Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 50

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Archive 45

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Archive 48

Contentious topics procedure now in effect

Original announcement

I despair. After helping restore a highly viewed doubly contentious topic to FA standards, I was still struggling to get a handle on how to handle the old DS stuff. And not doing very well at it. Surely the new thingie is better in many ways, but as a non-admin who just has to figure out how to get an admin's attention when someone is disrupting a contentious topic, is it easier for me to understand how to engage? Clearly, I am dumber than the average bear when it comes to adminly stuff, but {{Contentious topics}} leaves me scratching my head. There is too much info there that is not grouped by subject; I can't clearly distinguish why so many different templates.

What is the distinction between active and other restrictions?
If an editor edit wars any area of a contentious-labeled article, even if they don't touch on the contentious parts of the article (gender) per se, do requests for enforcement still go to WP:AE?
The reason I ask is that submitting a request to AE is quite time consuming; how much easier if I could just post to ANI. And I feel like my AE reports are for relatively trivial matters considering the contentiousness of the topic. And yet it doesn't seem appropriate to go to ANI or AN3 for a CT.
When is it more appropriate to just go to ANI or AN3?
Do I have to jump through the AE hoops all over again when an editor breaches their sanction, or can I just ping the AE admins who issued the sanction? I just had that happen, and as I despair at having to submit yet another AE, I didn't (and am keeping an eye myself instead).
Every time I check an editor talk to see if alerts have already been issued, I get a report that they haven't. Even when I just issued an alert. (Sample.) What am I doing wrong? Or is this because the system just changed so it's not working yet ?

I am lost in more ways than those listed, but that's a start. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:29, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

This edit didnt trigger the edit filter, did you substitute the template or did you copy the output of the template wikitext? nableezy - 20:41, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

My thoughts:

active restrictions are ones that are not expired. I've removed this word to reduce confusion.
You can choose to submit a report to AN even if what they edited was covered by a contentious topic area.
If you feel the outcome of a discussion at ANI or AN3 would fix the problem, then there is probably not the need for using AE (because as you say it's time consuming).
There is no rule (as far as I am aware) against pinging the admin who issued the sanction. As long as they stay uninvolved and are okay with the pings, they can apply further restrictions to deal with the breach of their current sanctions.
Has since been fixed with thanks to Suffusion of Yellow.

Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:11, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Nableezy, I always subst them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:37, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

@Nableezy and SandyGeorgia: there was a bug with edit filter 602 that was not fixed until around 22:59, 16 January 2023 (UTC). This bug caused invocations of {{contentious topics/alert/first}} to properly trigger the filter, but not {{contentious topics/alert}}. That bug has since been fixed and anyone using either the first or non-first template should now get the edit filter warning. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:00, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Sandy, to add to what Dreamy has already written, one of the changes with this new system is to make awareness far simpler. Namely if a person has been notified 1 time of that topic area being under CT, there is a presumption that they remain aware in the future. Annual notifications are no more. Hopefully that makes filing at AE a bit easier. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:22, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Thx DJ and BK ... all of this helps. Will see if I can do better, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:42, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Seconded. All of the effort put into these changes is only going to impede editors if what we need to know isn't explained in one place in plain English. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:55, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien I am not entirely sure what you're seconding? Barkeep49 (talk) 02:57, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

{{Contentious topics}} leaves me scratching my head. There is too much info there that is not grouped by subject; I can't clearly distinguish why so many different templates. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:59, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Ahh. Gottcha. That makes a lot of sense and is helpful feedback. Having the documentation for Contentious topics be written in plainer english is no doubt something we can improve on. The potential good news is that Wikipedia:Contentious topics is designed to be the one place in plain English that things are explained. I'm sure the clarity of that page could be improved even further but I think it's a substantial improvement over what was there previously. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: Template:Contentious topics/list/single notice might be a little simpler to follow? Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 03:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Explicit notices

I would like to see that "CT" notices are always explicitly required at the page level where it is in effect, to ensure there can be no room for interpretation that a given page might be CT because it is somehow related to a CT topic area, and thus a single admin can ban/block an editor on the spot even though there was no banner notice on the page (this has happened to me). I disagree with abolishing the 12-month requirement for awareness alerts, and I believe that admins should be strongly urged to first warn editors before imposing sanctions in their sole discretion, regardless of the editor's awareness. Thank you. soibangla (talk) 00:28, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Soibangla, what do you mean by "CT" notices? Do you mean ones on the talk page or in an editnotice? Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 00:58, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

both soibangla (talk) 01:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

While there are practical reasons for why I agree with the current decision around how to make people aware of CT on both the editor and page levels, I actually want to focus on the philosophical reason. With the change from DS to CT we also want to change the mindset. One of the biggest changes is that editing a contentious topic article isn't some radically different proposition than editing some other kind of article. Instead let's look at what's expected when editing a CT. Editors should always be adhering to the purpose of Wikipedia, complying with policies and guidelines, and refrain from gaming the system. This is why large numbers of editors can edit successfully in CT, often without even knowing something called CT exists; it takes a certain kind of elite to know about CT. The other two things to do when editing a CT are to follow best practices and follow page restrictions. Admittedly some best practices are normally optional and with-in CT they are less so, but again this is not some radically different way of editing that we're asking people to do. Finally there is an expectation that people follow page restrictions. This last one is substantially different in many cases and that's why those restrictions do require both an edit notice and mention on the talk page. In the one place CT is different from normal editing we go to extra effort to let people know. "Basically normal editing enforced strictly", which is what CT is designed to be, isn't some system to be afraid of, it's a way for us to continue to produce the articles that have earned Wikipedia its reputation. Barkeep49 (talk) 01:46, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't want to go much into an episode that inspired me to comment here. What I'm saying is that if an admin is to ban/block pursuant to CT, it must be irrefutably clear that the page in question is in fact CT, and not arguably related to a CT area, in that admin's sole judgment. There must be no fuzziness about it, it must be a sharp line. If there is no CT notice anywhere on a page, the editor must be taken to "wikicourt" to sanction them. This is more cumbersome for an admin, of course, but it protects editors from being punished for unwittingly violating a policy. Thanks for reading. soibangla (talk) 02:15, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The only difficulty I can see with this proposal, is that some CTs cover any edit, on any page relating to their topic, using language like Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all edits about, and all pages related to (taken from WP:ARBGSDS, emphasis mine) or Standard Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions are authorised for the area of conflict, namely any edit in any article with biographical content relating to living or recently deceased people or any edit relating to the subject (living or recently deceased) of such biographical articles on any page in any namespace (taken from WP:NEWBLPBAN, emphasis mine). This can result in a disruptive editor being sanctioned under a CT, despite the edit in question taking place on a page otherwise unrelated to that CT. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

There is no new policy that must be followed when editing content related to an identified contentious topic,(*) thus there is no new policy that one might unwittingly violate. What changes is that an editor can be sanctioned on the decision of a single administrator, with specified methods of appeal.

(*) As described by Barkeep49, if a page restriction is put into place based on the contentious topic process, then since this does differ from regular editing, notices are required and whether or not an editor knows about the restriction can be taken into consideration. isaacl (talk) 03:30, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

despite the edit in question taking place on a page otherwise unrelated to that CT is exactly the problem I have here. An editor cannot possibly have the comprehensive knowledge of the entire encyclopedia to know if an edit might tangentially touch a CT area without them realizing it. The solution is to ensure that the page in question must be marked CT. soibangla (talk) 03:56, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

You are, I think, confusing page restrictions and individual restrictions:

Page restrictions apply only to a single page, and editors of the page must be advised that they exist.

Individual restrictions cover the entire encyclopaedia and editors are made aware of them individually because they apply only to that editor. While articles can be tangentially related to a contentious topic, the only time that anybody can be sanctioned under the CT regime is if all the following are true:

They are aware of the relevant CT restrictions
The edit(s) they made were related to the relevant CT
The edit(S) they made were problematic in some way

Any sanction applied will be proportionate to the level of disruption caused and can range from nothing more than would happen on any other page up to topic bans and blocks. Higher level sanctions cannot be applied out of the blue - the editor in question will have been warned previously (almost always multiple times) about their editing. Thryduulf (talk) 10:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Please consider this scenario:

Editor is working on a Talk page of an economics article with no CT notice, no edit notice, and a contentious, heated discussion arises among several editors
Editor months earlier received a CT notice for an unrelated CT topic area, in politics, so editor is aware of CT in politics but could not be aware that economics area could be CT. Economics is not politics, it's science.
Admin deems editor aware of CT, invokes CT authority to topic ban editor because of disruptive behavior on non-CT page

In this scenario, a simple warning should/would have been sufficient to cool the discussion, rather than invoking CT on a non-CT page to abruptly ban an editor. Alternatively, and preferably, the page should be designated CT to deter the heated discussion from arising in the first place. That way there can be no ambiguity, no grey area open to interpretation, the page either is or isn't CT. If an admin deems in their judgment that edit(s) on a non-CT page touch upon a CT area, a warning should precede any sanction for any subsequent violations. soibangla (talk) 15:04, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

As discussed, there was no unwitting violation of policy, as disruptive editing is counter to policy for all Wikipedia pages. Areas are identified as contentious topics when the authorizing group decides that on balance, it's better to allow sanctions to be enacted more rapidly than can be done with a community discussion. Warnings remain a useful tool and one that ought to be considered for initial use. For contentious topics, though, admins are empowered to decide that a warning would not be sufficiently effective in a given situation and thus proceed to a sanction. For all situations, editors should strive to avoid disruptive behaviour and not rely on leniency; admins should strive to be understanding of editor missteps and try to apply the mildest remedies they deem to have a reasonable chance to be effective. The system isn't perfect, but this basic dynamic isn't reliant on whether or not the area in question has been labelled in a certain way. isaacl (talk) 17:08, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

disruptive editing is counter to policy for all Wikipedia pages Of course, but how it is handled is the question
Areas are identified as contentious topic that is, as CT, which was not the case here
it's better to allow sanctions to be enacted more rapidly than can be done with a community discussion And there are police officers who no doubt think it would just be a whole lot easier to throw someone in jail first and ask questions later, rather than follow due process of probable cause; we might consider modeling our policy along such due process concepts
Warnings remain a useful tool and one that ought to be considered for initial use Certainly on a non-CT page
For contentious topics, though, admins are empowered to decide that a warning would not be sufficiently effective in a given situation and thus proceed to a sanction But this is typically not a contentious topic, hence it was not CT, it just happened that a single, unusual heated debate occurred
try to apply the mildest remedies they deem to have a reasonable chance to be effective such as stating on the non-CT Talk page "everybody calm down or I'm gonna start sanctioning"
The system isn't perfect, but this basic dynamic isn't reliant on whether or not the area in question has been labelled in a certain way I contend it could be made more perfect it it was less ambiguous and not left to the subjective judgment of one person. Such ambiguity leaves the interpretation wide open such that we might as well just go ahead and make every page CT so admins have carte blanche. If we're going to make errors, they should be of the Type I variety (a guilty man is set free) rather than the more egregious Type II error (an innocent man goes to prison). That's all I have here. Thanks for reading. soibangla (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
It sounds to me like you have concerns about the contentious topic system as a whole. There are certainly others who feel the same way. Nonetheless, this is a separate (and more fundamental) issue than labelling content as being within the scope of an identified contentious topic, which I don't think will alleviate your base concerns. isaacl (talk) 22:02, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

You don't appear to grasp that the scope of contentious topics is defined by topics, not pages. Without that understanding, nothing makes sense. Newimpartial (talk) 22:39, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, admittedly I am not a policy wonk here, but in a previous discussion of this, another editor harshly chastised me for not knowing what I was talking about, then soon thereafter acknowledged to someone else that DS policy is a "complete mess" and in need of a major overhaul. So there's that. But if we're talking about topics rather than pages, I think the thrust of my argument is still sound, because (in this scenario) a non-CT economics topic does not fall under the CT politics topic area. But if it did, giving rise to CT authority being invokable, it should be disclosed as such in some clear manner. My general sense of this situation is that over the years a policy has been devised that may seem conceptually sound to those who built it but it is unworkable in practice. I have seen similar situations during my decades in corporate management. Now, I've said about all I know how to say about this, and I'm picking up the same "you just don't get it" vibe as before, and maybe I just don't, so I will exit this now. soibangla (talk) 23:13, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
As part of the new CT system, it says If the enforcing administrator believes that an editor was not aware that they were editing a designated contentious topic when making inappropriate edits, no editor restrictions (other than a logged warning) should be imposed. This means that if an editor has not been made aware that a particular topic area is covered by CT, then they can only be given a logged warning. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 23:18, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The thing about this example is, the only way the editor in question could be sanctioned is if their edit triggering the sanctions was about politics (because those are the sanctions under which they are sanctioned in your example).

If they made a problematic about politics on an Economics Talk page, why should the location of the edit be relevant to the sanction? That isn't the way the DS system ever worked, and I don't see why the CT system should operate differently. Newimpartial (talk) 17:31, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

@Soibangla Economics is a social science. I can see the problem as it can overlap with politics. Doug Weller talk 20:08, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Doug Weller: Arguably so, but it's a judgment call that should be handled in some way other than an insta-ban: a warning would suffice. The irony is that in this specific instance others were attempting to overtly politicize an economics article, based on stuff they'd heard in viral unreliable sources, while I was attempting to stop that politicization (and ultimately I prevailed by RFC consensus, but only after being topic banned, then blocked for allegedly violating the topic ban by questioning it on my Talk page — smh).

Here might the true test of whether economics falls under politics: does any aspect of the economics category fall under the politics category, as a subcategory, such that the "child" subcategory "inherits" the CT property of the "parent" category? I don't know how to inspect the category hierarchy to check that, or even if there is such a hierarchy. It's far too late for me to appeal these ban/block decisions, and that's not why I came here, I raise this here to ensure it doesn't happen to others going forward. This policy should be tightened to preclude one admin from invoking CT, where CT is not explicitly declared anywhere, to insta-ban an editor based on the admin's personal judgment. I'm willing to accept that maybe I "just don't get it," but I don't know whatever it is that I don't get about this. soibangla (talk) 22:27, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

Your formal hierarchy framing is not at all the way the DS/CT framework works - the domains have always been overlapping by design. For example, BLP is a CT topic, and it quite obviously overlaps with many other topics whenever the arricle text - or Talk discission - makes statements about a living person in relation to a particular other topic.

For another example, one CT topic concerns gender and sexuality, and editors can throw slurs related to that topic on seemingly unrelated Talk pages - and such behaviour is, and should continue to be, sanctionable under DS/CT (this has happened, for instance, at RfA). The idea that CT must be explicitly declared anywhere other than in awareness notices to editors runs contrary to the characteristics of the system that actually make it work, IMO. Newimpartial (talk) 23:55, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

I understand there are unique exceptions like BLP that apply always and everywhere. But beyond those exceptions, how can an editor plausibly know that an edit they make in a non-CT area might encroach into a CT area somewhere in the vast expanse of the encyclopedia, which they could not know but an admin might, in their judgment anyway, thereby invoking CT authority? soibangla (talk) 00:05, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anybody thinks that. But once someone is aware of the sanctions for post-1992 American politics, for example, they should know that those sanctions continue to apply when they discuss American politics on "economics" pages, or on BLP pages, or anywhere else. Nobody is being sanctioned for an edit they make in a non-CT area - they are being sanctioned for an edit they make within a CT area, after having been made aware of that CT area, and the fact that they may have made that edit on a page without a CT notice for that area has nothing to do with the scope of that CT sanction. The notices on pages relate exclusively to page-level sanctions, not editor sanctions. Newimpartial (talk) 00:50, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

As I noted before in another discussion, it might be reasonable to say you weren't aware CT (or DS) applies the places were politics and economics intersect when you were unaware that it was an intersection. But when by your own admission, you were aware of and trying to stop the "overtly politicize an economics article" then this defence goes out the window. You clearly knew this was an political dispute. I guess you could claim you weren't aware it was post 1992 American politics but instead claim it was the politics of the Australia or something but frankly that's a bit naff. In fact, as SPECIFICO has sort of noted below, if we made it more complicated to apply CT to this case, that would mean it would be harder for us to stop those you feel were trying to "overtly politicize an economics article" which is not helpful to Wikipedia and frankly not helpful to you either. (I'm not sure if anyone else ended up being sanctioned under DS in that particular dispute, but even if no one was, there's still a reasonable chance the recognition they could be helped to moderate their behaviour which is part of the point of DS or CT now.) Nil Einne (talk) 03:25, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't know that we want to create more and more rules and structure to prevent bad enforcement. In this instance, it was very very bad. Soibangla appears to be knowledgeable about economics and not in an ideological or partisan way. He was instrumental in saving that article from a canvassed onslaught of knowledge-free partisan edits from Reddit or whatever. The situation was actually made worse by an overly solicitous reaction that resulted in a precipitous RfC on the issue without prior discussion and with disregard for both the substance and the politics of the editing dispute. The underlying problem is that we do not have enough of our Admin corps monitoring the CT articles. Doug Weller, you are one of the exceptions, and you are consistently on-point in your comments and occasional interventiouns on complex matters at the intersection of content and conduct. I wish more Admins would be keeping an eye on these articles and develop a sense for how problems arise.

I think one issue that might be further addressed, however, is what to do when mistakes happen. I think the sanctioning Admin in Soibangla's case actually is to be commended for doing what I described above. They just happened to get it backward in this case. It was unfortunate that once Soibangla did not have a ready platform to get the sanction reversed without a lot of work and drama. That's something that was discussed during the Arbcom review process for these CT changes, but I do not see that such concerns were fully addressed. SPECIFICO talk 23:40, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

The underlying problem is that we do not have enough of our Admin corps monitoring the CT articles. That I would heavily agree with, at least insofar as the areas I'm active and familiar with. Much of how we handle disruption in those CT articles and talk pages is reactionary at the non-admin editor level, and is reliant upon non-admins to make reports to ARE or ANI.

Unfortunately this has two major flaws that enables a specific subset of editors who are able "toe the line" of what is acceptable, while allowing them to make those topic areas particularly heated and hostile. The first is that when any established editor who is active in a CT brings a ARE/ANI case against one of these disruptive editors, they are almost universally cast and sometimes seen as "trying to take out an opponent". This usually, but not universally, results in the disruptive editors being unsanctioned. The second is that the few admins who take a more proactive role in CTs, and are thus able to recognise the disruptive editors for whom they actually are cast as either biased or too involved (or sometimes both) any time they either take an action against one of these editors, or recommend taking action against one of these editors at ARE.

Sadly I don't know of a way to solve this without the serious potential for knock on controversy. Where the disruption I'm frequently encountering overlaps with culture war talking points, any attempt at reducing disruption at the scale required would almost certainly be seen "clearing house" and be cast as "Wikipedia confirming it's bias against ..." both on and off-site. I realise I've thrown out some pretty heavy but generalised aspersions here, and I can if necessary cite examples demonstrating this. And knowing this will probably paint a target on my back, I will say that I would be happy to discuss this at length with ArbCom privately over email if the committee wishes. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

@Sideswipe9th Thanks for these inciteful and useful comments. Doug Weller talk 09:56, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

I've been told "inciteful" could have negative connotations. When I typed it I wasn't sure, so looked it up. I guess I should have used. Oops. Doug Weller talk 17:24, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

It's all good. I hadn't even noticed the use of inciteful and instead had read/parsed it as insightful in the context. Thanks for the kind words. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:53, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Specifico: I don't think there was consensus input for making it so blocks could be reversed without a lot of work and drama during the process. I do think there was consensus to make it easier to get unblocked and to that end we made the standard of consensus lower and less scary for an admin to implement and also gave clear standards against which appeals should be judged. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:48, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Changes to sanctions?

TLDR: Wondering if it was intentional to modify these sanctions and, if so, pointing out various problems.


Old sanction (A)	New sanction description at WP:Contentious topics (B)	New sanction on talk page templates (C)
If a change you make to this article is reverted, you may not reinstate that change unless you discuss the issue on the talk page and wait 24 hours (from the time of the original edit).	an edit that is challenged by reversion may not be reinstated by the editor who originally made it until the editor (a) posts a talk page message discussing the edit and (b) waits 24 hours from the time of the talk page message.	~~You must follow the bold-revert-discuss cycle if your change is reverted and wait 24 hours before reinstating your edit~~ Template has now been edited to reflect (B) ~Awilley (talk) 05:02, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

The sanction description at WP:Contenious topics (B) has a minor but important difference from the original sanction (A). Both sanctions have clear bright lines (a wait time and talk page requirement) but (A) is easier for editors to follow (just follow 1RR and discuss) and for admins to track (glancing at time stamps on article edit history). Counting 24 hours between talk page and article edits is an unusual new requirement and introduces yet another mental load for editors of contentious articles.

Sanction (C) is too vague. It seems to imply (A) (24 hours between article edits) but if so that's in conflict with (B). And the admonition to "follow the bold-revert-discuss cycle" invites the user to follow the link to the BRD page, but the BRD page says that BRD is optional and mentions several ways of following it, some of which could lead to misunderstandings between admins and editors of what constitutes "following BRD".

The "Consensus required" sanction has been similarly modified, going from "an edit that is challenged by reversion may not be reinstated without affirmative consensus on the talk page" to "You must discuss your change on the talk page before making it". I personally don't object to that change, but that's a pretty big difference from the "Consensus required" sanction that we all know and love</sarcasm>. If that change was intentional it might be better to rename the sanction from "Consensus required" to "Discuss first" to avoid confusion. ~Awilley (talk) 18:05, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Awilley, thanks for raising this. The Wikipedia:Contentious topics procedure description (B) has precedence over what is in the template (C). Differences in the meaning of B and C are something that's wrong and will need to be fixed. I'll look to fix those now. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 18:08, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

For differences between A and B, that is probably best answered by an arbitrator. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 18:10, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Wow, thank you for the quick reply. Would I have to go to ARCA to request a review of the difference between A and B? Do you happen to know if that particular change was discussed already? Sorry for the edit conflict...could you suggest which arbitrator might be best to discuss this with? ~Awilley (talk) 18:11, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

I can't remember exactly whether this was discussed already, but posting here should be fine for now (as arbitrators will be watching this discussion). If there isn't a reply you can take this to ARCA for clarification, or ask one of CaptainEek, L235, and Wugapodes (who are drafting arbitrators for the new system). Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 18:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Given that the drafter's authority to implement has expired I think we'll need a motion to make any changes to (B). I know Dreamy has identified another change that will require a motion to implement as well. Arbs, clerks, and other designees have ongoing authority now to make changes to templates (C) so that can be fixed whenever. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:18, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Happy to explore updates on the enforced BRD. If AE admins prefer "time of the original edit", that seems OK to me. The discrepancy probably got in there from an early 2021 draft – perhaps I was looking at something else that was unclear (or maybe it was a knucklehead moment). @Awilley: Can I get you to clarify the point about "consensus required"? The footnote currently reads: On pages where "consensus required" is in effect, an edit that is challenged by reversion may not be reinstated without affirmative consensus on the talk page. That's not "discuss first"; that's "get consensus to reinstate edits challenged by reversion". Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:13, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

My consensus required concern is resolved. The discrepancy was between the footnote you quote and the short description in the template that goes on talk pages. Dreamy Jazz said they'd update the template to agree with the footnote. ~Awilley (talk) 20:41, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

@Awilley, I have updated the templates so it should show with text that better matches the footnotes. If it's not updated, let me know a specific page name and I can take a look. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:58, 19 January 2023 (UTC)

Jazz, thanks for adjusting that. Not to complicate this further, but the original language was IMO even more clear: "if an edit you make", etc. because it tells editors what they did and must do. The amended language is still in passive voice and not quite instrumental or an instruction. SPECIFICO talk 14:04, 21 January 2023 (UTC)

Scope

Maybe WP:ARCA is a better place for this question. But what is the scope of CT? Is one allowed to edit a page that might have something on it, one is topic-banned from? even though their edit has nothing to do with the material they're topic-banned from? Example - correcting a date of birth, which has nothing to do with one's topic-ban. GoodDay (talk) 15:16, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

This isn't specific to ArbCom, it's more a question about WP:TBAN, part of the banning policy. "Unless clearly and unambiguously specified otherwise, a topic ban covers all pages (not only articles) broadly related to the topic, as well as the parts of other pages that are related to the topic[...]". My general advice to users affected by such a ban is that if they're unsure whether a restriction affects a specific edit, it probably does. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 15:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Arbitrator access to mailing lists and permissions motion passed

Original announcement

Arbitrator access to mailing lists and permissions motion passed

I hope arbitrators etc have considered carefully whether they morally or even legally (depending on the country in which they are located) should agree to be obliged to "Obtain prior written approval from the Wikimedia Foundation if you determine such information should be disclosed to any outside parties, such as law enforcement". Typically one sees NDAs with carve outs that permit reports to law enforcement, rather than a restriction like this one. I would also hope that WMF might pay for the reasonable legal fees of volunteers seeking proper independent advice before signing such an agreement (the bit I highlighted isn't the only potentially problematic one) but I assume it does not... WJBscribe (talk) 14:03, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Signing the ANPDP and its predecessor policies has long been an ArbCom requirement so I just didn't want any misconception about what's changed with that motion. As to the issues you're addressing here, the Ombuds has ruled that disclosure to law enforcement without prior consent is allowed in some instances and there is a program that seems to do what you're suggesting around legal fees. Hope that helps. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:39, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Change to the Functionaries team

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding Conduct in deletion-related editing

Original announcement

Well that clearly didn't work, so we probably ought to do an autopsy to see what we can learn from this. Courtesy links: Article Creation at Scale RFC, AfD at scale RFC (which never launched; all interesting discussion is on the talk page.) Should this be taken as a warning against ArbCom requesting such RFCs in the future? Or is was the issue that the RFC was too broad and sweeping? Or was it just a problem with these particular questions lacking consensus? I think, given how the AfD at Scale RFC languished, that assigning the RFC to a few particular people to handle was probably also a mistake - I can understand the desire to have our best people handle the most difficult tasks, but given the scale of the task it's both unfair to them and to the participants (since, inevitably, if everything depends on the throughput of just a few people, no matter how devoted and talented, then the RFC is going to take much longer, and risks stalling out if something happens to them.) I think one takeaway from this is that future RFCs requested by ArbCom should not have specific named people in charge of them or assigned to close them at the start - making a broad general requirement for a close by a panel of admins is fine; naming specific admins seems like a bad idea for numerous reasons. --Aquillion (talk) 05:22, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I supported the motion to ask the community to hold an RFC on the subject when I was on ArbCom last year. I hoped that the community would find a simple, reasonable way to handle the mass creation and deletion of articles. I do not think that the structure of the RFC is responsible for the way it turned out. My impression is that the community is divided on what the problem is, let alone how to deal with it. A lot of Wikipedians think there is a problem, but do not necessarily agree on what the problem is. I think that we need to wait for a decent consensus to be expressed as to what the problem is before we can hold an RFC of how to deal with it. Donald Albury 13:23, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Exactly that. There is no agreement on what the problem is in general while mostly agreeing that the specific problem existed. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 14:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I've got to be honest, I think your takeaway is completely wrong. Without having specific people to do it, it runs into the "ArbCom recommends the community do this" category. Which has meant that it doesn't actually get done according to large precedent in the past. Now maybe one could make an argument that we didn't need to appoint the admins to close - though the trouble we had finding 3 people shows that this wouldn't have just happened magically without us - but we were delegating a large amount of authority to the moderators and so we absolutely needed to make those selections intentionally. While I disagree with parts of it - namely the part where he agrees with you that we needed more people - I find Wugs post-mortem to better hit the mark. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

It may have been better to direct the community to hold the RFC and solicit uninvolved admins to moderate/close, but without Arbcom directly choosing the people and structure required. The major precedent here for an Arbcom-authorized but Community-run binding RFC is WP:GMORFC, which was initiated by myself as one of the more creative uses of Discretionary Sanctions (though sadly, something like this would not be allowed under the current Contentious Topics rules). The chosen structure and process had some flaws, but overall it did what it was designed to do and has kept that topic quiet for nearly 7 years, where beforehand most people agreed it was destined for another full Arbcom case. Dictating too much of the process in advance and with little community control seems to limit the community's desire to participate. Another alternative would be a multi-stage RFC to tackle smaller parts of the problem like WP:BLPRFC1 (What direction should we go in to fix this), WP:BLPRFC2 (should we move forward with this solution} and WP:BLPRFC3 (a few months later, how is the solution working out?). The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 23:37, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. I feel like we actually did most of what you suggest here. The committee said there should be moderators and closers, tis true, but we did solicit volunteers for these roles. I've already noted perhaps we didn't need to appoint the closers but saying that there should be closers wasn't choosing the structure, it was saying that there should be an RfC. And then the Committee allowed the moderators to come to us and say "We want 2 RfCs instead of 1" - as you suggest - and modified the remedy accordingly. ArbCom didn't dictate the question to be asked (something that was considered and rejected). ArbCom didn't dictate the style the rfc should use. GMO and Jerusalem were the two RfCs that the committee really took its cues from in crafting this remedy and so I feel like it's not a coincidence that we actually did (minus perhaps choosing the closing panel) what you suggest? Barkeep49 (talk) 23:59, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I did discuss the GMO RfC with Valereee at the start of the process, and we agreed on some similarities and differences. She used some of the RfC language at the top of the draft. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:55, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

I was inactive during the initial case and early discussions, so it is likely that when catching up on the issue I didn't see or skimmed over those discussions. If that's the case then I do apologize for being misinformed. Something as broad and with far-reaching consequences like this issue is inherently difficult to organize in contrast with the more tightly-focused Jerusalem and GMORFC, especially after the case was over and tempers seemed to have cooled. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 18:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Barkeep49 that finding volunteers to help guide discussion is one of the key things the arbitration committee can do to ensure a discussion actually ensues. I feel one key factor that increases the likelihood of a productive discussion is having one or more skilled communicators guiding it. I think the committee essentially gave the community free rein to decide on all aspects of the discussion aside from lining up volunteers to support it, and the general topic matter. One significant barrier to finding a middle ground is that often, it's not that one view is always right and others wrong. Different editors just have different assumptions regarding the best way to create and improve articles, and there can be honest disagreement on which assumptions are more realistic, both now and in the future. For better or worse, the only tool we have is to talk about it and try to find agreement. isaacl (talk) 23:37, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

References to discretionary sanctions that haven't been updated

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Great Irish Famine#Remedies has since 2019 stated:

The article, now at Great Famine (Ireland), is within the scope of the discretionary sanctions authorised under The Troubles.

The Troubles discretionary sanctions were, along with all the other discretionary sanctions authorisations, converted to contentious topics designations in December 2022 so the wording on the Great Irish Famine case is technically not accurate. I don't think this is a big deal or in need of any action, but I thought I'd flag it up in case other people think an update is required. I haven't looked to see if this is a unique situation (I'd be amazed if it was common though) but will do if requested. Thryduulf (talk) 10:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging this issue Thryduulf. We actually have a fair amount of work left to do on conversion in truth. The two main reasons for this are the large cases we've had to kick off the year - which has diverted the time of both clerks and arbs - and the fact that the arb (L235) who had planned to lead this work has been limited or inactive almost the entire year. It is something we need to fix but hopefully we can muddle through - updating when things are particularly needed - until we have capacity to systematically finish the work. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Changes to the functionaries team

Original announcement

Armenia-Azerbaijan 3: Arbitration case closed

Original announcement

Is this the first time "probation" (what reads as a suspended topic ban) been implemented? I can't remember it from my time on ArbCom, though it could have been before or after my time, and I just haven't noticed. -- Amanda (she/her) 20:55, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

It's an older term; you can see it in this search. Izno (talk) 21:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

No. Probation is a remedy that dates back to 2004, and can be seen as a precursor to discretionary sanctions due to how it was implemented back then. Essentially, back in '04-'07, probation allowed uninvolved admins to summarily topic-ban someone from articles they were being disruptive on.

Honestly, the fact they brought it back, albeit in a more limited form, speaks more to the issues that AE has had enforcing AA2 sanctions, considering that was the impetus for this case to begin with. The use here is very unambiguous - cause trouble, and you will be topic-banned from the AA2 area. —Jéské Couriano (No further replies will be forthcoming.) 22:31, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I think in general that probation is a good idea as a "less severe" sanction immediately preceding a topic-ban, and I'm surprised that we don't use it more in the administrative space in general; although it could very well be that those open-shut cases that make it to WP:ANI are well past the point where probation would be considered, much less merited. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:27, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks goes to the arbitrators for concluding this case, and doing so in a timely fashion. I also appreciate and support the sentiment behind robust restrictions. I think, though, that one of the reasons we end up with warned users getting additional warnings instead of sanctions, is because a warning is so much less stressful to impose. Because, it seems like at least half the time, sanctioned users appeal their sanctions immediately, a process which can often be... unpleasant to the sanctioning admin. Whereas a warning forgoes all that. I don't really have a solution to this, nor am I proposing diminishing the right of appeal—but this problem of compounding warnings is far from unique to this particular topic area. The point is: warning is easy, sanctioning is hard. El_C 12:36, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
When Arbcom applies a sanction, it is usually with the caveat that it cannot be appealed for at least six months. I have also seen this done with community-imposed sanctions, so long as it is discussed and there is a consensus on that point. I don't see why a consensus of reviewing admins at AE could not do the same. There are plans to have some discussion with AE patrolling admins, this is something that should for sure be on the agenda. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:00, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
There're quite a few AE sanctions I'm aware of that required appeal intervals (and at least a couple instances where one was added after relatively rapid-fire failed appeals). Nothing stops AE admins from mandating that a given sanction cannot be appealed for X number of months (usually 6). The main reason they aren't used as often, from what I've grokked, is because they're generally reserved for instances where a shorter-than-indef topic-ban didn't have the deterrent effect intended (i.e. recidivism). —Jéské Couriano (No further replies will be forthcoming.) 17:16, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
An appeal interval can be imposed by consensus at AE or AN, but very explicitly cannot cut off appeals directly to the Committee. Only the Committee could impose that sort of appeal restriction. Courcelles (talk) 18:41, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
I should indeed have clarified "at AE". —Jéské Couriano (No further replies will be forthcoming.) 23:41, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox we authorized that very thing during the CT reform. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:37, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
I have to stop saying things before I've had coffee. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:26, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
While it can be imposed at AE that would require there to be a group of admins who (1) contribute to the thread, (2) agree on a sanction, (3) someone to think of a minimum appeal timeframe, and (4) a group of admins to agree to a minimum appeal timeframe. Most AE sanctions are imposed by admins acting alone, or with input from other admins but not a formal rough consensus supporting the action. I don't have a solution for this but I think it's worth noting that it's not so easy to have happen in practice. Additional to what El C raised re appeals, there's also ADMINCOND which requires admins to justify the sanction whereever and whenever they're asked even outside an appeal. Again I don't have a solution, but this is worth considering in addition to El C's point about appeals. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:54, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and sorry for hijacking this AA3 case close announcement (I say as I continue doing so). I was unaware of the amendment Barkeep points to above, but then again winter was a bit of a haze for me (haze!), where even when I was around, I wasn't really around-around. But I do recall the issue coming up when a single admin restricted the timing of an appeal. I remember saying in response that my understanding has always been that that could only be recommended. Only ArbCom or the community could set binding restrictions on appeals.

I still don't think a single admin should have the power to set such limits, singularly, but expanding that to a quorum of uninvolved admins at AE per that amendment — that's a good thing in my view. But it might require a new approach as to what the AE board is, a discussion which is probably beyond the scope of this. But briefly: while AE might continue to serve as a venue for when a actions/evaluation by a single admin fail to materialize, decisions by a quorum of AE admins should, at least in some ways, hold more weight than those made by a single admin. I don't think that's a controversial stance, but defining those 'some ways' is the tricky part.

And then there's the flipside of the pitfalls for when appeals occur much later than the given sanction. So on the one hand, it's a bit much to have a case essentially relitigated via an appeal immediately following a closure. But on the other, it's often difficult to recall all the relevant details months or even years later. Which goes beyond ArbCom-authorized or community-authorized sanctions, extending also to normal admin actions. So whether extreme in its unpleasantness, like this thread from a few days ago on my talk page, or neutral like this one (coincidentally directly above it) — in either instance, I couldn't remember what's what all the same. So it is a double-edge sword. But I ramble, so thanks again for indulging me! El_C 08:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Explanatory supplement mention of first alert

In Awareness of contentious topics I read "Editors no longer need to be alerted every 12 months, as they are presumed to remain aware after their first alert." But is a discretionary sanctions alert issued more than 12 months ago, i.e. expired before the changes, a first alert and therefore no longer expired? If so, would it be clearer to say "first discretionary sanctions alert or first contentious topics alert"? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:06, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I am anyway giving the new alert else for sure someone will claim that they were not made aware. Selfstudier (talk) 15:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I personally think that Template:alert/DS is helpful for these cases, but I can't point to a policy/procedure section explicitly justifying this use. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 16:27, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

I've now found footnote: "An editor who has not received an alert may also be presumed to be aware of a contentious topic if the editor: ... Ever received a discretionary sanctions alert ... for the same topic; ... Has otherwise made edits indicating an awareness of the contentious topic." So that answers my first question. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:25, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

There was an intentional effort to not mention discretionary sanctions in the main body of WP:CTOP so I'm not so interested in making that wording tweak myself. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:33, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

This is not about WP:CTOP it is about "Wikipedia:Contentious topics/Comparison with discretionary sanctions", the explanatory supplement. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 00:25, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Dbachmann

Original announcement

I looked over all the decisions in WP:FORCAUSE as far back as 2017. The reasons cited in the arbcom decisions often included specific actions which led to the desysopping, and in a few cases (Rama, Arthur Rubin, Enigmaman, and BrownHairedGirl), for "failing to meet community expectations". This is the only case I've seen, however, which called out "losing the trust or confidence of the community". How much of that is just random variation of wording by different motion authors over the years vs a deliberate recognition of the sentiment expressed by the community at WP:ANI#Desysop Proposal? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:10, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Timestamp comparison:
- 2023-03-31 motion
- 2023-04-03 community request
~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:14, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
I think this is a case of ArbCom and the community coming to the same conclusion, perhaps independently, perhaps not; if anything it seems like the ANI thread was informed by the thoughts at the case, not the other way around. I'll note that my vote, which assesses how Dbachmann has lost the community's trust [1], came on April 1, two days before the community request. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:19, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
As the author of that proposal, I borrowed some wording from old motions, L2 procedure and a few other places. I didn't post it at ANI until April 3rd, but I had been tinkering with the idea in my own userspace a day before the motion was posted at Arbcom.[2] The similarities in wording are probably because we borrowed language from some of the same places. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 19:34, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the replies. This wasn't just an idle question; as I mentioned on ANI, I'd like to see a community recall process happen. I could potentially see the trust issue being one of the distinctions between arbcom and community desysops, with arbcom's remit generally being specific violations of rules, and the community's being more about loss of trust, since figuring out if the community trusts somebody is mostly what WP:RFA is about. I'm not sure such a clean line could actually be drawn, but it's kind of where my head is. -- RoySmith (talk) 20:25, 5 April 2023 (UTC)
The problem with a community-based desysop process is that any admin who attempts to handle a highly controversial topic, or take any step against a popular user (remember the Fram case?) would be likely to fall victim to it. This would both tend to scare off admins from these areas, and cause us to loose the few who are brave enough to remain there. Letting ArbCom decide based on community discussion reduces these risks. Animal lover |666| 09:11, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
Does anyone believe there is any merit to tabling the idea of a community-based desysop at WP:VPP? Or is this an issue of jurisdiction that a community discussion cannot and will not resolve? I, for one, have similar thoughts to Animal lover 666. My main concern is that although we'd call it a "community" de-sysop, the fact is that we will not ever get an unbiased cross-representation of the community at any venue such as WP:ANI. I'm thinking back to the ANI discussion we had for the indeffing of FleurDeOdile. Although that one did end up being resolved at ArbCom, it sickened me to my stomach that there was such a large participation of highly involved editors at the previous venue. Once we go down that route, why even bother with asking administrators to be open to WP:RECALL? --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:51, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
We do need more accountability and review (mostly in areas less severe than desysop) But I'd be worried about an angry mob type process at community recall for such a big decision, as well as desysoping for being willing to handle tough areas. North8000 (talk) 16:04, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
As someone who recovered from WP:CDARFC, I can say that working up a proposal for a community-based process is unlikely to be worth the effort. When I did it, way back then, there was a valid case that ArbCom wasn't up to the task. Times have changed, and I believe that the ArbCom of today handles it better than the community could. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:31, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
I believe ArbCom has the following advantages:
They are members of the community (unlike the Foundation), and understand its dynamic.

They listen to the community, and generally try to act based on the community's opinion.

They are not bound by any formal consensus, and can decide to disregard any opinion which appears to be overly biased with no legitimate cause. This allows them to deal with an angry mob.

They give the admin being discussed a truely fair opportunity to defend themselves, including where BEANS or privacy issues prevent them from telling everything to the whole world.

Animal lover |666| 21:33, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

@Roy Smith, I have a couple of concerns in possibly separating trust issues from rules violations, especially if we were thinking of having an elected community desysop process for rules based violations and an unelected community desysop program for trust based desysops. Firstly we complicate the whole thing by having to decide whether some borderline cases are about trust or about rules (especially as in truth they are usually a mixture of the two), secondly we complicate the whole process by also having the issue of private information. Any case where Private information has to be involved has to go through our elected community desysop process as only the Arbcom members have done whatever WMF legal requires for them to look at such information. But any admin being told that some members of the community don't trust them and want to put them through the desysop process has the option of either disputing whether the case against them is predominately about rules or about trust. Presumably those who want the desysop also have an opportunity to argue as to which route the case should go down. Then both the Admin and their accusers have the opportunity to send some off wiki argument to Arbcom and Arbcom then has to consider the case and that evidence, but only to the point of deciding whether the private information makes a sufficient difference to the case that it should be determined by Arbcom, or not. Hard to see how we could add those two processes and have the resulting system be as fair and efficient as the current system. Ϣere SpielChequers 19:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I wonder if it would be an improvement to the process to create a separate subpage of Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests for review of administrator conduct, perhaps something like Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Administrator conduct? Currently, all desysop requests are funneled through Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case, but as this case demonstrates, there is occasionally no need to conduct a full arbitration case for issues regarding administrator conduct. The admin conduct review subpage could then be structured to standardize the possible outcomes of such a review: an arb could vote between (1) dismissing the request, (2) summarily warning or admonishing the administrator, (3) WP:LEVEL1 or WP:LEVEL2 emergency desysop, (4) summary desysop (as was done here), (5) "open and suspend case" (e.g. [3]), or (6) open a full arbitration case. Mz7 (talk) 02:13, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Why do we need a new venue to do that? Barkeep49 (talk) 04:44, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
If ArbCom thinks it necessary, I wouldn't oppose it. However, since they can enact motions directly from the case request page, a separate page for this is probably unnecessary bureaucracy. Animal lover |666| 05:12, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough. I suppose if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Handling requests (other than self-requests) for removal of administrative tools is one of primary responsibilities of the Arbitration Committee as stated in WP:ARBPOL#Scope and responsibilities, and I just think it is strange that ArbCom's procedures technically require us to request a full-blown arbitration case in cases where we merely want to request that an administrator be desysopped. Oftentimes, people like to propose various ideas for a "community-based" desysop process, and one of the main arguments people raise in those discussions is that the full arbitration process is too long and complex and that a more lightweight system is needed. However, as this case demonstrates, ArbCom is perfectly capable of expeditiously desysopping administrators when necessary; the instructions at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case don't really make it clear that this is an option, though. Mz7 (talk) 01:47, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
ArbCom doesn't require it, traditionally arbs on ArbCom have required it. My position on this is admittedly nuanced: I think we can do it without a case, but also would have to see this vary year by year just by who happens to be on the committee (or this year by who happens to be active when the request comes in). Barkeep49 (talk) 02:08, 10 April 2023 (UTC)
Is there any particular reason why cases that have some actual consequence, eg a desysop, through a motion are declined instead of accepted and resolved by motion? Makes it a bit more difficult to find later. nableezy - 07:20, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Because they are simple enough to be resolved without a full case. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Declined requests for all declined cases, including ones resolved by motion. Animal lover |666| 08:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Some cases are declined and resolved by motion, others are accepted and resolved by motion. Perhaps it would be better to organise the archive into three sections - full case accepted, resolved by motion, declined - rather than just the two? Thryduulf (talk) 09:40, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
I think that's a good idea. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 10:17, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
In order to get this change made, you need consensus in an appropriate thread, and a volunteer willing to fix up the existing archives. Animal lover |666| 17:50, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Where exactly would I go to propose this sort of change? Village Pump? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 17:59, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Given that we are discussing changes to the Arbitration Committee archiving system, it would probably make sense to do so on a talk page for the Arbitration Committee, e.g. Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee. Primefac (talk) 18:04, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Given the current number of case requests I think having a single archive (which would also necessitate less of a backwards fix) feels like a better solution to this concern than to split the archive further. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:11, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
Discussion has shifted to Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee#Organizing_archived_case_requests. Primefac (talk) 18:38, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Media mention

Withdrawn, it looks like people know about this already as the Grabowski article is referenced in the case request and in a Signpost article a while back. I had thought it was new. 2602:243:2007:9990:FC12:23ED:462:65F4 (talk) 19:07, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

On WT:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland in the "This Arbcom case has been mentioned by multiple media organizations" box, could the following link please be added:

Canadian Jewish News, The Wikipedia fight over Poland’s role in the Holocaust sparks death threats against an Ottawa professor (24 minute podcast), my source of the academic article linked below.

The podcast is mostly an interview with Jan Grabowski, the professor who was threatened, and a co-author of this article:

Jan Grabowski & Shira Klein (2023) Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust, The Journal of Holocaust Research, doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939.

He blames the threat on the Polish government, and thankfully doesn't indicate that Wikipedia had anything to do with it. In the interview he talks at length about how Wikipedia content in the topic gets distorted. He mentions the arb case. He gets a few details wrong about Wikipedia's internal processes, but it is mostly stuff that has been through the wringer before.

I got the podcast link from Hacker News[4] but the accompanying discussion thread is currently empty.

I'm making the request here since the arbitration talk page where it would normally go is itself semi-protected.

Arbcom might want to take a look at the article, though it looks somewhat like a transplant of the same editing dispute we've seen on Wikipedia seemingly forever. In fact the article link should probably be posted to one of the case pages. I'll leave it to the experts to figure out which one.

If it matters, I have nothing to do with this content area or dispute.

Thanks. 2602:243:2007:9990:FC12:23ED:462:65F4 (talk) 08:11, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Recent ArbCom blocks

With both of the ArbCom blocks that were recently issued, why was email access revoked when the instructions specifically say to appeal via email? (Hope this is the right place to ask). 73.17.22.205 (talk) 03:53, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Revoking email removes the ability to use Wikipedia's internal email system, you can still email the committee directly, and the address to send to is right on the block template. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)

Change to the Checkuser team

Original announcement

ARBPOL proposed amendment live

As the petition for an ARBPOL amendment to remove the right for Jimbo Wales to act as an appeal route for arbcom decisions has received 100 signatures a referendum on the proposal has been opened.

Proposed amendment referendum

It requires a majority in favour with at least 100 supporting editors.

CENT, WLN, WP:AN, user talk:Jimbo Wales and VPP have all been notified. Please feel free to provide neutral notices to other relevant fora. Nosebagbear (talk) 11:22, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Feedback on the Evidence Summary Style/Document Mode

One of the clerks is in process of closing World War II and the history of Jews in Poland as I type this and the next section will be the bot created section to discuss that outcome. I want to have, however, a separate place for feedback on the use of an evidence summary page. I have pretty strong feelings against it but think feedback from the community (including parties to the case if they wish) would be useful for ArbCom to consider if/when to use this again in the future. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:16, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious why you're against it? I thought it was helpful to figure out what arbcom was interested in, and I thought it helped keep duplicate submissions down. As well as keeping the submissions culled down to avoid useless stuff. Ealdgyth (talk) 16:30, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I found that it made the evidence as a whole much more readable. It is something that definitely improved the signal-to-noise ratio. That said, it seems to me that such an exercise is extremely labour-instensive on the part of the arbitrators who are summarizing the evidence. I'm not sure how sustainable such an approach is; while it may be workable for a particularly high-profile case as a one-off, I'm also imagining trying to keep with, for example, two open cases with a considerable amount of evidence. My recent experience of being a sitting arbitrator was that the behind-the-scenes stuff took up a fair amount of time already (case in point: the main reason why I haven't been really active this year is because I've seized some opportunities to do other things with my free time, now that I'm no longer an arbitrator). Adding something as intensive as promptly (!) summarizing all evidence may stretch a committee too thin. Even with 15 members, there is a number who are inactive or recused, but also, perhaps at the risk of saying a quiet truth too loudly, a notable percentage of remaining active arbitrators aren't up for grunt work, which is a feature of committees year-in year-out. Maxim (talk) 16:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Once upon a time, I suggested having co-ordinators gathering submitted evidence and putting forth a concise presentation. The goal was to reduce redundancy, thus making it easier to follow the case and save everyone time. There are clear difficulties in trying to put this into practice (getting Wikipedia editors to co-ordinate is very hard). However for a refining-of-evidence approach to be sustainable on a larger scale, I think the effort needs to be de-centralized to other community members, in order to spread the workload. isaacl (talk) 17:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

extremely labour-instensive is really the core issue for me. This is, I think, a rare instance where all three drafters were constantly on-call. In previous cases, the whole process was pretty resilient to one (sometimes even two) drafters needing to step back for a few days, but there was far less slack in this process. That's really just not sustainable, and despite the benefits we get when it works, if it winds up breaking everything I think we wind up in a worse position. It was an interesting tool to try, and for very specific reasons worked out well, but multiple factors would need to converge for me to suggest doing it again. I'd rather we figure out what people liked and try to come up with easier ways to achieve those outcomes without having to do this precise procedure again. — Wug·a·po·des 00:06, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I think it encouraged people to be like "here's a conversation" leaving it to the arbs to figure out what about that conversation needed noting. And conversely when someone did provide context or if arbs noticed something not noted by the submitter, the neutral summary meant we had to strip that context back out for the summary before putting it back in for the PD. It took tons of time to do, at least doubling the amount of time I would have spent as a drafter on processing the evidence and with no clerk feeling comfortable to ever do the summary it fell completely on the drafters. Not to mention the one reasons for it - to let give people more words/diffs while still providing some constraints ended up not completely working simply because the drafters fell behind in summarizing. And on top of all that it created extra work and points of friction between participants and arbs as people would appeal the summaries (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not). For me it was an experiment worth doing but not one that would be sustainable or advisable again in the future. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:59, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I disliked it, and Barkeep49 just summarized a lot of the reasons why I did. You noted the possibility of friction when someone who posted evidence disagreed with how it was summarized, and (obviously to anyone who followed the case closely) I can raise my hand for that. (Example: I presented evidence of what I thought was some misrepresentation of source material on a case page. Instead of summarizing it, Barkeep49 put a hat on it, and suggested that the other Arbs should just look at it directly. Nothing came of it. I'm fine with ArbCom looking at my evidence and deciding that it just didn't rise to the level of something that required coverage in the final decision, or even deciding that I had misinterpreted what had happened. I have no problem with that. But for all I know, nobody ever even really looked at it.) It's simply an unnecessary extra step to create a curated version of the evidence page, and it puts the drafting Arbs in the strange position of screening what the other Arbs are supposed to look at.

To some extent, the idea of trying this probably arose out of all the other unusual features of this case, including that ArbCom was the "filing party" and that there was an extraordinarily large amount of content and source material that the Arbs had to try to understand. But most cases should not involve that much source material that needs to be digested. (I wonder: did the Bibliography ever really get used for anything in the Final Decision?) I can also imagine that some editors may believe that a good thing about it was that it seemed to reduce the amount of sniping between parties. But I want to point out that this case was also unusual in that many of the parties came to it with the argument that "there's nothing to see here, all the conflict died down a few years ago", which on the whole did not seem to persuade the Committee. But given this dynamic, it was inevitable that the most aggrieved parties would, nonetheless, be reluctant to go after one another. That's what really happened, and it wasn't a result of the case page structure, even though it might superficially look like it.

Here's what I think would be good things for ArbCom to do with this in the future. It's good for drafting Arbs (or any Arbs) to take an active role in saying "this is off-topic, and we are closing it" or "this is useful, and we would like to hear more about it". That's always beneficial to everyone involved. Arbs should feel free to use hatting to turn off unproductive evidence. It's OK for an Arb to say something like "I'm interpreting this evidence to mean X and Y, but not Z, is that a correct interpretation?" But there's no need for editors submitting evidence to have to feel like "does that mean that my evidence did/did not make the cut?" --Tryptofish (talk) 18:04, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Were the clerks not encouraged to feel comfortable producing the summaries? I didn't participate in the case and have no feelings about the new process under discussion, but it seems like if the primary complaint is drafter workload, improved delegation could help. Folly Mox (talk) 18:32, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

The clerks were encouraged. In the end we really only had 1 active clerk for this case and he didn't ultimately feel comfortable doing it. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

(Yeah, it wasn't a lack of encouragement that made me avoid summarizing the evidence. I was overwhelmed by the amount of evidence input and the task of compressing it to pure facts about user conduct. And while my perception may well not match reality, I suddenly felt as if I was in a position of judging article content for ArbCom. That didn't feel right.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:09, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, the clerks should not be asked to do this kind of task. It goes beyond what they are normally expected to do. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I could see it as something I'd be willing to help do for the future if I didn't get a late start on the case (because of an ill-timed unannounced Wikibreak). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 22:31, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the evidence summarization was somewhat helpful to me as a party, in figuring out what was considered relevant, and I thought BK did a really good job doing it and asked some really pertinent questions. However, if the format is used in future I think the other arbitrators should give greater weight to the opinion of the arbitrator doing the summarizing, otherwise it is a waste of that person's time. I think this would have been a better decision if it had had some relationship to the summarized evidence. Elinruby (talk) 23:31, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

I found it an interesting innovation that I mildly support. It was very helpful to know which parts of evidence were considered useful and which, not so much, early on (before the PD). I had some issues with appealing the evidence summary process, as in - I felt that some appeals were effectively ignored. I'd sugget formalizing appeals so they are not lost, maybe create a subpage for them or let them be at summary talk page (which here was redirected to the main evidence one I think?), and then have each one officially marked with {{resolved}} or similar templates while pending, so that it is clear which requests are backlogged, or denied. As for backlogged part, well, what were the not-very-active clerks and arbitrators doing? If we run into the perennial backlog-because-volunteers-are-understaffed/overworked issue, we need to recruit more arbitrators and clerks. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:54, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

At the time I write this comment, no one has yet raised the fact that there was no Workshop phase in this case, so I'll raise it in the context of what the experience with Evidence Summary might tell us. Personally, I think Workshops are very beneficial, but I realize that there are lots of differing opinions about that. In my opinion, if ArbCom has a Workshop and really engages with it, including having drafting arbs workshop potential parts of the PD, it can help ArbCom avoid confusion over the wording of the eventual decision – witness all the questions in the talk section below, about the 1-revert remedy. Criticisms of Workshops include editors sniping at one another and extending the stress for named parties. I agree that those are legitimate concerns, but I think the way that ArbCom explored aggressive hatting of evidence in this case suggests an improvement that could be made. In future cases, Arbs might want to have a Workshop, but make aggressive use of hatting to shut down sniping and proposals that are unlikely to be used. I think that would be a good thing (and a lot easier than summarizing evidence). --Tryptofish (talk) 15:29, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

If the drafting arbs have things they want feedback on, I agree the workshop is useful. But it wouldn't have helped with this 1-revert remedy which was drafted during the PD itself based on discussion among arbs, and feedback from the community. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/World War II and the history of Jews in Poland closed

Original announcement

I don't get involved in WP:AE as a rule, so maybe this is obvious to the folks who do. The two cases that just got published make reference to the usual/normal/ordinary exceptions, but don't say what they are. If somebody were to ping me with a request, "XXX violated their TBAN, you need to block them!" and XXX protested that it was one of the allowed exceptions, I wouldn't have a clue what to do next. If you don't want to spell them out each time, maybe just make a page listing them and have each of those be links to that page? -- RoySmith (talk) 19:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
One of the remedies referring to exceptions links to Wikipedia:Banning policy § Interaction ban. The following section is Wikipedia:Banning policy § Exceptions to limited bans. isaacl (talk) 20:27, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The "usual exceptions" are WP:BANEX and could theoretically be modified by community consensus at any time, so hard-coding them into the ArbCom remedy would make a tiny theoretical difference. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:29, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Perhaps the other remedy could at least link to Wikipedia:Banning policy § Interaction ban? isaacl (talk) 20:39, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I-BAN seems to be very clear. It says: "The purpose of an interaction ban (IBAN) is to stop a conflict between individuals." Fortunately, I do not have a conflict with anyone, and even an active content disagreement with anyone. It further says: Alice would not be allowed to: edit Bob's user and talk pages; reply to Bob in discussions; undo Bob's edits to any page ..., and so on. OK. This should be easy to follow. Topic ban is more tricky because it says "broadly construed" and everything in the world is related to everything. I assume one should use common sense here. For example, Soviet repressions against former prisoners of war would be fine for as long as it does not mention any Polish prisoners, does not cover anything in Poland, etc. My very best wishes (talk) 01:01, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
I expect to offer some suggestions about the processes used in the case later on, but for now, I want to make two observations about the case and its impact:

Given the thesis of the G&K paper that prompted the case, I find it remarkable that there was nothing in the final decision (if I'm missing it, please do correct me) about anyone having misrepresented sources. I'm not saying that's a problem with the decision, in fact, quite the opposite. It's entirely proper for ArbCom to have focused on editor conduct as opposed to content, but none of the findings seem to have been about editors systematically misusing source material.
In her published reaction to the case decision, one of the authors of that paper faulted ArbCom for not having asked historians to correct the content: [5]. This is an unjustified criticism of ArbCom. Not only does ArbCom have no mandate to dictate content, but ArbCom made a considered decision to have User:Chapmansh as a named party. That was an explicit invitation for her to participate in the case, and to do so in her capacity as a subject matter expert in history if she chose to. She is of course free not to participate, but then to complain about never having been invited to participate seems like a deliberate wish to find reasons to criticize Wikipedia.

--Tryptofish (talk) 20:40, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Are there any ethical considerations to their actions in this case? I'm pretty certain at least Klein's postmortem is a major failure to do basic research about the Arbitration Committee's lack of remit as regards disputed article content at large. It's not like there isn't literally over a decade of precedent of ArbCom deferring to community processes for them, and it's not like they're particularly hard to find. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 22:39, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Are we reading the same thing? She literally says Arbcom is “bound by Wiki policy to steer clear of content. ArbCom was simply the wrong solution to begin with.” 2601:196:4600:5BF0:18E5:B19C:5238:1AC0 (talk) 16:04, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

But in the exact same paper (hell, the exact same paragraph) she faults ArbCom for not being historians and thus, in her view, being incompetent to address the article content and suggesting they demand historians' input - which is a distinction without a difference as ArbCom would still be directly interfering in article content at that point. Note that several of the content-dispute related remedies above (Mantanmoreland, Scientology, Socionics, GamerGate, War of the Pacific) also request (but do not mandate) knowledgeable users who otherwise have not involved themselves in the on-wiki disputes to get involved to address the articles' content.

Another thing complicating matters with "just ask historians" is the fact that, unlike Gamergate/GenSex and Scientology (the two cases above that were/are contentious topics), the heart of the Eastern Europe issues is not so easy to fix as to be answered with pure facts, something which ArbCom itself has acknowledged multiple times. The contentious topic it's in is one of five (the others being AA2, AP2, IP, and PIA) where the base issues are deeply-entrenched ethnic and nationalistic sentiments that cannot realistically be resolved on Wikipedia short of the suggestion made by User:Short Brigade Harvester Boris here, and which we'd all agree is incredibly extreme. Even if we assumed historians would be free from the bias that permeates the area IRL, that wouldn't stop their words from being used by whatever side to support their position if it can even remotely be used to do so without committing source fraud.—Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 17:35, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

(Addendum: All the cases above, bar Seeyou, are cases that explicitly have a remedy deferring content matters to the community or its content-dispute-resolution processes. It does not include cases (again, except for Seeyou) where ArbCom invokes the "It is not our role to adjudicate good-faith content disputes" principle, which would include far more than just these cases. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 22:52, 20 May 2023 (UTC))

About whether there were ethical considerations, ArbCom examined that and decided that there were not (see: FoF 9). Some members of the community (including me) are not entirely comfortable with that, and there is like to be further discussion (see WT:Harassment#WP:OUTING). --Tryptofish (talk) 15:20, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Though, it's important to recognize that intentional distortion of a source, or tendentious misuse of a source, is absolutely a conduct issue and does fall within ArbCom's remit... but very little evidence of that was actually presented during the case (even by people who broadly support the overarching thrust of the G&K paper otherwise), which suggests that those aspects were probably reasonable disagreements between sources and not editors outright misrepresenting them. Admittedly, this may also be because most of the evidence was contributed by experienced editors who knew that WP:CIVILPOV and deliberate distortion of sources is hard to prove, whereas edit warring, incivility, and violation of previous restrictions are easy, and therefore devoted their limited time to finding evidence of the latter rather than trying to string together an inevitably more tenuous case for the former... especially given that in the end ArbCom concluded that virtually every major participant in the case except Piotrus had enough of that evidence against them to support a topic-ban on their own, anyway. (Or in GCB's case were a banned sockpuppet so none of the other evidence mattered.) --Aquillion (talk) 07:25, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

The way I read the FoF 6 family is that except in one case attributable to GCB, the evidence characterised as source misrepresentation could be more easily explained as translation variance, but this might be because – as a person who has translated – I find this incredibly plausible.

User:Tryptofish, Principle 9 makes it clear that source misrepresentation is understood as a conduct issue, and FoF 5 explains that not all sources were possible to examine due to availability and language barrier issues. It is still telling that there was apparently only one instance of source misrepresentation that was positively verified.

Klein's press release reads as if she didn't read these bits, or Remedy 2, which is not particularly surprising given that it also impugns ArbCom for not doing a thing it never does, and also mistakes the PD for the closure of the case. As to whether it represents a deliberate wish to find reasons to criticize Wikipedia, the press release does open with a statement about how you can hire her to come criticize Wikipedia, so uh inferences can be drawn. Folly Mox (talk) 10:06, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Folly Mox, I agree that Principle 9 says that, as a principle, but there really were no findings of fact that it happened in the ways that the G&K paper claimed, or in the ways that the case scope appeared to anticipate. From the evidence that I saw, it was mostly a problem in the earlier history of the content dispute, involving editors who were not named parties because they were long gone for one reason or another by the time the case arose. This points to some limitations of basing an ArbCom case on complaints made off-site. And the difficulties in examining sources seems to me to have been a limitation to ArbCom being able to deal with things that are on the boundary between content and conduct. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:11, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Without regard to this case specifically, I do feel that many intractable disputes between experienced editors happen because one or both sides in the dispute dig in and defend an edit or wording that they wouldn't have added themselves (and which may have fundamental problems) because they see themselves as defending articles against the "other side." It's one of the problems with WP:BATTLEGROUND conduct. --Aquillion (talk) 15:30, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Opening a press release with “Chapman University’s Dr. Shira Klein is available to speak to the recent ruling by Wikipedia’s arbitration committee” is a far cry from “hire me to criticize Wikipedia” 2601:196:4600:5BF0:18E5:B19C:5238:1AC0 (talk) 16:07, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not tryna hassle her hustle — everybody's got to get paid. But is available to speak is an invitation to engage her as a paid speaker or lecturer, and if the recent ruling by Wikipedia's arbitration committee is in any way represented by the paragraphs that follow, where she says nothing positive about the site or the ruling, saying Wikipedia failed... miserably and even downplaying VM's and MVBW's topic bans with but the ruling is appealable in 12 months instead of celebrating it as a desired outcome, I'd be pretty surprised if she doesn't incorporate a fair amount of Wikipedia criticism into her paid speaking engagements. It's fair play and probably exactly the market niche I'd grab ahold of in her position. I hope she'll also build in some constructive suggestions for her audience members about how to get involved and improve quality and representation of sourcing in historical articles. Folly Mox (talk) 20:26, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

In fairness, I'm not reading "is available to speak" in that way. It's a university newspaper, and it probably just means that this professor made herself available to speak to a student reporter. It doesn't come across to me as an advertisement. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:35, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm open to the possibility that I'm being too cynical. I'm noticing some tropaic echoes in this whole situation that are resonating with open emotional wounds, and I think it's making me too salty to express the level of kindness I'd like to. I didn't even participate in the case and don't edit the topic area, so I'm not sure what value I'm adding here. Thanks to the arbs and clerks and evidence submitters for all their volunteer labour. Folly Mox (talk) 20:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It is a university press release aimed at the press. She wants the press to interview her on the subject. It isn't about paid speaking engagements or aimed at students. Zero^talk 02:00, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Zero. I should have seen "Press Release" right there in red letters at the top. That means that Klein/Chapmansh approved all of the text that was published there. She's not looking to make money from it, but she is actively trying to get widespread notice of her perspectives on the case. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:43, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Just slightly confused by VM's 1 revert restriction. Is that 1 revert period? Not per day, or week. 1 revert on an article and then no more reverts, even unrelated content weeks later, absent explicit consensus for that revert? Is that really what yall meant? nableezy - 21:32, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Yes, this is confusing. Did y’all mean once per article per day, one revert for any particular piece of content, or one revert per article until the heat death of the universe? This needs to be clarified before the AE messes start. Courcelles (talk) 22:21, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Unless otherwise stated, it means reverts per article per 24 hours, subject to all the exceptions which apply to 3RR. Animal lover |666| 07:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

It was intended to be 1 revert per piece of content until consensus is developed. Barkeep49 (talk) 08:50, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: Well, it certainly doesn't say that. And unless my reading skills have failed, does this 1RR apply to the entire encyclopedia, or just this topic area? Black Kite (talk) 16:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
It was meant to apply to the entire encyclopedia, so your reading skills and the intention match there. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:57, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I think ArbCom made tough but fair judgements in this case. For all the whingeing from some corners about how Icewhiz will be overjoyed with results of this case I really don't think this case vindicates him at all. I agree with Nableezy that VM's 1R restriction is unclear and should be clarified. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:17, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Arbitrators, thank you for your hard work on this case, especially Barkeep49, Izno, Wugapodes, Primefac, and Captain Eek who's names I remember seeing frequently in the discussions. Jehochman ^Talk 13:38, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Saddened to see Levivich has left over this. They were among the best of us.-- Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks ArbCom for dealing with all this shit.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
+1 Selfstudier (talk) 16:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

+1 Boud (talk) 13:41, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be useful to look back at how the case got started. There were multiple unusual things about that (which is what made me interested in the case to begin with). It was started by ArbCom itself, rather than by a member of the community serving as the "filing party". It was started in immediate response to an external publication about Wikipedia, although ArbCom also took into consideration previous requests for Arbitration that had been declined, and in hindsight looked more worthy of a case. And it involved ArbCom having to do much more examination of source material than is typical in an ArbCom case. In my opinion, there was nothing about this that went beyond ArbCom's remit according to policy. So ArbCom can do these things. But the question is whether ArbCom should, and what can be learned going forward about things to watch out for if ArbCom does.

An interesting side-effect of ArbCom initiating the case was that most of the named parties felt less of a need to present evidence of wrongdoing, and more of a motivation to claim that there wasn't really a problem. In most other cases, the filing party and those who agree with the filer lay out a series of accusations, and those accused respond in kind. That was muted here, and I think it made it much harder for ArbCom to find the evidence that it needed. Future ArbComs should keep that in mind, before acting as the filing party.

That ran up against the immense amount of difficult source material that the drafting arbs tried to digest. In the talk section above, I asked somewhat rhetorically whether the Bibliography ended up being used for anything, and I'd actually be curious what the answer would be, but I'm going to guess that it became a huge amount of work that didn't really yield anything useful. I think ArbCom ultimately did a very good job of explaining in the Final Decision what ArbCom does and does not do with content versus conduct. But I think going forward ArbCom should think twice, and then think again, before undertaking a task like this.

And finally, there's the fact that the case was so heavily influenced by the fact that the G&K paper had come out. Arbs have said repeatedly that they made their own evaluations of the facts, and that's good, but the fact remains that a polemic by scholars with a bone to pick had an oversized role in this case. And the complaints by scholars on opposite "sides" of the academic debate as soon as the PD came out ([6], [7]), demonstrate that this really wasn't ever a situation where there was a scholarly consensus that Wikipedia failed to reflect. There is actually an ongoing scholarly dispute, and Wikipedia displeased two scholars on one side of that dispute because Wikipedia doesn't take their side. ArbCom, and Wikipedia in general, are going to have to get used to this kind of external academic criticism, because it's going to become more and more frequent. It's good when we take note of such criticism and look to see if there are things we need to fix. But we shouldn't have a knee-jerk overreaction. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:03, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

So, tl;dr, G&K basically intended to try and influence the matter on Wikipedia, but failed utterly because ArbCom wouldn't play ball? Where have I heard this story before? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 17:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

A couple of responses. First G&K posit that Lucas' assertions are not with-in the realm of legitimate academic debate and that Wikipedia treating G&K and Lucas as two equally valid sides is itself part of the problem. Second I think a lot of people have over thought things. G&K want our coverage to more closely align with their analysis of history and since that was never going to be an outcome of this case of course it was going to disappoint them. I will say that if their assertions about the state of mainstream scholarship is correct then our coverage should actually more in the direction they wish, but that will be up to other editors in the days, weeks, and months ahead to decide. Hopefully aided by what other historians have to say. Finally, while I agree that a lot of the actors settled on a "nothing to see here" narrative ultimately I flat out disagree that there wasn't sufficient evidence to find. In the end there was sufficient evidence to pass multiple topic bans and nearly the banning of an incredibly longtime editor. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:22, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for these thoughts. I need to clarify that I agree with you entirely when you say that there was, in fact, sufficient evidence brought forth to allow ArbCom to have a solid basis for taking decisive action to resolve the conduct issues. I agree with that. But I didn't say (or at least didn't mean to say) that ArbCom failed to find enough evidence. I said: I think it made it much harder for ArbCom to find the evidence that it needed. You found it, but it was harder for you than it needed to be. I think we can agree about that.

As for the first part of what you said, it's certainly G&K's opinion that they are the mainstream academic view. I've been struck throughout the case by the absence of secondary sources that state an academic consensus on the matter. G&K also take the attitude that academics who disagree with them are not only wrong, but engaging in something outrageous, bordering on antisemitism. But I think it's open to debate as to whether Richard C. Lukas is (a) someone who is so far outside of the academic mainstream as to be a WP:FRINGE scholar, or (b) a scholar who holds a minority view within an ongoing academic dispute. I think it's closer to (b). Editors have recently discussed how Wikipedia should position the matter at Talk:The Forgotten Holocaust#Arbitration case, and Legitimizing fringe academics, and I'm not seeing a consensus that Lucas is fringey, although the argument is being made. My sense of where Wikipedia is likely to end up is something more nuanced, not treating Grabowski and Lukas as equal, but not treating one of them as "completely right" and the other as "completely wrong", either. Of course, you and I are not going to decide that here. But I'm uncomfortable when ArbCom flirts with deciding a content matter before the community has. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:23, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

According to Worldcat, Lukas' most well known book on the Holocaust is held by 1304 libraries. Grabowski's by 901. Here are Lukas' books prominently featured in a bibliography published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: [8]. Similarly here. Just saying. Andreas JN 466 05:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

I find it very interesting that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum recommends Lukas (as well as Grabowski) as an author worth reading. It's pretty hard to reconcile that with Lukas being regarded by Holocaust experts as a fringe figure who is hostile to mainstream views on the subject. This seems to me to be a clear indication of how ArbCom can be the wrong body to attempt to make determinations, unilaterally, of which "side" of an outside academic dispute is right. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

There is a potential "first mover advantage" in this kind of situation, too. Andreas JN 466 21:23, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Tryptofish "Lukas being regarded by Holocaust experts as" would be more correct as "Lukas being regarded by some Holocaust experts as". Arguably, isn't he an expert in the same field with differing views on those who regard him as..., etc.? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:02, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, certainly. And all the more reason to regard this as an academic field where there is ongoing disagreement amongst experts. --Tryptofish (talk) 12:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Lukas' other major book, "Out of the Inferno", is held by 1,255 libraries according to Worldcat. Like The Forgotten Holocaust mentioned above, it was published by the University Press of Kentucky, Lexington. This may not be a top university press in the U.S., but it is a long, long way from "fringe".

Let's look at another author, Nechama Tec, who Grabowski and Klein mention approvingly in their essay. Her major work, "When light pierced the darkness", is held by 1,356 libraries according to Worldcat. Her "Dry Tears" come in at 694 libraries, her "Defiance" at 303 libraries.

So Lukas' key works, at 1,304 and 1,255 libraries, are at least as well represented on Worldcat as Nechama Tec's, are they not? Is this compatible with the notion that this author is "fringe"?

Now let's look at Grabowski's other works: In addition to "Hunt for the Jews" (901 libraries), Grabowski has published the Polish-language "Dalej jest noc". This is held by 43 libraries. His other English-language book, "The Polish police: collaboration in the Holocaust", is held by 5 (five) libraries according to Worldcat.

User:Barkeep49, you said above, "G&K posit that Lucas' assertions are not with-in the realm of legitimate academic debate". Were you aware of these numbers? And if not, do they alter your thinking on how much weight to give Grabowski's opinions on Lukas, compared to the weight we should give Lukas' opinions on Grabowski? Andreas JN 466 15:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

And this book is held by 2,467 libraries according to Worldcat, a much higher number than any of the above. So by Andreas' logic, we must not regard Holocaust denier David Irving as "fringe" either. A good illustration of the quality of some arguments in this debate area. (Andreas' Holocaust Museum argument regarding Lukas has also been questioned by several other users, see the talk page of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-03-09/Recent research and the preceding discussion mentioned there. But of course that doesn't stop him and others from continuing to repeat it.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Good try.

Quoting from our lead for David Irving: "By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself outside the mainstream of the study of history". The book you mention was published in 1977. Contrast its library holdings against those of Irving's later works: Churchill's War (1987), 346 libraries; Goebbels (1996), 192 libraries; Hitler's Army (2011), 9 libraries; True Himmler (2020), 2 libraries. Surely there is at least some correlation between the worth of a book and libraries' decision to purchase it.

And while I concede my argument about the USHMM bibliographies has been "questioned", nobody has explained why in a bibliography on "Polish and Soviet civilians, and Soviet prisoners of war" comprising a total of five (5) works, two of which are about Russia, the USHMM would choose to include two books by Lukas. Apparently we're supposed to believe they rolled dice. Andreas JN 466 18:10, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Irving may not yet have outright denied the holocaust in 1977 yet. But as noted in our article about this book, he was arguing at that time already "that Hitler was against the killings of Jews. He claimed that Hitler even ordered a stop to the extermination of Jews in November 1941 (British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that this admission blatantly contradicted Irving's other claim that Hitler was ignorant about the mass killing of Jews)". See also this RSN discussion about an even earlier (1964) book of Irving where the same argument that Andreas makes here was roundly dismissed.

Instead of engaging in such shaky arguments based on metrics that for good reasons are not used elsewhere to assess scholarly credibility, it might be more productive to address the concrete criticism of Lukas that the paper makes and cites. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:10, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

You can't rely on just one essay that extols Engel. I read most of the back and forth of the "ongoing discussion" in Slavic Review the other day; just the first page of it visible here should disabuse you of the notion that Engel's and G&K's views were generally shared then, thirty years ago, when Lukas' book appeared.

Worldcat holdings are routinely used to judge authors' "fringiness" at RS/N, and I don't see any reference to them in the discussion you link. I think it's pretty clear that today, most libraries no longer touch Irving with a bargepole, and for very good and clear reasons. This is not the case with Lukas: cf. [9]. Are you seriously trying to compare Lukas to Irving? I hope not. Regards, Andreas JN 466 21:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm having flashbacks to the arguments during the case over VM's methodology in determining the numbers of AE threads in the case scope year-by-year – which in the end really didn't matter to the results of the case. To my knowledge, Irving hasn't made a public statement about the case decision, so we really don't need to evaluate his fringieness for that purpose. Lukas may be in a minority in his field, but he is not a fringe figure. G&K may, arguably, be more in the majority in that field, but their dismissal of Lukas should not be taken on face value, especially not for labeling editor conduct as disruptive. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:18, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm just going to copy, without further comment, something I wrote on the proposed decision talkpage:
As we all know, the Committee opened this case on its own initiative to examine the claims in an academic publication, which asserted that our articles in an important and sensitive topic-area were being intentionally distorted and manipulated by a group of nationalist editors. I understand why the arbitrators may have felt compelled to weigh in, and I do not criticize their decision to open the case. However, it is far from obvious that an ArbCom case was the best way to address the issue.

A takeaway: Wikipedia probably needs a procedure for evaluating allegations that sensitive and important articles are pervasively untrustworthy. I am not sure what that procedure should be, but I am confident that an arbitration case is not it. Brainstorming about how this type of situation should be handled in the future could be at least as important as the "white paper" the Committee proposes to solicit in remedy 1. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
I agree entirely, and I hope that the current Arbs really hear what you are saying. I'm looking forward to seeing whatever the white paper does or does not say. But once we know that, I very much want to see the community brainstorm about what the white paper seems likely to be about (personal information in scholarly writing), and, separately, how Wikipedia should respond to academic publications claiming that we have gotten content wrong, because that really is not what we elect ArbCom to do. I do want to say that ArbCom did a pretty good job with what they got handed to them, but the community should not, and very probably will not, want ArbCom to become an arbiter of content problems. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:30, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
The "white paper" is supposed to give advice to external writers on "how to study and write about Wikipedians and their personal information in a way that respects our principles." However, there is no journalist or academic who feels obligated to follow our principles. If they pay any attention at all, it will be to resent being told how to do their job. So I don't see the point. Zero^talk 02:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
One worthwhile aspect is that it might clarify what the UCoC is actually supposed to mean. Because according to the UCoC, nobody who wants to participate in Wikimedia projects should be writing about Wikipedians' personal information at all without their explicit consent. Andreas JN 466 06:09, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
It's true that external writers will not feel obligated to do what the white paper asks them to do, and it's also true that editors disagree about what the UCoC really says. For both these reasons, I think the most important use of the white paper, once it is issued, is for editors here to use it to assess where the WMF stands on the subject, and then, to take a hard look at what we want our en-wiki policies to say about it. We won't be able to tell external writers what to write. But if they write something that we decide violates community norms, we can decide what our policies will be with respect to those writers being able to participate as editors here. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

100% agree. I understand why ArbCom felt it needed to do something here, but the result was predictable from the outset: topic bans for (nearly) everyone involved, no progress made on the root cause of the problem because it's a 'content issue'. They have done a more thorough job than we did with Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland, but essentially is the same decision and I'm not optimistic that it will be any more successful in fixing the problems in this topic area. – Joe (talk) 08:38, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't think Arbcom can "fix" any topic area like this. Ever. But that doesn't remove an obligation of arbcom to try and do what it can to improve these kinds of topic areas. The AN discussion about MEK right now is an example of another similar topic area arbcom clearly hasn't fixed but where I see the case having resulted in some marginal improvements. Barkeep49 (talk) 09:03, 24 May 2023 (UTC)
I, for one, am extremely surprised by the lack of discussion around Levivich amongst Arbs on this one. I see nothing here warranting such a permanent IBAN between Levivich and VM when he hadn't even previously had a warning, certainly nothing recent. Very disappointing. Everything else, pretty much spot on. Buffs (talk) 04:09, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Sorry guys, but there is bad blood going back to the 2019 case-- about four years. Considering that, I was honestly surprised to see some reactions saying that the interaction ban was unjustified. This was Moneytrees' comment as they voted to support the Levivich/VM IBAN. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 06:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Something that they forgot to include on the evidence page. For all the constant talk of "Arbs can only judge based on what you post on the evidence page" it was interesting to see arbs themselves post all of the diffs and justification on the talkpage of the proposed decision instead. Parabolist (talk) 10:08, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Ibans are small potatoes, particularly as they don't interfere with WP:HERE (creating content). Which part of the FoF justifies topic banning MVBW from article space? I still have trouble understanding that. Oh well. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:34, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Just as ArbCom has never been a court of law, ArbCom has never been required to consider only the evidence that is on the Evidence page. I can remember way back to the Civility case, probably about a decade ago, when I provided a small amount of evidence of what someone had done, and it was the only evidence of that particular thing. But when the PD came out, ArbCom made a substantial FoF about it, with a topic ban, and the FoF included not only my diffs, but additional diffs in the same area, that the drafting arbs found on their own after looking into mine. Editors should not assume that there are legalistic rules of evidence here. It's much more like IAR.

I also don't buy the arguments that ArbCom didn't have evidence sufficient to enact an IBAN, or that ArbCom never warned Levivich that his conduct was going to be examined. During the case request, some of the Arbs specifically told him that they were going to look at this after he asked why he had been named as a party.

I have complicated feelings about this. I, myself, got upset by something that happened some time ago, and I "retired" then. I genuinely believed at the time that I had quit – and everyone can see for yourselves that I'm very much still here. So I can sort-of understand how Levivich feels. On the other hand, I clearly remember that at the time of my quit, Levivich said some mocking things about my having done that. Funny how that looks now. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Even the original IBAN imposer has said "I would have gone with a warning if their conflict wasn't with VM. I knew that warnings were less than effective with VM, so that it would be a waste of time. I couldn't institute a 1way IBAN and a warning or a block and a warning after L's comment, especially as it was pretty obvious we were on good terms. To me, the IBAN seemed like the best result that could come out of that situation, and it never occured to me that Arbcom would have extended it to indef." Buffs (talk) 19:05, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

That was a bit eyebrow-raising. The original restriction placed by an admin was done with the rationale that I'd rather cut things off now than risk more severe sanctions - I feel that it probably would have been fine to leave it in the hands of the admin in question, since it was already essentially handled. But I was honestly more surprised by the topic ban for MVBW when the only evidence about him concerned behavior during the ArbCom case. Decorum during ArbCom cases is important, and I guess this answers the question of "how willing is ArbCom to sanction people for violations of that alone", but a topic-ban with no evidence that the user has any larger problems editing the topic area itself seems more punitive than preventative. If there were any problems at all with MVBW's editing in the topic area that needed to be addressed, I could understand ArbCom's problem with them seeming to downplay issues during the case, because it would imply there's no likelihood of improvement; but in the absence of those problems it feels like they're just topic-banning someone for being wrong. And part of the reason decorum during ArbCom cases is so important is because they're stressful - that's a reason to demand best behavior, but if someone only has problems during the case, it's also probably a sign that their issue is specific to that situation and not a general problem requiring a topic ban. (Though, as MVBW said, it may just not matter since they didn't edit the topic area much in the first place.) --Aquillion (talk) 21:01, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

No one will see the outcome as perfect. It never can be with such a huge, I'd say, impossible, workload taken on to defend the bona fides of wikipedia, a visionary project in progress created by anonymous volunteers that, by its nature, given the immense terrain it covers, can't satisfy everyone. As a formerly permabanned editor who thought the case against himself was flawed, I accepted the ban without comment, and sat out my sentence, until it was drastically truncated after about a year when an appeal, unknown to me, was made on my behalf by two representatives of both sides of the contentious topic area. If sometimes this place fouls up, just quietly taking it on the chin, without grievance, editing elsewhere, and leaving one's future in the hands of fellow- editors is an option, who, after a year, might make a representation for review with admins. There's plenty of evidence that some sanctioned editors on both sides here have wikipedians in good standing who would consider supporting such appeals. If one lesson lies here, it is to be somewhat more tough-skinned when blips of mediocre research pop up, as they always will, to scream 'foul'. If academics (many already do) are unhappy, they can always consider tithing their precious time to do a little collaborative work in improving what tens of thousands of people already do anonymously, i.e., constructive community service. I live in Italy which is perhaps congenitally prone to dysfunctionalism. Grumbling is part and parcel of every other conversation. In the meantime, crises or no, it manages to get by thanks to an extremely high level of participation in voluntary projects, and wikipedia is much the same.Nishidani (talk) 21:52, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Replying to Aquillion about the MVBW sanction, I know that some of the Arbs have already said that editors should always expect that their demeanor on case pages will come under scrutiny, and should not need to be told. Basically, I accept that as true. It says so in ArbCom's guidance to editors participating in cases. However, it strikes me that, in a case where the drafting arbs were very active in hatting posts on case pages, with explanations of the rationale for the hatting (all of which I like), there wasn't much in any of that, that would have alerted MVBW that the Arbs were concerned about it. I get the feeling that the Arbs felt as though MVBW's case page posts were indicative of a problem that was also happening in main space, but the main space evidence wasn't at hand. This seems to me to be an example of where ArbCom's assuming the role of the filing party, along with the reluctance of some editors to post evidence critical of one another, left ArbCom in the position of simultaneously doing both prosecution and judgment, and the volume of evidence that ArbCom had to sift through, because of the inclusion of so much content and source material, caused ArbCom to cut a few corners. I'm not saying that to criticize the Arbs, so much as to point out how there are things about how the case was accepted that future ArbComs need to be alert to. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

This page is full of criticsm so I'm not sure why you're pretending "caused ArbCom to cut a few corners" isn't a critcism Trypto. I think your analysis doesn't stand up to scrutiny: the committee didn't even mention (let alone sanction) the two editors who were outright sanctioned for their conduct during the case in the final decision. So clearly there was something about MVBW's conduct that struck arbs (including me) differently. And as for why I didn't say anything it's because it's potentially really unfair, for a single arb, or even the three drafting arbs, to say your conduct when taken as a whole (as opposed to some "brightline" issue) is disruptive. Also compare this to my stating during the case (first privately then publicly) that I found Piotrus off-wiki conduct troubling. I wasn't looking to take shortcuts, but by the time that it became clear to me that MVBW's conduct during the case needed more scrutiny we were days away from the 2nd evidence phase/analysis closing. Now I hadn't previously written on this because I think the idea that we could have mishandled MBVW's better is fair and genuinely worth considering (I know I will). But this idea that it was done because Arbs were taking a shortcut feels demonstrably untrue.

And because you keep bringing it up I read you as believing that ArbCom exercising its policy authority to sua sponte open the case was a mistake. I have some real concerns about ArbCom doing this with any sort of regularity but I think ArbCom was right, at the time to open the case (hence why I voted to do it) and having brought the case to conclusion I still think that was the right decision. Whatever shortcomings may have been caused by that choice - and I think we largely agree on what they were - I don't think it makes it the wrong choice. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:10, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

By saying my purpose wasn't to criticize, but to give advice for the future, I was trying to cut ArbCom some slack. And I didn't say that the end result was wrong. What I said is pretty much what you say, that you were near the deadline, that you could have handled it differently and should think about it. That's not saying that the end result was wrong. As for sua sponte, I've already said very clearly that "In my opinion, there was nothing about this that went beyond ArbCom's remit according to policy. So ArbCom can do these things. But the question is whether ArbCom should, and what can be learned going forward about things to watch out for if ArbCom does." --Tryptofish (talk) 12:48, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I think one problem with a FoF and a resulting sanction stemming solely from misconduct during a case, in retrospect, is that it can sometimes seem to come out of nowhere without much time for anyone but arbs to discuss it or for the person in question to try and respond. (Granted that MVBW's responses during the case were the problem so that might have just been WP:ROPE.) For anything other than misconduct during the case, if people realized late into the process there was an issue that hadn't been introduced during the evidence phase or discussed yet, I think it would normally be omitted due to not being raised in a timely manner or the case would need to be extended so it could be examined properly. Misconduct during a case is different because the evidence is already part of the case and because sometimes it can occur after the evidence section is already closed. I think that ideally, though, there would have been an evidence section created for it (which would have alerted MVBW that that aspect of their conduct during the case was a problem and was being examined), and if it had to be added late then the case would have been extended a bit or things would be reopened briefly for that part alone. But I can understand arbs not wanting to extend the case over something like that. ArbCom certainly can resolve things that weren't previously discussed from orbit with no warning during the decision phase, I suppose (the other phases are there to guide them, not some as sort of guaranteed right of response) but I'm not sure that it's ideal. --Aquillion (talk) 00:23, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

As someone who found the evidence summary useful and understood it as "this is the stuff we will focus on" (ditto for the Questions/Requests from Arbitrators section of analysis), I think the summaries regarding Levivich and MVBW should have been expanded, and those editors should have been allowed to post a rebuttal during Phase 2. I know I was asking to "speed things up", but now I feel a bit guilty that perhaps my request to do so resulted in worse experience for others. Ideally, maybe their "cases" should have been split into one or two sparate, smaller proceedings (one looking at VM-Levivich interactions, and one at MVBW behavior?), although this would create more procedural workload for the Committee. In the end, our procedures to handle stuff evolve and generally improve (two steps forward, one step back?), just like our content does. This was a complex case with a record(?) number of parties (or at least close to, I am sure). We need to consider, for the future, how to better handle the issues raised here (including, seriously looking into a system through which subcases can be split off and run at their own speed), which, IMHO, relate to an issue I raised before - the communication between the Committee and the parties need improvement. I am still mulling on that, and maybe I'll write another mini-essay, or such, although I think much of that is related to the tiny mini-essay I wrote a while back ("Advocates needed". The system failed some editors, for example, by not having anyone in authority tell MVBW to consider (refactor/limit...) his talk page behavior until it was too late. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:46, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Not a record. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manipulation of BLPs had more parties. And that's just one I stumbled across a while back. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:40, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Pppery: I'll see your manipulation of BLPs and raise you 27 at Gamergate -- Euryalus (talk) 12:05, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Small fry. 45 at WP:ARBSCI. Andreas JN 466 18:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Remedy 6.3 is currently spelt with 'with-out', which is very unusual. Banedon (talk) 01:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

FYI, The Jerusalem Post published an article about this case, with the quote “There’s no problem with falsifying the past; just be nice about it.” Animal lover |666| 05:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

An other quote from the same person: “This is the seventh-most viewed site in the world, yet the safeguards Wikipedia has in place for battling disinformation are scarily ineffective. If it’s true for the history of the Holocaust, it is probably true for other cases we have yet to discover. With ChatGPT amplifying Wikipedia on an unprecedented scale, this new failure is all the more worrying.” Animal lover |666| 05:51, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The article seems to put too much trust in Klein and Grabowski's understanding of Wikipedia processes. We absolutely have processes for battling disinformation, and most coverage has said that we're one of the best sites in the world for that - eg. [10][11][12]. If someone believes there's a concerted effort to push a fringe perspective, for instance, they could go to WP:FRINGEN and put together an RFC clearly establishing that perspective as fringe, which would greatly simplify answering it in the future; if someone believes specific sources are unreliable and yet are being pushed repeatedly, there's always WP:RSN. And of course there's WP:NPOVN for general neutrality issues. But AFAIK nobody involved in the dispute has even attempted any large-scale resolution at those places (because, I think, most editors recognize that it's not so clear-cut and that producing the evidence necessary for something like that wouldn't be possible.) --Aquillion (talk) 06:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

If a likely-false statement is sourced to a text, written in a difficult language with few speakers on English Wikipedia by a largely-unnotabme author, and this statement supports the national claims of the language's country (where making opisite claims is actually illegal), how can the community at large judge the claim and the source? The discussion is likely to be dominated by speakers of this language, who - as a group - have a COI in favor of this statement, so it will stay. Get a concensus that it's false, they will wait a few months and try again. Animal lover |666| 08:32, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Mhm. The other side of the coin: Wikipedia:Systemic bias, Racial bias on Wikipedia... and WP:AGF. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

To take up Aquillion's point about placing too much trust in G&W's article, as though it represented 'scholarship' or the high ground of neutral academic work in that field. It doesn't. To the contrary the paper is wholly out of whack with the detached self-awareness and methodological cautiousness which informs history even in that topic area.: it represents one partisan (and very traditionalist) approach to the issue of Polish and Jewish relations. Scholarship has long recognized two 'camps' here 'Jewish' and (pro)Polish, each with internal disagreements, and each subject to changes in paradigm over decades. And familiarity with, say,

(1989) Ezra Mendelsohn 's Poland: good for the Jews or bad for the Jews? pp.249-258, and
Scott Ury, 'Strange Bedfellows? Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Fate of “the Jews”,' American Historical Review, October 2018, vol.123, 4 pp.1151-1171

might have helped to clarify the dangers of taking as a point of 'scholarly' departure that particular paper's arraignment of the evidence, and the overall picture. Mendelsohn and Ury's background overview (1930s down to 2018) of the fraught nature of themes, and the infra-academic histories of dispute in this topic area amount to just 29 pages in all, rather than the huge length over months of churning arguments which, necessarily, wikipedia must produce when addressing such challenges to its legitimacy. Perhaps in the future we should evaluate the quality of an external polemic about our credibility before ending up chained to the grindstone of cross-checking several thousand diffs simply because someone out there waves a red flag in public. Editors here have enough time wasted negotiating articles without this order of trivial distraction. The 'bull' metaphor is cogent.Nishidani (talk) 11:57, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

If a likely-false statement is sourced to a text... Someone deliberately misrepresenting a source is an extremely serious form of misconduct, and if you could prove that someone has repeatedly said that sources say things they clearly don't, that then it should be easy enough to get them topic-banned or worse, without having to go through RfAr. Unless I missed it there was little effort to even attempt to prove that in this ArbCom case. And in the modern day language isn't the barrier it once was - machine translation is far from perfect, but when someone asserts that a source says something, a machine translation is usually enough to get a general sense of whether that assertion is plausible or not, at least to the point of knowing whether it's worth challenging them or raising the issue at a larger forum. Now, concerns about the laws in specific countries influencing sources are another matter, and are worth raising on WP:RSN (I know there's been significant discussion about China there in that regard.) Most editors are not going to be willing to exclude an entire country unconditionally for systematic bias reasons, but we can absolutely take such laws into account when weighing sources and deciding whether to attribute them. --Aquillion (talk) 18:38, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

(where making opisite claims is actually illegal), that's not true, please strikethrough this misleading information. Marcelus (talk) 12:15, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

A part of the problem is inevitable....people will want to tilt an article in a prominent encyclopedia. The other part is systemic.....it is very easy to tilt an article if you are wiki-saavy and wiki-clever. The latter can be improved with changes in policies. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:54, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Sort of. One thing we have to always remember is that our policies require eyes and hands to follow and enforce them; the more people there are working on an article, the less likely it is to become unbalanced or to develop other problems. (This is something that IIRC there is actual academic research supporting.) So the way to solve problems is to call attention to them, raise the profile of articles that have problems in noticeboards, and so on. The other thing we have to keep in mind is that disputes on Wikipedia often reflect unsettled disputes in the real world, which means we're never going to completely settle them just by hashing stuff out here. People who feel strongly about those disputes and who don't agree with what we would call the consensus of reliable sources are always going to feel that articles on those subjects "tilted" and will always arrive to try to "fix" them. While the most egregious WP:NOTHERE or WP:TEND editors can be removed, ultimately that can't be solved using policies or sanctions, both because even if the people challenging our articles are wrong there's just going to be endless more of them and because Cromwell's rule requires that we do consider the possibility we're wrong - sometimes our articles are tilted. And in cases that don't involve obviously WP:FRINGE views, figuring out whether complaints are valid (and who is trying to "tilt" an article as opposed to who is trying ot "fix" it) is intractable. Even academics knowledgeable about the subject won't necessarily be able to do it - after all, as we've seen, they have opinions and biases themselves. --Aquillion (talk) 03:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

"Wikipedia sidesteps the issue/misses the mark" -seems to be Shira Klein's "talking points":
Wikipedia Disciplines Editors in Holocaust Distortion Dispute, Sidesteps Polish Complicity Debate
Wikipedia decision on Holocaust articles 'entirely misses the mark'Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps debate over Polish complicity.
Wikipedia bans editors but sidesteps broader action in Holocaust distortion row
Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps debate over Polish complicity
Wikipedia disciplines editors in Holocaust distortion dispute but sidesteps Poland debate

Hmm; remarkable lack of knowledge about how Wikipedia works -for a Wikipedian, IMO; Huldra (talk) 23:55, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

All these articles (well, they're all the same article with different headlines) say, "Those ideas are baked into Polish law, which since 2018 has criminalized accusing Poland of complicity with the Nazi regime." Surely Klein knows that after international protests against this stupid law the Polish government backtracked within months and decriminalised the matter again (people can still potentially be sued in Poland for claiming that Poland was responsible for the Holocaust, but all the criminal sanctions were dropped and it is now a civil rather than a criminal matter). (BBC report. The Polish ‘Holocaust Law’ revisited. Also see Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance#Subsequent amendment.)

So what these articles describe hasn't been the case for five years. Andreas JN 466 11:57, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Also: perhaps our article is not up to date, but there is no indication this law has ever been used... (I could be wrong, and in that case, I invite interested editors to update the relevant article - which interestingly doesn't even have a pl wiki equivalent). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:21, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if it ever had been used. The BBC article says, When it was signed by Polish President Andrzej Duda in February there were immediate objections, and he then referred the measures to the Constitutional Tribunal, in effect putting the law on hold. Five months later the law was history. Andreas JN 466 13:28, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Also at least some of the managed to somewhat connect it to the recent small controversy over Noa Kirel words after her Eurovision performance, which I must admit admirable case of mental gymnastic. Marcelus (talk) 12:22, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

About Klein having a "remarkable lack of knowledge about how" we do things, I think it's remarkable because, in fact, she clearly does have that knowledge, which is evident from her years of experience teaching classes through WikiEd. The community should not fool ourselves, nor shortchange her intelligence, by assuming that she simply doesn't know about these things. She knows perfectly well, but she disagrees with it. As she seems to see it, she has bigger fish to fry. It's the same as with her not participating as a named party in the case, and then complaining publicly that ArbCom should have asked for input from historians. She knows what the polices and guidelines say, and she even understands how the inside baseball of Wikipedia is conducted. But she has an agenda, and for Wikipedia that comes with no small amount of WP:RGW. And more broadly, Wikipedia serves her as a useful foil, one that may very well advance her academic career. And, as I've already said repeatedly, the Wikipedia community needs to get used to the fact that more and more ambitious academics (well, actually, that's the only kind of academic) are going to try to use us this way, and we need to learn not to overreact when they do. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There's also the slim possibility that Klein, a trained professional in Jewish history and the digital humanities, might have a genuine interest in improving the coverage of Jewish history in the world's biggest digital educational resource. Even to the point of suggesting—shock horror—that we could change the way that Wikipedia works. – Joe (talk) 13:45, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

And there's the not-so-slim possibility that she has an option available to her of working with us, through our existing mechanisms for discussing changes in the way we do things, to achieve that goal. I'm sure she does have a genuine interest in improving our coverage of that topic. But she does not get to declare for us, unilaterally, what those improvements will be. The way she has been going about it, she is simply a primary source who complains that we don't treat her as a secondary or tertiary source, and ignores ArbCom's invitation to take part in this case. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:24, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, this is the other side of the problem I described above. The flip side of "improving Wikipedia coverage of a topic" is that it often amounts to "make Wikipedia's articles on this topic say what I believe is the truth." An argument that we should change or ignore central policies and procedures in order to present an article on a controversial topic in a particular way requires exceedingly strong evidence that the current way is fundimentially wrong, even coming from an expert. Nobody has really made that case convincingly; in fact, to the extent that it was discussed, a major point was that there are mainstream, respected academics who disagree with Klein on the key points that she believes need to be presented essentially one-sidedly. Obviously Klein thinks those academics are dumb and wrong and should be disregarded (and perhaps even that they are, or should be, fringe) but that's not something we can just assume on the say-so of a single scholar. The question of eg. whether Richard C. Lukas is fringe isn't some obscure complex thing that Wikipedia has no policies or procedures to address; it's a straightforward question of the sort we answer all the time, which we have well-established procedures to address. In fact, you can see people using our usual ways to address that question above. The problem isn't that our procedures have broken down, the problem is that (at least in that example) Klein and those agree with her have simply failed to make their case. (Although, perhaps it hasn't been approached in a systematic manner yet - I encouraged everyone involved to take such things to WP:FRINGEN if they haven't already, and still think that would be a good idea. Most of the underlying content / sourcing questions here are simple up-down questions that we have well-established procedures to address, which makes me leery when people argue we should bypass them and just WP:IAR to implement their preferred version.) --Aquillion (talk) 15:03, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps one should take to RSN Klein's belief as asserted in her book that Primo Levi won the Nobel Prize to discover if it is a fringe view or not? After all, her area of expertise is Italian Jewish history, and she is reliably published.Nishidani (talk) 16:21, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

@Joe Roe: Isn't it as much Polish history as it is Jewish history – and German history, for that matter?

This is pretty much the point made here by another scholar responding to Engel's criticism of Lukas. With two million of their people systematically murdered (the first victims in the German death camps were Polish gentiles, not Jews), millions deported as slaves, and unrealised German plans for the complete annihilation of their nation, surely the Poles have a right to write about their own people's suffering.

Here is a summary of school kids' skewed perceptions of the Holocaust, from holocausteducation.org.uk – this is the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, part of IOE, University College London’s Faculty of Education and Society. Their website states that "for eight years in a row, IOE has been rated number one in the world for Education in the QS World University Rankings". The same statement is also in our article, UCL Institute of Education. Here are the current 2022 ranking, they're just above Harvard University. So this is what they are saying (my emphases):

While Jews, Roma and Sinti, gay men and the disabled were all mentioned by large numbers of students as victims of the Nazis, some other groups were rarely mentioned. We can only speculate on why these groups appear to have all but ‘disappeared from view’, but it seems likely that they are considered somehow less ‘relevant’ to contemporary social issues. Many schools are rightly concerned with homophobia, for example, or the attitudes of society today towards disabled people; perhaps other groups persecuted and murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators have less ‘purchase’ on many teachers’ and students’ concerns with modern British society. Whatever the reason, the outcome is that the murder of up to 15,000 gay men appears to receive a lot of attention in the school classroom, whereas the murder of 3.3 million Soviet POWs seems to be forgotten, and the Nazi genocide of Poles (in which at least 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles were murdered) is barely mentioned. The persecution of political opponents also appears largely overlooked, even though the first concentration camps targeted these victims, and an understanding of this initial period of terror is important in understanding the later development of Nazi violence and genocide. It may be that an over-emphasis on the ‘lessons of the Holocaust’, leads to a particular focus on groups that feel ‘relevant’ to today’s issues, but that this leads – unwittingly – to both a distortion of the past and the forgetting of millions of victims.

So much about "distortion". Andreas JN 466 16:32, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, and what is curious that that report is ostensibly a synthesis of the far more detailed study by Stuart Foster, Alice Pettigrew, Andy Pearce, Rebecca Hale Adrian Burgess, Paul Salmons, Ruth-Anne Lenga, 'What do students know and understand about the Holocaust? Evidence from English secondary schools Centre for Holocaust Education, University College London 2016 ISBN 978-0-9933711-0-3, but the point made in the précis of results (p.8) which you cite, is, as far as I can see, absent in the original 2016 paper, which only mentions very briefly (pp.65,135) that students show almost no awareness of Polish and Soviet victims, and does not mention specifically that the Holocaust had some 5.1 million Slavic victims. The answer to the puzzle is that there are two schools, one that defines the holocaust as exclusive, referring only to Jewish victims (dominant) and the inclusivist school, which extends the definition to every people or group subject to racial murder in WW2 (p.9). The figures for both are approximately the same. And this exclusivist bias arguably inflects the G&K polemic.Nishidani (talk) 17:39, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily in mass shootings and by poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chełmno in occupied Poland.

There were a huge number of other victims in World War II, but the Holocaust was a unique and specific episode within the war that does not refer to these other victims. The "debate" here is like the "debate" between intelligent design and evolution. Jehochman ^Talk 19:05, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

From the pdf Nishidani linked:

For the purposes of our discussion here, there are two significant axes along which opposing definitions of the Holocaust may divide. The first concerns the term’s inclusivity or otherwise as regards the identification of variously targeted victim groups. Again, as Chapter 1 has already detailed, most contemporary academic historians use the particular term ‘the Holocaust’ to refer exclusively to the targeting of European Jews (see, for example, Bauer 2002; Cesarani 2004; Hilberg 1993). Here, the experiences of other groups of people persecuted and in many cases murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators are recognised as critically important to an understanding of the Holocaust, but they are not themselves denoted by the use of this specific term. More inclusive definitions might use the term to reference the experiences of other groups, most commonly the Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), disabled people, Poles, Slavs, homosexuals, Jehovah’s witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, Black people and/or other political or minority ethnic groups (for an expanded discussion of variously articulated definitions of the Holocaust, see Niewyk and Nicosia 2000).

I would hope we can agree that this is a reasonable summary, by one of the most highly qualified academic bodies available to us. Andreas JN 466 19:40, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

'but they are not themselves denoted by the use of this specific term.' Since Jehochman appears to misread that, it should be noted that the statement of the 2016 authors here refers to an editorial choice by the writers of that paper, and not an affirmation of a fact reflecting scholarly usage, so much as an historic convention that came to dominate for some time scholarly usage until recent times. Nishidani (talk) 20:36, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

That's a good definition. For clarity, Wikipedia should follow scholarly usage. We happen to have lots of articles about the other mass killings done by the Nazi. All of them are equally terrible! Aside from Jews (and occasionally overlapping), Nazi attrocities included "the killing of Romani people (Porajmos ), imprisonment and execution of homosexual men, euthanasia of the disabled (Aktion T4), execution of the Poles (Polish decrees), the execution of Soviet prisoners of war, murder of political opponents, and the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses." (see Names of the Holocaust). The Holocaust, as used in a scholarly context, is about Jews because the sheer number (6 million) and proportion (2/3 of European Jews) is so outrageous, but I agree that it should be presented in context of these other mass killings, some of which have their own specific names as indicated above. Jehochman ^Talk 19:52, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

No, that is completely wrong. I've supplied on my page some (only halfway through) of the evidence regarding the historical swings between exclusivist (only Jews) vs inclusivist approaches to the concept of a holocaust. The reason you give for semantic restriction to Jews is likewise unhistorical: 5.1 million Slavic victims and 5.1-5.7 million Jews. The term was used broadly once, then began to be used restrictively of Jews in the late 70s, as TV and films spread awareness of the events and Israel in particular lobbied heavily to that end, and, since that time, several major works (Moses, Kiernan, Snyder et al) have insisted on contextualizing it in a larger comparative perspective, over the last two decades. Scholarship is now tending towards the inclusivist apppoach. It is true that in percentive terms, 75% makes the Jews proportionately by far the group that suffered the most devastation, but to translate that into a 'qualitative' categorical difference (the much hallowed but conceptually void use of the word 'unique' to qualify the Holocaust and its Jewish victims) when the racist ideology and its technologies of extermination were applied to many groups begs too many questions, not least of which is the indelicacy of the subtextual drift of such a distinction ('we suffered more, ergo we are in a different category'), which by the way seems to underlie the G&K polemic.Nishidani (talk) 20:19, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

This debate should really be happening either on Talk:The Holocaust, if people are suggesting changes to that specific article (it was just raised there recently); or on WP:FRINGEN, if people are asserting that the inclusivist perspective is WP:FRINGE. I would strongly urge people who feel that way to actually take the latter step, since it would hopefully move us towards settling one of the underlying disagreements in the topic area. (Remembering that of course a perspective can be the minority and not fringe.) Nothing is going to be settled on this page, but an extended discussion of sources at FRINGEN followed by, if necessary, an RFC could at least put one aspect of the dispute to rest and could help inform how we use the available sources going forwards, and on WP:FRINGEN there are plenty of outside voices who are experienced with the relevant policy and who would look at the available sources in order to weigh in. --Aquillion (talk) 00:01, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Ignore by all means this final note, a WP:TLDR personal closure.

Aquillion. I agree (but as with this case, I for one have no intention of going there). My notes here only reflect a concern from the outset that this whole case made an assumption, unaware of a Eurocentric/ethnocentric bias which, at least in recent scholarship, is well known, but not reflected in our articles. Editors no doubt read the wiki Jewish-Polish articles and generally took their impressions from those, ignoring the by now extensive meta-critical literature which historicizes knowledge, and teases out the way approaches to any topic are time-bound and reflect a paradigm that might have a decades’ long life as authoritative, but which is always liable to perspectival shifts. Most historians have taken on board the implication of Hayden White's Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe to exercise a metacritical awareness that our otherwise necessary reliance on an ostensible RS 'co0nsensus' ignores, with notable effects on the quality of our articles.

Our articles as they now stand properly tend to reflect RS consensus and weight. At the same time the consensus, ergo our articles, echo the trend from the late 1970s to the early 2000s that restricts the holocaust refers specifically to Jews, and not to victims in the (numerically) other half (the paradigm that was in place from 1944 onwards). Solidarność and the fall of the Berlin wall finally allowed scholarship in the excluded Eastern European countries to enter into the arena of what was basically a research area dominated by the United States and Jewish scholarship. The G&K article clearly defends the traditional Western consensus, and reads the Polish material as mostly a nationalistic attempt to disrupt an achieved POV consensus by claiming victimhood status recognition in a holocaust industry which accepts the recent premise that the latter by definition can only include Jews (In another context Ian S. Lustick wrote Miltonically of a 'Paradigm Lost', and this happens all the time in scholarship)

One can understand the disgruntlement of both sides here: one feels ‘common sense’ or a ‘consensus’ is being ignored, and stands its exclusivist ground. The other side is intensely annoyed that the prevailing Western model is contemptuous of a stark fact, that of 5 million Polish dead, the 2 million ‘ethnic Poles’ killed by the Nazi machinery are historically a footnote, ‘beyond the pale’, even complicit 'bystanders' to the only real holocaust that counts, the 3 million Poles who were Jewish. As the UK study mentioned above shows, the impact of holocaust reportage and teaching is such that the 15,000 homosexual victims are fairly widely remembered as holocaust victims, while students remain almost totally unaware of the 5 million Poles and Russians who died as a result of Nazi ethnocidal policies. Slavic peoples don’t register as holocaust victims, and our holocaust article, with its selective bias, reflecting the bias of a short but intense phase in the scholarly paradigm, won’t get any help from Wikipedia in grasping that conceptually this split between ‘real victims’ (Jews) and the ‘collateral other(s)’ is known to be analytically awkward.

There was in short a Eurocentric defensiveness at the heart of the G&K polemic that is somewhat dated, since the inclusionist theory, which has as its own assumption that Raphael Lemkin’s thesis – that genocide is the master concept, and the holocaust a subset- which dominated down to the late 60s, is conceptually superior to the exclusivist model grounding a vast amount of scholarship for two decades because it avoids writing history in terms of ethnic priorities. The point was made decades ago by A. Dirk Moses if remembering the holocaust is to serve, as it rightly does, a moral purpose, the ethical lesson loses much of its force if the term is applied restrictively to one group victim, for it implies that our values become particularistic in that they must protectively focus on never allowing anti-Semitism to threaten Jews, rather than teaching that throughout history genocide has brushed or crushed peoples all over the world, and continues to do so, and the example of the holocaust must serve to inculcate that general principle, the defense of any people under threat of extinction or mass slaughter.Nishidani (talk) 12:54, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Aquillion that we should try to resolve the scope of the Holocaust. Per their suggestion I have started a discussion at WP:FRINGEN [13]. Let's spare the arbitrators further comments. All good thoughts and sources can be presented at the noticeboard, and potentially at a subsequent RFC. Jehochman ^Talk 13:10, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

As Horse's Eye Black notes there, since the view is not fringe, an eventual discussion could be more properly opened up at the WP:NPOV board. Nishidani (talk) 14:55, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I request arbitrators to look at this discussion Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Scope_of_the_Holocaust. If this is how its going to go so soon after the case, there can't be much hope for progress in the topic area. Jehochman ^Talk 16:32, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Contentious topic edit notices

I've searched to find whether using these mean that an editor does not need to have an alert to be considered aware and couldn't find a statement - although I could have missed one, obviously. Just asking to clearify the issue as if they still need an alert I don't see a need for an edit notice. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 08:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The editnotices fulfill two main purposes:

Reminding users to be careful when editing
Informing users about article-specific restrictions such as a one revert rule.

They do not remove the need for user talk page alerts. They are additionally required, though, for taking administrative action against editors who breach article-specific restrictions (Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#Enforcement_of_restrictions, point 2). Thus, administrators are required to place such edit notices when creating a page-specific restriction (Wikipedia:Contentious_topics#Restriction_notices). ~ ToBeFree (talk) 10:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@ToBeFree If you read Template:Contentious topics/editnotice it says "This template can be used as a editnotice on pages that are covered under a contentious topic. When using this template you must specify what contentious topic this page is under using one of the decision codes. If the page has active restrictions Template:Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice should be used instead of this template." Note the "If". The only way that I can interpret that is that this edit notice is for pages with no active restrictions. So the edit notice I'm asking about is presumbably just there as a reminder but doesn't satisfy awareness? Even though it says the article is a contentious topic? I'm not sure I follow the logic. It looks to me as though this was missed at the time. Doug Weller talk 11:22, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

{{Contentious topics/editnotice|a-i}} looks as follows: [14]

If there are topic-wide restrictions, they're displayed by {{Contentious topics/editnotice}}.
If there are page-specific restrictions, {{Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice}} needs to be used to manually describe them.

If none of both is the case, {{Contentious topics/editnotice}} can be used as a friendly reminder, but an edit notice never creates formal awareness by itself. I understand that this may be counter-intuitive. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:33, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@ToBeFree Yes, it's counter-intuitive. I just remembered that I encounter editors who have never responded to anything on their talk page and may not know it exists. Which could be an acceptable excuse for saying they shouldn't be sanctioned. But if the page or pages they were editing did have edit notices .... Doug Weller talk 11:53, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Assuming that edit notices were sufficient and talk page notifications were not, how would you inform users about a topic ban placed in response to disruption? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:19, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@ToBeFree Block so they find their talk page seems to be what people do, generally seems to work. Doug Weller talk 18:46, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Okay, so my point is: There is no way around the user's talk page in the end. I could claim not having seen an editnotice, but "I haven't seen the message on my talk page" is generally not accepted as an excuse. The talk page message, though, informs the user about the existence of page restrictions and their requirement to comply with them. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:27, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@ToBeFree Definitely. And I know I miss both talk page notices - I usually edit without looking at the talk page - and can miss edit notices. Doug Weller talk 20:52, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I did suggest at the time that the use of edit notices for pages without page-specific restrictions be discouraged. However the committee chose to keep the status quo: the template is available should any admin choose to make use of it, without guidance on the advisability of doing so. isaacl (talk) 18:32, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

As per Wikipedia:Contentious topics § Awareness of contentious topics, an editor must be alerted once about the contentious topic system using a specific template placed on their talk page. After being made aware of the system, they can be notified through other means about specific areas that have been designated as contentious topics. Footnote m lists some specific circumstances when an editor is presumed to be aware of a specific contentious topic area. I don't know if things have changed, but at one point no area other than COVID-19, across both arbitration committee-designated and community-designated discretionary sanctions topics, had edit notices for articles for which no specific editing restriction has been enacted. (This was before the arbitration committee assumed responsibility for the COVID-19 designation.) To avoid exacerbating the banner blindness issue, personally I feel it is better not to have edit notices simply to identify that an article falls within the scope of a designated contentious topic. Because edit notices are frequently overlooked, and they aren't displayed to editors on mobile devices, in my view (as an ordinary editor) I do not feel that a message in an edit notice should be considered to be adequate notification. isaacl (talk) 11:01, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Isaacl I take your point. But in that case maybe it shouldn't be used at all. Doug Weller talk 11:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as I said, I agree edit notices for this circumstance shouldn't be used. isaacl (talk) 17:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@Isaacl I’ve r never used one and don’t intend to. I think I understand the issue as much as is possible now. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 18:48, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

(Edit notices are displayed to editors on mobile devices.) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:23, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I vaguely remembered something was done, but I couldn't remember the details. I've updated Wikipedia:Editnotice with a reference to Wikipedia:Mobile communication bugs. Thanks for the correction. isaacl (talk) 17:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh! Thanks for yours too ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:11, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Hate speech on Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning naming dispute

I recently revisited this ten-year-old case, and I'm a bit uncomfortable with some of the disparaging comments that are reproduced directly in the case summary and findings of fact marked "Discriminatory speech by 'x'". I don't think reproducing the borderline hate speech is necessary to get the point across that these users have exhibited sanctionable behaviour. Could this be toned down to just a link to the diff in question? Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 12:51, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Ritchie333, would you mind terribly posting this at WP:ARCA? Primefac (talk) 13:17, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I wasn't sure where to put this. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 13:51, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Postscript to World War II and the history of Jews in Poland case

Dear arbitrators,

I'm sorry, I know many of you are weary of this topic, but some new information has come to light regarding the above case, and I wonder if at least some of you might like to reflect on it and comment.

Before and during the case proceedings, most or all of you took the view that the essay's authors had no intent to intimidate editors when they decided to name them, and their places of employment, in their essay. Your finding of fact was that Posting information in a peer reviewed academic journal is not 'inappropriate communication, following, or any form of hounding.' Nor is authoring such a paper 'behaviour intended primarily to intimidate, outrage or upset a person or any behaviour where this would reasonably be considered the most likely main outcome or beyond what a reasonable person would be expected to tolerate in a global, intercultural environment.'

Earlier this week, a newsletter was published on the scholarly Wikihistories site. (Klein is on the Wikihistories advisory group and has just presented her Wikipedia paper there.) According to this newsletter, Grabowski and Klein felt they needed to name editors because they were authors of content that was untrue and potentially harmful and they don’t have the confidence of Wikipedia’s ability to obtain redress when its highest body (ArbCom) only enforces conduct rather than truth.

To me this reads like G&K felt publicly "naming and shaming" the editors and their employers might be needed to do what you might not do: stop the editors from contributing further to the topic area, by publicly embarrassing them. If such was their intent, do you still think your finding above did full justice to the situation?

And would you have looked differently at this aspect of the case if the authors – or indeed any other Wikipedian who publishes academic papers – had published this reasoning at the outset? Regards, Andreas JN 466 11:51, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

The finding of fact you quote is the committee interpreting site policy, not a statement on motivation. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:19, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer to treat this new information, and it is new information, as an opportunity for the community as a whole to examine and appreciate where our policies should be, going forward, and not as a way of saying gotcha to ArbCom (not that Jayen actually meant it that way). I'm parsing the cause-and-effect between "don’t have the confidence of Wikipedia’s ability to obtain redress" and "felt they needed to name editors because they were authors of content that was untrue and potentially harmful". On the case Analysis page, I drew upon a source by David M. Douglas, about the philosophy of doxxing: [15]. I quoted a distinction that he made: I argue that doxing may be justified in cases where it reveals wrongdoing (such as deception), but only if the information released is necessary to reveal that such wrongdoing has occurred and if it is in the public interest to reveal such wrongdoing. Revealing additional information, such as that which allows an individual to be targeted for harassment and intimidation, is unjustified. I think it will be useful to the community in evaluating the difference between legitimate academic investigation, and conduct that we on the project would regard as unacceptable harassment.

So when I ask myself here whether revealing editors' names and employers passed or failed Douglas' test in this case, I really do have to conclude that it failed. If the problem was a lack of "confidence" in ArbCom and Wikipedia's dispute resolution mechanisms, along with "content that was untrue and potentially harmful", it seems to me that calling out that content and showing that it needed to be fixed was what was in the public interest. The content problems did not hinge upon the identities of who wrote the content, or efforts to conceal those identities. I don't see what the real-life names and employers of editors would do to further enhance that public interest. So I conclude that the naming was, as Jayen put it, "naming and shaming", which fails Douglas' test of allowing those editors to be "targeted for harassment and intimidation". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is different and needs a far tougher doxing/outing standard because.... Without anonymity, Wikipedia is the most privacy-violating major website in the world. It is a public, easily searchable database of every edit that the editor ever made and the exact date, hour, minute and second that they made it. Think what the person at work who doesn't like you could do with that. North8000 (talk) 13:55, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Another key factor is that in some countries editing Wikipedia can literally land you in jail for decades, depending on which topics you've edited, and what content you added.

This makes it arguably more difficult but also even more important to come up with a globally consistent standard. From that point of view I actually thought the UCoC's "not without explicit consent" was a good aim to shoot for – at least in cases that do not involve a significant professional conflict of interest on the part of the editor, and where the editors are mere hobbyists like those jailed in Saudi Arabia – or, for that matter, those involved in this arbitration case. Andreas JN 466 14:46, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not really up to amateurs (those who do it for love rather than profession) to try to engineer a privacy-preserving solution for Wikipedia. It's very hard to de-identify data in a way that makes re-identification impossible. A good idea would be to advise editors to operate under their real names (as I do), as a reminder that a sufficiently motivated adversary can likely re-identify them. Don't make edits that could put yourself in danger! Wikipedia cannot guarantee your anonymity. Jehochman ^Talk 04:49, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I strongly agree with you and would second your advice. However, it's a separate issue from defining what should count as unacceptable behaviour with regard to Wikimedians' personal information. Andreas JN 466 12:48, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

By that reasoning, those Saudi editors have only themselves to blame for their situation, and that's something that I can never accept. And I'm pretty sure that the community would never accept it. Certainly, one should not make edits one would be unwilling to take responsibility for. But we have no control over whoever is out there on the Internetz, and Wikipedia cannot function if some random wacko wants to harass a good-faith editor and we just blame the victim. It's true that there are always going to be ways to track down personal information once it has gotten out, but it's also true that we can set the rules for who will be shown the door. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:55, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree with Tryptofish on this. The fact that something is difficult is no excuse for not doing our best. Zero^talk 01:52, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Let's do our best by all means, but let's be honest with editors about the risks. (As I warn above.) Jehochman ^Talk 01:51, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It's ironic that User:Gitz6666, who was a party to this case, has now been globally locked for a UCoC violation whose technical aspects – a name disclosed on-wiki a decade ago, an employer disclosed in a widely read publication – bear more than a passing resemblance to what happened here.

I am saying this not to criticise either decision. I am saying this to draw attention to the fact that the UCoC as presently conceived creates a huge potential for double standards. Andreas JN 466 07:39, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

This isn't your fault as some of it has not been made public but your summary of Gitz's case is incomplete. Barkeep49 (talk) 11:23, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Are they banned as a result of involvement in this topic area? I am trying to assess the benefits and drawbacks of this case and all that preceded it. (Was the juice worth the squeeze.) Jehochman ^Talk 01:51, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

No look at the In the media section of this week's Signpost. And Gitz started a thread on a certain website where Wikipedia is often discussed. Dronkle (talk) 16:37, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong closed

Original announcement

Ironically, I had written a draft with similar motifs at the AlisonW case request, but never got around to finalizing it. At the risk of beating a long-dead horse, I want to re-iterate my ongoing concern that the acceptance of a case with administator conduct as the focus generally ends up in a desysop. When such a case ends up at ARC, and there seems to be movement towards accepting it, I find it increasingly difficult to see what the subject of the case could possibly do, at that point, to sway the outcome. This is true for both this case and the AlisonW case (yes, I know as that of posting, there is no majority for desysop, but frankly given the votes on the FoFs, it's not looking good). Perhaps it would be useful to start an off-wiki straw poll for such case requests, as a yes or no question on a desysop given the existing evidence? If it's going towards a 'yes', it should be quite doable to formalize the findings and pass the relevant motion. I know an off-wiki straw poll isn't ideal transparency-wise, but it feels like a lesser evil to me, compared to a weeks-long event, where a result other than a desysop tends to require exceptional circumstances. Oftentimes, the combination of the inevitable ANI thread(s) plus the case request itself is already a considerable portion of the final decision, and it doesn't seem like putting the cart ahead of the horse for a committee to see where it stands via straw poll. Maxim (talk) 18:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Regarding AlisonW, I do not think I could possibly have voted to pass a motion. It took working through the case for me to see the facts necessary to vote for a desysop (not that I will or won't do so).

I expect this is true of most ADMINCOND (not ADMINACCT) cases. Sometimes the facts just need to be laid out, and what that takes is someone spending a week on what evidence is submitted to line up a draft that walks through the findings of fact in order (I can tell you I had the case up on my computer screen for what probably constitutes a surprising amount of time).

That's ignoring the perhaps-disputed perception of fairness of desysopping by motion in such cases. Izno (talk) 18:26, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
"Spend three weeks on a process which in the last 4 years has only led to deysops because the arbs need time to work through the fact that they're going to desysop you" doesn't actually strike me as fair to the admin under scrutiny. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:35, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I also don't think it's fair to tell up to 15 people they have, well, 1 week (less?) to do the dirty instead, to synthesize what may be a complex case (I do not think AlisonW is a trivial case, despite that the outcome may appear trivial), and then entertain removing tools that many more people (usually) agreed to grant. If we wanted, we could preconsider all cases that end up on our doorstep as guilty, because we have a habit of passing remedies only for guilty people. Admins aren't special in that regard. Izno (talk) 18:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Your statements have been about what's fair to the 15 arbs. I don't think that is who fairness concerns should be focused on. And actually I think Maxim has proven that Admins are special in how they're treated at ArbCom. If an editor is named as part of a broader case topic they may or may not have a sanction levied against them. In contrast, if Admins have a case opened about them they'll get deysopped. With 4 exceptions since 2010. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
When people rush, they make bad decisions. Indeed, it's not about what's fair for us. Putting a fast timeline on consideration, by proposing motions (which are seen to be "fast", or so seems to be the reason why one might do only motions for ADMINCOND cases) , leads to rushed decisions. That's not fair for the person to-be-desysoped either. Izno (talk) 18:59, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Accepting a case is also a decision. One that has, historically, proven to lead to desyopping 90% of the time. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
The remaining 10% is still the remaining 10%. I could make almost the exact same quote about the Japanese court system, which takes cases and convicts with some silly 90ish%+ rate. The reasons are many, including, among others, choosing not to take cases that are not guaranteed to lead to conviction, which ultimately leaves some false negatives around on the streets.

If we really want to play with statistics, here are some criticisms of the collection: 1) We may have an insufficient quantity of cases to draw valid conclusions from, much less act on, especially compared to the number of administrators. 2) The real comparison should be made to the other cases we take, not just the insular set of administrator cases to... nothing. How many editors named as parties end up with remedies against them?

Accepting a case has always been about whether something should be investigated. Do you seriously want to change that? I don't. That is setting us up to be in reactionary mode rather than deliberative mode. That's not a win, pure and simple. I think everybody should get a fair shot at presenting a case for the kinds of cases we see. That's the tradeoff for potentially hurt feelings or the time investment of, what was in AlisonW's case, apparently a single contribution. Hurt feelings that will come regardless if in fact the decision is to desysop, but without even the veneer of fairness a full case provides. ArbCom is oft-criticized for being a star chamber. We really would be one without such cases. Izno (talk) 19:21, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Izno: In 46 cases from 2009 to 2015 in which a party was named in the title of a case, that party never escaped sanction. Of the 140 other parties identified in those cases, 121 had no sanctions applied. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:00, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Accepting a case has always been about whether something should be investigated. We agree with that. My contention is that accepting a case of admin conduct (and not some broader piece) is not an investigation in the way it is for other cases. I gave the 90% number, which is true if you look at Maxim's entire dataset. I think the more relevant dataset is post FRAM where no admin who has had a case opened about them (versus party to a larger dispute) has escaped desysop. I think there could be a different deliberative process than our current case and PD format to reach just outcomes. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I have been thinking a lot about this recently as I've been able to see some "inside things" (e.g. mailing list discussions, arbwiki work) while also being willfully oblivious to the actual facts at play for these two cases. A few thoughts that have been rattling around. One is that the Committee has increasingly focused on Administrators who seriously or repeatedly act in a problematic manner, or who have lost the trust or confidence of the community (emphasis added) part of WP:ADMIN. The second is that the case structure itself inevitably leads to the outcome because of how hard it is for any individeual to look good when the spotlight is focused on them and especially on an action that was bad enough to get enough arbs to vote to accept a case. Finally, ArbCom has tied its hands because "anyone with a restriction should not be an admin" and "I wish there was an outcome short of desysopping but stronger than condemning" are incompatible. If Scotty had happened at a company, would some kind of HR course rather than "demotion" have been available? Maybe, but we don't have/offer anything like that where an admin could be suspended but demonstrate that they have gained skills to "fix" whatever is wrong to have merited the desysop. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:51, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
Barkeep49, you used the wording above of if "an editor is named as part of a broader case topic", and it caught my attention that this refers to a broader case topic. Although the immediate issue here involves whether cases about admins are treated differently than cases about other editors, there is also a difference between a case that is about specific use(s) of administrative tools by an individual admin, versus a case about multiple editors in a disputed topic area. The former is defined in such a way as to focus on a single person. I remember that some time ago (and I don't feel like hunting down the links), there were a lot of pixels spilled about whether case names should never the the usernames of specific users. There was some consensus among the then-Arbs that case names should no longer be usernames, and then that just kind of got forgotten about. I don't know if the Scottywong case had instead been named something like "Addressing non-Latin usernames" the process would have been any different, but perhaps it would have affected perceptions. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:30, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
There was an agreement to do this among 2021's~~last year's~~ committee but we never had a case to do it on and the votes are not there (or at least weren't when we were opening Scotty's case) this year. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:58, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion is archived at Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 36 § Community feedback: Proposal on case naming. I wouldn't say there had been a consensus amongst arbitrators at the time (as they didn't act on it). I periodically ask about it and there has either been no response or just that they haven't decided on proceeding (up until last year, it seems). The {{ArbCase}} template supports an alias in the form of "Year-number" for all cases going back to 2015, so editors can refer to cases by number if they wish.. isaacl (talk) 21:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
That is not the discussion I am referring to. The discussion I am referring to was not last year as I originally said, it was 2 years ago and was on Arbwiki and the mailing list. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:15, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
My apologies; I was responding to Tryptofish's comment. I thought they were referring to an on-wiki discussion and not one on Arbwiki and the mailing list, but I could be wrong. isaacl (talk) 21:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
You're probably right. I had initially thought they were referring to my previously noting this agreement for change which was never implemented but your link makes much more sense. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I think Isaac's link is what I was remembering. It's definitely true that I was thinking of something on-wiki. I had forgotten that there was discussion back then about a numerical way of naming cases, which never got consensus, but what I remember was the idea that it's better to name cases after what the dispute was about, rather than to name the cases after individual people. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:47, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Tryptofish: From idle memory we named the Mister Wiki case after the topic area rather than the editor concerned, partly to enact a rough consensus that cases shouldn't be named after people, and also to make it more easily searchable in the archives if the same issue resurfaced. Seemed like a good idea at the time, but that was the last case of that year and the incoming committee did their own thing instead. :) -- Euryalus (talk) 12:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Yes, that fits with what I remember. In my opinion, it's still a good idea, at least some of the time, and it offers a possible approach for admin/desysop cases. I can understand that the Committee might not have consensus to enact this as an actual policy, but it may be easier just to keep the possibility in mind, and consider doing it on a case-by-case basis when the case request is being accepted. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:09, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Personally I thought the Timwi motion was a good way to do something between an admonishment and a desysop; while in some ways that was "Timwi is admonished and we really mean it this time", it felt like it had more teeth than just an admonishment.
Izno's points about how he considers case requests are interesting, as it's quite different from how I had done it when I was an arbitrator. Chances were that I was aware of the problem, whether through perusal of the dramaboards, because someone had email the mailing list to point out something's brewing, or even because a colleague pointed it out in IRC. I would typically follow the incident as it evolved, so when it came time to vote on acceptance, I would have a general idea of what had happened. That's not to say that I wouldn't carefully consider the evidence that is presented during case, but I felt I had a good knowledge of the broad points of the dispute. A lot of these kinds of these accepted cases (I always want to say all of them but one can't ever be that certain) can be distilled into commenters at ANI and the case request generally agreeing that an administrator has chronically or egregiously stepped over the line, and the administrator in question disagreeing. The general facts of the case tend to not really be in dispute, starting from roughly between the conclusion of the ANI and the part of the case request where a few arbs have voted on case acceptance. To me, both as an arbitrator and a non-arbitrator, it seemed reasonably predictable which cases were going to be accepted and declined, and what usually was more uncertain were the finer details.
Unlike most if not all recently serving arbitrators, I have been a party to case requests, and my guess as to how it would go generally panned out. For example, in Fred Bauder, there was no way Fred was getting his bit back, and as for myself, maybe some warning about being more conservative with the 'crat bit. On the other hand, I found the proposal to remove my bureaucrat access unpleasant, and not something I had expected in the proposed decision. And then I was party to one of the Fram cases, and also a case request to do with a crat chat, so a hat-trick of, at a minimum, case requests, is not what I recommend to other Wikipedians. Perhaps this is why I keep beating this horse about administrator conduct cases, even though I've not been a primary party to one (as well as not publicly proposing more severe sanctions that are highly unlikely to pass but that's another conversation).
My question regarding what a subject of such a case could do to avoid a desysop is still open. Ideally the course correction happens at the ANI stage, but barring that, given that the ANI thread had not resolved the problem, what could be said in the request to avoid the case being accepted? It feels to me that with an acceptance, the die is cast: would a statement in the evidence or workshop (or even proposed decision talk) that would resolve the matter during the case request phase have the same effect? Under the light of a case opened to examine the conduct of the named party, it feels like the ship has sailed. Maxim (talk) 19:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Maxim I've suggested in the past that we need the equivalent of a yellow card: consensus that you made a mistake, you're on notice that you handled this poorly, and if this comes up again something will actually be done about it. That could also help with the broken feedback loop where someone goes from zero-to-foulup and folks are angry. This would have more teeth than the usual admonishment, and wouldn't require Arbcom. This might also address the pernicious cycle on AN/ANI where people tell you to get lost unless you're proposing sanctions. To my mind that just encourages escalation. Mackensen (talk) 20:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 3) Are you thinking of progressive discipline in an HR context? We don't really have that here, apart from formal admonishments which are kind of the same as verbal warnings unless the committee is logging them somewhere privately. My experience observing Arbcom over the past decade-plus is that, going by the HR analogy, if the conduct in question isn't so bad as to likely merit immediate dismissal (desysopping), no discipline occurs at all (the case is not accepted); instead we spend a week airing grievances and then nothing happens. I agree there ought to be middle ground for the committee to review evidence of admin misconduct with a goal of determining a progressive outcome, rather than only determining if a desysop is warranted. I admit I don't know what that looks like, but under the current framing as Barkeep49 observes: if the bar to accepting a case is "could this lead to a desysop", the outcome in most accepted cases will be "yes", the supporting arguments having been made before the case is accepted in the first place. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 19:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I wasn't thinking of progressive discipline. I was more thinking that in a real life context Scotty might have been terminated, demoted from his position of power, sent on some kind of HR training course (cultural sensitivity? workplace collegiality?), put on some kind of performance improvement plan, suspended (with or without) pay, "fined" vacation days or some other benefit, or given some kind of formal reprimand (and/or a combination of the above). In a Wikipedia context we have obvious parallels for some of these "HR" tools - terminate/arbcom ban, demote/desysop, formal reprimand/admonishment etc - but not others. Some of these because they're silly in a Wikipedia context - the old cases where "Foo is deysopped for 1 week" always struck me as a good thing to have left in the past. But I can't help but wonder if we wouldn't be better off thinking about what other parallels we could have. But that would first require having a large number of arbs open to that idea and as my first musing makes clear I think on the whole the current group of arbs is very focused on the loss of community trust piece. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

If a desysop is about "losing trust or confidence of the community", shouldn't there be related evidence and a finding of fact? As far as I know, the idea that "anyone with a restriction shouldn't be a sysop" hasn't been approved by the community, so it is not a standard that Arbcom needs to enforce. Trust is not binary and can be regained, probably more easily than the sysop bit (which is binary) can be regained. —Kusma (talk) 12:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I think a key challenge is that a system of graduated responses would require some kind of central tracking mechanism (as HR would have). I think editors are leery of being summarized by their worst moments (and I think for equal treatment, it would likely be done for all editors). With HR, there can also be positive performance reviews to provide a more holistic view. isaacl (talk) 21:28, July 10, 2023 (UTC)

I think there's an eternal desire to make the desysop process less unpleasant, but it's just inherently going to be that way. Especially if it's a desysop-by-case, that means an admin has done something not so bad for a summary desysop, but bad enough to cause community outrage, but hasn't apologized for it to an extent the community and Committee find satisfactory, and also hasn't resigned. That will always be an unpleasant mix of circumstances. I'd argue that there is still an easy enough way out for admins in those cases, the same that there was before the case: an unconditional apology. Maybe admins who get desysopped by case deserve some credit for honesty, because it would be easy to lie and say the right words to make it all go away. But, either way, people who make it to the point of a potential case don't tend to be the kinds of people who will then roll over. So they get their three weeks under the microscope, and I can only imagine how much it sucks, but at the same time it's by choice. People choose to become admins, choose to do things that violate admin policies, choose to not back down after that, and choose to not resign. What ArbCom owes case participants is a dignified process—not a painless one. -- 'zin^{[is short for Tamzin]} (she|they|xe) 19:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I guess I'll self-nitpick that occasionally the Committee does hear a full case over a bright-line desysoppable offense, but it's rare. The most recent at User:Maxim/ArbCom and desysops is Fred Bauder in 2018. Most desysops-by-case are for fine-line violations (mostly INVOLVED or RAAA) or patterns of bad judgment; in almost all such cases, a failure to be held accountable is a contributing factor. -- 'zin^{[is short for Tamzin]} (she|they|xe) 19:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I see the mechanism behind this: the fact that the case has been opened is starting to be (unconsciously?) interpreted as evidence that the person has "lost the trust of the community", so no matter what happens during the case the arbs are feeling compelled to reach that decision in the end. So if the angry mob is angry enough to cross the "we should accept a case to look into it" threshold... Anomie ⚔ 12:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

The bar for accepting an ADMINCOND case is extraordinarily high and now seemingly reserved for cases where it is evident there has been some type misconduct. Once you factor in all the rejected case requests (which has become a trial in itself), in what is already a mechanism of last resort, and where community resolutions, resignations, retirements, ghosting, and clouds have already all occurred, I don't find this a surprising statistic or outcome. In the broad scope of ADMINCOND issues, very few administrators actually face consequences. Mkdw ^talk 17:43, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
What this case has reinforced is that ArbCom is willing to use a party's responses to a case as evidence against them. ScottyWong noted this, and it's happening again at the AlisonW case. I find this repulsive to say the least. This actively discourages people from participating in a case. I have long maintained that if I were brought to ArbCom as a title named party in a case that I would not participate in this case in any respect. This further cements my determination. I also agree that acceptance of this case made it a foregone conclusion that ScottyWong would be desysopped. All the hand wringing that has happened since acceptance has been utterly pointless and a waste of time for all participants. While not excusing ScottyWong's behavior, it is quite troubling that a 16+ year editor is now gone from the project. Contrast; the other named party, already checkuser blocked as an LTA, got an interaction ban. Big whoop. Score one for the bad guys. The template for bringing down an administrator seems locked in place. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
IMHO, refusal to participate in a case should be grounds for an immediate desysop (or however they do it now, temporary desysop made permanent after some number of months or whatever), so the system would still work. Floquenbeam (talk) 21:52, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
It's not just an opinion of course. Anyone who did that would be desysopped, but it wouldn't matter. As others have noted above, any admin brought here for a case that questioned their suitability for the tools gets desysopped anyway. So, the addition of not participating doesn't do anything to change that outcome. The arbitration process is horribly abusive, knowingly anchored, and above recrimination. If you participate, you make it worse as has been highlighted in the recent cases. There's no rational reason to participate. I see such people participate and shake my head in dismay, knowing how that at best it is utterly futile, and in reality will make it worse. I applaud those who refuse to participate, as it saves their time and serves to not buttress the existing abusive system. My time is entirely volunteered. I'm not going to waste it helping sustain such a system. --Hammersoft (talk) 22:21, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
In the two current/recent cases, I can think of several things SW and AW could have said, both during the request phase and the case phase, that I believe would have significantly altered the course of each case. I'm pretty sure I'm more pro-desysop than all but maybe one or two arbs, and I would have probably been swayed if they'd had a true Road to Damascus moment. These moments are apparently rare (you pretty much need to have dug your heels in to get to a case stage, and R to D moments are hard to have when your heels are dug in), but I can see the benefit of giving the admin a chance to have one. Floquenbeam (talk) 03:10, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I rarely do much with arbcom stuff. I've only know a tiny amount about either of these cases. But I have to say at AN//I similar things happen. IMO a lot of editors make things worse for themselves by participating in the AN//I. A small number make things better for themselves. Yes AN//I is a flawed process as is arbcom, but it's probably the best we can do. And while 'cases' (whether a formal case on arbcom or someone's behaviour being discussed at AN//I) do add stress and unfortunately make it more likely someone will make things worse for themselves, the truth is that a big part of the reason editors end up worse is is precisely because they either have behavioural problems or lack understanding of some of our policies and guidelines and don't get it even when people point it out. In other words, while you may be able to say the process plays a small part in why editors often end up worse off by participating, IMO the bigger reason why they end up worse off is on the editor. Note that whether at AN//I or arbcom, most editors I'm thinking of are good well meaning people. However being good and well meaning doesn't mean you're automatically suited for Wikipedia, or that you aren't making it worse. And if you are making it worse, then we have to consider how to deal with that. Nil Einne (talk) 09:39, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Usually refusal for an admin to participate in a case involving their conduct is grounds for a 172-style desysop. The only reason this precedent hasn't much been used is because pretty much every admin-conduct case where the admin didn't participate had them "retire" as well, to the same result. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 02:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Exactly. Given that an admin conduct case virtually always results in a desysop, not participating in a case doesn't make it any worse. It's meaningless. --Hammersoft (talk) 03:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Evidence is evidence. BOOMERANG is a long established and accepted part of Wikipedia as in common law and made famous by "Anything you say can be used against you in court". I'm not sure why administrators at ARC should be given special status or immunity from that which of the rest of the Wikipedia community is subject to; we should not create ivory towers or prerogative rights for administrators. Mkdw ^talk 17:51, 25 July 2023 (UTC)
Doesn't look like anyone's put in the actual desysop request yet at WP:BN—just wanted to make sure that doesn't get forgotten. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:48, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Extraordinary Writ: It's been done now. Thank you for the reminder. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 18:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm disappointed in the resolution of this case, and I sincerely hope that Scottywong will continue on as an editor despite his loss of the tools. While I do think there were genuine concerns with Scotty's conduct—"Mr. Squiggles" was not a very wise choice of words, and it certainly does carry xenophobic connotations (intentional or otherwise)—I also saw genuine contrition in his response to the case. Whether you'd consider his words "too little, too late" is up to you, but the way I see it, we're desysopping a highly valuable administrator with a demonstrated willingness to learn and improve, all because he typed a few ill-advised words on a handful of occasions. I probably would have said more in his defense had I been active over the past few weeks (other pressing matters have been occupying my attention as of late), though I doubt it would have shifted the balance sufficiently to preclude this case coming to the same end result. It's just unfortunate. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:06, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Kurtis Scottywong deleted all his subpages, placed a retired banner on his user talk and user page and blocked himself. I don't think he is ever coming back. Lightoil (talk) 01:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The deleted subpages include User talk:Scottywong/Portal guideline workspace, an aborted attempt to write a new portal guideline, with more than 900 edits by other people and nontrivial incoming links: Special:WhatLinksHere/User_talk:Scottywong/Portal_guideline_workspace. —Kusma (talk) 13:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
And user scripts imported by dozens of users. Nardog (talk) 13:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
If people think there are pages in his userspace that should be undeleted, including or in addition to the two pages above, let me know. However, unless there's a good reason for it, the pages should probably be moved elsewhere. Floquenbeam (talk) 14:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I've undeleted User talk:Scottywong/Portal guideline workspace and User talk:Scottywong/Portal guideline workspace/Archive 1. I suggest we move that to WP:Portal guideline workspace (and the archive), and if there are no objections (or no better target suggestions) I'll do that in a bit. I don't appear to be able to undelete User:Scottywong/diffconverter.js; if I remember right you need the WP:INTADMIN bit to do that. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:37, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
For what I believe are WP:BEANS reasons, I suggest we should probably leave any js/css subpages blanked/deleted. - jc37 14:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Maybe there is something else you're thinking of, but the only reason I can think of is non-BEANS; SW going nuts, restoring the page, and doing something nefarious. There is zero reason to think that would happen - zero. But if there is some other real concern, it could be resolved by undeleting and moving it somewhere else. Those who were using it could change their import target. Floquenbeam (talk) 14:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Pinging User:xaosflux - who, I think, knows far more about such stuff than I : ) - jc37 15:03, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
@Jc37 - personal userscripts are fragile by design, and should be hosted by someone that will take ownership of future updates. So (a) if someone wants to take over one of these scripts, I'll happily restore and move it to their own userspace. - They could then inform people using it to update their userscripts. We wouldn't force this on anyone - for example you may decide to trust loading a personal userscript from an admin, but it is up to you if you will trust another user. If some userscript was heavily used, it could potentially be converted to a gadget (if someone is ready to champion the script and its support) as well. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Yeah I wasn't really suggesting we restore them at least at their original names, since the deletion in and of itself is an indication that the user no longer intends to maintain them. That said, keeping the code someplace else may be a good idea if the users really found them useful, so that other script developers could pick them up. Nardog (talk) 15:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
@Nardog if you are volunteering, just let me know which ones you want :D — xaosflux ^Talk 15:26, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I think he's currently undergoing a vigilant debriefing elsewhere. SN54129 12:10, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
If I had a nickel for every time someone declared that they were "never coming back", only for them to subsequently come back, I'd... well, I wouldn't literally be rich (obviously), but I'd at least have enough to purchase a few things at the 7-11 just up the road from where I live. Kurtis ^(talk) 06:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Scottywong previously retired in 2015 and then came back in 2019. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

And an old page-move archive of his talk page, which technically shouldn't have been deleted per WP:DELTALK. I'm sure this was a mistake, but if we are going to critique the deletions then it shouldn't go unmentioned. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 14:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I've undeleted that one — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:11, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
A note to @MJL: I was impressed by your diligence in the clerking of this case and wish to record my appreciation for doing a tiresome and thankless task with sensitivity and speed. Thank you. — Trey Maturin™ 21:44, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
@Trey Maturin: Thank you! I very much try my best. –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:41, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Like others on the proposed decision talk page, I disagree with the outcome and felt that Scottywong should have been allowed to keep their admin right. Sure their conduct was bad but not so bad that he should be desysoped. Lightoil (talk) 01:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
To add on Scottywong did apologize for his action but I guess it was not enough for ArbCom. Lightoil (talk) 03:54, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
At the risk of looking like an ArbCom suck-up (and a grave-dancing asshole), I think these two recent cases actually show a pretty solid, reasonable approach to "lost the trust of the community" type cases. I wonder, in cases like this, if someone smarter than me could wordsmith an approach that is less like "Zot! you're desysopped", and more like "Due to significant community concerns, you'll need to have a reconfirmation RFA to continue as an admin". Same results, but maybe a different perspective with less sting? Maybe the admin would be less likely to quit? Or maybe I'm dreaming, that would probably really hurt too. I'm agnostic on the benefits, from the admin's point of view, of motions vs. cases, but maybe that approach would make a motion more palatable to some arbs? Anyway, I acknowledge SW's pain (I'll probably quit too when my eventual desysop case happens), but at the same time, I want to thank ArbCom for a well-done but kind of thankless task. --Floquenbeam (talk) 03:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
This was tried before, and the resultant RfA ended with a relist (17/29/7, with 49 instead literally voting for "Kick back to ArbCom"), prompting a hue and cry that forced ArbCom to step in and flat-out revoke the userright. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 15:57, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
A "hue and cry", you say? Would you describe it as a tearful grey, or is it more of a somber cyan? Kurtis ^(talk) 19:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Try a pyretic red. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 19:55, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for those links, I wasn't aware of that. I suspect that things would go differently now if it was tried again., but that's just a guess. Floquenbeam (talk) 17:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
I express my condolences for Scotty that he has been desysopped. He blocked himself a day before the ruling, which means we've ended up losing someone (without laying blame at ArbCom). SWinxy (talk) 04:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
I have never been less comfortable with a case result as this, ever. Finding of fact #2 is something which I think will one day be reflected upon as one of the poorest ever to pass any Committee. A laundry list of things from up to over a decade ago, things that previous Committees voted against sanctioning, and things which had been formally apologised for years ago. If this is how Arbitration cases will play out from now on, pretty much no-one will dodge a desysop and/or ban if there is someone willing to dredge through 50k+ edits to find half-a-dozen examples of a poor use of words, something misinterpreted, or something which was potentially more acceptable a decade ago than it is now. As I wrote on the PD talk page, I echo the final two paragraphs of this Anomie comment 100%. Daniel (talk) 12:28, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
- To clarify, the most recent examples at the core of this case don't fit into the categories "poor use of words, something misinterpreted, or something which was potentially more acceptable a decade ago than it is now" but rather are an issue, but using these other things (as FoF 2 did) to demonstrate a pattern of behaviour is not appropriate given their age, their relative lack of frequency, their withdrawal and apology years ago, or a lack of direct relevance. Daniel (talk) 12:44, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
  @Daniel: For what it's worth, FoF 2 did not factor into my vote on the desysop remedy at all. I understand your concern, though, because it's not at all clear that that's the case based on the structure of the decision, and I wish there was something between an FoF and a remedy (for the application of the principles to the findings of fact). Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:46, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
As a a very experience user do you have a current list of FoF which you consider the poorest the committee has ever passed? If so please share on my talk because my experience is that no one reflects on any FoF. Specific remedies get reflections somewhat regularly, and principles not infrequently. Can I suggest that Blade of Northern Light's comment below as a good example of how to write a strongly word comment condemning a decision without slipping into hyperbole? Barkeep49 (talk) 23:44, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I thoroughly agree with Daniel here. I've long argued the scope of a case needs to be outlined else it becomes a free for all. But, though ArbCom has occasionally mentioned scope of cases in setting up a case, there is no formal requirement or structure for this. This is one of the ways in which ArbCom is abusive. Bringing up "evidence" from 12 years ago? Bringing up "evidence" of discriminatory speech that ArbCom itself refused to pass... from 10 years ago? Any administrator on this project who has been an admin for more than a few months is going to have "evidence" against them. I'm quite confident that I could find plenty of "evidence" to censure members of ArbCom. ~~Barkeep49~~ KevinL, it doesn't matter if none of the arbitrators used this FoF to support a desyop. That it's even included is deeply troubling. How is a person supposed to defend themselves against accusations across 12 years worth of editing? Good freaking Lord this is insane. You might as well desysop me right now, because I've made some missteps in 3.5 years of being an admin. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:57, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Hammersoft, I'm not sure why the sentence which contains my name has my name. I said nothing about the use of the FoF to support the desysop. My experience is that FoF fade into memory in a way that remedies do not and to a less extent principles do not. It is also my experience that some editors do a better job than others of avoiding hyperbole when they get furious at arbcom about a decision. That's what I wrote about, none of which you seem to actually be addressing either in the sentence that has my name or the rest of your comment.

As for ArbCom has occasionally mentioned scope of cases in setting up a case every case since sometime in 2021 has included a scope. The incoming arbs that year felt that this should be a standard practice and it has been since then. This should probably be codified into procedures the next time we're making changes. This obviously doesn't address your more substantive concerns about this case. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Barkeep, you are correct about my misattribition. My apologies. I have changed it. To the scope issue for this case (nevermind others); Where was the scope laid out for this case? Did it actually allow for reviewing every edit Scottywong made, even dating back 12 years? A scope isn't much of a scope if it allows edits from 12 years ago. I find some mention of scope on the main case page, but nothing decided. The only thing otherwise I find it "Scope: Conduct of Scottywong". I.e., freeforall. Every edit of Scottywong's was fair game in this case. That's absurd. If you're meaning to say that I am using hyperbole in expressing my severe disappointment in this case, I'm sorry but that's just wrong. The facts speak for themselves here; a case with a limitless scope and ArbCom using Scottywong's statement on the case as evidence against him in the case. There's a reason a lot of administrators don't participate in de-admin case requests against them. This case demonstrating ArbCom's abuses is a clear example of why. What needs to happen is that ArbCom needs to reform. Now. You're part of ArbCom. Do something about it. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:36, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think ArbCom needs to reform (emphasis added) for the reasons I noted in my previous comment but I am certainly very interested in improving how we handle administrator conduct cases because ArbCom should be trying to improve itself and its processes. I think we need to consider scrapping the current case format for admin conduct because I don't think it's working well (and as I read your comments you agree with this). What would take its place? I don't know and so that's what's holding me up from proposing something. Suggestions from you or others would be welcome. However, in a more modest realm there is the conversation in the section below where I have suggested we gauge community consensus about remedies short of desysop and Kevin has proposed what one such remedy could be. You might want to give input on those. You might also want to give input in the discussion above where a different Arb (one who was actually active for this case, unlike me) suggests our current style of handling admin conduct cases is working. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

If ArbCom isn't willing to reform (and the track record over the last 10+ years generally supports that conclusion), then it should be abolished. In so far as admin cases, we have means in place now that the community can manage this. ArbCom is doing a horrible job of it and what little effort there has been to reform has resulted in effectively nothing. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm here trying to figure out how ArbCom can reform and would welcome your help in trying to do that. I also have joined efforts to try and let the community desysop but so far you and I have not found consensus for that. As for abolishing ArbCom, there's certainly a pathway for doing so but I obviously disagree with you on that and have stated my reasons why I think there would not be community consensus for it. But if you're serious about reforming ArbCom I really would welcome ideas you have about changing our case structure for admin conduct cases. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm skeptical of Hammersoft's belief that "the community can manage this", because I remember Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/RfC#Intentions. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Barkeep; I appreciate your willingness to listen. That sets you apart from a great many of your predecessors. If I had easy answers, this would have been easily done. What is clear to me is the status quo is directly harmful to the project. What needs to happen now is an exploratory stage to identify and (hopefully) quantify/objectify the problems. Tryptofish; to be honest, so am I. But, continuing as we have is guaranteed to fail, as opposed to might fail with community efforts. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:08, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I basically said what I had to say at the PD talkpage, and unlike most times when I write when I'm that riled up I can't say I back away from any of it. That's 2 of the 3 people who laid the groundwork for ACTRIAL, I just hope I don't hurt the precious feelz of a serial LTA enough to have the same happen to me. In real life I recently had an extremely abrupt and ugly falling-out with someone who I was an idiot enough to think was my best friend (that's what she called me literally until the day she told me never to speak to her again); this is a website, so it's nowhere near the same impact on me, but it's a depressing reminder of how little it can take to end up on the wrong side of the unduly passionate. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 23:05, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
Without contradiction, I want to stress this isn't personal against any of the arbs here. If I agreed with everything everyone did on ArbCom 100% of the time I'd be a pretty lousy functionary. I can't remember a single time "burn it down" actually made things better (going through that with an unrelated RL situation), one decision I'm not a fan of doesn't mean I think ArbCom should be disbanded or anything. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

At this point, I am a supporter of the "burn it down" approach with ArbCom. The abuse of this case isn't isolated. ArbCom isn't just a net negative to the project. They are an active detriment to the project, far beyond just being a net negative. If ArbCom were a single entity as an editor, they would have been banned from the project a long time ago for their abuse and policy violations. This latest case is just yet another example. This isn't to say Scottywong didn't do anything wrong. It is to say that how ArbCom managed this case and progressed it was deeply wrong. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:10, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

While I very much respect those who feel Arbcom should be burned down (hence why I interact with you regularly about ArbCom Hammersoft), I believe based on the way ACE turns out year after year and the way that RfA doesn't overturn the desysop decisions of ArbCom that most editors like and respect the work ArbCom does on the whole even if they disagree with individual decisions. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: Designing systems that produce good results, in addition to being one of my central projects on Wikipedia, is both a personal and professional interest of mine, so I'm genuinely curious what you'd replace ArbCom's vital functions with. Please feel free to reply here if you think it's relevant to this discussion or on my talk page if not, your choice. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:45, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

A full answer, if done properly, would take a lot more than could be accomplished on this talk page, nor would it be appropriate to hash this further out here. I'll note this however; ArbCom hasn't been designed. It's a mishmash of original intent, and many years of changes. Beer can and bailing wire, and the beer wasn't all that good to begin with. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Though I'm prone to writing them myself, I also understand why the word jeremiad isn't a compliment. I'm willing to see a proposal, but given my RL job (which involves a lot of dealing with governmental entities) I'm naturally inclined to try to make whatever changes I want within existing structures. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 01:31, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree completely with Hammersoft above. I commend Scottywong for engaging with this case and attempting to explain his actions unlike so many previous admins accused of misconduct, and yet his evidence has actually been used against him by the Committee. I find this very disappointing. Why should any admin in the future participate in a case about their conduct when it is obvious that accepting a case inevitably leads to a desysop no matter what they say. Pawnkingthree (talk) 23:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
The problem with that is that there is a very recent case where the opposite happened - admin rights were restored after a deopped administrator provided exculpatory evidence for himself. The difference that keeps it from being close to applicable to this case, however, is that Stephen had his rights stripped by ArbCom before requesting the case, and so Stephen was trying to clear his name rather than just defend himself. —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 00:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Even when he did clear his name, there were still arbitrators who felt strongly that the exculpatory evidence was not enough to merit a reversal. It was a comparatively very close vote which could have swung on a few arbitrators being undecided about the evidence, and it came down to whether more harm than good would be created by not restoring admin rights. I generally think that the above sentiments are correct, that an arb case where a sysop is the primary party already has close to a predetermined outcome. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
It certainly feels troublesome to think that evidence one presents oneself would end up being cited against one (and having it be evidence from long ago makes it worse). I think ArbCom needs to be very careful about not passing FoFs unless the FoF directly backs up a Remedy. Just passing an FoF because it appears to be factual can come back to bite you. On the other hand, in theory, any named party can present stuff on case pages that ends up reflecting badly on them (that's in theory, not referring to anything in this case). That's why ArbCom considers conduct on case pages. It seems to me that a good trend in recent years is for Arbs, and especially drafting Arbs, to comment more actively on case pages over the course of the case. If someone presents evidence that might boomerang, I think it would be a good idea for Arbs to give feedback on that, right away, after that evidence gets posted. That gives the named party an opportunity to rebut the concerns. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:43, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Good points. I will note this balance is harder than it first looks. Re: If someone presents evidence that might boomerang, I think it would be a good idea for Arbs to give feedback on that, right away, after that evidence gets posted., if we do this too actively it can look a lot like we're suppressing someone's preferred defense. Plus, the committee as a whole in this case (and in many cases, if not every) did not have the capacity to engage, so it would have been a few arbs at most who even were able to articulate those concerns, and I would be concerned about giving the arbs who happen to be paying attention at that point too much weight. I'm not saying you're wrong—you're probably right in this case, in fact, that we could have tried harder to give this feedback. But it's not quite as simple as it sounds.
And, on passing FoFs that are not directly used to support remedies, what should an individual arbitrator do when voting on FoFs that are factual but that they wouldn't be relying on? Oppose? That seems wrong when it is factual. I think what you're getting at is that we don't sufficiently write with analysis of the application of the principles to the findings of fact. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, and understood. For whatever it's worth, a personal peeve of mine is that I'd prefer to see all Arbs who are active on a case paying attention throughout the case. I sometimes get the feeling that some members, when they are not drafting, just wait to see the PD and then vote without really having read everything. Maybe that's not fair, and it's certainly not everyone, but it sometimes looks like that.

About FoFs, yes, I think it's entirely reasonable to say something like: "Oppose, although true, it's not relevant to the decision." After all, one can imagine infinite possible facts that are true but irrelevant. There's no good reason to support something that doesn't advance the final decision. There's a sort of informal expectation that Principles justify the FoFs and FoFs justify the Remedies, so I think ArbCom should move away from adopting FoFs simply because they are true. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
Much of the struggle when it comes to considering intermediary discipline (or however you want to call it) for an admin is the culture that has been created at Wikipedia over the years. The concepts of the Super Mario effect or the unblockables have been ingrained into Wikipedia conscience such that aggrieved Wikipedians feel, and perhaps rightly so, that some editors experience a double standard and that it is an unjust and undesirable double standard. This is sadly likely as a result of some high-profile editors who behaved so unprofessionally and incivilly that it became necessary to swing the pendulum in that direction.

I'm reminded of the differences that we see in criminal justice between varying countries; how some countries choose to take a rehabilitative and a rebuilding approach with an effort to restore the criminal into a functional member of society, while others take a punitive approach based on addressing victim grief by exacting as much punishment as possible. This is analogous to our culture in the sense that if we see an admin that appears to be behaving like a bad apple, the complainants feel that anything short of a de-sysop would be woefully insufficient and demonstrating that admins operate in a different class from the rest of us.

Personally, I'd like to see a middle ground as well. But I don't know how you would go about instituting cultural change. That may be the sort of thing that calls for a WP:CENT RFC and I seriously doubt you will get that type of buy-in unless it can be clearly explained why it's better to rehabilitate an admin rather than to remove one. However, all of this is assuming that there's a consensus that the retribution for Scottywong was too high, as it has been for other previous admin cases, and one can't really go off of what people read here. People who feel the final decision was correct are likely not going to openly celebrate it on an Arbcom noticeboard. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:04, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is the Super Mario meme not connected to the actual reality of cases in the last 10 years? —Kusma (talk) 13:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't really see its purported effects (admins having a layer of protection) nowadays either, certainly not in any of the recent ArbCom cases. It's more of a specter that seems to lurk over cases involving admins. I occasionally still see people throwing the term around whenever such cases come to the forefront. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:49, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

This is just one example, but I created my account like a week and a half after this comment was made by an admin (arguing that Khosian peoples are an entirely seperate species!). I have a feeling that I would've been blocked as WP:NOTHERE if I'd said something similar when I was a new editor. That said, I think that admins are generally held to a higher standard. However, I can be somewhat sympathetic to the super mushroom argument because it seems like a potential desysop is what people focus more on when an an admin does/says something that would prompt a regular editor to just be blocked. I know this doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but does someone have a way of showing me other edits from that specific date that have nothing to do with that editor and are good contributions to the enyclopedia? September 3, 2018, was the first time I ever celebated my birthday so I dislike negative associations with that date. I should probably just let it go but it does bother me a little bit. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:59, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

IMO there are plenty of recent examples when an admin has gotten off with behaviour that would likely have long resulted in a block, maybe even in an indef if they weren't an admin. Indeed IMO in some cases admins have only lost their tools despite the fact they potentially would have been blocked or cbanned were they not an admin. Nil Einne (talk) 09:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Clerk note: Moved from WP:ACN. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 17:18, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

You would have thought that, considering messing about with a bot in editors' sub-pages helped cause this entire situation, User:AManWithNoPlan would back off from massively editing one of my own—it's a personal user page, for Heaven's sake. Frankly, it's outrageous, and if AMWNP had a bizarre username, I'd probably do a Scotty on him too. SN54129 17:16, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Reading the rationale for the support votes at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Scottywong/Proposed decision#Scottywong desysopped, I noticed that some arbitrators supported because they guaged that "the community" had lost confidence in Scottywong. It seems that at least a few arbitrators found convincing an argument that if there were a hypothetical "community desysop process", Scottywong would not survive it. One arbitrator wrote that Having the community evaluate evidence of demonstrated change is better than me deciding based on what I project might happen. I'm a little uncomfortable with this kind of rhetoric. We do not have a "community-based" desysop process precisely because RfA-like processes suck: editors can cast votes based on weak or no evidence that have substantive impact on the result. We elect arbitrators because we trust them to apply their judgment in analyzing evidence and considering carefully whether it indicates that an administrator is no longer a net positive. We aren't electing arbitrators because we want them to guess at what the community thinks about a particular administrator, which is a pretty daunting task if the only subset of the community you are exposed to is the one that cares enough to comment at an ArbCom case about a particular admin—surely that subset must be a little skewed. In other words, I wish the explanations were based more on an analysis of evidence rather than guesswork at community sentiment. Mz7 (talk) 04:29, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Hi @Mz7. I understand your concern, but I think you are slightly off base. I agree that a community-based desysop process would "suck", large numbers of people weighing in to have a dig at an admin would not be a pleasant experience for anyone, and no, we don't want mob rule. However, that doesn't stop committee members from using "loss of trust" as a basis for their decision.

I, personally, have never looked for "net positive" or "net negative" outcomes - I hate the terms, because we should not be summarising individuals in such a manner. As a committee member, I look at the evidence of misbehaviour, I look at how people have reacted to the evidence, I consider what knock on effects the evidence are likely to have and I use that to weigh up how big a problem the evidence is. I might mitigate that against good work, and length of service, because every case is unique, but you never find me saying that any of the people I have desysoped are a "net negative" for the encyclopedia - they have each spent many hours working hard to improve the project and that should always be acknowledged. Worm^TT(talk) 08:39, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
In the context of a desysopped administrator, I would agree that describing one as "no longer a net positive" or a "net negative" would often be cruel and uncalled for, so I would like to clarify emphatically that I did not mean to imply that I think any particular individual is no longer helpful to or welcome on this project. As you know, the term "net positive" is a common phrase at RfA, which I interpret to be a restatement of the principle at WP:ADMINCOND that occasional mistakes and lapses in judgment are compatible with adminship, but "consistent or egregious poor judgment may result in the removal of administrator tools". I used the phrase here to refer to that principle, not to summarize any particular individual.

To restate my view at its essence: I want to know what you think, not what you think the community thinks. Do you trust this person to continue to be an administrator? Do you believe that the evidence demonstrates the level of "consistent or egregious poor judgment" that would warrant removal of the tools? I feel that framing the decision around what the community thinks weakens the argument because it's hard to know what the community really thinks. We can look at the response to the evidence at ANI and the ArbCom case, but the community also encompasses editors who do not participate in ArbCom or ANI matters frequently, but who may still feel the impact of the loss of an administrator that works in their editing areas. While it may not have been the case here, there could eventually come a case where, after careful consideration, you disagree with most of the participating community members regarding the severity of the evidence. Should you feel obligated to follow the wishes of the most vocal community members despite your disagreement? I think not. We elect arbitrators because we trust your judgment, so you should follow your judgment. Mz7 (talk) 10:09, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Question

So I think we've all seen threads like the above happen after certain case closures. How often are they merely an opportunity to vent, and not actually doing something about it?

I have an idea of how to deal with/address that "in-between" admonishment and de-sysop. And maybe others do too.

I would welcome ideas for a path forward. - jc37 12:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I suggested the "yellow card" above. Admins (and others) need to be open to feedback short of sanction, and there needs to be a way to convey it. More broadly, people need to practice deescalation, especially when there's an incident involving someone they consider a colleague. Mackensen (talk) 14:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

The yellow card piece struck me as more of a metaphor than an actual proposal. How would you see that actually working @Mackensen? Barkeep49 (talk) 14:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

My thinking is that it's a concrete way to register disapproval on the record without getting bogged down in sanctions. A particular dynamic I've witnessed is people maybe agreeing that the current conduct is bad but being unable to agree on any outcome (e.g. "yes this is bad, but X is too much"). I think it's potentially easier to get people to agree that "X is bad, we've told you so and trust you'll do better", with the understanding that if we're all back at ANI or whatever in another three months the previous yellow card will be held against you. I don't think there should be any bureaucracy around this more than a linked essay which I should get around to writing. Mackensen (talk) 14:52, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

So giving options for the community to level a "community advisement" or a "community admonishment"? I proposed that as a part of a community de-sysop process awhile back. It presumably wouldn't be difficult to split those out from that for proposing. - jc37 15:07, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

This sounds way too much like WP:RFC/U to me which IMO is nowadays rightfully considered to have been a terrible idea. Perhaps if it's restricted to admins only it would work better but I quite doubt it. Nil Einne (talk) 09:46, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I've posted precisely because I am in a position to propose changes. The problem is that I don't think there's support among the committee for my more concrete change (case names) and my broader "I think it would be a good thing to restructure how we do ADMINCOND cases" not only doesn't have support it's not a fully developed idea. Also I think the community having a place to express their strong feelings about hard decisions like this one is itself a useful purpose even if it could also be characterized as "an opportunity to vent". Barkeep49 (talk) 14:34, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't disagree, but I guess I'm just a proponent of: if I'm going to complain about something, I should try to think of as possible solution. Shouting at the sky may make me feel somewhat better for now, but it may not do much for the future. - jc37 14:46, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

The "yellow card" problem is something I pointed to in my vote on the PD, but as I noted there, my sense (which could be wrong) is that the community doesn't really want us to consider intermediate sanctions: Ultimately, I wish there was an acceptable intermediate sanction for administrators—I would rather vote for, e.g., a remedy suspending his tools for six months. But I understand the community's concern that sysop is a high-trust role, and that if someone needs a suspension, they no longer enjoy the trust of the community for the sysop role.
I wonder, would a re-RfA remedy, or perhaps even a remedy for an advisory RfC on whether someone should retain the tools for ArbCom's consideration, be a reasonable intermediate sanction, lower than a "straight desysop"? The "re-RfA" remedy could feel less like a straight desysop if it happened at a time of the sysop's choosing (say, within a month of the case concluding), and the sysop kept the tools pending the conclusion of the reconfirmation RfA.
Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

As long as we're spitballing ideas, perhaps ArbCom admonishments should normally be attached to the ability for the community to recall the administrator and require them to undergo a reconfirmation RfA. Maybe the way this works is that going forward, after an administrator is admonished, a certain number of other editors may ask them to stand for a reconfirmation RfA within a certain amount of time. (If nobody asks, then no RfA need be held.) This idea is loosely based off of the UK's recent Recall of MPs Act 2015, which provides that anytime an MP is suspended from Parliament for over 10 days, their constituents may petition for a by-election. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:45, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I question if the community doesn't really want us to consider intermediate sanctions is actually true or if it just appears to be true because the people who are inclined to participate in a case are likely to be those most upset about the actions of the admin, in the same way that those most inclined to post here are those upset with our decisions. It might very well be true but I think it might be an assumption worth checking. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:47, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that the reaction of an admin to being required to undergo any sort of reconfirmation would be pretty similar to the reaction to being desysopped. Thinking back to Framgate, Fram's re-RfA was unsuccessful, and I think many admins put in such a position would argue that ArbCom had poisoned the well for the community to give a "fair" RfA. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:52, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Tryptofish: Yeah, I get that concern too. But I wonder if there's a chicken-and-egg thing going on there: we only desysop people for pretty significant offenses (and kind of imply they aren't suitable to be a sysop), so desysopped folks at RfA again get walloped. If, instead, we allowed reconfirmation petitions after every admonishment, it'd be less of a big deal. Another way to say that is I think a lot of the community trust's ArbCom's judgment and is generally happy to oppose RfAs for desysopped admins because they think ArbCom has judged the sysop unsuitable. If instead ArbCom's remedy was "admonish, and do a reconfirmation if enough people ask", then perhaps the community would feel less like ArbCom has in some sense "recommended" opposing a re-RfA. (Edited to add: if we do this, it shouldn't displace a "straight desysop" in appropriate cases.)
@Barkeep49: You're right about that too. I'd be thrilled if I'm wrong, because I think ultimately the idea that you either have enough trust to be a sysop or not ignores the fact that every active sysop has done things that'd make me question my trust in them on occasion. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps:

Reconfirmation of admonished administrators
If, within 30 days of an Arbitration Committee decision admonishing an administrator, six editors in good standing and uninvolved with the underlying dispute request that the admonished administrator stand for reconfirmation, the administrator must initiate a reconfirmation RfA. If no reconfirmation RfA is initiated within two weeks of the sixth request for reconfirmation, the administrator is considered to have been desysopped by the Arbitration Committee.

KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 16:15, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I am having a hard time imagining an accepted case that doesn't have six editors in good standing feeling like someone should be desysopped especially after we advertise that option in the places we would. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

My gut feeling about how the community would process an RfA after an admonishment is that a significant number of editors would treat "well, ArbCom decided to admonish, and we trust ArbCom" the same way as "well, ArbCom decided to desysop, and we trust ArbCom". I don't think it would help. I agree with Barkeep49 about such a procedure, and I'm having flashbacks to WP:CDARFC. The community has never been able to settle on an agreed-upon procedure for the community to conduct any sort of review of whether an admin should retain the permissions. My own thinking evolved over many wiki-years from being a supporter of a community process, to deciding that it's best for ArbCom to handle it. That's because, long ago, ArbCom was ineffective at handling admins who behaved badly, but you are effective now. And I'm disinclined to reinvent the wheel. I still think ArbCom should take full responsibility for these things, and the place for reevaluating and refining should be within how ArbCom handles each case as it comes along. If ArbCom has evolved over time from being ineffective at desysops to, arguably, being too effective (I'm not sure that this is really the case), then that's a matter of recalibration, rather than changing the process. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:08, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

It sounds to me, then, that this is in essence akin to a community-initiated reconfirmation vote, with the arbitration committee being a guard against unreasonable requests. An editor would open a request, and the committee would decide if an admonishment is warranted, thus enabling the reconfirmation vote to proceed. isaacl (talk) 17:13, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I do like that, rather than trying to extrapolate the community's degree of trust from a limited, self-selected group of commenters in, say, an incidents' noticeboard discussion, more voices are able to weigh in. I think the existing practice works well for egregious issues, but is less able to handle more ambiguous situations. isaacl (talk) 21:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@L235: I don't think 6 uninvolved editors is enough to realistically support that kind of thing. For one, those editors could just be members of Arbcom (possibly even a voting minority who wanted to de-sysop anyways). Maybe exempt arbs from that decision? Otherwise, maybe raise it to 10? Ten is a round number.
The other issue is who gets to adjudicate whether someone qualifies as uninvolved. If the first suggestion is done, then it could just be arbcom (though I don't know where they would make the decision).
The last thing I could see as a potential problem is that 2 weeks is not a lot of time to get ready for an RFA (much less a re-confirmation RFA). My preference would be to give them at least a month (hopefully when things to cool down a little) and just tell them not to use admin tools in the meantime (or risk an immediate de-sysop). –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 16:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

These are helpful comments, and yes, the specifics if we explore this further are very much in the air. 10-15 uninvolved editors and one month respectively I could both be on board with. But I know there are deeper concerns with this proposal and I'd like to explore what they are. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:34, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@L235 (apologies if this is duplicative, and obviously it's very late) - but having to do a re-RfA after you've just had arbcom spend time reviewing you and sanctioning you would be a truly horrific 6-8 weeks. I feel like we'd see the rate of admins resigning rather than face the full process rise significantly Nosebagbear (talk) 20:36, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, as for me, I have 2 different ideas that I would like to see happen along these lines. One of them is WP:RRA. It's been quite a while. Maybe it's worth trying again. - jc37 17:18, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

As written, the proposal only covers removal of administrative privileges and not, as you mentioned in your earlier post, in-between steps. Do you envision the proposal being modified to allow for a range of outcomes? isaacl (talk) 17:21, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:RRA#Determining_consensus - it allows for advising or admonishment as well. - jc37 17:24, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't want to discourage anyone from trying something new, but based on my extensive experience, it's very unlikely that the community will agree on such a proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I've been there too, lol

But it's been awhile. And WP:CCC, so who knows. It might be worth exploring again. I'm game to try again. - jc37 17:33, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree but ArbCom deciding to something like what @L235 proposes it as an alternative outcome to a case wouldn't require community consent which is why it's interesting in a way that a community proposal is not. That said I can't help but wonder if the first step should be an advisory RfC about whether the community agrees or disagrees with the statement the community doesn't really want [ArbCom] to consider intermediate sanctions. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:31, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't really get the impression of that being a consensus view. There's a vocal group who think administrative privileges should be removed more often, there are others who think long-time editors should be given consideration for their history of contributions, and then there's a less-vocal middle group who aren't particular about the removal of administrative privileges, as long as undesirable behaviour ceases. I think there's a lot of potential support for intermediate approaches; the trick of course is how to make them effective. isaacl (talk) 21:11, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes that is the trick. Right now I think you have a number of arbs who are philosophically opposed. I think you have a number of arbs who are philosophically supportive. And then there is the biggest group, who are also the swing group, some of whom would want to do it if they knew the community wanted them to (and wouldn't want to do if the community didn't). Establishing that through something more than anecdata could be impactful and from there it would just be up to arbcom to iterate and attempt things until something worked. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

It might be useful for ArbCom to conduct an RfC, asking editors to choose amongst a couple of options, such as something like:

A. ArbCom should generally desysop admins who have been found to misuse their tools.

B. ArbCom should be cautious about desysopping, and should make use of lesser remedies unless the misuse was egregious.

Or something like that, maybe more options. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:39, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

My apologies; it's been a while since I read the page and I only re-read the intro now, where the italicized question only seemed to address one outcome. isaacl (talk) 17:27, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

No worries. It was designed to be a reflection of typical arbcom results. It was a result of the many many discussions over the years and trying to address as many concerns as possible. - jc37 17:43, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Jc37: We also used to have WP:RFC/U as a venue that could deal with that sort of thing. It had a lot of legitimate issues with the structure and inherently being a magnet for drama, but its deprecation left us with no "in-between step" from AN/ANI and Arbcom. I do have a concept I've been tinkering with in my userspace at WP:RFC/AC that might be helpful. I originally only saw it as a community desysop proposal for clear cases, but the scope could be widened a little to cover cases where desysop isn't the only outcome considered. By limiting the scope to admin conduct and making some changes to the format, I think it could keep drama to a minimum and prevent it from becoming the Airing of Grievances again. It needs a bunch more work, but I think there could be interest in getting this problem solved. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 21:49, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for posting about this. I looked at it, and got an idea. I see that one of the proposed ways the process could begin would be referral from ArbCom. Given what some of the Arbs have been discussing here, perhaps the proposal could be revised into something that would specifically be invoked by ArbCom, and not by the community. (It would still have the community role in there, being a prior discussion somewhere like AN or ANI, because ArbCom will want to see that before acting, anyway.) --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

My original goal for it was as a Community Desysop procedure, which could be handled in 2 weeks from start-to-finish without all the hemming and hawing at AN over whether it should be closed because we can't actually do anything without Arbcom, the dithering at Arbcom over whether the case should be rejected, handled by motion, or a full case, and then finally the drama and time sink of a full case. This one was under 2 months, but historically some admin conduct issues have gone much longer from start to desysop and generated much more in the way of anger and hurt feelings. I was picturing workflows of either Noticeboard → "Desysop might be needed, consensus to open RFC", or Noticeboard → RFAr, "This is premature, we reject the arbitration request and remand to RFC for community to decide". I suppose there could be another flow of Arbcom Case/Motion → "Not enough for an Arbcom desysop, open RFC for the community to determine if trust has been lost". It would be mostly the same as the second flow I mentioned, just as a remedy instead of a rejection at RFAr. I'd welcome input in developing my idea if you're interested. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:02, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I realize that was your goal. As the primary ~~punching bag~~ proposal writer of an earlier attempt at a community procedure, I've become convinced that the community will never, and probably should never, find consensus in favor of such a procedure. I think the reality is that ArbCom is the place to handle it, and the real focus of improving processes should be to refine how ArbCom does it. In the discussion here, a couple of Arbs have expressed interest in finding better ways for ArbCom to arrive at a result that is less than a desysop, and have also expressed interest in finding better ways of determining whether or not an admin has "lost the confidence of the community". So what occurred to me was that taking something like your draft proposal, and making it something specifically for ArbCom to use, to get community feedback on how serious the community regards the alleged admin misconduct to be, and how the community feels about desysopping versus a lesser sanction, is something the Arbs would find useful as part of how they would process a case request about an admin. I'm curious whether any Arbs find this idea interesting. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:37, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I mentioned RFC/U above before noticing this. An interesting point IMO is that while RFC/U is dead, AN//I does sometimes effectively even if unintentionally serve a similar purpose. There are at least 4 long threads at ANI very recently, one okay which made it to arbcom which sort of demonstrate this. I'm not convinced we're going to achieve consensus on the two that didn't make it to arbcom for any action, and one of them was already closed without action. So effectively the only thing they may do is tell these editors, hey some editors are concerned about some aspect of your behaviour. (Yes they're far less of free for all than RFC/U, lack any clear indication other than by going through the thread of how many editors feel a certain way etc but at they do ultimately do tell an editor hey a bunch of editors see a problem with your behaviour.) IMO a big reason why these often don't work, and why RFC/U often didn't work, is simply because of the nature of behaviour and the way people interact with wikipedia. In many cases, it's likely even before the AN//I threads, multiple editors have raised concerns with the editor so they already know there are concerns. If there is an AN//I thread with no action but significant concern, they're surely even more aware. The reason they often don't improve or at least not enough is likely dependent on the editor and the behaviour. In some cases, the editor disagrees their behaviour is a problem that needs to change no matter how many others disagree. In other cases the editor may sincerely agree they should change, but probably isn't going to manage that or at least not enough. Sometimes, unfortunately IMO way too rarely, an editor does change enough. Yet even for these rare instances, I think many of them probably don't actually need those AN//I threads since often the talk page approaches will be enough. (To some extent while there are good reasons for how we operate e.g. lacking clear bright lines for most things, in being preventative and not punitive and the lack of a formal system etc, doesn't help since in reality even if the editors recognise they may one day be sanctioned for it, they have no idea when and many of them may think who knows maybe it'll never happen. However for good reason at least in most cases we don't want a system where an editor is fairly sure they'll be sanctioned which as in real life, can be a good incentive to improve.) I've said before that IMO one thing which could help if those who oppose sanction and support the editor, yet recognise there is a problem make this clearer to the editor since often IMO the nature of their defence may lead the editor to think there's nothing wrong with what I'm doing. But even with this, and in at least one of those AN//I cases I do feel this happened a reasonable amount, I expect it'll only help in a small number of cases. For administrators, it's probably true that many experienced editors are far less likely to approach them if they see a problem and not bother to open a thread since they're sure there will be no result and there may even be a (unfair in their opinion) boomerang. It's probably also true that for some willing to do so, they feel a desysop is way too far yet is the only likely result so aren't going to push it for that reason. So yes looking at ways we can deal with this might help. But I do think to recognise that there's a good chance that whatever we do is probably only going to make a difference in a small number of cases and any system is going to be very imperfect. Editors will receive sanction which some regard as unfair, some agree with, others think took too long. Etc etc. In other words we should definitely consider how we can improve, but we need to be realistic on the likely outcome being only a small improvement. Nil Einne (talk) 10:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I do agree that it would probably only help in a small number of cases. However, Arbcom desysops that aren't part of a wider case are already a small number, and yet we've had 3 in the last 4 months. With Dbachmann it was an obvious desysop, but Scotty and Alison I'm not sure what the community would have done. One or both might have been salvageable and not been blown out of control if there was a "middle path" of a process where the community can choose to give a "yellow card" instead of only having one tool in the toolbox. I'd welcome any input on my idea, the talkpage is open. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:10, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I wrote Friends don't let friends get sanctioned precisely to address the situation you describe NE. That is a situation where a lot of editors express concern but there isn't enough for some kind of formal sanction/remedy. In these situations I think an editor's friends are best positioned to help the editor change. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

A counterpoint: In some cases, the editor disagrees their behaviour is a problem that needs to change no matter how many others disagree. In some cases, the people vocally accusing are wanting to WP:RGW or are otherwise extremists. Others may be afraid of becoming another target if they publicly support the accused. Sometimes, unfortunately IMO way too rarely, an editor does change enough. Sometimes no amount of change will be enough for some people. In other cases the editor may sincerely agree they should change, but probably isn't going to manage that or at least not enough. Alas, it's still ok to exclude people with certain kinds of disabilities. Anomie ⚔ 11:47, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Admin conduct cases are never pleasant for anyone involved,(including the committeee members) but I see them as a vital function of the committee. We've made a lot of changes to things like activity requirements and I think that is probably going to have a long-term effect of reducing the total number of such cases, but there will probably always be a few each year, and it is likely that most of them will result in removal. This is not to say that the committee does or should pre-judge cases, it's simply a reflection of the fact that if the committee feels a case is warrantred, that probably means there is serious problem with an admin's behavior.

As to participation in a case, it is certainly a double-edged sword. If you decline to partipate, you are basically not presenting a defense, but we have also certainly seen admins who made their situaion worse by behaving cluelessly while a case was underway. Frankly, the response that makes the most sense to me is when an admin retires when it is clear the commmittee will accept the case. They haven't actually lost anythng, and a number of former admins have said that they actually find it liberating, but clearly this option is not appealing to some for whatever reason.

As to "admins who need to be sanctioned should not be admins at all": I am one of the people who has been beating this drum failry consistently during my two terms here. Admins are supposed to be helping to solve problems, if they are instead causing problems, to the point where any type of sanction is needed, they have failed at their job, badly. That's actually fine, not everyone is cut out for administrative work, the same way not everyone is going to be able to write a featured article, or maintain a bot or script. They are entirely different skill sets, and we need people who good at each of these things, they don't have to be good at all of them. When someone is unable or unwilling to see that they are not doing their admin job well, the committe is there to correct the situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Beeblebrox what are your thoughts about the advisory RfC about this topic to see where the community sentiment is? Barkeep49 (talk) 17:22, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

More input is always good, but I'd want to be very cautious about how the questions are framed. We wouldn't want to paint the committee into a corner, where there are rigid rules that dictate when to remove and when not to. "Loss of trust from the community" is virtually impossible to define specifically, but I think it is a perfectly valid reason nonetheless. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:26, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

For me it would be a single question. I agree with you how that question is framed is important but I would see it along the lines of "When should arbcom place a restriction/sanction short of desysop on an admin?" with suggested answers along the lines of "A. Never, B. Only when it does not involve tool misuse (e.g. an iban), C. For misconduct needing formal remedy but whose severity does not rise to the level of needing the tools removed". With A representing your view, B (and apologies in advance that I'm naming specific editors for these next two publicly but I think the benefits of having this conversation publicly outweigh the costs here) being a Ritchie/Praxidicae situation, and C being a Giant Snowman situation. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:33, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

And I do have a solution, but I think it would be virtually impossible to implement at this point. I actually suggested this as joke over on Wikipediocracy, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Hear me out: put both ends of the process in ArbCom's hands. In other words, admins would be appointed by the committee through the same process that functionaries go through. Nominations are sought out, there is a community comment period, but not a vote, and the committee appoints qualified candidates. The removal process works the same as well, no need for a full, month-long painful case about one person's behavior, an email discussion and a simple motion are all that would be required to remove an admin. The two worst things about being an admin are RFA and admin conduct ArbCom cases, this eliminates both. I know, it's crazy and we'd never get the community to approve it, but I think it actually would be kinder to everyone involved to do it this way. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:23, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

In times gone by, I suggested removing the "support" section from RfA. So that only issues/concerns to prevent may be brought up and discussed. And then a bureacrat assesses the discussion to determine if there is anything preventing adminship. Substantial policy-concerned opposes, and no tools. A pretty clean page of few to no concerns, and congratulations. Needless to say, there is very little chance that that is going to happen. Everyone wants to drop their "feelgood" support vote : ) - jc37 17:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that would be a surefire way to stop people from running. RfA already feels pretty awful; I can't imagine wanting to spend an entire week having people only tell you about how you've failed. Like, I had a somewhat rough RfA, but having people support me made it easier to bear; it was still one of the most stressful weeks of my life. We have to remember that RfA candidates are very much human beings. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 19:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I haven't even gone through RfA and I've had actual nightmares about the process. I also don't think "oppose-only" RfAs are a good idea. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 19:31, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I understand. Someone looking at this with the filter of thinking about the current battleground process of support vs oppose likely sees this as removing the positive and leaving only the negative.

But consider that without labelling the sections support/oppose, and set the standard as merely discussing diffs, you remove that battleground. A similar comparison might be an arbcom evidence page. Except of course, that (presumably) the editor in question hasn't done stuff to need an arbcom case, so there could actually be RfAs that are blank. And with discussion limited by evidence, a lot of the nonsense should evaporate. One simple question: Are there good reasons to not grant the tools? If no, then here ya go. But like I said, for the reasons above, among other things, I don't see it likely to happen. - jc37 23:18, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

RfA voters do not just look for evidence of potential for tool abuse, but also for evidence of experience and cluefulness (which is harder to convey by diffs). While I have no love for many of the edit count / "data" based opposes ("only here for five years", "only 5000 edits", "only 30 AfDs, and only 70% 'correct'") they do serve as a proxy for expectations of general experience that may be not as easy to convey in a purely "oppose for cause" system. I mean, I full agree RfA is totally broken, but I would like us to spend less time publicly discussing and dissecting every single potential character flaw. (My preferred system at the moment would be a structured and moderated vote-free discussion coupled with a discussion-free vote with a hard threshold and no bureaucrat chats). —Kusma (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Actually examples of cluefullness typically come hand-in-hand with activity. If you go through someone's edits and don't see anything concerning, but see good stuff, there's no reason for you to need to post. What you're talking about is catering to what I consider the "lazy" voter who just wants to scan the rfa page and drop a vote based upon that. I'd like to move as far away from that as we can. If someone wants to form a judgement upon someone else, they should put in the work. - jc37 16:00, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The problem is your process suggests that 50 valid opposes would always be equally strong. But opposes can be either rebutted or diluted. For example, Tamzin's RfA's opposes would have been grounds to declining in almost any other case, but here were offset by a huge number of supports - while the presence of an unprecedented number of weak supports would not be easily replicated in an oppose-only system. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:40, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

When I was an admin, I did a fresh RfA after two years because I felt the continuing consent of the community was important. My lesson from that was that taking admin action against anybody poisons that particular stretch of the stream - and you need the backing of those you have helped and the fellow mop wielders to be succesful. Unless the WP culture has turned considerably more sympathetic, anyone under suspicion of not doing the job correctly (and especially of doing the job with extreme prejudice) is simply going to attract a pitchfork bearing mob - i.e. the WP 'Community'. I believe ArbCom is the appropriate venue not only for desysopping, but also perhaps for suspensions and subsequent re-instatement; ArbCom being able to hold a virtual meeting with a suspended admin after the defined time has elapsed and judge whether the issues that were apparent have been recognised and addressed. This option, of course, means more work for the Committee (and will give rise to complaints of "us and them") but seems to be the only option other than desysop and fresh RfA. LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Timeline and remedy only Admin cases?

I've noted above I don't think our current case structure is serving us when it comes to administrator conduct cases. This is my best attempt to provide a fix. I'm not sure it's even a good atempt, but it's the best one I've come up with so far. In really thinking through the issue I see, I don't think the case format is doing us well when it comes to the type of cases we've heard recently. If you go back to 2020 and 2021 admin conduct cases, I think the format worked reasonably well where you had a wide variety of facts that needed summarizing across a fairly spread out period of time. That is even in a case like RexxS where the desysop was controversial and the facts weren't, it's clear how Arbs got from those facts to their support (or not) of the desysop. But in the admin cases we've heard over the past 2 years it's mostly been "single incident with maybe a little extra backstory" and arb judgement from there.

And so I wonder if rather than having a whole FoF section if all that was needed was a neutrally worded timeline of events. For Scotty that timeline could stretch back to include the Manning stuff, for instance, but could still exist as a neutrally worded timeline. This format could work at ARC or in a longer 2-3 week timeline similar to a case depending on what the arbs needed for a given circumstance. It could by dynamically updated, ala the summarized evidence in WP:HJP rather than released all at the end. And then it places the burden of interpretation and explanation on individual arbs in their remedy votes which kind of happens already anyway. It's my sense that this could have worked for every admin conduct case post-RexxS, including the stranger two (Stephen and Reversal and reinstatement of Athaenara's block).

As I noted up top I'm not sure it's a good idea (even if it would have "worked") but since it's my best idea so far I thought I'd throw it out there for comment, questions, refinement, and other feedback. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:33, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

We've had timelines in cases before, so why not just - as an intermediary step - just automatically have "Timeline" at the top of the FoF section for admin cases. And then FoF is there if it needs to be, but doesn't have to get filled out if it's unnecessary.

I don't think that locking these pages into rigidity is doing anyone any favours. - jc37 19:38, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

What the drafters/arbs are writing towards matters. Right now the drafters are locked into a certain FoF format and it's my hunch that it's not a good box for them to be in. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel like, if the issue is that some evidence was so old that it should not have been considered, presenting it in a timeline does not address the problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Writing AlisonW I didn't feel locked into a format, much less any certain one. You might need to explain what you're thinking about. Izno (talk) 19:42, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I've perhaps framed it wrong @Izno. In our discussion above, I noted that cases that get accepted basically lead to a single outcome. You noted that you liked having time to think things through clearly. This was my attempt to square those things. Did a full evidence phase really provide evidence that got used for Scotty and Allison that wasn't already present at the case request? My impression is only marginally so. I don't think Scotty, Allsion, or the broader community were particularly well served by the multi-week process that transpired, but you are suggested arbs are well served. So this was my attempt to create a process that serves the non-arb stakeholders better without taking away the chance for arbs to act in a deliberate manner. It's hard for me to really sell an idea that I'm not sure is a good one myself but it was my hope that by getting something down there could be something iterative that might go somewhere. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Wherever it goes I think this is a conversation worth having. I don't think we are necesarily locked in to any one format, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Format of decisions says "Decisions are written in clear, concise standard English and usually(emphasis added): (i) outline the salient principles, (ii) make findings of fact, (iii) set out remedies and rulings, and (iv) specify any enforcement arrangements. Where the meaning of any provision is unclear to any arbitrator, the parties, or other interested editors, it will be clarified upon request. "Usually" gives the wiggle room we need to adjust for certain types of cases if it seems better for everyone, like we have already done by eliminating the workshop in some cases. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Beeblebrox that the arbitration policy allows for the arbitrators to decide the exact format they think best serves any given case. In cases like this one, perhaps it would be helpful for the arbitrators to decide what specific questions they would like to have answered by the end of the evidence and workshop phases, and thus how to narrow the scope of submissions that will be accepted. For example, if the primary question is does the community continue to trust a given editor to hold administrative privileges, then the scope of the evidence phase could be limited to examples of specific situations that led an editor to lose trust. A workshop phase might be limited to statements of continued trust or the absence of trust, to help arbitrators evaluate the community's viewpoint. isaacl (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

If the/a question is "does this admin still hold the trust of the community to make good administrative decisions" then there should logically be (a) some place for the community to provide evidence of that admin making good and/or bad decisions and/or expressing views/making other edits that give cause for either confidence or concern; and (b) some indication that the committee desires to see evidence of this nature. Thryduulf (talk) 12:04, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, if the arbitrators want to get input from the community on X, then specifying this in its scope for accepted submissions will satisfy (b). isaacl (talk) 15:21, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I attempted to raise this exact point a few weeks ago but it kind of got lost in the shuffle. I'll also note that while arbcom solicits public comments, I sense an undercurrent of not really wanting the input provided. RoySmith (talk) 16:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I personally don't sense that input isn't wanted in general. However I do sometimes feel that some arbitrators are looking for input in a specific area to help them answer a specific question. I appreciate that for many cases, different arbitrators may be seeking information on different aspects, and so overall the scope is fairly wide. If there are cases, though, where there is agreement on having some specific questions answered, then I think delineating a narrow scope may help the process be more effective. isaacl (talk) 16:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Stuff does get lost in the shuffle and not replied to by the committee. This is not deliberate. We've just closed a case, are closing a second one now, we have ... at least five open appeals we're discussing, and three or four more random issues. And we have this quite long conversation here. It's hard to keep up with everything. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

A few years ago, I made some requests to the community regarding arbitration cases, including a request to understand that [d]ue to the wide number of commenters and limits on available time, it's highly likely some comments will not get addressed directly by the arbitrators, even if you thought they were deserving of a response. I appreciate it can be disappointing not to get a response, and not know why; I agree though that constraints make it difficult for it to be otherwise. isaacl (talk) 21:39, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

If an admin has not used their tools obviously detrimental to the project, I believe the admin is supposed to stay. We lose a lot of admin know-how if we desysop editors for a (perceived) 'personal attack' or some comment in a discussion.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:16, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to move it to ARCA or a similar board; note that additional commentary beyond the opening statements cannot be given without presenting diffs, and give it a 1-2 week timeframe depending on the preference of the named party. A vote to accept is functionally a vote to desysop, which is why the trend of admins just not participating in admin conduct cases has risen over the past few years. Giving people a fair chance at a hearing, but also don't go through the full show. At this point admin conduct cases are more in line with ritual shaming than an investigation (and that is not the committee's fault.) I can understand why people don't want to take part. TonyBallioni (talk) 02:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
A vote to accept is functionally a vote to desysop I strongly disagree with this. Generally I think the worst thing someone facing an admin conduct case can do is choose not to present their side of the story, because that way there is no balance and the outcomes will trend towards being favourable to those who do give evidence. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Thryduulf (talk) 09:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
I also disagree, based on my own personal experience. I was the swing vote for not desysopping GiantSnowman, and I based my decision in large part on his active participation in the case and public willingness to accept responsibility. If more people (not just admins) participated in cases with that kind of humility, I think arbcom would lay fewer sanctions, including desysopping. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
Sorry if I wasn't as specific: I do not think individual arbs have made up their mind to desysop if they vote to accept, but given the statistics Maxim has collected - 90% desysop rate since 2010 and close to 100% if not 100% post-Fram (depends on how you count), a vote to accept, for the admin involved, a vote to accept in most cases means that they will lose their tools. Now, there's an argument to be made that the reason for this is the committee only accepts cases when they are ripe, which is why the desysop rate is so high. I'm sympathetic to those arguments. But that's even more reason to have a streamlined desysop procedure. TonyBallioni (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/AlisonW closed

Original announcement

This is to thank the ArbCom in having a heart and hearing the case out both on the basis of evidence and on the basis of Alison's contributions. While I had hoped she would retain her bits, I strongly believe ArbCom was absolutely fair and responsible in the process followed and in the decisions (and supporting logic) of each arbitrator. While this section is for Alison, I would also add a note of appreciation for the Arbcom on Scotty's case. The reason ArbCom exists, in my opinion, is to rule in cases where the community is unable to reach a decision. It is obvious that when a case is decided, those are the detractors (those who oppose ArbCom's decision) who will speak out the loudest. Similar to how in a country, when a party wins elections, the voters of the opposition party would be prone to come out on the roads to protest, while the winning party voters would tend to avoid confrontation, as they have already won the vote. In Scotty's case, or in Alison's case, the ArbCom should not be swayed by the comments of the detractors and find out novel methods to 'improve' ArbCom functioning (such as what Kevin has mentioned above). The ArbCom works, as do transparent country elections, and the detractors have the right to express their frustration, but I would beseech ArbCom to not be swayed by such comments. Hear them out, diplomatically, but let's move on from here. You guys are doing a great job, sifting through some really harsh words above, I can only offer this advise to you as I have. Thank you again team, and warmly, Lourdes 04:30, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
I'll second that. Having concerns about "Arbcom", the institutional structure, has little to do with the respect I have for the arbcom members, who definitely deserve kudos for volunteering to provide such service to the community. - jc37 04:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not going to second that. It amounts to "ignore complaints". Sorry, but there's serious problems with both the Scottywong case and this one. Sweeping it under the rug as cries from the 'losers' (not quoting anyone with that; but "winning" was mentioned) and nothing to worry about it flat wrong. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:15, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 w/Hammersoft. I do not doubt that all committee members have hearts of compassion, but I'm not sure it's helpful to wish them a collective one. The Holy Roman and Universal Church—servus servorum dei—may proffer grace over justice to the fallen; intractable behavioural problems and/or misuse of the admin toolkit that cannot be addressed at ANI does not require such a quality. SN54129 17:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

In reading over the proposed decision page, I kept asking myself if it ever occurred to anyone on the committee that AlisonW was under an enormous amount of emotional distress due to her mother's declining health and ultimate passing, and that this might have factored into her misuse of the tools. It also feels like no real consideration was given to NYB's suggestion that the case be put on hold to give Alison the opportunity to grieve. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:53, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kurtis I understand where you're coming from. I will confirm that the committee did seriously consider that the case be put on hold, indeed I would have preferred that myself. However, ultimately, the committee decision was that the evidence phase had closed and the best thing to do would be to finish the case as quickly as possible, rather than leaving a pending decision hanging over her. Worm^TT(talk) 09:01, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kurtis, if that had been a part of evidence (private or public) and/or AlisonW had indicated that her real-life situation was influencing her editing, then yes, I suspect that we would have had a different outcome. As WTT says, though, the only notice we received was after the Evidence closed, and it did not give any indication that what you are suggesting may have been the case. Primefac (talk) 11:44, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

I continue to believe that handling this by motion would have been less stressful for AlisonW than a full case, which simply spread the pain out over a longer time period. Her contributions to the project would seems to have earned that consideration. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:35, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
I'm very uncomfortable with statements like "contributions to the project would seems to have earned that consideration". I think it's very rare someone makes it to arbcom without making significant contributions since if they don't, the community will normally just deal with it themselves so what's the point? It's something that pretty much always applies when an editor makes it to arbcom. (Note I have no comment on the motion proposal. It may be that a motion was a better way to deal with this case or even most desysop cases.) Nil Einne (talk) 10:40, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
I disagree. There are contributions and there are contributions, they are not all equal, and while all edits and actions which further the project are helpful and welcome, some are simply more significant than others. AlisonW's contributions -- which were over and above simply editing the encyclopedia -- occurred in the very early days of the project, and we should certainly show respect (which is just as much a pillar as civility is) for those actions. I am absolutely not saying that the Committee "dissed" her by opening a full case instead of handling it by motion, but I do think it would have reduced the amount of her stress to have gotten it over more quickly. Maybe AlisonW feels differently, but I'm certainly not going to bother her by asking her or pinging her here. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:52, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
I feel like we are in a very sticky spot regarding motions instead of full cases. I agree that desysopping by motion is less stressful for everyone involved, but by the same token, it is felt that we owe the consideration of fully examining the evidence and giving the full right to respond to all accusations. Which is more fair to the admin under discussion? I'm not sure I have an answer. There are some cases where there is a single, recent incident that is the whole focus of the case, and I think The Fred Bauder case (in which I and others asked the committee to consider a motion rather than a case) in particular pointed out how a case was a waste of everyone's time as it changed nothing about the exceedingly obvious outcome and gave the case subject more time to cast aspersions on others and try and distract from the actual issue under discussion. On the other hand, this last case came right down to a tie-breaking vote. I thought what the outcome was should be obvious, but clearly I was just -barely- in the majority in feeling that way.

A possible third route is the "take the case, desysop right away,but suspend the full case for three months" approach we have thusfar only used in cases where the admin in question has indicated at the outset that they are quitting the project entirely and will not partipate in the case. Perhaps, instead we could make this the new model? It gives the admin a simple choice: just do nothing, and in three months the desysop becomes permanent, or take the option of the full case which has a good possibility of ending in the exact same result.

It's not like we want to do a bunch of admin conduct cases, there is a reason arbs are often strong supporters of things like activity requirements. I think at this point we've gone about as far as we can in that direction, and there will always be a few cases like this last one, where the admin is not at risk for being procedurally desysopped for inactivity but there is still a real problem that seems to be related to being out of touch with the community. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
Such a methodology is perhaps possible, but I would want it to be 'if the admin demands their "trial by court-martial", then the default situation is the restoration of their sysop rights'. That is, an affirmative decision to remove the rights would remain the requirement. Nosebagbear (talk) 20:42, 29 July 2023 (UTC)

ToBeFree promoted to full clerk

Original announcement

Congrats ToBeFree! DanCherek (talk) 01:45, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Congratulations! You've officially made the team! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 04:06, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Congratulations! – dudhhr^talk _contribs (he/they) 05:55, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Congratulations! Well-deserved after single-handedly clerking the monster that was WP:HJP. — SamX [talk · contribs] 14:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Well deserved, congratulations. --qedk (t 愛 c) 21:16, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
@ToBeFree: Congratulations! --TheSandDoctor ^Talk 22:36, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
Congratulations ToBeFree! 👏👏👏👏👏 Aasim - Herrscher of Wikis ❄️ 18:53, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Thank you all very much! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
Belated congratulations. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:19, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to you, my main mentor. :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 12:24, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 18:55, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Paradise Chronicle

Original announcement

~~Two~~ ~~Three~~ Four thoughts:
1. As I commented at the motions page, I don't really object to this particular ban, mostly because of their continuing problems after unblocking. But I do have a slight "statute of limitations" uneasiness. If they had been an angel since the unblock, I'd pretty strongly disagree with it.
2. I wouldn't be terribly surprised if this was de facto forever, I assume it isn't de jure? It's an AE block by ArCom; if I were to spend hours rummaging thru the red tape cabinet, would it explain how and when they can appeal? My guess would be the appeal has to be to ArbCom, not the community? Is this already set down somewhere, or should it be mentioned on their talk page? Would appealing in less than a year just be dumb, or would it also be illegal?
3. I'm bemused to see how rapidly they've become an unperson: RFA comments they made while not banned have been stricken because they're banned now. Userpage blanking in 3... 2... 1...
4. I appreciate ArbCom's willingness to relook at a mistake they made in the past.
Floquenbeam (talk) 18:29, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
You're right that information about how to appeal should be given. I've left PC a message about it. As for timing, there was no minimum set so I would say anything less than six/twelve months is incredibly unwise, longer than that is better, but there is no minimum time they have to wait. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:36, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
And, for the record, policy does specify how to appeal (WP:UNBAN, under "Appeal of Arbitration Committee decisions"). Dumb, not illegal, sums it up.
Is striking RfA !votes for folks who weren't blocked/banned at the time (and weren't actively evading a block/bab) normal? Am I missing some policy? KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:26, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
Not that I’m aware of, although I’m guessing it was struck in part due to this question Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 19:28, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
I don't think there's a policy; it's just typical WP "not of the body" behavior. Floquenbeam (talk) 19:56, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
With the caveat that I voted to support Pppery, I agree that the striking of PC's vote is a bit concerning. We weren't blocking him for the socking, it was for behavior (if informed in part by socking years ago). I agree that just because someone has been blocked does not mean we should tear down their work, unless it was block evasion. Though I admit his vote wasn't very high quality, that seems like something for the crats to consider rather than wholesale removing his vote.
In a similar vein, and in response to Floq's point about userpage blanking, I am also resistant to blanking people's userpages for bans...it gives "tearing down the statue of our tyrannical leader" vibes. While we could independently debate the merits of such real world deplatforming (ba dum tsh), I don't think that is generally a good practice on Wikipedia except in the implementing of DENY. PC may not be currently suitable for Wikipedia, but he's no troll, and he wasn't block evading, so I'd be unsettled if his userpage was blanked. CaptainEek ^{Edits Ho Cap'n!}⚓ 21:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
I'm getting a little wide of the topic, but you made me think of two broader issues in the community that are relevant here. There's been some discussion, that I really ought to get back to getting moving again, about whether editors who are not admins should go around tagging user pages of banned users when the enacting admin didn't do it. That's similar to blanking, and the community seems to be of various minds about it. Also, I was in a deletion discussion recently, where one editor who was making what I think were unhelpful comments got indeffed over something somewhat related. I struck their !vote in the deletion discussion (which would have made no difference to the consensus anyway), and another editor objected to my doing so because it wasn't strictly block evasion. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

One was struck at my RfA, which irked me, but I thought better than to challenge—partly because I was aware that, out of the total number of supports, there were probably a few sox hiding in there and so it cancelled out, and partly because it seemed reasonable to say that no 'crat should give much weight to that particular user's vote. I do think it's best to stick to a strict test of "block evasion or not?", though. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 20:15, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
On the RfA striking (which I think Maxim has undone) I think probably the thing that sets this apart was that the vote was cast when a ban was already passing with a majority of active arbs and the enactment of it was basically just paperwork. I don't really have a strong feeling either way on if it should be re-struck; the RfA is likely to pass above the discretionary zone at this point so it doesn't really matter, but I can see a case for striking this because of not a bureaucracy and the like vs. striking the vote of someone who who was indef'd for copyright violations 5 days after voting in an RfA. Ultimately it is up to crat judgement, but this one I could see the case on either way. TonyBallioni (talk) 01:38, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
It should not be re-struck. Unless it was a sockpuppet/block evasion, the !vote was valid when it was cast. If the RfA falls within the discretionary zone (or just above it such that PC's !vote puts it over) then the Crats can decide how much weight to give it. That's what they're here for. I'm not thrilled with the trend of damnatio memoriae for things sitebanned users validly did before they were banned, unless it was directly related to the ban reason (such as closing the XfDs for someone who was banned for making disruptive XfD nominations). It just seems like pointless WP:GRAVEDANCING. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 17:07, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree with The Wordsmith. There are only 2 reasons to strike a vote: the vote itself was against policy (including ban evasion), or it's likely part of a disruptive pattern of innocent-looking edits. Unless ArbCom make a public assertion to either of the above, or strike the votes themselves (or via the clerks), the votes should remain. Animal lover |666| 16:22, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
FWIW, a former arb had raised the issue of PC"s question at the RfA internally. That to me could have been removed as disruptive and I would have done so, if Pppery hadn't already answered it by the time I went to the RfA page to do so. At that point it felt better to let sleeping dogs lie. For me the striking of the vote is really more of a formal clerking action that falls into the crat realm of responsibility and so Primefac/Maxim handling that as they feel best as crats feels appropriate. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't arguing for it but I also understand the point of view: yes, there's a 24 hour waiting period between an arbcom motion passing and it's enactment, but for all intents and purposes someone with a passing ban motion and no opposes is banned and it is a matter of bureaucracy to affect that. I'd make a very similar argument if an admin who had a desysop motion decided to implement restrictions under contentious topics or the like with a passing desysop and the 24 hour clock running on the case closure. Is it technically allowed? Sure. Is it taking advantage of a procedural protection meant primarily to give protection in less straightforward instances to make a political point? Yes. But I also don't think non-crats should be making that call. Just pointing out that the specific case we're talking about here is not as straightforward as "well he was blocked after his vote was cast." He was blocked after his vote was cast, but with a ban passing and the 24 hour timer running. And his vote and question were directly related to his ban (i.e. he was basically saying he was banned because I and/or the people who commented on his talk page disagreed with his view of his initial block.)
This isn't going to be a recurring thing, luckily, but I also don't really think it is as straightforward a situation as you/Floq present it, and it probably hasn't happened in over a decade if ever, so it was reasonable for BMK to raise the point. The back and forth over after a crat had restored the vote wasn't, though. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:26, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Concerned

[16]

My understanding is that, per WP:BAN, bans are to the person, not to the account.

So the link above would appear concerning.

Due to the behind-the-scenes that apparently went on with this editor, I thought I'd ask here before leaping to any conclusions. - jc37 08:49, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

jc37, genuinely out of curiosity, why do you find it concerning? The edit itself is undoing the previous edit, which (some would argue inappropriately) blanked part of the user page. Primefac (talk) 09:24, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Ok, so I feel dumb now. My apologies. I did not see that it was a reversion. It looked like an addition. Thank you for looking into this. - jc37 09:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Change to the Functionary team

Original announcement

This is a nice contrast to the welcome Brad initially got upon his return to activity here. Welcome back. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:10, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Welcome back to the “Brad cabal”! Courcelles (talk) 22:32, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Welcome back! Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 03:46, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Hmm It's August. Are we nearing the time to start the "bradv for Arbcom" campaign, yet? : ) - jc37 05:25, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the warm welcome. @Jc37, let me save you and anyone else who might be thinking this some time: No. :) – bradv 13:09, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah well. There's always next year... : ) - jc37 13:29, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I might as well say in public what I've said in private. I have absolutely no doubt that bradv would be a good arb (again). On the other hand, I think it's more important, for the long-term health of the project, to be identifying, grooming, and recruiting new blood into leadership positions rather than recycling the old guard. RoySmith (talk) 20:52, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Cool. It's nice to see a well-respected user return. Nice to meet you, and welcome back. Pecopteris (talk) 18:13, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Change to the Checkuser team

Original announcement

2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: announcement

Original announcement

Arbritration Requests Buddy

I have asked User:Bellezzasolo about their script, but just noticed they haven't edited four months. Hoping all is well with them of course. But how/where is it getting maintained? Thanks! SN54129 16:10, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Would be nice to get that integrated with Twinkle someday. I have some notes on what that would take over at Twinkle Ticket #1806. Edit filter #602 throwing a warning that stops attempted edits, plus inconsistency between the three CT alert templates such as some adding a heading and others not, creates many challenges from a programming perspective. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:52, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Novem Linguae, interesting. Oddly I already thought it was part of Twinkle, but that's because it's in the same tab, I guess. SN54129 17:07, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The Bellezzasolo script uses Wikipedia:Morebits for its front end, which is what Twinkle uses, so it has the exact same look. But yeah, it's not technically part of Twinkle (is installed and maintained separately). –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:18, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

Change to the Functionary team

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding WikiProject Tropical Cyclones

Original announcement

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SmallCat dispute closed

Original announcement

This is a very sad occasion, speaking as somebody who has seen BHG around for almost two decades, and almost always agreed with her on substance. A very high and substantial edit count, from a person who was key in forming many of our early editorial principals. I do understand what happened and why, but its still hard to take. Wish BHG, who always had very, very impressive energy and insight, all the best for future projects, and wish to thank her for her countless hours / years of voluntary work which has significantly aided our project. It seems like the end of an era. Ceoil (talk) 03:37, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

@Ceoil: This might be a weird thing for the filing party of that ArbComm case to say, but I agree with every word of that. - RevelationDirect (talk) 13:40, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Seems like the end of a 3 year long downward spiral.I think Wiki was stressing her and this is certainly time for her to think of her actions through.I hope she comes back better that ever.--88.240.152.194 (talk) 08:24, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

She has closed to 3M edits, the second-highest only behind Ser Amantio di Nicolao. Just a random Wikipedian^(talk) 09:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and 88.240's point is well made...that level of work and commitment has to lead to a certain level of burn out. I do see a way back for her also, after time out, as 88.240 says. Ceoil (talk) 13:06, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

I thank the Arbitration Committee for making the difficult but ultimately correct decision for enwiki. I truly wish it didn't have to come to this but years of intractable disputes take a toll on editors, and the community in general (Barkeep's vote on the matter comes to mind, it is quite well-written and conveys the point much better than I have). That said, I wish the parting editors the best, and I hope to see them participating positively to the wiki in the future. --qedk (t 愛 c) 12:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
For those ArbCom members who patrol these discussions, you might want to look at WP:AN#Request to delete some taunts from a userpage.--Bbb23 (talk) 13:10, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Personally I think the community gets to decide this. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:03, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I agree that this a community issue, and as a member of this community I have removed the worst bit. Further discussion at the AN thread. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:41, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I can't believe you're on WPO talking shit about about someone you just sitebanned. Ugh. Personally I think that's actually worse than what BHG did, and she was also very uncivil. But as least she didn't use her tools on people and then talk shit about them on other websites. And then on top of that, removing stuff from her userpage? The only thing worse is that everyone else here tolerates this. Levivich (talk) 16:09, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I tolerate it, in the sense of the second definition on wiktionary, because the community, through ACE, has decided it tolerates it (in which definition of the word I don't know) in an otherwise really good arb. I have on more than one occasion said something to Beeblebrox when I thought he posted something which went too far on WPO. Truthfully, and he knows this, I would prefer he stop posting to WPO altogether. Failing that I wish would cut it back to participation of the sort Newyorkbrad and Worm That Turned do. And yet I cannot say that I think anything posted there about BHG was too far or even talk "shit". Barkeep49 (talk) 16:23, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I think he made the right call, and have revered Levivich on the basis that the diff would hamper any future block appeal. Re WPO, generally Beeblebrox holds back, and from the trenches its good to see an arb being open on another form, it gives insight and makes the gods seem more human :) Incidentally Barkeep I think you went above and beyond on this. Ceoil (talk) 16:33, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I try to be really open here, on wiki, with the people who've trusted me and are a current part of the community I serve, rather than being open with people who have, in many circumstance, been banned from the community. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:35, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Am well aware and glad of you being really open here, in case you thought I was saying otherwise. Frankly I think the current generation of arbs is one of the best yet. Ceoil (talk) 16:40, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I'll admit to being ignorant of virtually everything that happens on WPO, but I think it's unseemly for an arb to be discussing cases on outside forums. If it's confidential, do it on arbcom's private channels. If it's not confidential, do it on the public case pages. RoySmith (talk) 16:55, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I have to disagree, editors should be able to discuss cases wherever they want. It's a position of responsibility, as long as they are not misusing the powers of their given responsibility, I don't see a problem. Let's not forget that committee members are community members first and arbitrators second. qedk (t 愛 c) 22:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
As a matter of practicality, people will discuss aspects of one part of their lives in other places outside of that part, and it's not feasible to try to have some kind of blanket rule. But as I wrote before when this came up, the issue is expanding the minimum requirements to be able to engage fully in Wikipedia's community. I understand why it's attractive for editors to make comments off-wiki, allowing them to make statements beyond what Wikipedia's etiquette and guidance would permit. But if editors make a habit of this, and it becomes necessary to participate in venues other than Wikipedia in order to gain a full understanding of people's reasoning and actions, then participation on this site alone is no longer the minimum requirement for editors to fully engage with others. I think editors need to bear this in mind and strive not to set up different cliques of users with differing levels of access and knowledge. (Or the community should be upfront and state that participation in venues X, Y, and Z is necessary to be a full participant.) isaacl (talk) 22:29, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
@Isaacl that's at least part of where I was going. There's off-wiki channels (IRC and mailing lists) that I participate in where stuff relevant to my admin work is discussed. Some of them are access controlled, some are (mostly) public. None are technically required, but if I didn't participate, I'd be totally out of the loop on many things. But at least those channels are advertised on-wiki as appropriate and suggested places to communicate.

WPO is not. So, consider the situation here. We have an accusation that one of our arbs has acted inappropriately. And a counter-claim that he hasn't. Since this occurred in a forum I don't participate in, I'm at a loss to evaluate for myself which of those are true. Multiply that by Discord, Mastodon, and who knows what else, and this becomes a real problem.

@QEDK I agree that our policies don't forbid participating in WPO. But, there's a gap between "not misusing the powers of their given responsibility" and "best practices". RoySmith (talk) 23:20, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
Just to clarify, by "access" I meant that, for example, those participating on IRC with you have access to you and your statements through that channel, while others do not. This can create different categories of users unless care is taken to avoid this. isaacl (talk) 23:46, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
@RoySmith sure - like others I'd rather he didn't, but like you note policy doesn't prohibit it. As such, the correct way to try and square that circle is firstly to make your views known (and Beeblebrox is aware of various concerns), then to bring it up at ACE questions, and (as needed) in your votes for candidates. Nosebagbear (talk) 13:04, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I was already planning to ask about this at ACE. I did spend a little time poking around on WPO and noticed that Beeb isn't our only arb who partakes. RoySmith (talk) 15:22, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
I'd just note here, because I know that some folks won't even look at WPO that I said nothing substantive about the case while it was underway, and my comments since then have been as follows:

I'm glad it is over
I think we came to the correct result
I do not think BHG is the sort of person who would resort to socking in this situation.

I'd genuinely like to know which part of that is "talking shit" about BHG. It is also funny to me how many times peiople have said that they don't approve of my participation there while at the same time making it clear that they read it religiously. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:57, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with your attempt to make participation on the site an equivalent act to reading it. I make no secret that I read it; this is how I could say that I also found the charge of talking shit baseless. I read it because it's helpful to understand the full context when some WPO bugaboo makes the leap and becomes an onwiki thing (though I do think this happens less than when I started 5 years ago) and secondarily because I want to consider many viewpoints in order to make the best decision I can because there are some good faith critics whose POV deserves consideration even if I have to wade through admitted trolls and banned editors to get it. On top of that your participation as an arb colleague of mine makes it more important to read it than it would be otherwise. If you and a few other people who I like and think well of, outside of your WPO participation, weren't lending that crowd legitimacy I'd have a lot less motivation to read it. But you do participate and the community tolerates it, so here we are. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:07, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth I didn't mean you or any of the arbs. You said you tolerate it, which I know, and which is far more ... tolerant... than a lot of other feedback I've gotten on this subject. On that point, I am also very aware that a decent segment of the community thinks it is crazy/scandalous/should be against policy/etc. That's fine too. I don't require everyone to "get" what my own personal agenda is in this regard. I don't know that I've ever even tried to explain what it is to anyone here or there. It's probably better that way. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

On the broader point raised above by isaacl, yes, if you want to read my candid comments about WP, that's where they are. That is where I have personally chosen to have just one off-wiki venue for discussion of WP-related things. I don't have any desire to use IRC or Discord for that, but I have no issue with others who make that choice. It's a mixed bag to be sure, but so is WP itself. We wouldn't need an Arbitration Committee at all if it wasn't. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:27, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for intruding, but the true test is if Beeblebrox is voted in by the community. Check. Any intra-arb disagreements should be taken off-line. Ceoil (talk) 03:52, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Which is the point that Barkeep made. Izno (talk) 04:44, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I've posted a note at VPP to get the community's pulse on this... Thanks, Lourdes 15:16, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Noting that the VPR discussion has been closed. Folly Mox (talk) 17:55, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Linking the closed discussion's permanent link here for reference. Thanks, Lourdes 09:09, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Break

I'm not sure where to put this comment so I'll just place at the bottom of the page. I'm shocked at the punishment for BHG. I have gone to her for help countless times. Yes, she can be brusque but an indefinite ban, no email, no talk page? This is what we do for sockpuppets with long-term abuse, not editors that I think are irreplaceable. I haven't read through the entire case but it seems like you are coming down particular hard on a female editor. As for emptying categories out-of-process, I handle empty categories daily and while doing this disruptive editing is something I rail about in CFD discussions, it is very common behavior for editors who work with categories to empty them out. Is this going to be the new red line for blocking editors and this emptying is going to be treated so severely, we'll lose half of the editors who participate in deletion discussions at CFD. I really don't understand the harsh reaction here against these editors but I'll look over the evidence later. Who knows, I may return and strike some comments but just reading the case summary, it seems to come out of nowhere. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:06, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
If you had reviewed the evidence, in the way that the arbs had, you might have reached a different conclusion. For instance, because of my knowledge of the evidence I know for a fact that, at least at one point in time, you didn't feel that LaurelLodge's emptying of categories was appropriate.Barkeep49 (talk) 00:21, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
Okay, granted I am just looking at the evidence and maybe my attitude is colored by my longtime admiration for BHG, her work ethic, skills and knowledge. But I thought, at least, some agreement would come out about what we should do with SMALL CATS but this is all about editor behavior. I understand ARBCOM doesn't set policy but I expect disagreements on this subject of small categories to continue. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:28, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
I am very confident that ArbCom did not treat BHG any differently because she is a female editor. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

I thought, at least, some agreement would come out about what we should do with SMALL CATS but this is all about editor behavior. Isn't that exactly what ArbCom's supposed to do? Arbcom is all about behaviour failure - what we do with an editing guideline such as SMALLCAT is a matter for community consensus and is not within Arbcom's remit, surely. DeCausa (talk) 20:22, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Arbcom does not set policy, and that includes not telling the community what it should do about small categories. Arbcom's remit in cases like this is to investigate the behaviour of one or more editors that is allegedly preventing the community coming to an agreement and, if they find the accusations were supported by evidence (which in this case they did) to issue remedies that will enable the community to reach agreement. Thryduulf (talk) 06:31, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't empty categories out of process and have been working with Liz to address that issue. Other than Laurel Lodged, this practice seems to be more common with one-time CFD participants or non-participants. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:52, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Liz, if you don't have the time and patience to wade through the entire case, please at least read the proposed decision page, and in particular the arbitrator comments for Finding of Fact 3 and Remedy 1. This ban didn't come out of nowhere. —Cryptic 21:46, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
I would add principle 3 to that reading list. It's a new principle for the committee, and I belive a very important one that we will be seeing again. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:25, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
In anticipation of this being a popular principle to cite, and in an effort to promote semi-soft cheeziness, I've created WP:BRIE. RoySmith (talk) 23:09, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
What a cheesy shortcut! (joke) (But seriously, I agree that it's an important principle.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:30, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
Its sad to see BHG banned, I had a bit of interaction with her as both of us have lots of involvement with categories. While I didn't think when I first started seeing complaints years ago about civility I didn't think they were correct but as time went on unfortunately I did seem to notice problems however I'm not sure a site ban with an appeal date of at least a year is proportionate, would maybe an appeal of a few months be better? Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:56, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
No, definitely not -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 18:41, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
To expand on that, this is a standard minimum timeframe for an appeal of an ArbCom ban. Only in exceptional circumstances would the committee even consider an appeal before that, and I am unaware of any such circumstances here. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:23, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
As someone who did follow this case closely, and was previously hounded off the project by BHG and her supporters, I for one think ArbCom absolutely made the right decisions here, and that the two banned editors have no place on this project until and unless they see the error of their ways, express genuine understanding and remorse for their disruptive behaviour, and can demonstrate significant changes in their attitudes.

The notion that any participant in this case was treated more harshly based on their gender is utterly groundless. Waggers TALK 20:31, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Frankly, I was not surprised when BHG got the indef ban and not sorry at all to see her finally leave the project. In the portal ArbCom case, multiple editors expressed in writing that they were chased away by BHG's aggressiveness and nastiness. Any editor who isn't an admin would have been indef banned for their behaviour from that case alone, but she got away with just desysop and namespace restriction thanks to "super mario effect", which led us to this case 3 years later. Had ArbCom acted more swiftly and decisively in 2020, we wouldn't have this case today. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 04:54, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
Are we really still talking about this, three and a half years later? Oh well. As several of us said at the time, we only received evidence that BHG had conducted herself poorly in the context of the (already highly contentious) portals dispute. We gave her the benefit of the doubt that, removed from that context, she could return to editing in the productive and non-controversial way she had for the preceding 15 years. Obviously, we were wrong, but I don't regret giving her that chance. That's not the super mario effect, it's not turning on people who've devoted a significant chunk of their lives to this project at the first infraction. – Joe (talk) 05:26, 8 September 2023 (UTC)
I sorry to say I'm not shocked. From the first time I ran into BHG, before I became an admin in 2012, I found the aggressive tone and demeaner to be so bad, that I have refused to enter that area of the wiki. I had already favorited her 2nd RFA in case she ran again. In real life, she may be the nicest person in the world, I have no idea. But the aggressive behavior predates the last 3 years. She may very well be right on the substance most of the time, and she was obviously productive, but if you are chasing off other editors (like me and surely many, many more) from participating in an area, then we have a problem. This might not be the most popular opinion, but I've been following her for 15 years, never saying a word, simply to avoid her. I think we gain more than we lose with this ban. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 23:06, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk page access

The site ban policy allows for an exception allowing editors to keep their talk page access.

Fellow top-ten editors with lengthy block histories Koavf and Rich Farmbrough have never had their talk page access revoked, but Lugnuts had theirs revoked on August 2, 2022, a day after their last edit.

Her talk page access was previously revoked at 18:12, 9 October 2022, but only for a matter of hours, not days (expiration time was 01:11, 10 October 2022) - "talk page access while blocked is for appealing the block, not for posting extended diatribes" Community sanction enforcement: Violation of the civility probation imposed at Special:Diff/1039021442, per WP:ANI#Uncivil behavior by BrownHairedGirl. Calling editors "sneaky" and "nasty"; accusations of "anti-intellectual bullying".

A finding of fact in the Small-cat case noted the previous block from her talk, but the vote to ban her did not explicitly vote to revoke her talk page access. – wbm1058 (talk) 12:17, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

It is standard procedure for Arbcom bans to revoke talk page access. So when the Lugnuts block became an ArbCom ban TPA was revoked and BHGs was done as part of the block. The other two editors named were not blocked by Arbcom. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:38, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

See also the note at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Clerks/Procedures § Enacting bans and editing restrictions (The banning policy states that talk page access is "usually not allowed" and may only be used for appeals. As ArbCom only accepts appeals (for their site bans) by email there is no reason to depart from the "usually not allowed" given that the user in question wouldn't be able to use their talk page anyway.). KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 14:46, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. That text, which appears on the first line in the table Wikipedia:Banning policy § Difference between bans and blocks, was changed from "Usually not allowed" to "No, except for some appeals" by a couple of December 2020 edits. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:25, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little disturbed at the mention of "top ten editors" as if they are some special class and not just editors who make heavy use of automated tools to make tens of thousands of minor edits. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:53, 27 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed they are a special class of editors who make heavy use of automated tools to make tens of thousands of minor edits. Are you disturbed because they get disproportionate attention from the Wikimedia Foundation and the press? (I'll never join this club because I program bots to make such edits, which takes a lot more time, and my bots' edits are counted separately) – wbm1058 (talk) 03:38, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

If you were to combine edit counts from you and all three of your bots that would get about 1.6 million, or currently 8th in the list behind Rich Farmbrough. But that's unfair since you would have to include every other bot operator in the list, knocking you down to somewhere between 30 and 40. By comparison you are at position 199 not counting bots. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

Standard procedure? There is no standard procedure. Looking at site bans emplaced by ArbCom over the last 10 years, only 4 out of 16 had email ability revoked. Only 10 of 16 had talk page access revoked. I'm not advocating for/against BHG's restrictions, but to say this is "standard" practice is false. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:51, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

It has been standard procedure for my time on the committee. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:06, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

The small number of historic cases makes this complicated, still I find it interesting that something that a bunch of things that have AFAIK gone unremarked before when there has been a site ban (removing talk access, 1 year between appeals, posting the standard notice on the editor's talk page including the discuss here element), have each drawn some attention in this case. Nil Einne (talk) 11:01, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

SmallCat guideline discussion

As I would guess everyone watching this is at least "aware" of the WP:SMALLCAT guideline. I'm noting that I started an RfC on whether to mark it historical. - that's my neutral note.

My "opinion" (stated in the RfC) is that I think the rest of categorization policy/guidelines cover this well enough, WP:NARROWCAT, in particular, and so it can probably be deprecated. And I also wonder if perhaps the consistent controversy concerning it might indicate that there is not consensus that it should be a guideline. But whatever the case, I think we should have a community discussion about this. I'd like to hear what others think, and see if we all can talk this out and come to a consensus. - jc37 20:43, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom made a big point that BHG's actions were unacceptable even if she was right on the content question, and I recognise that its role is not to make content decisions. Unfortunately, evaluating conduct objectively will, in some cases, require looking at the content position being adopted.
For example, suppose editors A and B are bickering over a content issue. A wants statement X removed, B says it is reliably sourced, but A says it is a violation of (say) the WP:V policy because B can't access the printed source being used. Both may be acting poorly / unwisely and open to sanctioning, but the fact that B's position is inconsistent with what WP:V actually says / means would be relevant to evaluating each editor's conduct – especially if A and other editors have been WP:IDHT-ignored when the actual meaning of WP:V was pointed out.
In the present case, both BHG and LL engaged in conduct that ArbCom has found to be sanctionable without needing to look at such issues, which has the unfortunate consequence that the content issue about which BHG was screaming was set aside. IMO, this contributed to ArbCom's mishandling of BHG and contributed to her choices regarding participation. I think ArbCom should reflect with regret on how it contributed to her alienation from the process, even if the outcome would not likely have changed.
A related consequence is that ArbCom's limited comments on the SmallCat topic itself have left ArbCom open to being misrepresented. In the RfC on SmallCat started by user:Jc37 at this moment, nearly 40% of all edits and over 50% of the content has come from Nederlandse Leeuw, the editor who ArbCom warned in this case about behaviour in discussions (where evidence of warnings about WP:BLUDGEONing from [multiple editors was presented). NL has added nearly four times as much text to the page as the RfC-initiator (and next largest contributor).
NL's contributions are inconsistent with my reading of the little ArbCom actually did say about the category, representing the situation as ArbCom having declared the guideline ambiguous and that there was no consensus on what the guideline actually says. NL's actions were not sanctioned during the case, though a warning was given, and ArbCom's choice to not acknowledge any merits of respective content positions have (predictably) led to the case's outcome now being presented as a de facto ruling against BHG's content position.
The case outcome (in terms of sanctions) was likely correct, and even inevitable – but the (IMO) unseemly behaviour of NL was predictable and avoidable. 172.195.96.244 (talk) 02:50, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
I'll keep this brief. Arbcom found: reasonable editors can reach differing conclusions about other elements of the guideline, including the potential for growth and whether categories "are part of a large overall accepted sub-categorization scheme." I don't see how this should be understood as BHG was right. Arbcom is implying nobody was "right" (or "wrong"), but that the WP:SMALLCAT guideline's text was so ambiguous that multiple reasonable, but contradictory, conclusions could be reached about what it means, and how it should be applied. That said, you're right I should be careful about how much input I give in the RfC. I've already retracted some comments at jc37's request because they were too unrelated to the question at hand. NLeeuw (talk) 10:55, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
@Nederlandse Leeuw: I note your user talk page comments with RevelationDirect, where your characterise your post above as counter[ing] the false claim that BHG was right. I didn't say BHG was right, and please don't suggest that I did. Further, I see your view of a need for quoting Arbcom's FoF that reasonable editors can reach differing conclusions (i.e. nobody was "right" or "wrong", the text was simply too ambiguous) as necessary to prevent stimulat[ing] the myth that BHG was always right, but just explained things uncivilly as problematic. The "differing conclusions" from "reasonable editors" to which ArbCom refers does not stretch to these words in WP:SMALLCAT:
this criterion does not preclude all small categories; a category which does have realistic potential for growth ... may be kept even if only a small number of its articles actually exist at the present time

meaning that small categories must / should be eliminated – especially when ArbCom stated in Finding of Fact 1 that the guideline
was changed after editors were using it to delete categories based purely on numbers. There has been an ongoing desire, never reaching consensus, to apply a strict numerical threshold for SmallCat (jc37 evidence). Use of such numerical thresholds, even if phrased as a "rule of thumb" or similar such phrase, in CFDs is therefore not supported by the guideline.

Despite your claims, the guideline itself is not ambiguous, and this FoF does not support your contention that ArbCom has declared it so (explicitly or implicitly). I think that it was a mistake on ArbCom's part not to have explicitly rejected claims that the wording of the guideline is unclear, in part because it leaves some room for what I see as your misrepresentation of ArbCom's words. In my view, what ArbCom is saying is that disagreements over implementation of the guideline can be reasonable, which includes differences of opinion when deciding which small categories may be kept at CfD. Indeed, the ongoing RfC about whether to keep the guideline moving forwards is equally a reasonable editorial position to discuss. None of this makes your characterisation of ArbCom's FoF as a declaration that the guideline's text was simply too ambiguous reasonable. I suggest that a more accurate summary would be that two editors behaved so unreasonably / poorly prior to and during the case that sanctions were inevitable irrespective of any merits on either side of the underlying dispute.

Your posts leas me to have the impression that you have adopted a battleground mentality, whereby your content position was in some sense vindicated at ArbCom and the editing community is either pro- or anti-BHG. ArbCom avoids content issues where it can, so much so that they chose not to explicitly state that the guideline is not remotely ambiguous. I suspect (with no mind-reading powers or access to non-public information, etc) that FoF 1 was written to emphasise a general proposition – that disagreements about implementation may be reasonable even when an underlying principle is clear – and then skipped any consideration of the objective reasonableness of the content positions adopted in the disputes that led to this case as irrelevant because the conduct of those interactions more than justified sanctions and made the outcome inevitable.

Please, let the discussion at the RfC develop without bludgeoning. Please stop misrepresenting what ArbCom have said about the guideline. Please leave BHG and her reputation alone. Finally, please try to recognise that this case was not about BHG's content views, that disagreement is not a declaration of belonging to an enemy camp in an ongoing war... and that seeing WP as a battleground (as you appear to be doing) is part of what led to BHG being banned. 172.195.96.244 (talk) 02:15, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
Nederlandse Leeuw certainly hast tended to be overly wordy in the past but, on this page at least, they've typed just 119 words total in a single post. That's the opposite of bludgeoning. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:00, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Typo

The announcement says "The following remedies has been enacted:" That should be corrected to "have". (I see that an editor tried to correct it, but was reverted as a clerk action, so I'm pointing it out in talk.) --Tryptofish (talk) 23:24, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

ToBeFree have, I mean has, fixed it. Thanks.

--Tryptofish (talk) 23:34, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Heh ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:35, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

If our WP (or ArbCom) culture is such that this typo fix was reverted, there’s something wrong with our WP (or ArbCom) culture. Floquenbeam (talk) 00:59, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

(Mostly in response to your edit summary, "what a weird site this is",) to be fair, few websites allow users to edit others' messages, and doing so is almost always inappropriate. That's neither ArbCom- nor Wikipedia-specific. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 06:20, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I would also say that the notices on ACN are cross-posted, so editing just the copy here brings an inconsistency between the notices placed on multiple pages. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 09:19, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Note in particular that editing someone's signed message can and has resulted in major blowups even where the editor thought they were fixing a typo. There is always a risk someone will misunderstand and what they think is a typo, in fact isn't. ENGVAR issues, neologisms and memes, less familiar words, etc. These notices are more complicated since they are effectively group signed as part of a committee so there's less personal feeling, still I think we should always remember there are very good reasons why people might not like their signed comment to be edited by someone even if that editor genuinely thinks they're being helpful. (One case in particular that I remember was someone changing automagically to automatically.) Nil Einne (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

I stand corrected, and will stipulate that it is not at all silly to revert someone who is fixing a typo, quote a guideline at them to make sure they know what they did was wrong, and then redo the same thing yourself, only after the proper forms have been filled out. In my ideal world, the reaction would have just been “thanks”, but I acknowledge that’s crazy talk. Indeed, one of the biggest benefits of Wikipedia is the constant reminder that I do not live in my ideal world. Floquenbeam (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

The proper forms, for those who missed it. —Cryptic 15:14, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I think some of the inconsistent reaction was that I made my revert before talking to the arbitrators and other clerks (as the "no editing this page" rule is well enforced on ACN). So to be clear (in case there was doubt), it wasn't my intention for that revert and then undo-revert process to have been followed. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:41, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Also, to be clear, thanks to JPxG for finding the typo. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:44, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

I guess in my ideal world, a person who finds an error of this nature just asks for it to be changed, and someone changes it with thanks (and in this case perhaps changes it in the multiple places it needed changing). And I would say that of any "officialish" writing, including things like closes. But also I'm pretty live and let live and so I just acknowledged how Wikipedia-like it is for the person who recently changed something officialish I wrote that is quite stale and will probably only be read a handful of times in the rest of Wikipedia history. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:51, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Just as an intellectual exercise, I was looking at this and trying to think which guideline or essay might cover this (besides WP:TPO, which apparently allows for "minor changes" like typo-fixing). At first I thought of WP:CREEP (and m:Instruction creep is an interesting read); then I looked at WP:AJR and WP:SENIORITY; and looked at WP:UCS, and WP:DBI, too; but in the end, I guess it's probably just Wikipedia:The rules are principles. It's interesting to go through and (re-)read the essays once in awhile. - jc37 13:06, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

So JPxG found something that was unambiguously a trivial typo. Just a typo, not some sacred revelation from on high. After a procedural (and unnecessary) revert, I decided to do things "by the book", and post in this section. And ToBeFree promptly fixed what needed to be fixed, and the world was back to normal. And now, there has been all this additional discussion, which is just so Wikipedia. I agree with Floq that there is something incredibly bizarre about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:11, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

This was tame. What would have been so Wikipedia would be a revert war, and an ANI thread culminating in JPxG being topic banned from fixing typos in project space. RoySmith (talk) 21:06, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Now I feel so much better. ;) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:36, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

@RoySmith don't forget the edit war over whether it should be listed at WP:LAME or not... Thryduulf (talk) 21:54, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Superclerk Bishzilla always fix typos on ArbCom pages when seen. Little arbs and clerks never dared revert her yet (cordially invited to try, bwahaha). Unfortunately missed this typo, sorry. (Bishzilla waves at young Floquenbeam and their sock.) bishzilla _ROARR!! pocket 22:00, 31 August 2023 (UTC).

If anyone wants to see something really lame, just see Talk:Barbenheimer, my personal prediction for the next Contentious Topic. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

My offer there to enter that on LAME still stands. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:32, 2 September 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Mark Ironie and CorbieVreccan

Original announcement

I'm guessing this is a WP:MEAT situation, at the very least? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 15:55, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

context. —Cryptic 21:54, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

I understand the motion as passed. It's clear. I was wondering if I needed to display the motion somewhere on my user page? I have the IP declaration there now. Is that sufficient? This is all a bit new to me and I haven't been very mentally acute the last few days. So a bit stupid in my reasoning. Thank you. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 22:14, 17 September 2023 (UTC)

@Mark Ironie the IP declaration is indeed all you need. Barkeep49 (talk) 10:35, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: Thank you. I'll probably keep the motion box on my user talk for a while. I have little desire to sweep this whole thing under the rug and disappear the notice. Some might consider this unbelieveable given this last week of discussion but I'm an honest editor. I'm not going to gloss over these events. I prefer to be forthright and acknowledge my culpability. I've spent a little too much time acknowledging it in my edits the last few days. I'd prefer to just get on with editing and such. Cheers, Mark Ironie (talk) 18:48, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: Community consultation phase open

Original announcement

Worm That Turned stepping down

Original announcement

I'm going to go short because my attempt to do full justice would go very long. Let me just say I think Worm is among the finest examples of an arb we have and he was a huge role model for the kind of arb I wanted to be. Thanks for everything you've done, WTT. I've already said this to him privately but I want to also say it publicly. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you Barkeep, it has been a pleasure to serve along side you as a consistent voice of sanity, even when we did disagree. Of course, I think you couldn't have chosen a better role model, but I am certainly glad you're still on the committee! Worm^TT(talk)
WTT, thanks for your work on ArbCom. I can speak on how taxing it is, and I understand the need to step down for personal reasons. RickinBaltimore (talk) 17:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Rick. It seems like only yesterday we were on the committee together! Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
And maybe it will seem like only tomorrow that you and I can be on the committee together @RickinBaltimore. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:35, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Sorry to see you go, WTT, appreciate your service, appreciate the timeliness of your decision relative to the next election cycle, and hope life is treating you well and this announcement means that only good things are happening to you IRL. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Sandy. The next election cycle is foremost in my mind. As much as I could have ridden it out (my term was up at the end of the year), I know what I'm like and would likely have thrown my hat back in on a whim (I'm generally feeling more positive about the work at that time of year!). Life is indeed treating me very well, but my shifting priorities should be recognised. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
As I've told WTT on our mailing list, he is part of the reason I ever decided to even run for a seat on this committee in the first place. He's been an integral part of thsi committee for a long time and unfailingly a voice of compassion and reason, and he has counseled me personally on more than one occassion. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:10, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Shh, Beebs, don't say that out loud, you'll get me in trouble! Seriously though, I've really appreciated working with you on the committee, straight talking, honest and knowing your own mind, you've been a great person to work with. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for doing it and thank you for stepping down when you no longer could. Best wishes and hope to see you around here in the years to come. Hobit (talk) 17:11, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Hobit, I appreciate the kind words. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for everything you have done. You have been a wonderful influence on the Committee, and on the community. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:54, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Tryptofish, thank you, that means a lot. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service on the committee, you have consistently been one of the best arbs we've had. It's a shame that you're stepping down before your term ends, but I cannot fault you for doing so in the circumstances. Thryduulf (talk) 18:05, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Thryduulf, I do appreciate the kind words. I'm sure the committee will cope without me for a few months, and hopefully we'll get a nice influx of fresh faces in a in the new year. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your work, Worm That Turned, and all the best! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:49, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks ToBeFree and thank you for your hard work as a clerk! It is definitely appreciated! Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks, WTT. You've certainly worked very hard as a member of Arbcom, not to mention your calm and sensible work elsewhere within the project. I hope you stick around to do other things. Risker (talk) 21:07, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your kind words, Risker, I'm glad to say that being on the committee is a lot less stressful these days than it was when we worked together, but I do remember some of the achievements we made with pride. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Sorry to see you go, WTT. Your comments have always been well-thought and insightful. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 22:43, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Ivanvector, I do appreciate your kind words. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your work on the committee. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 23:12, 11 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Dreamy Jazz, and again, thanks for your had work as a clerk - that was very appreciated! Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Wishing you well beyond the wikisphere. I enjoyed the time on the committee with you back in the day, and I think we had a lot of positives with you. Please don't hesitate to say hi whenever. -- Amanda (she/her) 02:27, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks AmandaNP, I too enjoyed working with you back in the day, will endeavour to still appear regularly. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service as an Arbitrator. I have appreciated your good work in the past and will continue to do so. You were one of the most levelheaded and insightful members of Arbcom from what I can see. #prodraxis ^connect 02:50, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Prodraxis, I appreciate your thoughts. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for all your hard work on the Committee, and I echo Sandy's sentiment that I hope this only means good things for you IRL :) firefly ( t · c ) 07:12, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Firefly, and again, thank you so much for your hard work as a clerk! Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
@Worm That Turned - thank you! I haven't been as active as I'd like in that area lately, but hope to pick it up now! firefly ( t · c ) 11:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you. Perhaps I'll get the opportunity to vote for you in some future arbcom-election. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:43, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I wouldn't hold your breath, but I also won't say never! Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
You've left some big shoes for someone to fill! Thank you for the many years of service, WTT. – Joe (talk) 09:06, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Joe, I do indeed have some very big feet... and spend a lot of time trying to keep them out of my mouth... At any rate, thanks for your kind words. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Solid, balanced, hard working, knowledgeable, thoughtful, fair, very fair, compassionate where appropriate, firm where needed, always ready to communicate, always ready to listen and respond, always calm and calming, polite, never nasty or spiteful, a good helping of authority and gravitas - pretty much the template of a perfect Arb. I'll miss you greatly. SilkTork (talk) 10:36, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your service. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 16:13, 12 September 2023 (UTC)
So... it's goodbye from you, and goodbye from him (re ArbCom)? LessHeard vanU (talk) 15:49, 13 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your service. Best of luck to you. MarioJump83 (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your years of service to the encyclopedia. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 05:26, 18 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you WTT, appreciate the hard work behind the scenes. starship .paint (RUN) 14:00, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service and hard work, WTT! Tails Wx 14:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Another thank you. I know that we only see the tip of the iceberg and even that is much appreciated. Waggers TALK 14:20, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your oft thankless work — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 20:03, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you all for your kind words, I have read them all and find them heartening. We don't tell each other enough how much we appreciate each other - our project relies on good will, something we all do need to remember some times. Worm^TT(talk) 07:46, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Resignation of SilkTork

Original announcement

Thank you for your service, SilkTork. I wish you good health and graceful ageing. starship .paint (RUN) 13:58, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks starship. To age gracefully, is something to be desired. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for all that you've done as an arbitrator. I hope that the reduction in stress and workload that comes with stepping down does you well. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Thryduulf. I feel lighter and happier already, having given my notice, even though there's at least two months to go. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Much wisdom in your resignation notice and there has been much in your service. North8000 (talk) 14:10, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks North8000. I feel that my resignation is the wisest action I've done this year! SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service as an arbitrator and, while we're at it, to the project as a whole. Waggers TALK 14:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Waggers. It's good that we thank each other now and again. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and careful work on the Committee. You have consistently been insightful and independent, and I appreciate it very much. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:28, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
I for one have often appreciated your insight and wisdom this past year. I did not realize this has been so taxing for you, and it speaks to your character that you felt an obligation to do your best anyway. Thanks for everything. Beeblebrox (talk) 16:30, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Beeblebrox. Two heads are better than one. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you SilkTork for your service with the Arbcom this year. I appreciate your wisdom and sensibility within the Arbitration Committee. #prodraxis ^connect 17:52, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks #prodraxis. I believe Wisdom and Sensibility to be the missing Jane Austen masterpiece. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service in ArbCom, SilkTork! – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 18:15, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks dudhhr. Much appreciated. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Well, darn it all. As a long and steady voice, you will be most sorely missed and I wish you well in life (growin' old ain't for sissies :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:24, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Sandy. I aim to rage a little as the light dies. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your oft thankless work — TheresNoTime (talk • they/them) 20:04, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks TheresNoTime. There's a certain delicious and pleasant irony in being thanked for doing a thankless task! SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you very much for your work, SilkTork, and all the best to you too! ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:14, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
And thank you ToBeFree for your work, and your quiet words of wisdom. Much appreciated. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service as an arbitrator! Tails Wx 21:08, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Tails. Thanking each other is a small effort, but is so greatly appreciated. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Quite sorry to see this, but I respect the decision and reasons. Thank you for all your wise efforts on Wikipedia. Softlavender (talk) 02:58, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Softlavender. I am touched that people are reaching out. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Also sorry to see this, I've encourage SilkTork to run more than once, and felt he was an excellent arbitrator throughout his time. I also appreciate that real life must come first, and thank SilkTork for giving advanced notice ready for the elections. Worm^TT(talk) 07:51, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Worm. I'm just following your example (and that of Donald Albury last year). SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
SilkTork is/was the mirror of NYB in ArbCom. Hope the place is filled by someone as mature, experienced and thoughtful. Will be missed dearly in the Committee. Lourdes 11:18, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Lourdes. The maturity in this instance is part of the problem. Though, as usual, people's mileage may vary. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service. You served well. – Ammarpad (talk) 19:59, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Ammarpad. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your work this term SilkTork. You've always been able to provide an alternative perspective on issues and you've definitely made me re-think my votes. Best of all you're able to change your mind and give a genuine explanation as to why. I was looking forward to serving with you for two years and am sad that won't happen now, but I'm glad you're resigning on your own terms for a healthy reason. Moneytrees🏝️(Talk) 21:02, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Moneytrees🏝️. I particularly like your comment as I do think that one of my strengths is that I am able to offer an alternative perspective. I tend to put that down to being dyslexic, so viewing things in a less linear and more holistic manner. That strength, though, does also reveal my main weakness, in that I am often unable to see the patterns that others see more easily, and so I miss much, and am sometimes out of step. I always listened carefully to what you said, and found that you had good insights that I could understand. SilkTork (talk) 15:37, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
You are dyslexic...? We think your username is SilkTork; what do you think it is? LessHeard vanU (talk) 16:21, 21 September 2023 (UTC) Oh, and thanks for the arbing. Live well!
I do want to say that I had the great pleasure of working under SilkTork and WormTT as a clerk. They both offered a lot to the committee that will certainly be absent now. Thank you both for your time and service! o7 –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 17:22, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Noooooo! Not another great arb leaving! Thank you for your service. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 21:16, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your service. It was never a dull read of yours and the other arbs' discourse here. Onwards to retirement years! – robertsky (talk) 03:02, 26 September 2023 (UTC)

2023 CheckUser and Oversight appointments: candidate appointed

Original announcement

Congratulations! –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 20:51, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
DatGuy welcome to the club. I think you're supposed to get a fez to go with your mop. Not sure, but whatever, welcome anyway. RoySmith (talk) 22:42, 26 September 2023 (UTC)
No screwdriver? Usedtobecool ☎️ 09:06, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Could I get a cowboy hat instead? It's a bit lonely being the only new candidate this year, being forced to clean toilets and wash sinks solo. Hopefully >1 candidates (I may or may not have some ideas in mind) can replace me next year. DatGuy^Talk_Contribs 09:45, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Looks like my precognesis] proved itself again :) but seriously, it's rather odd that there was only one applicant (no disrespect to DG). Or rather, I suppose, only one applicant that passed the committee's scrutiny. SN54129 11:29, 27 September 2023 (UTC)
Welcome! Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 08:15, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

Wellington Bay unblocked

Original announcement

Bkbray unblocked

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding the Prem Rawat case

Original announcement

Out of curiosity, would the topic overall still fall into the IP area (in much the same way TPM was rescinded due to AP2 existing) or is it distinct enough that there's no connexion? —Jéské Couriano v^_^v ^{Source assessment notes} 20:01, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I think Courcelles' comment at the ARCA is reasonable. Izno (talk) 20:57, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

To me personally, as there is no extended-confirmed restriction in this area and WP:BLPCT offers the same tools, the easiest approach would be relying on BLPCT. If edits about Prem Rawat lead to a need for a topic ban from WP:ARBIPA instead, these edits will likely answer the question too. Regarding existing restrictions, I like to explain "broadly construed" as meaning "when in doubt, yes". ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:58, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

I have removed the DS tag that was bundled with Template:WikiProject Prem Rawat. Category:Pages using an unknown contentious topics code should be empty soon. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 04:03, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

All the manually encoded tags have been removed by myself and Extraordinary Writ (talk · contribs). This maintenance category is now empty. –LaundryPizza03 (d c̄) 04:16, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you :) ~ ToBeFree (talk) 19:11, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Proposed motions on rescinding old topic-wide remedies

Original announcement

Unfortunately, this seems rushed and sweeping. For a single committee to undo decisions by past ones all at once, in individual cases as opposed to WP:ARBPOL overall. And to do so so close to the WP:ACE. Which perhaps is rather the point, that this set of motions could not have been implemented, by this committee's iteration at least, if these were more spaced out.

As for rescinding due to inactivity, I don't have a problem with that, and indeed there are several DS/CT remedies I've never heard of, or if I did, only in passing (recent example). But there is also a misconception that activity could be solely gleaned from WP:AEL entries. I've probably stopped more infobox conflicts by simply telling disputants that WP:ARBINFOBOX exists, than I did with logged actions for, say, Macedonia (see wp:balkans). Which were just the odd protection that could otherwise easily be encompassed within the broader WP:ARBEE (see WP:BALKANS).

Ultimately, the sanction regimes listed seem (mostly) unimportant for the present day, and likely nothing much will be lost by having them rescinded (in whole or part). But I'm not sure such an omnibus of motions was the best way to address their inactivity. Especially as tautologically nothing happens when nothing happens. But in order to find out what's actually what, in consultation with the community, spacing out the process benefit from better optics, at the least. And possibly beyond that, with any potential gains additional scrutiny and focus might bring. Sorry, I might not be available for follow up before the voting ends. Still, foregone conclusion as all this might be, I thought I'd at least get this commentary out before rather than after the fact. El_C 18:00, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it's probably better to not put together all of the old sanctions together in terms of giving an opportunity for, and getting, useful comments from the community. The counterpoint is that this work, from the committee perspective, is neither pressing nor particularly interesting, and thus difficult to execute. (Note that DS reform started to take shape from several candidate statements in ACE2020.) I found over three years that the kind of matters that will get the promptest attention are any of, or a combination of, a case request and some non-public drama. The non-public stuff really should lean towards the 'drama' end versus the ordinary non-public matter, in order to be promptly addressed. The rest of the work would tend to rely on one or two arbs really herding their fellow cats to do something. I would be shocked if this pattern changed in the past year that I've not been on the committee. All this to say is that anything but an omnibus motion is likely to be impractical. Maxim (talk) 20:11, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I see things pretty differently from El C. ArbCom is elected for two year terms. This idea that once ACE comes around ArbCom is supposed to just wait for next year's committee has always struck me as strange and the longer I serve on ArbCom the stranger I find it. It suggests that arbs are actually elected for some kind of dual 9-month terms with a couple of 3-month lame duck/caretaker periods which just makes no sense to me. Further I think omnibus motions are more respectful of the community's time than "we're going to do these once a month for 6 months" or whatever spread out regime is being suggested. It lets the community focus its attention for a short period of time on this maintenance task rather than having to return to it constantly. I think it's far more in-line with what people frustrated at this RfC are asking for. Finally, for me, the status quo is always that a topic area is operating under normal Wikipedia administrative rules. We should only be making extraordinary grants of power to admins when extraordinary circumstances call for it. When it's no longer called for we should be going back to the status quo, not keeping a regime that grants more power than the community is normally comfortable giving to individual admins. I didn't drive this omnibus - frankly I thought momentum was gathering for a different set of cleanup based on feedback from multiple arbs and wish we had been more strategic as a committee rather than moving forward with what was easier - but I see nothing wrong with it happening. Barkeep49 (talk) 20:31, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

I wanted to move the ball on another round of retiring old sanctions after voting on the Prem Rawat motion. So, I spent an afternoon in the archives and drafted 11 motions. I asked for feedback from the rest of the committee for about a week and with those comments came to the text at A/R/M. 8 are incredibly mundane returns of power to the community, 1 is less so.

If you take a look, you would notice the minimal cat hearding that I signed myself up for. That was intentional. I didn't want a project to balloon from a week to 6 months to come to a conclusion. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 23:18, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Reducing bureaucracy without fuss seems perfectly sensible to me. If there are special measures we don't need any more, get rid of them - and ArbCom should have all the info to decide if we still need them. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 08:25, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Briefly: I can see the logic of an omnibus in this instance being better than splitting (spacing out). That said, maybe I'm overthinking it, but it still feels like that doesn't need to happen in either 6 days or 6 months, as there are weeks-rather-than-months durations in between. The inert nature of power that isn't being exercised (bureaucracy on paper only) makes that rather risk free and likely even outside WP:ACE2023. Still, I can't really disagree that besides WP:ARBINFOBOX—notably, the only motion where the nays exceed the yays—there's probably not much to discuss.

Anyway, it's all very niche, but I just wanted to make sure potentially interested parties are informed; have enough time to be informed, since a week and it's done. I was gonna suggest that clerks make such notifications, but in a roundabout way, I found out that's already happening. So kudos, as always, to the clerks. I'll leave you all in peace now. El_C 13:49, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

That was not an official clerk action! I knew Gerda Arendt might be interested in this, so I notified her. I'll happily send more notifications if I'm asked to and if there's any algorithm I can use to determine whom. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:56, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

El_C, are there any other CT areas where you think the existence of the sanctions on their own is sufficient to ensure good behavior? I personally tend to be skeptical of these claims (as I've expressed in the past about the community-authorized "units of measurement in the UK).

To me, the fact that the existence of sanctions keeps people in line suggests that there are a limited number of people that are causing the problem, all familiar with the "back office" parts of Wikipedia, and so more tailored restrictions on those specific people might be just as effectiveo I'm curious what your thoughts are - what topics are like this, and would narrower targeted restrictions potentially be effective in place of the GS/CT toolkit. GeneralNotability (talk) 16:21, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

A small nitpick: I'm not sure omnibus is the best word to use here. An omnibus bill implies that a bunch of things are being packaged together and voted on with one vote. All or nothing. In this case, each motion is getting its own vote, which seems fair enough. Sounds like the concerns are more about information overload and/or moving too fast. –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:25, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I will admit my gut reaction to these was negative; I don't see that any of these topics have gotten less contentious in the real world. But I can't argue with the data, if the restrictions haven't been used then they should indeed be rescinded. I do support leaving the infobox restriction in place; I don't specifically recall probation being applied, but infobox conflicts came up at AE within the last few years if I'm not mistaken. Thank you to the ARBs making a move on this unglamorous work. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:55, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
I applaud this work, see nothing wrong it with it and I thank Arbcom folks for doing it. If the motions were actually contentious, I would have liked to see wider advertising, but IMO such is not the case. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:36, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
Also, echoing Novem Linguae's point, this is not omnibus. Omnibus would be if there were combined for a single vote. Here, each is being decided separately. North8000 (talk) 14:39, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
A note here, since I have some experience with one of these; if a topic becomes a hot spot again it's perfectly possible to file a motion requesting some or all of the remedies be reinstated. The rancor around longevity died down several months after the ArbCom case, so in 2013 ArbCom removed them as dormant, but then in late 2014-early 2015 the topic area completely blew up again (if not quite as spectacularly as what precipitated the case). It took a simple request for a motion for ArbCom to reinstate the remedies, and that enabled AE to clear the resurgent problem out in fairly short order. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:47, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Kolya Butternut unblocked

Original announcement

Slightly odd wording, all things considered. Serial 19:41, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Serial. This is very odd wording when you consider all things. The very specific thing I am reminded to consider is this ARBCOM statement which I found by following links from Kolya's talk page to this background discussion on Abecedare's page about SandyGeorgia apparently sending some private information to Barkeep49. The complaint I have is not just simply with odd wording, but with different standards being applied that seem to be at odds with each other as well. In the former "Flyer22" statement, ARBCOM seems to be taking the very strong position that it is not at all any of ARBCOM's business to go nosing around outside of Wikipedia/Wikimedia SPI's, even going so far as to print it in bold that it isn't within their purview to do so. Yet, in the case of dishing out restrictions, they feel it is well within their power/purview to monitor/restrict the activities of an editor for their online activities outside of Wikipedia/Wikimedia. I would like to know why ARBCOM is not being consistent or why it appears rules are only being applied arbitrarily. ARBCOM isn't supposed to be a denotation for the Arbitrary Committee. I would also like ARBCOM to reconsider the restriction being placed on Kolya. If it is not appropriate for ARBCOM for "conducting forensic investigations off of the site" and "Our authority and responsibilities do not include" such things, then I think that It would not be appropriate for the Arbitration Committee or anyone else to do these things. When ARBCOM says, "we have not and will not do so", they should be held to what they themselves have said. Any restrictions should strictly apply within Wikipedia. The power of ARBCOM does not and should not stretch across the internet especially if that power is only being used one sided to control users, but not in other cases just because of potential liability. Huggums537 (talk) 16:41, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

ArbCom can, and has, regularly blocked people for their off-wiki activities. These blocks for off-wiki activities are authorized by WP:ARBPOL as they are matters unsuitable for public discussion for privacy, legal, or similar reasons. ArbCom does so when behavioral policies are violated in a way that harms individual users or the community as a whole. I don't doubt Sandy provided evidence for this editor but it doesn't stand out because we had no shortage of evidence that spurred the block. I, for one, am glad that Koyla has agreed to the conditions - odd wording or not - and has been able to rejoin the community. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:04, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, there's nothing unusual here, the committee has sanctioned users for off-wiki conduct on numerous occasions. We never said it was not the committee's business to be aware of off-wiki activity, what is not the committee's business is investigating a users personal life, which is what we were being asked to do. I don't think it is in anyone's best interest to dredge that matter back up and sincerely hope this is the final chapter in the whole saga. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

The private evidence I submitted was during WP:ARBMED and had nothing to do with Koyla; it was about a third individual's evidence related to Flyer in that arbcase, and my concerns about who had written that evidence were unrelated to Koyla. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:15, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

PS, as I am on a roadtrip and iPad/Hospot editing with spotty access, I may be mixing up the two arbcases, but the basic facts hold. And I did not submit that evidence to Barkeep; I emailed it to arbcom general. Other than that, I can't decipher what Huggums is implying; the evidence I submitted was a tangential matter, unrelated to conclusions in the Koyla matter. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I can't say I recall with any specificty exactly who contacted us about what, and I don't really feel compelled to go through hundreds of emails trying to figure it out, but "Sandy sent Barkeep a smoking gun that prompted the committee to issue the block" is for sure not a memory I have at all. There is a tendency in siutuations where some material has to be handled off-wiki for people to engage in speculation about exactly what prompted what, and I belive that is what we're seeing here. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:33, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

If that is the claim being made, it's wrong on every count. I didn't email Barkeep; I emailed the committee when I was instructed to do so on a case talk page. Second, the matter I raised was wholly unrelated to Koyla. Third, while I am not on a real computer right now and can't check exact words, it is firmly entrenched in my memory that the response I got was not out of line or irregular in any way and supports what is stated here by arbs -- my memory is that basically that my evidence had no material bearing on anything, as who had written evidence was immaterial and secondary to what the evidence was, and whether I was right or wrong in the longrun had no effect on any outcome. So, I remain uncertain what Huggums is trying to say, but I hope that others will be reminded to let Koyla go about her business subject to the restrictions rather than trying to stir things up again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I have checked the history and as Sandy indicated her evidence had no bearing on the discussion about whether or not to block Koyla. Barkeep49 (talk) 00:02, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for doing that as my access is restricted right now. If Huggums is in fact saying that I had something to do with Koyla's block, I find that very ... troubling ... and firmly reject any such claim. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I merely stated that in the discussion you sent some private information to Arbs. It appeared that it was received by Barkeep, but apparently you only mentioned them because of their knowledge of it. I never said it was related to Kolya. These are connections you all made up your imaginations. If you people are making it this difficult to reason with, then I'll happily go back to pursuing other passions and avoid all this drama. Huggums537 (talk) 09:34, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

P.S. I take this as a sign you are no longer interested in advocating for the case you had brought up in that discussion? Because I would have been a good ally in standing up for ~~the rights of users sending credible information~~ [equal application of the rules] had you not suggested I gag myself here... Huggums537 (talk) 09:57, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Huggums, in your post above, I had no idea what you were trying to get at, but my original post you referenced was rather clearly only about the bookkeeping at the Deceased page and subpages, I pinged Barkeep as they are an arb I trust and wanted someone on Arbcom to know of the subpage issue, and my own experience in submitting evidence relative to that. That I believe I was muzzled in an arbcase and that a third party and others were affected -- something that ultimately made no difference to any outcome -- is unrelated to anything about Koyla, and I don't believe it in Koyla's best interest for this pot to continue to be stirred. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:27, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay, well thanks for clarifying that. However, my thoughts were differing along the lines of thinking that not only was it in the best interest of Kolya, but of all Wikipedians that ARBCOM and everyone in our administration should start thinking about an equal application of rules to all Wikipedians because I see no functional difference between "investigating a users personal life" and "to be aware of off-wiki activity" since the latter requires either some form of personal investigation to be "aware" or else it requires the acceptance of the credible evidence of some form of personal investigation to be aware. The statements being made now are contradictory to the previous statement I linked to. Essentially, it boils down to being told the exact opposite of what was said before; It is appropriate for ARBCOM to investigate users. ARBCOM always has and always will do so when users are suspected of fraudulent or "behavioral activity off wiki in a way that harms individual users or the community as a whole".

I just wish our administration would make up their minds one way or the other, and I don't care which. Either we can investigate users and our power stretches across the internet, or it stops at Wikipedia. Not, sometimes we let it go, and sometimes we don't depending on who we want to control and what's in it for us or what the potential liability might be. If we don't do that to our users, then that means we don't do it for any user no matter if they broke a Wikipedia rule or one of the 10 commandments or some other law. If we do it for blocked/restricted users, then that means we do it for all users suspected of any fraudulent activity or behavioral issue, and in fact should do it for any user period. There is no reason at all to have special spy rules just for rulebreakers. Please make up your minds one way or the other. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 14:32, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought I was done replying to this thread, but this latest reply is really helpful Huggums because it gives me greater insight into what you're troubled by. If an editor goes onto the Wikipedia Discord server (to name something that did not happen in this case) and says something which is then reported to ArbCom, there is no investigation into someone's personal life. It will be confirmed, or not, if it was said so there will be an investigation into the veracity but finding the comment itself required no investigation. This would be equally true if one Wikipedian happened to be on an unrelated to Wikipedia discord server with other Wikipedians (as I am in one tech related discord) and reported something to ArbCom. An example of an investigation into personal information, staying in the realm of Discord, would be if an editor knew a Wikipedian's real name, used that name to find their Discord username, then used the Discord API to find servers they're in, and a bot to log everything they've said in those servers. I hope that helps clarify this. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course. I understand the difference between what constitutes a personal investigation, and what doesn't. However, the issue with the "odd wording" of the unblock is that it effectively gives ARBCOM or anyone else who cares to do a personal investigation a free pass to do so. When you forbid someone to speak of something "anywhere" including "any other online location" that is an extremely broad power to be granting yourselves to examine the contents of someone's snail mail, eavesdrop on spoken conversations, and it doesn't in any way exclude anything you were talking about in either of your Discord examples. So, while you have explained what is personal, and what isn't - the issue of a user being potentially violated in the same way Flyer might have been still remains. Huggums537 (talk) 15:26, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Arbcom isn't going to be attempting to find Koyla violating the ban. I feel confident saying Arbcom would look unfavorably on anyone who made it their mission to investigate Koyla in an attempt to find a topic ban violation. And in many countries someone opening Koylas mail would be a crime so I don't think we need to worry about that. Arbcom didn't launch some personal investigation into Koyla before making the block in the first place - which I belive was a criticism you made at the time of the block. And all of that supposes there will be a violation. I sincerely belive there won't be which is why I supported the appeal and am excited to have Koyla back in the community. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:35, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Okay, then. I have said more than my share. If nobody else has anything to add to the discussion, then there is nothing left to do except welcome Kolya back to the community as you have suggested. Thanks. Huggums537 (talk) 15:42, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

P.S. I hail from the U.S. where it is legal to read mail after it has been discarded since it is then considered abandoned property. Cops can search without a warrant depending on the location of the garbage meaning that if it was in a secured location there was some expectation of privacy, but if it was out in the street, then any citizen would have access to it. Huggums537 (talk) 16:08, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

P.S.S. I understand that none of the worries I mentioned here are a very likely probability of happening, but the very possibility that they do exist in this case, but were not allowed to exist in the Flyer case is what bothers me. It seems rather unjust to this user to give Flyer that kind of benefit to privacy and deprive them of it. Huggums537 (talk) 17:05, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

OK, I get it, but don't want to get involved in that meta-discussion. I was mistreated on a user talk page by non-arbs because I raised credible evidence in the right place, and that was my personal issue. I don't necessarily think the arbs made the wrong decision wrt my evidence, which speaks quite well for itself three years after the fact, so my own issue is resolved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Understood. Huggums537 (talk) 15:32, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Comment: Also, before I take my leave of absence to return to my editing hiatus, I think it is only fair to everyone involved to let it be known perfectly well where I stand since I have been somewhat ambiguous. I 100% fully support the ARBCOM decision to strictly enforce the rights to privacy in the Flyer case since I am a strong proponent of privacy, and also strongly adhere to the principal that the power of Wikipedia stops at its own front door. I also think it was right of ARBCOM to take the matter of privacy as more important over the issue of publicly reserving any judgement as to whether or not any fraud or off Wiki behavioral issues had taken place. It is important to clarify this because I think the same amount of concern for privacy does not get extended to users when they have been for sure sanctioned of some offense, and the same amount of reserving judgement for the sake of preserving the more important issue of privacy does not get extended to sanctioned users either. It is a bias of epidemic proportions that isn't just against sanctioned users, but against the very sanctity of privacy itself. Huggums537 (talk) 18:41, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
In addition to this, the only justifications that have been offered up for this bias so far have been 1) We've been conducting this kind of bias for a long time and managed to induce most [sanctioned] people into agreement with it, so... meh. And, 2) Our bar for deciding who gets privacy protection is arbitrarily made by who we decide needs it more. In the case of Flyer, we decided her privacy was violated, and in the case of Kolya we decide there is a low chance their privacy will be violated. Apparently, privacy protection is only granted on a certain scale of need here where many people don't even know who is holding their thumb on it or who the scale operator is. These are not rational justifications that are good enough for me. Privacy protection should be equally granted to all and not based on what we have been induced to accept or based on what percentage the chance is that our privacy might be invaded. If nobody reading these words can understand the very basic common sense concept that great care, consideration, and tact was given in exercising privacy rights in the Flyer case when she was practically on the verge of being Ibanned at the time, but no consideration was given for privacy in the least whatsoever when crafting the restrictions of Kolya, then there really is no reasoning with anyone here because they will only rationalize it away with unreasonable justifications like the ones already mentioned. Huggums537 (talk) 10:20, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
Huggums, I didn't agree with the arb decision in the Flyer case, and am not privy to all of the information that influenced the Kolya case, and I understand your point about the differences afforded the two editors, but let me devil's-advocate for a moment. We simply do not know all of what the arbs are privy to, nor should we; we elect them because we trust them. I have been on the receiving end of past arb actions to protect me and my family, and a thankfully ongoing watchful eye from functionaries, because of Wikipedia-related threats against my family members; under no circumstances should anyone beyond Arbcom have access to information about this situation even though actions taken might make no sense to those unaware of the backstory. Sometimes we may just have to trust our "elected officials"; we might not know the full story. It is also my impression (could be completely wrong) that Kolya's situation was more related to not dropping the stick; it would be best if it could be dropped now for Kolya's sake so they can go about editing in other realms. Disruption in this years-long matter has stopped; it would be good to leave it that way. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:02, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
I sincerely appreciate your good faith efforts to trust our Arbs, but in like kind I also ask you take a sincere good faith effort to look at the possibility that they are only human like anyone else, and open to honest mistakes. Please take a moment to consider that the problem goes well beyond these isolated examples related to just the Flyer/Kolya cases that you are talking about right now, and see that they themselves have indicated in this very discussion is something that is a regular practice that has been going on for some time. I speak from the heart about these issues as someone who has experienced them as a blocked user in my own past and seen it happen to others as well. So, when someone tells me, "you don't know what happened at the secret meeting" my answer to them is that the ends do not justify the means and people need not be aware of the causes of bad results to know the result was bad. In other words, if I see a train wreck, I don't immediately need to know all the details about what caused it to immediately know that somehow somebody down the line fudged up and that this is really BAD because of it. Huggums537 (talk) 15:43, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

On a different note, I do understand your point about the disruption having come to a stop and Kolya is now back editing. So, I will gladly drop the matter as I wish to go back to pursue other passions. I did feel it was important have spoken my peace and I have done so. I will take your suggestion to drop the matter and whomever reads these discussions may do with the information whatever they will. Huggums signing off.. Huggums537 (talk) 16:03, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Temporary checkuser privileges for election scrutineers

Original announcement

I know, very pedantic, but I think it's Mykola7 not just Mykola. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:29, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks. Primefac (talk) 07:50, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

@Primefac: The error is still up at the AN post. – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 18:27, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

You are welcome to fix it there. These notices go to a half-dozen places, and honestly I do not remember them all. The link itself is correct, just the piped name is missing the 7. Primefac (talk) 18:56, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Ok, I just didn't want to mess with arb notices without asking first. Thanks :) – dudhhr^talk_contribs^she_her 19:25, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Unused Contentious Topics

Original announcement

Should remedies 2 and 3 in E-cigs be marked as repealed too, or do they in some way remain in force? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 05:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

If we did not explicitly remove them, then they remain in force in some way. :) I think remedy 3 does not need repealing as it is just a reminder, but I don't see harm in removal either. I think remedy 2 probably does need removal. @Guerillero Izno (talk) 16:23, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

2 should probably be removed and 3 could maybe be amended to remove the DS language. — Frostly (talk) 05:33, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

I will whip up a motion -- In actu (Guerillero) ^{Parlez Moi} 09:37, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Hey Guerillero, any updates? :) — Frostly (talk) 03:29, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Most of my time has been following Industrial agriculture and working on the draft PD -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 18:45, 8 November 2023 (UTC)

Re WP:ARBMED, at last, and thank you; time reveals what many knew three years ago. It was always wacky that an entire content area (drug pricing) was labeled because of the agenda of two people, and it is no surprise that the issue never recurred. I do hope this example will be kept in mind in future arbcases, as it is unfortunately all too typical for just one editor to make an entire topic area unbearable for the majority of policy-compliant editors and cause the impression of a topic-wide problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:16, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Should the line items for the removed CTOPs be removed or struck out at Template:Contentious topics/alert/first and Template:Alert? Schazjmd (talk) 13:30, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I've done these tables now. Category:Pages using an unknown contentious topics code now has pages filtering into it that will need further adjustment (either removal or replacement with a correct code). Izno (talk) 17:10, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Wasn't the idea (a while back) to make "legacy" codes that could be used in cases like this? -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 15:07, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

What's the idea with legacy codes? Please feel free to write a sandbox implementation and we can get those in. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I remember y'all signed off on it at ARCA like a year ago, I just haven't gotten around to writing something up. I'll try to soon but am spread fairly thin at the moment. If someone else is interested, I sketched out how it would work at Template talk:Ds/Archive 3 § Finally handling "legacy topic areas". -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 15:51, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Not sure how to deal with Template:Liancourt Rocks probation (currently on Talk:Liancourt Rocks and Talk:Liancourt Rocks dispute, which both need the DS/talk notice removed), which is framed as suggestion but then has "must dos" in it that seem extraordinary relative to normal behavioral guidelines. From a glance through the CTLOG these are not logged page restrictions, so I think it is reasonable to remove this template from those pages (and/or TFD it since it appears to be used in an edit notice). Anyone disagree? Izno (talk) 17:35, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Go for it, I say. In any event page restrictions can be removed by uninvolved administrators after one year unless they were imposed by AE consensus. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

If I understand the history correctly, the guidelines discussed at Talk:Liancourt Rocks/Archive 17 § New Rule of Conduct box were added to the article shortly after the arbitration committee enacted Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Liancourt Rocks § Liancourt Rocks article probation. In 2015 this was standardized to an authorization for discretionary sanctions, but it seems logging the legacy restrictions got missed. In any case, if the contentious topic designation has been removed, then it is reasonable to remove any special restrictions that were preserved from article probation under the scope of contentious topics. isaacl (talk) 19:07, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Proposed motion to modify the extended confirmed restriction provisions

Original announcement

I'd like to suggest adding the word "only": 1. Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace only to make edit requests.... (Bolded to show what I mean, not to imply that it should be bolded in the actual text.) If I understand correctly, the intent of the motion is to eliminate confusion over whether non-EC users can do anything else on talk pages, and "only" makes that intention clearer (as opposed to saying that making edit requests is one of the things they can do). --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Excellent idea. Doug Weller talk 09:37, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Makes sense. LessHeard vanU (talk) 14:42, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

This motion passed, and the change was enacted. One aspect of the motion was that "edit requests" was linked to WP:EDITXY. Can this link, approved by motion, please be added to WP:ARBECR? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Done Barkeep49 (talk) 20:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Call for Checkusers and Oversighters

Original announcement

Good idea! - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 22:37, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

+1 Clyde _{[trout needed]} 23:07, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Is this related to the lack of candidates in this year's election? Galobtter (talk) 02:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Highly likely - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 03:13, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Good change that benefits Wikipedia. I see no reason to limit qualified candidates from applying for the perms at any given time. Hey man im josh (talk) 13:40, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Seems like an OK starting point, would much rather just devolve CUOS from arbcom to the community (change from appointments to !elections) - there are drawbacks to that as well though (see 2019 VPI thread on the topic). — xaosflux ^Talk 14:34, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for that link because I'm pleased to see that I had concerns about this idea even before I became an admin (let alone arb). Barkeep49 (talk) 15:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Yep, not trying to bury the lede that it would be far from a trivial change. Some other large community managed CU's include dewiki, ptwiki, and eswiki. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:43, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know about ptwiki, but I do know that dewiki's and eswiki's culture around admin appointments is healthier than ours. Having seen how the last CUOS appointment that really put the emphasis on the community played out (2018) I don't consider the benefits of outweighing the drawbacks. And I'm genuinely thankful and relieved to know that I had these concerns before becoming a person making those decisions as it tells me that I've come to those concerns honestly rather than because I trust myself (and my colleagues). Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

Just for a bit of wiki-history: I was a candidate the last time we did CUOS by election, 2010 if I recall. I feel like there were around eleven applicants. Not one person got elected, at a time when we actually needed new functionaries, and we got literally zero feedback as to why none of the candidates were elcted. That's when the committee developed the process we have been using since then. And I do think it makes sense for the committee to oversee the functionaries, for the simple reason that they can see what the functs are doing, whereas the broader community, by design, cannot. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:06, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, wasn't CUOS2018 a community process too? A few were elected there. ——Serial 15:04, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Those weren't elections; like every CUOS round in many years, community consultation was advisory. See WP:CUOS (The May 2010 elections were conducted using SecurePoll instead of public voting. Only one candidate was successful, which was deemed insufficient given the demand. Following a request for comment, the committee announced that until there was a strong consensus for an alternative approach, the committee would resume making the final selection after seeking input from the community concerning potential candidates.). The Committee's role in making "the final selection" has remained the same since its 2010 announcement. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 15:08, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Incredible! A total opposefest! I guess its testament to allowing admins to be judged by those they might have sanctioned previously. Pretty much an object lesson in what happen at reconfirmation RfAs, too. ——Serial 15:40, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad to see this dropping out of annual cycle, regardless of the current process it's in. -- Amanda (she/her) 03:24, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Alalch E.'s topic ban rescinded

Original announcement

Opabinia regalis resignation

Original announcement

Thank you for your service. Queen of Hearts ❤️ (no relation) 07:46, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your service! Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:00, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Noting, this has no impact on WP:ACE2023. Best wishes with your next efforts OR. — xaosflux ^Talk 16:41, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your service. #prodraxis ^connect 17:38, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your service. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 04:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding the extended confirmed restriction

Original announcement

When the committee says Deletion of new articles created by non-extended-confirmed editors is permitted but not required does that mean speedy deletion by a single admin? Or is the discretion of an administrator when deciding how to enforce this remedy on article creations limited to keeping or nominating for deletion or moving to Draft space? nableezy - 18:56, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

This motion didn't change that provision. However, as for the original provision, it's speedy deletion under WP:G5. The remedy is an equivalent to a topic ban for all non-EC editors from the topic. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:57, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Does anything at WP:PIA need updating? –Novem Linguae (talk) 17:44, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Good question; I think Special:Diff/1133756797 removed a need for updates there. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

I see {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} has been updated; {{Contentious topics/Arab-Israeli talk notice}} has not. (Do we really need both? And same question for {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli editnotice}}/{{Contentious topics/Arab-Israeli editnotice}}?) —Cryptic 22:45, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The change in ECP restrictions at [17] has been discussed here:[18] I've had problems understanding it and having just run across this AE case see that I'm not the only one. User:Selfstudier, User:Zero0000, User:El C any comments or have I misunderstood you? Doug Weller talk 14:41, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

The only thing they can do is make edit requests. There is no longer any discussion option. FWIW the old version prohibited participation in RFCs also. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:51, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

No, Barkeep49, that is not responsive to the criticism about how the wording is unclear. El_C 15:06, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

You're right it's not responsive to the criticism because I didn't understand it as criticism I understood it as confusion which I attempted to clarify. Let me make some comments and see if any/all of these answer the criticism. I think reading only that sentence in isolation is at the heart of this confusion. The key sentence in this part is not this talk page one but The restriction applies to all edits and pages related to the topic area, broadly construed, with the following exceptions:. So that is an absolute prohibition. Everything that follows starts from non EC can edit nothing. Beyond that the confusion seems to be over the word only. That was added after voting had started based on an editor suggestion in order to clarify things. I didn't throw up a roadblock to that change but also didn't think it needed so if that's the word that's the problem I'm the wrong person to ask. I hope somewhere in here I answered the criticism that you wanted a response to. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:03, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

The confusion can be eliminated by taking out the word "only." Then it will read:

A. The restriction applies to all edits and pages related to the topic area, broadly construed, with the following exceptions:

1. Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace to make edit requests related to articles within the topic area, provided they are not disruptive.

Which is clear, whether you read (A) and (1) together, or just read (1) in isolation. Levivich (talk) 17:12, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, not really. I also don't think it would be productive to get bogged down in the semantics of criticism of confusion due to unclear wording. The issue is about potential edit requests via the talk pages of AfDs, DRVs, etc., onto those project pages themselves. I think it's best to make it expressly clear: that non-EC users are only allowed to file edit requests to pertinent articles (content templates?) in contradistinction to internal project pages and processes. Hope this clarifies mine and others' confusion/criticism/lack of clarity. El_C 17:18, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Since KevinL offered to consider tweaks at his talk, I suggested something there. Selfstudier (talk) 17:24, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would write it like this:

A. The restriction applies to all edits and pages related to the topic area, broadly construed, with the following exceptions:
1. Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace to make article edit requests, provided they are not disruptive.

Levivich (talk) 17:26, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Like. El_C 17:46, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I would go with "provided they are constructive" rather than "not disruptive". Also I opened a discussion that relates to this over at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 76#Welcome message for new editors editing ARBPIA topics that I would appreciate feedback on. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 17:49, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

"Constructive" would be holding non-EC editors to a higher standard than EC editors. There's a lot of space between constructive and non-disruptive. WP:DISRUPT is a guideline but "constructive" is in the eye of the beholder. Levivich (talk) 17:57, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

To shorten it further, Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace to make non-disruptive article edit requests. Levivich (talk) 17:59, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't think the real confusion at AE was over the word "only", for which the reasoning was given in the talk section right above this one. Rather, I think the confusion is over whether edit requests are permitted throughout the "Talk:" namespace, or whether they are permitted only on the talk pages of EC-protected mainspace articles. And I kinda think the answer to that is up to ArbCom.

The IP who opened the AE did indeed have confusion over "only", but if one looks at what the IP said, the contention was that "in the "Talk:" namespace, nothing other than an edit request may be made or edit requests may not be made anywhere else than in the "Talk:" namespace" are contradictions. As long as there is clarity over what is meant by the "Talk:" namespace, it's clear that the first interpretation is the correct (intended) one, while the second is actually a true statement that does not contradict anything (that I can see). Instead, it's just kind of irrelevant, and maybe wikilawyering that other talk page contributions are permitted, so long as edit requests aren't put in the wrong place.

I think that this can be cleared up by saying:

A. The restriction applies to all edits and pages related to the topic area, broadly construed, with the following exceptions:

1. Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the talk pages of articles within the topic area, but only to make non-disruptive edit requests.

--Tryptofish (talk) 00:31, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

I have problems with the use of WP:EDITXY as the indicator of what "making an edit-request" means.
(a) The paragraph at WP:Edit requests that introduces EDITXY says to establish consensus before adding an edit-request template. This is now impossible, as discussion is forbidden, so actually non-EC editors cannot follow WP:Edit requests as it is written.
(b) EDITXY requires that editors not only see a problem but also know exactly how to fix it. However, new editors often don't know how to fix problems that they see, and if they are total newbies they might not know the first thing about editing policy and practice. So, for example, "Ref [12] does not contain the information sourced to it." or "The link in ref [12] is dead." are comments we should welcome from anyone but they don't match EDITXY and so now seem to be forbidden. (Editors who use the edit-request template to make such comments commonly get a templated response "Not done. Make your request in a 'change X to Y' format.")
(c) If someone making an edit-request is asked to justify it, are they forbidden from replying?
Much of this comment can be seen as a complaint against EDITXY, which has annoyed me for a long time. I propose first that the link to EDITXY be removed, and second that a revised wording to make the rule self-contained be constructed. As a 0-th attempt: "Non-extended-confirmed editors may use the "Talk:" namespace to point out explicit problems in an article and suggest ways to fix them." Zero^talk 03:40, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

This is actually the main problem with the new wording, which I forgot about yesterday. But I remember thinking about it a week ago when I first seen the motion (seen it, mind you, briefly and in passing). Namely, what do you with WP:ER follow ups. What limits should be set for these, and how does it not become merely a normal discussion? Because indeed, sometimes solutions and resolutions only materialize after several iterations of dialogue within a single edit request. So how many edit requests does a non-EC user get per talk page, per subject matter inquiry, and how many follow ups? I realize a lot of it falls on admin discretion and a broad sense of reasonableness, but the absence of clear guidelines could make this model quite problematic. I get the wish to impose greater limits on non-EC participation, which I'm not inherently opposed to, but applying it in practice may prove to be a whole other animal (in a whole other galaxy). El_C 08:58, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Is there any template we can use to inform editors of the current restrictions on them participating in discussions? I don't mean a generic contentious topics one, rather I'm wondering if there's a template I could have used to inform these IP editors [19] why I deleted their posting. (As I understand it, it was reasonable for me to delete their comments since they weren't allowed to post them and no one had commented who could.) Nil Einne (talk) 07:17, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I threw together {{welcome-arbpia}}. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:25, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

SFR, I'd suggest changing the template background color to something like Template:Contentious topics/alert/first. The current lime green color makes it look like a warning instead of an introduction. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:57, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I thought green was a non-threatening color, and it won't disappear if the alert/first template is given at the same time. The hope is that the plain language explanation of the most important thing will stand out. I opened a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 76#Welcome message for new editors editing ARBPIA topics. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:14, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I know its too late for a reconsideration, but thinking about it I think you all are creating an Emergency law in Egypt situation, where one event (Sadat's assassination) led to an indefinite "state of emergency" that banned what would have already been limited rights. Right now, this second, we have a sub-topic of an already contentious topic that has reached this fever pitch, and we have an influx of users, new or returning but it doesnt matter, drawn to WP because of a real world event. And I agree the level of disruption does indeed warrant emergency actions, but for the scope and duration of the emergency. Think you would all be much better off making this apply only to articles related to the 2023 Israel-Hamas war, and for a limited duration of time. Do we really need to ban any non-ec participation outside of edit-requests to the wider topic area indefinitely? That strikes me as an overreaction to a problem that is limited in scope, and, likely, also limited in time. And for that emergency just simplify it and say no non-EC participation period for these articles/talk pages for war+n months. nableezy - 00:37, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

KevinL has a suggested rewrite Selfstudier (talk) 11:33, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

LGTM. If this doesn't work, maybe try "a whistle." Levivich (talk) 17:43, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

If you and others would also comment at KevinL talk, we can try and put this to bed. Selfstudier (talk) 14:47, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Appeal from Ethan2345678

Original announcement

How does an Arbcom appeal of a globally locked user work? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus great question. We consult with the Stewards about whether an unlock is possible if we wanted to grant an unblock. They either tell us it is (in which case we consider the appeal) or it isn't (in which case we don't). Barkeep49 (talk) 15:45, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Is ArbCom able to share the contents of Ethan's appeal, or at least a summary of it? If I were looking at this in CAT:UNBLOCK, I'd mostly care about their understanding of what went wrong before, and what they plan to edit going forward. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|she) 16:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

To clarify, are you requesting input from the community on an appeal that we don't have access to and which, due to the global lock, may not be possible to proceed with if granted? Also, as a question of process, was it the consensus of Arbs that this was the best way to move forward with this specific appeal?-- Ponyo^{bons mots} 16:34, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
This has proven to be a difficult appeal for any number of reasons and so yes coming to the community for feedback was seen as a way of helping ArbCom reach a decision about what to do; speaking only for myself I'm inclined to accept the appeal but felt uneasy about doing it without community feedback given what happened with this user and because of the lock a straight "remove the CU element of this block" wasn't an option. It was absolutely a mistake to not get something substantive to post here and we're working behind the scenes to correct that now. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:39, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 where is the "CU element" of this block? While there appears to be socking for evasion, it seems to be simple socking and seems to have been admitted to (c.f. User_talk:Definitelyduke255). I don't see any of the blocks on either of these accounts listed as CU blocks, or ArbCom blocks. Is the committee escalating one or both of these blocks to checkuser or committee blocks - preventing this from following the standard unblock appeal process? — xaosflux ^Talk 13:48, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Want to acknowledge I've seen this and will be coming back to you with an answer after talking with my colleagues. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:34, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

With my steward hat on, I can say that unblocking is certainly possible while locked - however the user still won't be able to log on and contribute. Ultimately the unlock decision will be handled by stewards, but yes arbcom does ask if it is possible so as not to waste time (generally locks are for reasons in excess of a local block). Being unblocked by a project that a locked user has a significant connection to is generally viewed as favorable during unlock decisions. — xaosflux ^Talk 18:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
I think Tamzin and Ponyo's points are valid. How can the community to give feedback on a appeal we have little to no information about and no summary of? My first inclination is the Ethan had issues with understanding English, something I understand completely as English isn't my first language. It seemed there may have a general lack of knowledge in the area of vandalism patrolling which is also understandable even with the filters and tools patrollers have at the disposal. In their overexuberance to remove vandalism they made mistakes, repeated mistakes. This led to them being blocked. Were they globally locked as the result of the alleged Sockpuppeting? --ARose Wolf 17:02, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
@ARoseWolf: I believe the global lock came about when they were blocked on three Wikipedias. The one on THAIWKI expired after the lock. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:41, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Deepfriedokra. I wasn't sure how all that worked. --ARose Wolf 12:46, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious how this ended up on ArbCom's plate. The global lock is an issue for the stewards, and the underlying blocks (both Ethan2345678's and Definitelyduke255's) seem to be non-CU actions that the community would typically be able to review on its own. Is there some non-public reason that this needs to go through the Committee? (If so, I'm happy to take your word for it, of course.) Extraordinary Writ (talk) 19:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

FWIW, user has UTRS access. Back in May, 2022 I proposed some unblock conditions. User was emailing ArbCom. (If memory serves, it was his idea.) UTRS appeal #55809 is available to admins for context. Thanks, -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:23, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
@Patient Zero: was willing at that time to mentor. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 22:25, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Still happy to mentor if Ethan is unblocked - thank you for reminding me of the matter, Deepfriedokra. Could someone please email me what Ethan has said in his appeal, just so that I can gain an understanding of whether he has committed to change the editing patterns and disruption that led to his block, and so that I know, in theory, what we will need to work on? Thank you in advance, but no worries if this isn’t possible due to confidentiality. Patient Zero^talk 00:39, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Patient Zero, I think this is an excellent idea and I was going to suggest mentoring. I don't mind lending you a hand if it gives a committed editor another opportunity. I don't view it a waste of time for the community to work together to assist an editor that has potential and a willingness to do what right. Just need to see that they are committed to it. --ARose Wolf 12:55, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

As the original blocking admin, I'll say that the block was not for any kind of nefarious behavior, but for an impressive lack of competence. I'd say ArbCom is probably capable of judging whether the user's competence and maturity have improved 2+ years later, just based on interacting with them. I can imagine that the competence may have been age-related, so 2+ years is a long time. If yes, it seems like unblocking would be fine, especially with a mentor and/or with conditions. If no, then please don't subject other editors to having to clean up their mess. But I will note that this doesn't seem like a high-stakes unblock; if it turns out to be a mistake, it's easy to reblock for 2 more years or something. It wasn't borderline harassment or a controversial block or bad faith or anything, just exuberance combined with cluelessness and immunity to feedback. --Floquenbeam (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
Assuming this is really a "normal" block (see above) - seems like a possible WP:ROPE candidate - if we had some sort of statement from the user. Do they acknowledge their disruption? How do they plan to act differently now? — xaosflux ^Talk 14:01, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Deepfriedokra and Barkeep49 - any update? Patient Zero^talk 01:33, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

AFAIK, ArbCom has not given us further info . . . . . -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 01:43, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

It's stuck waiting to hear back from Ethan. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:06, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

@Barkeep49 wait what? The question we're asking is if this is or isn't a checkuser block, how would anything the blocked party says impact the current state of the block? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

That's not what I was asking.😛 AFAIK, not a CU block. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I didn't mean to put words in your mouth there DFO, this was more along what Extraordinary Writ was also asking - why is this situation being handled by our final dispute resolution body? Has the ability for the community to deal with this unblock appeal been exhausted? — xaosflux ^Talk 02:58, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Xaosflux, I left out important information. What limited discussion there has not brought evidence that this was a CU block. The question was asked to Ethan about posting his appeal on wiki either for feedback (if it turns out to be CU) or for community handling (if it wasn't). Barkeep49 (talk) 02:45, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I will try to take some time tomorrow to dig up/explain the history behind this account appealing. Izno (talk) 07:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

I went back and actually read through UTRS appeal #55809. User had had a sock, definitelyduke255 (talk · contribs) that was/is/'ere shall be checkuser blocked. I'd been instructed, it seems, to ask them to email ArbCom for that. Just to be sure. At the time, I was hoping to clear a path to an unblock. So Xasoflux was right that there was a potential CU issue. (sigh) Anyway, unless something hideous arises, endorse unblock. Thanks -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 09:05, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Definitelyduke255 is not checkuser-blocked: it's just a regular sockpuppetry block. That's the reason several of us were confused here. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 16:55, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Well, that's just spiffy.😢 -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

History dig up and who's responsible

July 2021: Floq blocks for non-sock reasons. User makes both a talk page and later a UTRS appeal. Both declined for non-sock reasons.
August 2021: Bbb23 blocks Definitelyduke255 account. That account appeals multiple times onwiki and a separate UTRS appeal. Multiple declines, the first of which is from Jpgordon (a then and current CU) who notes a recently created new account by the user. I don't see what caused Bbb23 to issue the block (some sock hunters are magical and just come up with a master name, some contact a CU beforehand offwiki, etc. etc.). Bbb23 points out here that Ethan2345678 is locked for crosswiki abuse. This account admits to being a sock.
October 2021: User made an ArbCom appeal. It was noted they were locked and had admitted to the sock in August. That ArbCom declined under net 4 procedure, and appears to have treated the case as routine.
March 2022: User makes a UTRS appeal. DFO posts the set of unblock conditions. A CU indicates data is stale. UTRS expires. DFO refers the case to us based on 'offwiki' comms with an ArbCom member. ArbCom gets an appeal at this time.
May 2022: User makes another UTRS appeal. Admin tells them to make it onwiki. Clearly an incorrect result given their lock. (Does UTRS surface locks to reviewers?)
June 2022: Appeal with us is still open. It gets bumped internally because stewards have an appeal email to them for the lock. We declined that month (under net 4 procedure) with varying reasons, also mostly unrelated to socking. Can't speak to the lock appeal (because we don't have the final result).
July 2023: Another ArbCom appeal. Using a then-new-fangled process we devised with the stewards about block+lock cases, we check for unlock-worthiness with them. We get told it's a go, provided we come to a consensus to unblock.
August 2023: We get to an outcome of downgrade so that the community can review for goodness. We try to resolve what this means in the context of that new-fangled process since that wasn't accounted for in the original discussions.
October 2023: We reach out to stewards about the implications of downgrade. Stewards say "no, you need to do either a block or unblock consensus". We consider our potential options (there are a few: 1) actually come to consensus, 2) directly proxy an appeal onwiki, 2a) solicit advice from the community without doing the back and forth, and 3) totally punt to the stewards to sort out the lock directly with them and then return to figuring it out ourselves).
November 2023: This notice gets posted.

(This is one of the couple long poles we get each year for appeals, and in this case is probably why we don't have a statement from Ethan about whether we can provide you either what we got or could get for a community review.)

I think at least from the March 2022 appeal it's safe to say we had scope to review here. I know internally I've suggested that CUs when making comments based on CU results at unblock reviews that they upgrade the block to indicate clearly who is responsible for at least some portion of future appeals. Such practice would have prevented any line of this questioning about who should have this specific one. (I suspect it would be more work for what I think is like 3 CUs who actually review appeals here and UTRS, but maybe hitting the TW CU block button isn't that hard. YMMV)

I have tried to make sure we keep to our line about whether a block is a CU block or not since becoming the present coordinator of appeals in mid 2022 (post Juneish). I think most of the other members do as well, but sometimes an appellant slips through the cracks or it isn't otherwise clear. Locks in general make appeals hard since users have two options for appealing our blocks, either UTRS or ArbCom, and they don't always get the UTRS choice. Izno (talk) 23:48, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

UTRS did not do stewards then. It does now. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 00:01, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't see why the locked account is an issue if there's already a process in place between ArbCom and the stewards. Seems like this is a straightforward case of the community deciding whether to unblock, and then the stewards will do their thing. voorts (talk/contributions) 02:32, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

quo vadimis? -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Functionary candidates: December 2023 community consultation open

Original announcement

👍 for both. Kurtis ^(talk) 17:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Contentious topics procedure now in effect

Explicit notices

Changes to sanctions?

Scope

Arbitrator access to mailing lists and permissions motion passed

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Change to the Functionaries team

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Break

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Arbitration motion regarding the Prem Rawat case

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Call for Checkusers and Oversighters

Alalch E.'s topic ban rescinded

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Arbitration motion regarding the extended confirmed restriction

Appeal from Ethan2345678

History dig up and who's responsible

Functionary candidates: December 2023 community consultation open

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