGO's statement of 01:55, 2 June 2015. BusterD (talk) 01:59, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

I appreciate that arbitrators are considering options after reading comments from editors on the left, right, and uninvolved. It's rare that so many people who frequently disagree can come together on these issues. Whatever the outcome, I'm appreciative of the consideration arbs seem to be giving comments on this talkpage. BusterD (talk) 18:41, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

@DGG and Courcelles: My preference was made clear by first comment in this section. But for the record, why does something, anything, need to pass? I'm not trying to be obstreperous; I just would like to know an Arb's rationale for such comments. We have a case with mild offenses, borderline evidence and little participation. Both users have expressed regret and at least one is planning to retire has retired for reasons unrelated to this procedure. Why do we need to have a punishment (I said it, a punishment) which arguably doesn't accomplish any purpose? What future mucking does this prevent? I have strong respect for everyone here, participant, arbitrator or clerk, but IMHO such comments at this stage give the appearance these remedies are about face-saving. BusterD (talk) 02:56, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I do not think of remedies as "punishment", which is why they are worded as remedies, not penalties. I think of them as ways of preventing further problems. That there are problems are i this case shown by the findings--finding 4 was unanimous that there have been problems. We therefore need to make a response to those findings. DGG ( talk ) 14:50, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Short Brigade Harvester Boris

I agree broadly with Tom Harrison, BusterD, DHeyward (mark your calendar, as this doesn't happen often) and RightCowLeftCoast (indeed -- a double red-letter day). The discretionary sanctions are OK but the topic bans are excessive.

If you carry through with the sanctions then for goodness sake delete the "broadly construed" language, which historically has led to confusion. (One of the arbs already has commented on verbal pushmi-pullyu of "closely related...broadly construed.") The admins at WP:AE have a hard enough time already. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:12, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Addendum: Speaking as someone whose politics are generally on the other side of MONGO's I can personally verify his description of his participation in climate-related articles. (Disclosure, my employment is within that subject area.) We need more people who are willing to reach across the aisle on topics like this. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Reply to Native Foreigner Just drop "broadly construed" and say what you mean in plain, simple language. "Broadly construed" has turned into one of those legalese phrases that makes people's eyes glaze over. Try something like "any topic related in any way to American Politics since 1933," or whatever it is that you actually intend. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 13:48, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Scope of sanctions/topic bans

There has been a lot of criticism about the various proposed scopes of the topic bans/discretionary sanctions, including the "broadly construed" language (either generally or in combination with the "closely related" phrase), however there has been a distinct lack of alternatives put forward.

The piecemeal approach to sanction areas (climate change, Tea Party, etc) has just seen the substandard behaviour move onto a different topic. The shortcut route to approving DS for specific areas tried last time has not worked either. Stopping this cycle is in everybody's benefit, so we need to find a scope that is broad enough to stop the problems but not overbroad so as to avoid unnecessary chilling effects. If you don't think any of the proposals made so far fit that bill then you need to help us find an alternative. Leaving things as they are is not a viable option. Thryduulf (talk) 13:06, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

If there are editors who have moved between sub-topics of American politics, exhibiting the same problem behaviour, then by all means extend the topic scope applying to them. They may, of course then move on to British politics...

However it would seem overkill to use this broad brush approach on "first timers".

As to other proposals:

1. 0RR/1RR
2. May contribute to talk page only
3. May make no more than one post per talk page section, and may not start sections.
4. Is placed on an interaction ban with <foo>
5. Is reminded to comment on content, not on editors.

You might also consider asking the named parties what restrictions they would volunteer to place on themselves, to reduce or end the disruption.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:39, 3 June 2015 (UTC).

Statement by Liz

Discretionary sanctions suggestion

It seems like some of these proposals might fail because the cut-off year can't be settled upon. Any thought to simply say, 20th century and 21st century? I'll admit it's just as arbitrary as 1933 or 1980 but it's clear, not too recent, not too much ancient history. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:56, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that American politics and history do not cleanly break along easy lines like that. Neither 1933 nor 1980 are arbitrary dates. They are the starting years of major eras in political history. I think that these are our choices in dates: 1607, 1776, 1792, 1828, 1854, 1896, 1933, 1952, 1968, or 1980. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 21:45, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking about the logistics of enforcing a topic ban based on a specific year as well as the prospect of getting a consensus of arbitrators to agree on a target year. I wasn't thinking of historical eras since this topic ban is about politics, not history. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:04, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I would have thought that the smaller scope would have the support of those arguing for a larger scope, so finding consensus should be fairly trivial. As to what the date should be, learned arguments are probably unnecessary, the evidence should show where the problems arise: in general the significant arguments I have seen, separate from the case, rarely go back more than a few years. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:48, 3 June 2015 (UTC).

I think the idea of a specific year+ topic bans a good idea for problems like these, but we need to change how we do it. I suggest in the future we first decide if we want to adopt such a topic ban, and then as a secondary matter decide on which year. DGG ( talk ) 03:53, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

@Liz and Rich Farmbrough: the basic issue with the date is that the problems with the American politics topic area are principally regarding contemporary hot-button issues and issues that become significant during contemporary political discourse; and it is not possible to always predict in advance what those issues are. Those of us who are supporting a date+ scope for a topic ban are trying to split contemporary politics and the genesis of its issues from historical politics as articles like Wilson–Gorman Tariff Act and Bleeding Kansas are not part of this dispute - personally I think that extending topic bans and discretionary sanctions back that far would be too broad a scope, but my view is not universally shared on this; and obviously we have not agreed on what the cut-off date should be. Setting a date like this is not without precedent, for example in the Argentine History case (which in a way was the inverse of this) it was decided that everything post December 1983 was contemporary and not historical for the purpose of a restriction. Thryduulf (talk) 12:24, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, Thryduulf, I was just offering yet another suggestion. I'm sure it's all being hashed out among the arbitrators and you'll settle upon some cut-off date. But I wasn't aware of the Argentine History case, thank you for the reference. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 12:43, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Statements by Rich Farmbrough

Sua sponte matters

It has been a matter of some concern, over the years, where various committees have taken sua sponte decisions on various matters. These actions are probably ultra vires and usurp the normal community processes.

Moreover they have divisive and often counter productive results, they deny the community the ability to reach a more productive conclusion, they create a chilled environment and they build concern over the unfettered exercise of power.

In this particular case, both the arbitrary decision to make all editors commenting parties to the case, and the decision to create two cases out of one, were unprecedented and severely worrying (though the sua sponte addition of a single party to, IIRC, the GGTF case was a hint that worse was to come).

Effectively this case is being brought by the Committee, and being judged by the Committee. As has been remarked above, the parties to the case let alone the community at large seem uninterested, though they have made the effort to robustly put their cases in the evidence phase.

It is questionable whether any useful ends are served by sanctioning parties to this case, and certainly in this way. I would endorse those above who suggest that the best way forward might be to close the case completely. Alternatively admonishments and reminders proved a way for the committee to express the established community views on the appropriate ways handling of disputes.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:16, 3 June 2015 (UTC).

as I understand what we did in the committee, we split the cases because we thought that the evidence case would be much more extensive and involve many more parties than in fact it turned out. In retrospect, it was unnecessary. Once that became clear, we did consider merging them back together again, but decided it would would have caused even greater confusion. I don't see how any decisions such as this can possibly be called ultra vires -- they involved not policy, but internal matters of case management. Similarly, it would be very odd if we did not make such decisions involving the handling of a case sua sponte-- they concern our own procedures, & it is our own responsibility to figure out how to transact the business the community sends us.

as for whether any useful ends will be served by sanctioning, the opinion of the majority of the committee is not yet evidence, but it is obvious that, as usual, various of us have various opinions. As I see it, that's the purpose of having a large committee and voting independently--it avoids group-think as much as any formal procedure can. DGG ( talk ) 00:16, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Effectively the naming of additional parties, and the creation of additional cases is transacting business that the community has not sent you. Another disgraceful example was the banning of Betacommand by motion. It is arguably fine line between procedural and substantive matters, but these three cases the line has not merely been crossed but clearly and definitively been crossed. There are many other less obviously egregious examples where remedies far more sweeping than the original dispute have been imposed, effectively amounting to policy creation which is specifically excluded from the remit of the committee. While this type of abrogation of power is not unusual (see SCOTUS, for example) it remains wrong.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:26, 6 June 2015 (UTC).

I consider all 3 of these procedural rather than policy. With respect to the involvement of Arb Com in actual policy decisions, see the reply I made to your question in the ArbCom election. DGG ( talk ) 15:54, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

I think we should show some caution. What happened here wasn't ideal. I don't really see a problem with the splitting of cases, or the addition of parties so long as the case scope stays consistent/focused. When drafting we consciously avoided sanctioning a couple parties who had good evidence submitted against them because it was so far separate from the american politics case we set out to solve. But here I think that the case sort of morphed via both community evidence which was submitted, the split, and the addition of parties. So while this case has morphed over time, and isn't scoped as we would have liked when the split was made I would like to challenge the assertion that arbcom is acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner. NativeForeigner ^Talk 23:57, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Under the arbcom policy that was ratified by the community "The Committee retains jurisdiction over all matters heard by it, including associated enforcement processes, and may, at its sole discretion, revisit any proceeding at any time". Both this case and the third betacommand case fall under this. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:54, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

A wide reading of that clause provides ArbCom with a level of power neither envisioned at the time nor desirable. At this point in time virtually the whole encyclopaedia falls under the rubric of the committee in terms of hundreds of past cases, and matters will only get worse. It is unacceptable for a small group, nominally elected for arbitration purposes (though actually for pseduo-judicial purposes) to exercise executive power that its the prerogative of the community.

I would have no objection to the Committee rescinding conclusions, or varying them for minor corrections, or reducing the impact therefrom. But ex-post-facto judgements, which we have seen, are an anathema to natural justice, as a matter of principle.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:02, 7 June 2015 (UTC).

According to the policy as it exists at the moment, we acted entirely within bounds to hear this case regardless of whether you consider it splitting one request into two or retaining jurisdiction over prior matters (or both). If you wish to change the policy, you are well aware of how go about doing so and that repetitious argumentation on this page is not part of the process. Thryduulf (talk) 16:15, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

• Please see Hunger (2006), Review of Waldorf education (2007), Review of Certified.Gangsta-Ideogram (2007), C68-FM-SV (2008), Betacommand 2 (2008), Mattisse (2009), Tang Dynasty (2009), and Review of Race and intelligence (2012) for past examples of the committee utilizing or acknowledged its ability to revisit closed cases. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 23:15, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks those are useful links. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:26, 15 June 2015 (UTC).
22:26, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Robert McClenon

Request About DS Template

I have a request for the clerks. As soon as the final decision is rendered, will the clerks (or developers, or whoever) please ensure that an option is available in the {{DS/alert}} template so that disruptive editors in articles within the topic area of American politics can be templated to caution them as to the availability of discretionary sanctions and Arbitration Enforcement? Thank you. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

@Robert McClenon: Yep, updating discretionary sanctions is part of the closing procedures. Thanks for the reminder. L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 22:30, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. The discretionary sanctions for American politics really should throw a lot of issues from WP:ANI to Arbitration Enforcement. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:19, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Beyond My Ken

Question for a clerk

Can someone please update the summary of voting in the implementation notes? Right now, unless I've miscalculated, Remedies 1, 1.1, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1 and 3.2 cannot pass, but only Remedy 2.3 is listed in that category. BMK (talk) 01:38, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

@Beyond My Ken: it looks like L235 updated the list for you. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:28, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, L235. BMK (talk) 01:40, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduff's reasoning. When 12 Arbs have supported other measures, a 4-4 vote doesn't especially show the Committee in a good light. The remaining Arbs should either support, oppose or abstain, but simply ignoring the remedy doesn;t seem right. I encourage all the Arbs who haven't yet voted on that measure to please do so. BMK (talk) 01:49, 16 June 2015 (UTC) Copied from #Closing below. L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 04:38, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Statement by Figureofnine

I just became aware of this arbitration, and wish to interject that I agree with my two colleagues above, Buster and Short Brigade. The incivility complained of is not to be defended by any means, but it is typical for Wikipedia. I served, during its brief existence, on the incivility notice board, and I don't recall either editor's name ever coming up. Agree that the topic bans are unnecessary and will deprive the project of useful contributors. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 15:22, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Closing?

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.

---

Closing is premature. Section 3.4 has 8 votes... if the other arbs have no opinion, they should vote abstain. But at least vote. How much does this need to be delayed? EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:04, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

This has sat here for several days in this state; I do not see any reason why extending this very late case would change anything besides make it later. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 06:16, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

I agree with Thryduff's reasoning. When 12 Arbs have supported other measures, a 4-4 vote doesn't especially show the Committee in a good light. The remaining Arbs should either support, oppose or abstain, but simply ignoring the remedy doesn;t seem right. I encourage all the Arbs who haven't yet voted on that measure to please do so. BMK (talk) 01:49, 16 June 2015 (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.

Closing in two hours

Unless votes change, per authorization of an arbitrator, this case will be closing in a little more than two hours. Thanks, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 17:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

brief hold please, close motion no longer at net four. Have raised an issue on the mailing list, hopefully won't take long to resolve. -- Euryalus (talk) 17:40, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Done, thanks. At your convenience, please feel free to reactivate the close. -- Euryalus (talk) 21:09, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

• This will close in no more than 8 hours. Thanks for your patience everyone. L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 13:28, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Changing the timetable to a close in 30 minutes. Thanks, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 18:47, 19 June 2015 (UTC)