Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 03:12, 24 August 2007

Misplaced Pages Arbitration
About arbitrationTalk Arbitration policy (CU/OS) Guide to arbitration Noticeboard + Talk Search archived proceedings Ban appealsReport
Open proceedings All open requests Case requests Clarification and Amendment requests Arbitrator motion requests Enforcement requests
Active sanctions Contentious topics (Log) General sanctions Editor sanctions
Arbitration Committee Discuss+ Contact Members Procedures ElectionsTalk History Clerks+ Talk Clerk procedures Conflict of interest reports
Audit Talk StatisticsTalk Reports (pre-2016)
Track related changes
v t e

• WP:RFAR
• WP:A/R
• WP:ARB/R
• WP:ARBREQ

A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution for conduct disputes on Misplaced Pages. The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and review previous decisions. The entire process is governed by the arbitration policy. For information about requesting arbitration, and how cases are accepted and dealt with, please see guide to arbitration.

To request enforcement of previous Arbitration decisions or discretionary sanctions, please do not open a new Arbitration case. Instead, please submit your request to /Requests/Enforcement.

This page transcludes from /Case, /Clarification and Amendment, /Motions, and /Enforcement.

Please make your request in the appropriate section:

• Request a new arbitration case
• Request clarification or amendment of an existing case

  This includes requests to lift sanctions previously imposed

• Request enforcement of a remedy in an existing case
• Arbitrator motions

  Arbitrator-initiated motions, not specific to a current open request

• recent changes
• purge this page
• view or discuss this template

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

Currently, no arbitration cases are open.

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/How-to

Current requests

User:Vintagekits

Initiated by User:SqueakBox at 21:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Vintagekits (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• SqueakBox (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• BrownHairedGirl (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Giano_II (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Astrotrain (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Rockpocket (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Counter-revolutionary (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• SirFozzie (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Kittybrewster (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Padraig (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• GiollaUidir (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• John (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• W. Frank (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Alison (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• David Lauder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• One Night In Hackney (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

I am doing that when I have edited this

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

SirFozzie offers unblock conditions

Statement by User:SqueakBox

I am not directly involved in the dispute but as nobody has so far brought this case to arbcom I am going to be bold. VK was recently indefinitely blocked in a case that has brought up many strong feelings from editors who believe this block is both wrong and partial given that this case involves various parties editing two subject areas, Irish republicanism and the British nobility. There have been many arguments and blcvoks abnd nastiness on both sides and IMO the arbcom needs to pass jusdgement ont he case and take whatever remedies it feels necessary, SqueakBox 21:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:Vintagekits

Statement by User:Rockpocket

As far as I recall my first major involvement in an administrative capacity was when another editor approached me for assistance with some convincing evidence that Vk was recruiting meatpuppets of-wiki. The clearly stated purpose of this was to votestack on Afds. This editor expressed to me that he would rather remain anonymous for fear of threats of retribution from Vk (with time this precaution came sharply unto focus). I offered to present the evidence on his behalf. The evidence can be viewed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Vintagekits and Misplaced Pages:Suspected sock puppets/Vintagekits. The latter report was closed by Will Beback (talk · contribs) with the conclusion "it is clear to me that these accounts are either sock puppets of VK or are meat puppets controlled by him. I will block these accounts indefinitely. VK has been blocked seven times since January, and also has a proven history of using sockpuppet accounts." An ANI discussion on what action to take (Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive262#Vintagekits, redux) generated consensus on a one week block followed by civility parole by SirFozzie (talk · contribs). This had limited success; SirFozzie blocked Vk for further "WP:CIVIL violations" within a month and I issued several warnings, including one for a typical attack (Note: Vk appears to think that the swapping of, or addition of letters disguises his regular use of the word "cunt" in reference to other editors .) Just over a month after being placed on civility parole I blocked Vk for 31 hours for a number of attacks, culminating in this edit (which is typical of his combative attitude towards Misplaced Pages). This resulted in further attacks, threats, paramilitary rhetoric and so, on. So I indef blocked and immediately asked for an independent review at AN (see Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive97#Block Review - Vintagekits). The consensus, including Vk's mentors, was to maintain the indef block. In the meantime, the abuse continued by email, along the same lines, but with the added threat of personal violence against me and some hints that he indended to get revenge off wiki.I can forward them to ArbCom on request.

After an apology from Vk (the tirade was alcohol induced, apparently) and a campaign by a number of supporters to unblock him, Vk was unblocked by myself on his explicit agreement to a self imposed ban on certain articles, to avoid conflict and uphold the "utmost level of civility" meaning he was "going to have to be on your best behavior no matter what" . Although Vk's ban was in the area of Irish Republicanism, it was made clear to him that the point was to avoid conflict, and wiki-lawyering around this would not be acceptable. Indeed, in this spirit he agreed to consult an admin before editing "articles tangential the subject-specific ban (like contentious British issues such as the Falkland and Gibralter)." Despite this, and fully aware that the prior conflict on Republicanism articles had spilled over onto articles about baronetcies, Vk waited less than 24hrs before editing an article on Sir George Dick-Lauder, 12th Baronet Inevitably, Vk found himself in conflict on this subject before long, leading to a block by BrownHairedGirl (talk · contribs). In the immediate aftermath of this, it was reported that Vk sent abusive emails to both his mentor Alison (talk · contribs) for not supporting him, apparently, and to BrownHairedGirl. This was just eight days after Vk had been unblocked, having been indef blocked for the exact same behaviour. At this point Alison then indef block Vk again for "making clear threats regarding another editor's home address" , but for obvious reasons did not elaborate. I reviewed Vk's recent edits, identified two edits that appeared suspect and contacted Alison privately to confirm those were the reason for the indef block. She confirmed to me they were. With this information to hand, and considering Vk was already on parole from an indef block, had sent abusive emails yet again and has a long history of seriously disruptive editing, incivility, sock- and meat puppetry, I believe Vk's negative impact on the project grossly out-weighs any benefit he may offer. I propose he remain blocked indefinitely and placed among the Misplaced Pages:List of banned users. I am aware of a history of disruptive editing from a number of other editors named in this request, and support an ArbCom inquiry into those editors also. I do not believe I, personally, have used sysop tools in anything other than a neutral manner, in an effort to protect the project from disruptive editing. Rockpocket 22:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:Kittybrewster

I am one of many Users who has interacted at some stage with User:Vintagekits. I have found him to have been persistently provocative in attacking articles created or edited by me and others, some of which were articles about baronets. It seems he is deeply opposed to anything connected to the British establishment, titled people, etc. He has threatened to and has tagged numerous articles nn or fact or afd. Other users have waded in to back him up in this, including numerous editors who are members of the Irish Republican project (notably User:One Night In Hackney, User:Padraig, User:Domer48, User:Derry Boi) and editors who are not (e.g. User:Giano_II and User:SqyeakBox) Other SPAs and possible meat/sock puppets have emerged from time to time, some of whom (eg User:Thepiper User:Stramash) are still around. At no stage has VK accepted any responsibility for his own actions and for drumming up support off-wiki.

Misplaced Pages is not a battleground. Nor is it a soapbox.

After this had been going on for several months a few administrators were drawn in, all of whom are listed above (I think). They have done a superb job in trying to stop this dissolving into total chaos but they have been accused by VK and others of having been partisan. I don’t believe those accusations.

My analysis is that VK is a very angry person who should have been restricted to writing articles about boxers – where I am told he contributed constructively and uncontroversially (I have no view on that). He was allowed past his first indefinite block on condition that he behave impeccably in future. He has failed to do this and administrators blocked him indefinitely as a result. Other editors (User:Giano_II and User:Squeakbox) claim VK may have been provoked or goaded into resuming his poor behaviour. They claim they want to achieve a full inquest to ensure things have been fair. From what I have seen the admins concerned have been fair and patient to a degree.

Statement by User:SirFozzie

I am not really much surprised that this case has made its way to ArbCom. I have recently returned from an attempted vacation (and still on a semi-sabbatical from WP due to health issues). My two cents.. as I said on the Great Irish Famine ArbCom.. this is one of the biggest long-term edit warring groups I have ever seen on Misplaced Pages, both in terms of numbers and in terms of people. We have the whole smorgasboard of ill done deeds.. threats, edit wars, sockpuppets, POV Pushing.. you name it.. it's happened in this group. I strongly urge the ArbCom to take the issue, and take whatever means necessary to end this war, once and for all, even if it means blocking everybody (and I do mean EVERYBODY.) Half-measures will mean that we have to do this again, eventually. SirFozzie 21:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Giano

I am not inolved with the Anglo-Irish issues which cause contention here, and do not edit on these subjects. However, in unrelated subjects I have come across some of those involved. Regarding Vintagekits being the subject of theis RFA I cannot really make a statement, as I am unsure of the crime which has been committed - if indeed one has. Can some one explain please - in as few words as possible. Rumour has it that only Fred Bauder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is allowed to have the full facts - is this correct? If so why? Giano 21:56, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Newyorkbrad

Disputes involving Vintagekits have been brewing for several months. Vintagekits, an Irish editor, appears to have a strong aversion to articles about British nobility and titled commoners, such as baronets. This brought Vintagekits into conflict with editors on the WikiProject:Baronetcies such as Kittybrewster, who I believe self-identifies as a baronet in real life and who has written articles about numerous members of his extended family, some of which have been proposed for deletion on notability and/or sourcing grounds. Some editors had the initial reaction that these articles were being sought out and proposed for deletion on ideological grounds; however, further investigation led by previously uninvolved editors such as Giano and Mackensen, revealed that serious reason did exist for concern about these articles, justifying at least to some degree Vintagekits' position. Harsh language and other user conduct during that dispute was regrettable but that dispute, in and of itself, is probably too stale to be arbitrated.

The particular dispute quieted for awhile but I gather from Vintagekits' talkpage that he has been involved in some other controversies, also generally related to disputes between Irish and British editors. There were some prior blocks and, after discussion, unblocks and several admins including but not limited to Alison and SirFozzie have made strong good-faith attempts to salvage the situation, which regrettably seem to have been unsuccessful.

Most recently, Vintagekits clearly crossed the line of acceptable discourse very seriously in his edits cited above by Rockpocket. It is clear that some administrator action was warranted based on those edits, particularly in view of the conditions of his prior unblocking. Squeakbox is raising the issue of whether an indefinite block, as imposed by Alison, was the appropriate response. Alison has asserted on Vintagekits' talkpage that Vintagekits has made very serious threats involving another editor's real-life identity and address, mandating a definitive and permanent block. There have also been references to a series of abusive e-mails; it is not clear to me whether Vintagekits has admitted or denied having written these. Other editors on the talkpage have acknowledged that Vintagekits made at least some highly inappropriate edits but have urged that he was, to an extent, provoked into doing so.

On Vintagekits' talkpage, Alison has also stated that she believes that based on his conduct, it would be inappropriate for Vintagekits to be unblocked even for the limited purpose of participating in an arbitration case. My understanding is that Alison has communicated privately with one or more arbitrators concerning the content of the threats. Beyond that, neither I nor probably any other user can intelligently comment here because I have not seen the evidence and it does not seem appropriate to post it here.

The questions with which the arbitrators are presented, then, are (1) should the evidence against Vintagekits be considered privately or on-wiki and how should all interested parties be heard; (2) does the evidence against Vintagekits support an indefinite block or a formal ban; and (3) does this case present an appropriate vehicle to discuss any other issues beyond the narrow one of whether Vintagekits should remain blocked. Newyorkbrad 22:14, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by One Night In Hackney

This case goes far deeper than the conduct of one editor, the currently indefinitely blocked Vintagekits. While his conduct has at times been deplorable, the many, many breaches of policy by his opponents are plain for all to see. For well over six months there has been a campaign of disruption and POV pushing by a group of British (and assorted other) editors on articles related to The Troubles. Some of the Irish editors are equally to blame, very few people have clean hands in this case. In effect since the end of outright conflict in Northern Ireland, Misplaced Pages has become the new battleground between those believing the views of the British public are what should be presented as NPOV and Irish republicans wanting their side of the story to be told equally and fairly, or in some cases a biased Irish republican viewpoint.

For my part, my editing has been misinterpreted by many editors. Many consider me a POV pusher biased in favour of the Provisional IRA, when the truth is I'm as English as they come. I have probably contributed as much in terms of sourced content to articles relating to Irish republicanism as any active editor. There are currently two articles under the Irish Republicanism WikiProject that are good articles, and I wrote, re-wrote or sourced 90% of both of them. If my editing was as biased as certain editors claim, they would never have passed GA. One administrator who holds a strong anti-Provisional IRA viewpoint has said privately to me that my editing was totally neutral, and anyone seeking to find much evidence to the contrary will have difficulty in doing so.

I am no longer an active Misplaced Pages editor, so if anyone wishes to spend their time hunting down evidence to blacken my name it will be an exercise in fulility, and there is ample evidence to refute any claims. However the conflict across articles has intensified since I stopped editing Misplaced Pages, and something needs to be done to get many editors back on the straight and narrow and improving the encylopedia in constructive ways. For this reason I implore the Arbitration Committee to accept this case to examine the conduct of all involved.. One Night In Hackney₃₀₃ 22:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved Sam Blacketer

Earlier this year I was involved in trying to (unofficially) mediate between Vintagekits and some other users over Norman Stronge, Hugh Fraser, 1st Baron Fraser of Allander and divers Baronets. I can't comment on the more recent issues brought up but I did form the view that Vintagekits' tendency to view edits through the prism of the Anglo-Irish conflict was very damaging and made it very difficult for him to function effectively in a neutral encyclopaedia. I also felt he unduly personalised his dispute with Kittybrewster. However, he was able with some guidance to see others' points of view and move on. This case has many of the aspects of an 'appeal against community ban' which the committee takes up if there's a reason for believing the ban may be excessive. Pace Squeakbox, it may be that a wider finding would be of assistance. Sam Blacketer 22:35, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Recuse. Picaroon (t) 22:01, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Recuse from any clerk activity in this case. Newyorkbrad 22:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/1/0/1)

• Reject, no basis is presented which would justify unblocking Vintagekits Fred Bauder 23:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
• Comment, I request that Allison please send all private information regarding this matter to the ArbCom mailing list. Paul August ☎ 03:12, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

User:DreamGuy

Initiated by Dicklyon at 16:57, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Dicklyon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (bringing the case)
• DreamGuy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (person whose conduct and attitude are being complained about)
• Cool Blue (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (mediator of failed/closed case, receiving end of many messages from DreamGuy)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• General notification on the open RFC about DreamGuy to alert all active participants there.
• (updated) Notification of DreamGuy on his talk page.
• Cool Blue contributes to the draft RFAr, Official confirmation
• In the event that User:DreamGuy believes that I'm an "involved party", I, Arthur Rubin have no objection.

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

1. Well documented in Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/DreamGuy 2#Evidence_of_trying_and_failing_to_resolve_the_dispute
2. More recent attempt via Mediation Cabal: Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-08-17 Photo editing (closed due to DreamGuy's objection)

Statement by User:Dicklyon

The currently open conduct RFC (Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/DreamGuy 2) is the best description of the conduct problem. Through continual incivility, DreamGuy manages to alienate every editor that he comes into the slightest conflict with. He has convinced himself that his position is always right, and therefore the others are just "problem editors", justifying his conduct. His statements indicate that he is in denial that any part of his problem with "problem editors" is due to his conduct.

At the end of the talk page there, he firmly rejects our last attempt at content mediation as well, involving a long-running dispute about the use of the term "photoshopping" for photo editing, which he started on March 9, 2007 by blanking the photoshopping article and redirecting it to Adobe Photoshop. All other editors of those articles have converged on a redirect to a small section in photo editing, but there he insists on removing the referenced content and replacing it with a statement that photoshopping simply means using Adobe Photoshop.

Many others who signed on to the conduct RFC had similar complaints about his involvement in articles they care about. I am willing to stipulate that he was sometimes on the "right" side of disputes, in that a final consensus was reached that agreed pretty much with his position. However, his incivil involvement appears to have always made it harder to get there, not easier. On the photoshopping question, however, he is clearly in a minority of one against a number of editors who have made good faith efforts to understand and study his policy concerns (undue weight, neologism, reliable source, etc.) and his position, and to a mediate and reach a consensus. His participation in such processes seems to be a simple rejection, calling everyone names for disagreeing and going about it all wrong. Few editors have yet found a way to work with him, other than to give in and let him have his way. Numerous complaints, three conduct RFCs, several AN/I complaints, etc. have not led to anything like resolution or progress.

DreamGuy also likes to "ban" people from his talk page, claiming "harassment" when they try to discuss things with him, or when they warn him that they're going to file a complaint, etc. He routinely removes talk comments with no response other than an abusive or dismissive edit summary. His User talk:DreamGuy page states his bad-faith attitude clearly: "Note: If you are here to leave personal attacks, false accusations of vandalism, a long tirade about why your cat photo or article about yourself should be left alone as you and only you wanted, nonsensical rationalizations of why vampires, ancient astronauts, werewolves, "creation science" and so on should be treated as completely real and so forth, do not bother, as I'll either just remove them right away or simply point you to the appropriate Misplaced Pages policy which you should have read in the first place."

This kind of conduct costs[REDACTED] tremendously in terms of the time, effort, and good will of good editors who deal with DreamGuy. His mode of interaction needs to be changed or stopped.

What I would like this arbitration case to achieve if accepted?

1. DreamGuy should as a minimum agree (and be held under penalty of blocking) to stop being incivil, to stop asserting a consensus when he's alone against a majority, to carry on dispute discussions on talk pages (including his own) instead of in edit summaries, and to respond as if other editor's actions are in good faith.
2. DreamGuy should be compelled to remove the blatant assertion of his own assumptions of bad faith from his user talk page. Hopefully, a genuine assumption of good faith can be found to underlie these conduct changes.
3. DreamGuy should agree to mediation of the photoshopping/photo editing/Adobe Photoshop dispute, pending finding a mediator who knows nothing of him or his history. With respect to this and other content disputes, he must stop asserting that the mediation process is worse than the deadlock that it is intended to help solve, or that other editors don't respect policies.

Statement by User:DreamGuy

Statement by User:Cool Blue

Incivility has been an ongoing issue with DreamGuy. This conduct has been going on for quite sometime.

I'd like to point out specifically March 9, 2007, where DreamGuy deliberating redirected a page to Adobe Photoshop without any consensus or discussion. Any topic that he finds the least bit undesirable, he takes some kind of extraordinary means to, in someways get rid of it; see here. The issue with Photoshopping has been going on for quite sometime now.

I've did a little bit of mediation work with the Mediation Cabal, and was looking for a case to mediate at Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases when I accepted a case at Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-08-17 Photo editing. I have had negative interactions with DreamGuy in the past, but could not recall any details, and did not recall the negative interactions until DreamGuy objected, so I accepted the case anyways. I had started doing some preliminary work with two other editors, and reviewed an alternative version, when I received a message from DreamGuy stating he objected to me as mediator, and the Mediation Cabal system alike. Normally, that's how the process works, but he came forward, without any recent, previous confrontation here. I'd like to point out one passage "The ide that you can go to my talk page, ask if I want to be a party, and if not you'll remove my name and make a decision anyway is a complete misrepresentation of how mediation is supposed to work. As you seem more interested in forging ahead to a solution with or without my input, I question your ability (or perhaps willingness) to act as a fair and uninvolved mediator here. You should remove yourself as a mediator, as you cannot go forward without this being completely a sham process. Considering that it's also been clear from the start that I think "Mediation Cabal" protocols (when they are actually followed, which you did not do) are contrary to the standard rules of Misplaced Pages (one individual person with no background shows up and tries to determine consensus on his own? that's nonsense), the people involved *know* this and the mediation attempt was clearly made in bad faith. But, hey, thanks to your screw up in not following the mediation rules, you've only gone to prove my point on why I don't trust it." It's only a myth that the mediator needs to ask all parties before-hand, as proved here. When I explained this to DreamGuy he responded "If you intend to try to mediate in the future, you should read up on the basics of mediation. "Mediation is purely voluntary. All interested parties must be willing to accept mediation. If any interested party does not accept mediation, we cannot help." is just a starter. The mediation process here is flawed and full of people who have no business pretending to be mediators, but at least most of them read the rules before jumping in." I am aware of that, and when DreamGuy didn't want to participate I closed the case, following all guidelines of the Mediation Cabal.

As per Dicklyon above, I also feel that the message on his talkpage is unnecessary.

His attitude needs to change. Period.

Statement by ElC

This looks rather one-sided, both on the part of the initiator (whom I agree with on the content front, incidentally) as well as from an unofficial mediator who, by his or her own words, may not have been entirely objective and might have accepted a case prematurely. This is a good time as any for me to reiterate my unease of the Mediation Cabal (I note that an MC member, Ideogram, who recently launched and quickly withdrew a prior RfAr on DreamGuy, has recently been placed on a one year community ban); I always prefer formal mediation. As the admin chiefly monitoring the RfC, I've been struggling to keep it from being disrupted by editors mostly hostile to DreamGuy and although, DG was not entirely satisfied with me, either, I must say that if this treatment is the norm for him, I rather understand his talk page disclaimer (I don't approve of it, but it isn't that different than several others I know). Let me go beyond photoshopping, then, and discuss the conduct RfC.

As mentioned elsewhere, although the certifiers did not directly participate in disrupting this request for comment attempt, I do not feel they did enough (leaving it pretty much all up to me) to combat this negative atmosphere; moreover, they often seemed to argue that the focus should be placed exclusively on DreamGuy (I made it clear that, on Misplaced Pages, everyone's conduct is subject to review, at any time; there's no license for people to be uncivil simply because they are charging "reckless incivility" against the subject of an RfC). Conduct RfCs are not free-for-alls.

Members of the Committee, I've been struggling for long now to keep conduct RfCs from degenerating into indictment-like pages, where little if any prior or ongoing dispute resolution efforts are undertaken and illustrated (you may have only seen me act in high-profile RfCs, such as the Kelly Martin ones, and so on, but my work on that front has been extensive). This RfC was no exception. It started with editors violating the certification rules, continued through threaded discussions and top-page notices on the project page, and kept going down hill from there. Only thorough refractoring on my part kept the project page comprehensible and free from revert warring, but even this wasn't enough as unproductive discussion was simply diverted, mostly but no means entirely, to the RfC's talk page, where it appeared to me that several editors were already set on treating it as a step toward arbitration, arguably to impose punitive measures on DG, rather than a genuine dispute resolution attempt.

In this extension, I note the sheer volume of DreamGuy RfCs and RfArs; one of the former, which I recently deleted was created by-now two banned users who failed to undertake any efforts at dispute resolution (and yet, it was allowed to stay, with people "commenting," for years). This RfC wasn't quite as bad in some ways, but was worse in others. As I told Daniel Case (the author of the second diff I cited; and no, I do not retract my astonishment upon learning that he as an admin): "If this is the sort of expression that DG is ordinarily subjected to, that would work explain many things." Someone on the RfC has compared DreamGuy's with RickK's treatment, a comparison which, I, as someone who on several occasions personally spoken with Rick on what made him leave the English Wiki, is an apt one. El_C 19:48, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by TexasAndroid

It was stated a number of times, in a number of ways, at the RFC, that incivility against DreamGuy does not justify DreamGuy being incivil back. And I fully agree with this: DreamGuy's incivility is not justifiable in any way by the actions of others, and should be fully subject to review and possibly sanction by this RFAr process.

But that said, it really is a two way street. If the hands of those that bring this RFAr, or who piled on DreamGuy at the RFC, are not clean in the matter, then others should be just as subject to the review and sanction by the RFAr process. So, assuming that this case is accepted, while I fully expect to see DreamGuy's actions to be scrutinized, I would hope that the actions of those that have been incivil towards DreamGuy are given just as close of a scrutiny as DreamGuy's own actions. There certainly appear to be unclean hands on both sides of this one. - TexasAndroid 20:21, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Thespian

It is said that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. People will, over the next little while, repeat over and over that while people have violated WP:CIVIL towards Dreamguy, of course they, themselves, were not innocent. This will be used both in his defense, and as an argument against him (and you will see, in the investigation of this, a number of people who start out civil, if contentious, and wind up as rude as Dreamguy is).

I first encountered Dreamguy on Otherkin and Therianthropy. Now, please note, I'm not a terribly unbiased editor; you'll find I once commented that The current self-identifying therians don't want to be mistaken for otherkin because, well, a lot of people think that otherkin are nuts. But to be honest, if someone says to me, "My soul is actually that of a panther," I'm going to think the same (therians never seem to realize that their soul is that of a boll weevil). However, I have friends who are furries and Otherkin, I'm involved in fandom, and I know that a moderate voice could be used between the people who want to treat it as completely real and the people who want to treat it as a psychosis. Indeed, I said as much about the articles being edited by self-defined therianthropes, but that also applies to anyone who has an extreme view on the subject.

Eventually, there was an issue with external linking to the WikiFur project at Wikia. I was not severely attached to either side; I was more pro towards allowing the link, because things in the softer sciences, humanities, etc., are quite simply not as rigorously citable, and I do feel that if people are looking up an obscure term like therianthropy, there's a very good chance they encountered it, at this time, through the Therian or Otherkin communities. The link is, in my opinion, useful and relevant to the audience for that page. But I wasn't going to go to a throwdown WP:OWN issue over it. The link was added, removed, discussed briefly on the talk page, and readded, and it was solid. And then Dreamguy removed the entire section after returning to the page after a little over eight months away (12 Oct 2006 - 28 May 2007). No one really knew who he was, he just showed up, ignored the varied consensus that people on the page had been working for on a tricky subject, and started making up rules, such as a declaration that 'competing wikis absolutely DO NOT meet WP:EL guidelines.' He was asked to come to the talk page where other discussion of the links had been had, and discuss his change but he instead decided that his non-existant rule was all he needed, and talk was irrelevant (please note that regardless of whether Dreamguy believed Mermaid was blind reverting, Mermaid had been consistantly around making an edit or two every month on the page while Dreamguy wasn't - this wasn't someone who was just wikistalking him, though Dreamguy claims otherwise, and perhaps they have elsewhere. It was certainly not the case here). Bryan Derksen pointed out that this wasn't just Mermaid from the Baltic Sea, and attempted to get Dreamguy to speak with other editors on the project.

I can continue outlining this bakklewheep, but the page history is easily browsed at this point.

Now, I present you with this: first thing I ever said to Dreamguy. I think, all told, it was moderate and polite. I did say I felt he sounded aggressive (but if you read up...well). He never responded to me. Over the next couple of days, he kept firing off pretty randomly at people. Now, please note, I genuinely believed that he was editing in Good Faith, even if his random attacks and use of edit summaries to editorialize on other editors were stretching it - I believed that Dreamguy's editing was IGF, even as his meta-behaviour was becoming unacceptable. After a couple days of several editors being in consensus that all the EL links that Dreamguy had removed were good removals, except for WikiFur, and him abusing anyone who reinserted it, I filed a MedCab on Therianthropy (not, please note, on Dreamguy, but instead a way to simply get someone completely random to come in and straighten out the issues). I was a newish experienced editor at the time (nearing 1000 edits), and I've realized since that an RfC would have been a better option. That, however, didn't seem to matter. Though the mediation was intended for the whole page, and for all editors (and I was only slightly biased by my inclusionist tendencies to want to leave resources available, and not because I was passionately wanting the link to stay), Dreamguy decided that because the argument did mention it was 'a number of other editors, including myself, Bryan Derksen and more' and 'Dreamguy' as the sides, it was actually Mediation against him. He refused the mediation, and closed the case by himself. You can see it here.

Dreamguy often refers to any attempt to speak with him by someone who disagrees with him as harassment. At one point, he referred to the recent RfC about him as such. I asked him how people were expected to have civil conversations with him considering his banninations from his talk page, his abuse in edit summaries, his attacks on people who try to disagree with him on talk pages. He never responded to me. When the subject of this Arbitration came up, I noted that I still believe that he's editing in good faith, but that when doing something for the first time (the MedCab), he attacked me and indeed I felt he gamed the system to take advantage of a new editor and avoid the process. He never replied. I asked at one point what was going on, because he doesn't seem to be enjoying Misplaced Pages these days; indeed, he seems to be holding on tenaciously though it's making him bitter and angry, and discussed the fact that Dreamguy just plain seems to dislike a lot of the people that he works with on Misplaced Pages, which is problematic because while you don't need to befriend them all, you do need to be able to collaborate with them. He never responded. Indeed, my 'squeaky wheel' metaphor back there refers to this -- I often feel like the only way you can even get Dreamguy's attention these days is agreeing with him or sinking to his level of incivility - my comments, which were low key even when I was angry, simply don't hit his radar.

Despite the fact that Dreamguy abused me a fair bit with his napalm-like accusations at WP:EL that everyone who disagrees with him were 'pro-furry' and more, I've stayed fairly clearheaded on this, as Misplaced Pages is enjoyable and stimulating, but Not the Most Important Thing In The World. However, I have admitted on WP:AN/I that I no longer edit pages that I see Dreamguy has been editing, simply because the chances of being dragged into fights as he lays down edicts seems to escalate on any page he works on. It would be pleasant to add to several pages he works on, but it's just simply not worth it to have to deal with the anger and incivility that comes when you try and do anything he disagrees with. --Thespian 06:32, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Ghirla

It looks like a certain clique of editors seeks to impose punitive measures on DG, no matter what, although their own behaviour merits closer examination. I don't think any of the people casting stones at DreamGuy would do any better if they found themselves hounded to an even remotely similar degree. There have been no good-faith attempts at dispute resolution, rather a sustained campaign to have their opponent chastised for real or imaginary offenses. This is not what dispute resolution is about. --Ghirla 09:19, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Wizardman

There is, of course, two sides to this story. Those who find DreamGuy incredibly destructive and hurtful to the wikimedia community, and those who feel that DreamGuy, though uncivil, has been given a very bum deal. While I agree more with the former, (DreamGuy's lack of RfC support says I may be in the majority there) I feel that the latter is skewing the situation a bit, and that it's not about him retaliating so much as him being a problem here. Of course ArbCom has to accept this case, it's about time this guy is at least looked at by ArbCom. To say that there have been no good-faith attempts as resolution is flat out wrong, there was just an RfC that was clsoed only when both sides really started attacking each other. That just means we need to bring this here even more. I note that even the people on his side note that he's been abusive and incivil, so the sooner this is accepted and taken care of, the better Wizardman 15:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Alucard (Dr.)

There is a history of accusations that have been thrown around on all sides about lack of civility, POV editing, wiki-stalking, sockpuppetry, questioning motives/intent, edit warring and the like, to the point where certain articles are now a hostile editing environment, which I see as counter to the spirit of Misplaced Pages. Various remedial procedures have been attempted and have failed. Discussions about content issues are tinged with anger. Whether DreamGuy or the various people that contributed to the RfC are found to be at fault is, as far as I am concerned, academic at this point - this needs to stop, for the good of the encyclopedia. According to my understanding of the dispute resolution process, I see this as the logical next step, and am pleased that the scope is to look at everyone involved, rather than just one person. I encourage this case to be opened. -- Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 19:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (2/0/0/0)

• Accept. Kirill 18:06, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. James F. (talk)

SevenOfDiamonds

Involved parties

• User:SevenOfDiamonds AKA User:SixOfDiamonds AKA User:74.73.16.230 AKA User:69.201.147.240
• User:NuclearUmpf AKA User:Zer0faults (This is the person who Seven of Diamonds is accused of being)
• User:MONGO (main evidence collector)
• User:Theresa knott (bringing the case)
• Various other admins who I'm not sure if I should list as being involved or not.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

MONGO informed by Theresa Knott

SevenofDiamonds informed by Theresa Knott | The otter sank

Statement by Theresa Knott

Seven of Diamonds first appeared as Six of Diamonds on the 11th July. Since that time he has been accused of being the sockpuppet of a number of different banned users, some of whom are indefinitely banned. Most accusations have been in the form of checkuser requests:

• Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/SixOfDiamonds
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/SevenOfDiamonds
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Giovanni33
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Lovelight

But there have also been some quips on the incident noticeboard in the seemingly never ending threads on the matter.

On the 16th August MONGO posted an evidence page that SevenOfDiamonds was banned user NuclearUmpf to the Arbitration enforcement and a discussion followed. I reviewed the evidence and felt it was pretty strong. I was close to blocking but User:El C felt that because of the number of previous check user cases that Seven of Diamonds was being harassed there was possible phishing going on and objected. The case was therefore closed by a clerk with the statement that it needs to go to you guys. Later on I learned that El C hadn't actually looked at the evidence page before objecting.

Later that evening another admin blocked SevenofDiamonds as a sock . This caused yet another post on the admin noticeboard The objection was that the block was out of process because the clerk had said it must go to Arbitration. The blocking admin therefore unblocked.

That is basically it (I've missed out some minor details to keep the request short) So far, as far as I can tell, all objections have been process ones rather than people who have looked and the evidence and stated it was not strong enough. What I would like you to do is look at the evidence (we can tidy it up for you if you accept the case) and make a binding decision on this. SevenofDiamonds is either a sockpuppet of a banned user who we can block as such, or he is a new user in good standing in which case all those saying otherwise need to shut up. Theresa Knott | The otter sank 16:42, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by MONGO

Up front...I admit that I have no problem with ban evaders returning to work on articles so long as they don't resume doing the same things and arguing with the same editors that got them banned to begin with. I already spent a lot of hours off and on over the last month checking the diffs and information that I have posted in my userspace...at User:MONGO/Ban evasion. I could look for more, but frankly I am tired of this...I figure this is all a bit of a game anyway...he (as can almost anyone) can return and recreate a new account...the only way to detect if it is him if checkuser is stale is by tracking the diffs and cross examining them. As Theresa Knott has said, if SevenOfDiamonds is not found to be NuclearUmpf/Zer0faults, then I will issue a formal apology to SevenOfDiamonds and shut up. Do I believe the evidence is solid proof these are the same editor? Absolutely.--MONGO 17:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

As an addendum, I asked User:RyanFreisling here to look over my evidence page since she was convinced for a long time that User:Rex071404 (see:Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Rex071404 and two other arbcom cases naming him) was user NuclearUmpf/Zer0faults. I remembered her making these comments multiple times, so I did ask her to look over my evidence page to see if the editing style she saw there reminded her of Rex. There are many examples of Ryan discussing this matter... such as this one...so my basis for making comments to such effect was due to my knowledge that Ryan is not someone that would make accusations of sockpuppetry just for the sake of doing so, and neither am I, but I have not examined any diffs that might connect Rex to Diamonds at all, and won't.--MONGO 04:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Dtobias's comments below are preposterous, as are most that he makes about me to the mailing list. It is normal, as far as I know, to assemble diffs and evidence for checkuser requests, Rfc's and arbcom in one's own userspace...if this isn't the case, then why isn't he addressing the fact that SevenOfDiamonds is doing the exact same thing.--MONGO 19:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Amarkov

Almost all the objections on the case took the form of "but MONGO's done this too many times already, he can't keep making accusations!" While this sure looks a lot like repeatedly making accusations until one of them sticks, even I admit that the evidence here is pretty convincing. -Amarkov moo! 17:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Aude

I was the one who filed RFCU, regarding FAAFA and Rootology, based on suspicions MONGO and others had. Jumped the gun on that, and it was a mistake. Apologies to everyone. Reasons why I quickly realized this RFCU was a mistake:

1. Rootology and FAAFA's edits were stale, so RFCU was pointless anyway.
2. When I looked at the editing pattern, time of day, for FAAFA and Rootology, they were totally different. clearly not a match. Time of day isn't 100% proof that SevenOfDiamonds is a match for Nuclear, but it eliminates other possibilities. With that, one can then look at the editing behavior and style in detail and see if other characteristics match.
3. One characteristics of SoD/Nuclear that stands apart from others, is the way that SevenOfDiamonds seemed to have an issue with me , from the outset. That never happened with Rootology, FAAFA, (or Giovanni and Bmedley), since I'm not involved on the state terrorism page and rarely interacted with them. So, that was an indication that Rootology, FAAFA, (or Giovanni and Bmedley) are not matches. But, Nuclear did, such as this exchange in February on a page I had been watching and editing for 1+ years and Nuclear just came on days prior, and asks me to "stop following his edits" and "Try not to poke and prod." Characteristics I've seen in Nuclear's edits match the tone and style I've seen with SevenOfDiamonds.

As for Lovelight, I knew immediately it was not a match. I think the RFCU requester should have known better. First of all, Lovelight's edits are stale by now. Also, the editing styles totally do not match, as well I know the geographic location and IPs used by Lovelight (not at all a match). That's why I asked for that request to quickly be closed.

It's taken a while to pour over the evidence, but this is by far strong evidence when it's all considered collectively. Any one individual bit of evidence wouldn't convince me, but all the pieces together. Unlikely coincidence that this is a new editor and someone other than Nuclear. This is not about politics or anything, but simply that he became quarrelsome and disruptive, as has SevenOfDiamonds. This mess has been a distraction for MONGO and others, to keep having sockpuppets come back to resume the same tactics, arbcom decisions and bans not enforced. If SevenOfDiamonds simply came back and edited more quietly, I'd have no problems with that. But, that's not the situation here, and the drama and disruption needs to stop. I suggest looking past the numbers RFCUs here (many were mistakes or naive), but look at the collective evidence. --Aude (talk) 17:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Raymond Arritt

This is a complex case for several reasons. Most importantly, there is no single piece of evidence that proves sockpuppetry but instead an accumulation of coincidences. Each of these is minor on its own: two people following the same schedule proves nothing; two people editing similar politically-oriented articles proves nothing; two people with a similar grammatical quirk proves nothing; and so on. But when two people follow the same schedules and edit overlapping political articles and edit overlapping non-political articles and have a certain stylistic quirk in common and have another stylistic quirk in common and have various other traits in common the probability of pure coincidence becomes smaller and smaller. The lack of an obvious smoking gun resulted in a failure of administrators to reach consensus at the Arbitration Enforcement board, with some feeling there was a strong case and others summarily rejecting it. A second complication is that there is a history of antagonism and ill-will between some of the parties. Finally, SevenOfDiamonds was the subject of checkuser inquiries in the past that did not find evidence of sockpuppetry, and this fact has been used by some to dismiss the present case out of hand. Nonetheless I believe that this case should be considered on its own merits.

Since administrators are unable to reach a consensus, I request that the arbitration committee take up this case so we can put this recurring source of drama behind us one way or the other.

Statement by FayssalF

This conflict has lasted more than necessary. User:MONGO says he is being harassed all the time by User:SevenOfDiamonds and had accused the latter of sockpuppetry a few times until he prepared User:MONGO/Ban evasion. On the other hand, User:SevenOfDiamonds accuses MONGO of multiple false accusations of sockpuppetry and bullying.

I had blocked SevenOfDiamonds indefinitely as a sock of User:NuclearUmpf who has been blocked indef before. My block justification was this mentioned above which i have spotted at the ANI. An hour later i unblocked the account after i found out that there was an ArbEnfor case related to the subject in where no consensus was reached between admins. I obviously thought that the ArbCom is the appropriate entity which can sort this out and where admins failed.

All i want from the ArbCom is to consider this case and see what needs to be done appropriately. Thank you. -- FayssalF - 18:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:SevenOfDiamonds

I am not Nuclear, I have not harassed anyone either. MONGO follows me around, he calls me names, he brings up his accusations on any page I particpate on. He went into a rant even on a RfA page attacking me.

Evidence presented consists of "both users say Thank you," "Both users edit in the same timezone," "They both live in the same city," (along with 2.5 million others) "they both edit at the same time," (as much of the east coast)

Differences ignored by MONGO that are obvious:

1. Nuclear stated he lives in Park Slope brooklyn according to MONGO. I live in BayRidge which is about 3 miles away and large difference in income.
2. MONGO states both of us live in Park Slope because of a RDNS. RDNS based on location goes to the trunk of the ISP. The trunk is located in Sunset Park, which lies between BayRidge and Park Slope, anyone living in Brooklyn knows this place because it is where you pick up your cable box.
3. Other than 9/11 articles and the "allegations" article, our topics have nothing in common. In fact if you look at pages I create and actively edit, you can see I mainly "argue" on 9/11 pages not actually edit them directly.
4. My topic of interest is Latin American studies. The articles I create and edit are on these topics, something not in common with Nuclear.
5. MONGO attempts to link the two by an edit Nuclear made to the "allegations" page where he added a section on Guatemala, a country I am not familiar with as I am only interested in countries with dictatorship and corrupt governments in Latin America. I have never actually edited a page on Guatemala.
6. MONGO stated Nuclear never wikilinks policy, then provides difs of him not doing it. Ignoring of course the times he did, in less than a minute I managed to find examples: .
7. I also do wikilink policy at times:
8. When Nuclear left according to MONGO, he stated he already had a new account, this was in February. I have not edited with an account until SixOfDiamonds was made. MONGO ignores this fact as well.
9. Nuclear left threatening to cause disruption, of which if you check my block log I have not. Other than constantly having to defend myself against MONGO and his friends in RFCU's and AN/I posts, some of them not even users I have edited articles alongside.
10. I have been editing Misplaced Pages for over a year under various IP's and under two different ISP's. What MONGO categorizes as my first edit, is not, it is just the last one that can be tracked due to my use of it after registering an account.
11. MONGO's proof of us being the same is that we both mispell "commonly misspelled words." The key being they are common for a reason.
12. MONGO repeatedly has stated I started an RfC against him. This is false and if it can be undeleted it can be proven. The RfC in question was brought to my attention by a post on my talk page. After having had MONGO threaten me on my talk page with "stop or else," "I will have you blocked," and repeated accusations of being a sockpuppet, as well as vandalizing my talk page.
13. Most of MONGO's evidence revolves around the time of day both me and Nuclear edit, which corresponds to the day time of the entire east coast. MONGO however ignores that Nuclear's editing never drops, ignoring that my editing does at 7AM since that is when myself and most of NYC leaves for work. New Yorkers typically leave between 7-8AM to get to work at 9AM, which is why the period is called "rush hour," and known all over the world for it.
14. MONGO also ignores in his own chart that my editing does not peak until 2 hours after Nuclears since this is when I typically get home, living further away from Nuclear I would suppose, my train ride would take longer, if like most of NYC we both left work at 5PM. It actually does not even look like Nuclear works since there is never a drop in his editing, it just rises until lunch then tapers off afterwards, as if there is no travel time.
15. MONGO states that both myself and Nuclear have removed posts from him and Tom, then provides difs of only me removing his posts. This is for two reasons, I have had nothing but good interactions with Tom, or so I thought, and because MONGO failed to mention the posts I removed are accusing me of being a sockpuppet and attacking me, if you look at what he actually wrote that was removed.
16. MONGO states I always misspell "consensus" as "concensus." While I am sure I have my typos I have actually corrected the spelling of someone else and spelled it correctly myself.
17. In response to Aude. As I noted in the arbitration page, my hostility toward them was due to MONGO stating they had already passed jugement on me, and felt I was a sockpuppet. I asked them about this, and they did not deny it, I then asked them not to present themselves as a neutral person.
18. Aude later filed a RFCU against me based on MONGO's accusations.
19. Aude believed the evidence presented proved I was Rootology and Fairness.
20. Theresa Knott is noted as stating the evidence presented by TBeatty proved I was Lovelight. Only retracting after noticing it was already declared stale.

To give some history, my interaction with MONGO began after MONGO appeared on my talk page attempting to bully me into submission over an AfD he lost, I started to watch his edits. I did not make any malicious edits on pages he participated, but I would involve myself in some debates if I knew of the topic and seen MONGO attempting to bully someone. Much like he did when he followed Giovanni to the Hiroshima page just to revert him, a page he never edited before then and only appeared an hour after Giovanni edited it, Tom appeared shortly after Giovanni reverted MONGO, of course to then revert Giovanni.

I am sure after the hunt ends I will soon by hunted down again for being user:rex another person MONGO has taken to accusing me of. This new accusation started on the Arbitration page after some did not agree with MONGO. I enjoy editing Misplaced Pages but these games of politics are making it dificult and are becoming quite annoying. I have had my privacy violated in a fishing expedition as I was claimed to be 5 other users, and now gearing up a 6th when this one fails, alleging I am a user named rex.

If this Arbitration is not going to look at MONGO as well as myself, then it is bias. These accusations come from "evidence" MONGO has cherry picked, and based on his intent to drive me from Misplaced Pages, having accused me of being four other users now, rex, Rootology, Fairness and now Nuclear / zero. --SevenOfDiamonds 18:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Amendment: I just want to add that Proabivouac, a user I have had no interaction with, who has only recently appeared only to constant confirm MONGO's statements, has stated MONGO always believed before accusing me of being anyone else, that I was Nuclear. However MONGO himself has stated that this is not the case, that he in fact believed I was Rootology and Fairness, which is why he presented evidence to Aude as such and then Aude filed their false RFCU. MONGO stated he only started believing I was Nuclear last month, which I would like to point, when he stated that he was still accusing me of being Rootology if you look at the date of that RFCU. So either MONGO was lying or purposely subjecting me to RFCU's he knew were not true, or Pro is lying about MONGO in an attempt to make it seem as though MONGO was never part of the fishing expedition, in an attempt to bolster his statements. --SevenOfDiamonds 10:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by AuburnPilot

As one of the admins standing in the way of consensus, I do not believe the evidence provided is enough to block SevenOfDiamonds based on the enforcement of a previous arbitration case. If you look only at the evidence provided by MONGO is his subpage User:MONGO/Ban evasion, there is certainly an indication of sockpuppetry, but if you look at the contributions of the editors as a whole, those diffs begin to look a bit cherry picked.

As for edit summaries, MONGO points out that the two editors use edit summaries with single words or phrases such as "huh", "+1", and/or words such as "response" and "note". True, but if you look at my edit summaries, you see "huh?" , "+1" , and single word edit summaries such as "response" and "note" . Maybe SOD is my sockpuppet...

Now look at the times they are actively editing. Yes, there is a general similarity, but if both users are in fact residents of New York/surrounding area, it's common sense that the two editors would be active during the same time. This is not evidence of sockpuppetry.

As for the spelling mistakes, I actually had to stop and consider how I'd been spelling those words when looking at the diffs. Thankfully, I've been spelling them correctly, but these are common spelling mistakes. I was actually sure "consensus" was spelled "concensus" but realized it was likely because I'd been looking at the misspelling for several days . Must be another sockpuppet. Same goes for the other spelling mistakes; they are not common to these two users.

Bottom line, there's a fair amount of evidence presented (so much that I can't address it all here), but it is not enough to show they are unquestionably the same person. The spelling mistakes, editing times, edit summary use, and 3RR blocks (note I have one) are not unique to these users and diffs could be provided showing the same for many users. With that in mind, I'll echo several of the users above and suggest the arbcom take this case so that editors and admins can act or shut up. - auburnpilot talk 18:55, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

On the knotted facts, by ElC

Regrettably, I feel compelled argue that Theresa had taken a bit too much liberty with the facts, at least with respect to my position. I'll be brief:

1. First, where are the Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried? This section should have contained some of the links in a more organized fashion (the various noticeboard threads and some key talk page ones). But this is a relatively minor point.
2. Second, while I did, indeed, object, I did not do so on the basis that SoD "was being harassed." In fact, nowhere have I used the word harassment in connection with this case. I did, nevertheless, express unease with all the phishing. And more on that directly below.
3. Third, with respect to all the phishing, her list above is incomplete and flawed: Giovano33 is not banned. Here are all rfcu and users: a. As IP:70.105.24.127, IP:74.73.16.230, and IP:172.131.137.61 (result: unrelated); b. Rootology and Fairness and Accuracy For All (result: declined, stale); c. Giovanni33 (result: unrelated); d. Lovelight (result: stale, unrelated?). The NuclearUmpf one is likely stale.
4. Finally, the reason I felt uneasy was that the block Theresa had proposed came the next day after the Lovelight RFCU. What struck me was that the user who filed it, argued on ANI that "the evidence is strong enough to stand without checkuser" (italics is my emphasis).

In light (no pun intended) of the above, I don't think it was unreasonable for me to feel uneasy about the extent of the phishing. If it changes from the day to day yet continued to be expressed with such certainty, then insisting on having the Committee review the matter and conduct its own investigation is not unreasonable. This is not to pass judgment on the latest, NuclearUmpf evidence by Mongo, which, indeed, I have yet to review. The point is that appearances count and a formal arbitration proceeding looks to be the best way to untie the knots (pun intended!) and retie everything together in a cohesive, comprehensive, and comprehensible format. Thus, I urge the Committee to speedily accept this case. El_C 21:26, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I extend my thanks to Theresa for amending her statement in accordance with some of my points. El_C 21:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Dtobias

The ArbCom decided unanimously that harrassment of an editor must be opposed by other editors and admins alike. This was aimed originally at combatting harrassment against MONGO, and has been invoked many times since with regard to attacks against him and various other editors. Commonly, when this ArbCom decision is cited, the point is made that the truth of any particular accusation the "harrasser" is making is either irrelevant or at least of lesser importance compared to the importance of opposing a campaign of harrassment against an editor. Now, is the sauce for the goose as good as the sauce for the gander? If MONGO and his friends, allies, defenders, and enablers engage in a campaign of harrassment of another editor, should that be regarded as a bad thing, even if it's possible one of the accusations in the whole series may be true? MONGO has clearly been out to get SevenOfDiamonds, and, with the assistance of a varying group of others, has tried a whole series of possible sockpuppet users until they could find one that would stick. This one does have some suspicious evidence, though still very circumstantial. But shouldn't the ArbCom be concerned about the sort of organized campaign of serial accusations against an editor that has taken place? Or, if this sort of thing is tolerated, then it needs to be tolerated in the "other direction" too, where even long-time, powerful users like MONGO can't duck criticisms levied at them by labeling their critics "harrassers". Because the sort of thing he did... building a subpage in his userspace collecting evidence against an editor... is precisely the sort of thing that (when it's done by somebody outside the "clique" to somebody inside it) is labeled "harrassment", "outing", "wikistalking", "creating an attack page", or, if done off-wiki, an "attack site", and is vilified and often leads to the person doing this getting blocked or banned. There needs to be an end to the double standard, where a favored clique gets different rights and responsibilities from everybody else, because some animals are more equal than others. *Dan T.* 22:53, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by User:Tom harrison

I hope the arbitrators will review the evidence and decide whether or not SixOfDiamonds/SevenOfDiamonds is Zer0faults/NuclearUmpf. If he is not, then we can can apologize and move on, hopefully without needing any further dispute resolution. If he is, then the remedies in the previous arbitration should apply. Tom Harrison 23:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by RxS

I also urge ArbCom to take up this issue. The ban evasion evidence page is quite compelling. Raymond Arritt put it well, so I won't repeat it except to say that each individual piece may not be convincing, but all together they point pretty clearly to a sock puppet link. The number of previous accusations are unfortunate but this request should be judged on it's own merit. I also think that if anyone other than Mongo had brought the ban evasion evidence forward there's a very strong chance the block would have stuck and we wouldn't be here. Mongo's role in this is fair game as is anyone else who is directly involved. One last thing, Dtobias claims that using a subpage to collect and organize evidence constitutes harassment. It needs to be understood that using a subpage for this purpose is perfectly acceptable, it's done routinely in preparation for RFC's, Checkuser requests, mediation request etc. Bottom line, even some of SoD's supporters admit to some suspicions about his status as a sock, this debate has to end somewhere and this is as good a place as any.

Statement by KWSN

As a CU clerk, I patrol those pages a lot. The Lovelight CU page was not checked and closed by a CU, but instead by another admin (I did a listuser to confirm). Kwsn(Ni!) 02:06, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Proabivouac

Before he had posted anything on wiki, MONGO e-mailed me asking me, as an experienced evaluator of sock reports, to review the contributions of ZF/NU and SOD. It didn't take too much reading to determine that these were probably the same writer. Combined with the circumstantial evidence, ZF/NU's declared intent to return to harass his enemies and special fixation on MONGO, I concluded that the chance that SOD was not ZF/NU approaches zero.

While such impressions can be quite reliable, they are by nature black boxy. To demarcate and assemble specific points of evidence to illustrate the particulars is a laborious task which the wiki interface (at least the version I'm using) doesn't facilitate. The first step is to download a corpus of text from both users accompanied by diffs and times, which, barring some automated solution of which I'm not aware, must be done diff by diff.

Ideally, this should not be necessary: instead, a handful of disinterested people with a proven ear for style would take a look and come to a conclusion. However, most users on Misplaced Pages, including many administrators, are not particularly good at this, and few are willing to examine something in which they have no personal stake.

Per SevenOfDiamonds and Auburn Pilot's statements, all assemblies of positive evidence look like "cherry picking" - it's the presence of so many cherries which makes them convincing. Even statistical analyses like the edit time chart are chosen to support the point. Conversely, material which indicates nothing in particular has no place in any report. The only things that would be immune to the "cherry picking" charge are links to full contribution histories - and even these make it obvious. While but one point, the consistent misspelling of "concencus" is a fantastic example of something that was anything but "cherry-picked" - one diff MONGO presented showed SOD saying "concensus," I wondered if ZF/NU did the same, and googled it: it was everywhere.

To observe that others display one or another of the traits which link these two users is to entirely miss the point. Suppose we idenitified someone as John Smith, male, 27 years old, born on August 18th, 5'11", 73 kg, living in Sudbury, etc. It is as if we observed, but many people are named John, that means nothing. Many are named Smith, that too, means nothing. How many people are 27? Lots of people live in Sudbury. etc. It is of course exactly the persistent confluence of many logically independent lines of evidence which indicates identity. To proceed as if this reasoning were inherently invalid, as some have, will make the identification of any sockpuppets - and the enforcement of any remedy - impossible. .Proabivouac 04:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Tbeatty

I requested CU for SevenOfDiamonds being Lovelight because in the middle of the history of a bunch of disruptive edits that Lovelight was later banned for, were two IP edits doing the identical thing. SoD admits these disruptive edits were his before he created the Six/Seven accounts. I did not know that MONGO had such a strong case against SoD being NuclearUmpf and he was planning on filing a arbitration enforcement case. There are two things that are known here: 1) SevenOfDiamonds is a sockpuppet with the only question remaining is of whom (and MONGO has an extremely convincing case) and 2) SevenOfDiamonds is disruptive enough that he has drawn the attention and ire of numerous editors and admins. Having to complain about so many checkuser requests isn't a badge of honor but rather something that should give great pause to the quality of contributions being offered by this person. His similarity to a number of banned editors is problematic at best. If he is NuclearUmpf, then the protestations can just be added to the long list of lies proffered by NuclearUmpf prior to his ignominious departure. --Tbeatty 04:37, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Giovanni33

• Important background and context*

First of all, let me state I believe there has been a systematic attempt by right wing editors to purge Misplaced Pages of left wing editors. Thus it’s no coincidence that the repeated fishing expeditions have been by various far right editors against effective left wing opponents. It has often been said that WP “Is not a battleground.” Of course, this is not a statement of reality; simply a statement about what should be the case. In reality WP is a major political battleground, unfortunately. And, from what I’ve seen it’s a case where a team of tight knit right-wingers are constantly going after those who opposes them on various politically charged articles. This takes the forms of taunting, personal attacks, lots of requests for user checks, lots of digging to make cases that the editor is a sock of a banned user, wiki-stalking to edit war, etc. So all this has to be seen in this very real political context.

• Weakness of nature of evidence, and need to assume good faith*

Now as to the specific charges, I have only looked at the evidence briefly, but I was not convinced. We see what we want to see, and I happened to see the evidenced match another editor whom I did not like that much (because he always likes to remove information because the source isnt the best instead of fact tagging it and allowing other editors to find better sources--or find them himself). Nuclear did this but SOD doesn't, that I can tell. The politics were not the same, and the editing tactics have not been the same. I don’t want to bring up the name of which I think the banned user is because it’s not fair to the editor, but I digress. Also, the evidence is clearly cherry picked. What stands out is that it only looks for 'evidence" that furthers the thesis--what the POV opponent, the accuser wants to advance; it disregards any evidence that doesn't fit. Thus, we don't see a NPOV presentation of the evidence at all--no limitations section, or facts that don't fit but are very relevant. No, we only see every possible angle that can further the desired agenda to make the case to get this user banned. Its classic cherry picking that displays confirmation bias. And even then it can only paint a cloudy picture at best because there are common sense alternative explanations if one assumes good faith interpretations. SOD deserves our good faith assumptions which knocks down each and every one of these various circumstancial pieces of evidence. That leaves us with a question of assuming good faith nor not? Now, in truth, I did not give serious consideration to the alleged evidence simply because it’s like the boy who has cried wolf once too many times, and this is just more of the same. Also because of the clear political nature of who is making the accusations against whom. For these reasons the charges lose some credibility.

• Other considerations: SevenOfDiamonds is a good editor*

However, even if we think the evidence is noteworthy, even if we think its significant, and even if we think its compelling (from what I’ve seen, its not), then we have to ask why the need to consider banning the user even though its possible he might be. Aside from the question of fairness given the possibility the he is innocent (as I think), it’s a question of what is best for WP. The editor in question, in fact, has been contributing in a very positive way to WP, making this a better place. I can attest to his principled role in standing up against bullying behavior. What his crime really was is that he was not to be intimated, but did speak out against bullying and unprincipled behavior exhibited by entrenched right wing forces, and defended their victims. Besides this, he has worked well with all serious editors on improving article contact with the use of the talk page. So, my other problem is that even if one strongly suspects he might be some banned user, for WP best interest, we should even more err on the side of caution, and not even consider banning such a good editor from our midst. We need more editors like SOD, and quite frankly, less editors like those who are accusing him and want to see him banned.

• Recaping main point*

Again, I do not know if he is a sock or not, and I think he deserves the presumption of innocence. But even more so given that his role on WP has been very good. He honestly has been working towards building an encyclopedia for all of us. He started many articles, he is civil, and he works with others. Others call him “disruptive” is false—unless they mean that anyone who defends himself and others against unjust bullying is being disruptive. So the larger issue is that any examination of the fact regarding the possibility of him being a sock should be tempered with that most important rule of all (ignore all the rules) that reminds of why we are all (supposed) to be here in the first place: to write an encyclopedia first and foremost. If anything gets in the way of that all-important rule, then disregard it. That goes for any conclusion that SOD is a returned and reformed banned user---which I highly doubt.

• Conclusion: Arbcom is the right place to bring correction, & restatement of opening context/background point*

In this light I hope that the honorable judges of the arbitration board, as revered, trusted, and respected members of the community, and as members who are in a position to take a stand that has some lasting and enforceable effect, issue statements that the will have the positive effect that WP needs so that SOD can be left alone to edit in peace, and that those who keep hounding him are warned appropriately and reminded once again that WP is NOT a battle ground. As another editor wrote on his talk page: "As you are patently the victim of both WP:STALK and WP:HARASS from multiple editors including MONGO, Tbeatty, Proabivouc, Morton Devonshire, and others, it may be in your own best interests to pursue arbitration against all of them directly. Given that they have harassed you in a continuous fashion for nearly a month, you have demonstrated deep patience and calm in this troublesome situation. That you have not lashed out at even one of them is a testament to your personal strength, moral fibre, and ethical compass. Please consider it, for your own safety and protection. It is the responsibility of every single Misplaced Pages administrator to defend and protect all other users on this website." I agree, we should protect our fellow wikipedians. Finally, lets leave our personal POV at home (as much as possible), and not divide the community between right vs. left—but lets instead unite with our common goal of building an encyclopedia for everyone according the both the letter and spirit of the various rules and guidelines for whose purpose they were created.Giovanni33 05:41, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Thatcher131

Um, what is this case for? There was a request to take enforcement action against SevenOfDiamonds at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement#User:NuclearUmpf. It was clear that there was no consensus among admins to act based on the proposed sockpuppet identification, so I closed the discussion after recommending Arbitration. This was proven hours later when FayssalF blocked Seven and then unblocked after complaint and discussion on the noticeboard. But I think the parties have missed my point. I believe there should be a new Arbitration case to deal with allegations that SevenOfDiamonds is a disruptive editor who should be sanctioned. Such a case would also probably have to deal with SevenOfDiamonds' counter-allegation that MONGO has harassed him. I have not looked at extensively at Seven's behavior but after 4 or 5 different sockpuppet allegations, it is obvious than many editors feel he is a disruptive editor who should be removed, but there is no consensus among admins for a community ban. If there is going to be a case, that should be its focus. Thatcher131 13:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Notice has been given to Giovanni33 to substantially shorten his statement, per request from Charles Matthews, below. Newyorkbrad 19:44, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (3/0/0/1)

• Accept to sort this out. FloNight 16:42, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept to consider behavior of all involved. Kirill 17:01, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
• The statement by User:Giovanni33 runs to nearly 1200 words, and reads like an op-ed piece. I'd like to see a 500 word limit enforced much more strictly, and people addressing the issue of acceptance. Clerks please note. Charles Matthews18:35, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept; scope per Thatcher's comment. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Jebbrady and Armstrong-related articles

Initiated by SarekOfVulcan at 16:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• SarekOfVulcan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jebbrady (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log), and his known IPs:
  • 208.253.158.36 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
  • 69.115.162.235 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Jebbrady notified here. IPs were also notified here and here.

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

1. Talk pages: has been tried by multiple users
2. Disengage: considered as evidence of the validity of his position
3. Third parties: I was brought in as a third party by User:Lisasmall, who has also posted on WQA. An article RFC was tried: when Jebbrady found it, he demanded that I remove it, or I would be reported for lying.
4. Mediation: Given Jebbrady's past statements and behavior, I do not think he would accept a mediation outcome unfavorable to him.

Statement by SarekOfVulcan

Jebbrady is taking a very active role to present his POV on articles on articles related to Herbert W. Armstrong, such as Worldwide Church of God and Armstrongism, while ignoring closely-related ones like Garner Ted Armstrong, which present Armstrong in a less-favorable light. He has claimed to be fighting against a Misplaced Pages tendency toward religious discrimination.

Out of his 300 edits between July 28 and August 16, only 3 were to articles other than his core interests and related talk and user talk pages. He persistently assumes bad faith: for example, when I made two reverts of his deletion of my summaries of comments on the talk page and logged off due to a drained laptop battery, he accused me of colluding with the IP editor who continued to restore my comments to bait him into a WP:3RR violation. In other cases, he has taken politeness as proof of bad faith. He has declared that he's "in for the long hall"(sic), that "a new order has come to the plains", and that "there is going to be a long a very hard battle".

Despite being asked by at least two editors, he rarely uses edit summaries. His posts on the Talk pages ramble at length, and he does not indent his paragraphs consistently, making it hard to follow the threads. He claims that he can decide which sources are valid for the article. He takes the dispute resolution process as a personal attack. He claims to be a new editor, when he's actually be editing since October 2006.

Until recently, he did not properly sign his talk page comments with tildes, which makes diffs rather difficult to find, as many lack timestamps, or have modified timestamps.

He has previously been blocked for not logging in: he still does not consistently do so, as can be seen in the history between August 11 at 9:54 EDT and August 12 at 12:24 EDT, where he switches twice from IP to account.

Addition after Kirill's decline vote: I'd like to point to this diff (previously linked above) as a reason I don't feel an RFC/U would be productive. Among other things, he calls either the article RFC I opened or the WQA report Lisasmall opened a "vicious complaint".

Addition after two more declines: Got it. RFC/U opened.

Statement by User:Jebbrady

Comment by RelHistBuff

I ask the arbitrators to seriously consider this case. The problems with this user has have not only occurred recently. I have had the same problems as described by SarekOfVulcan, but going back to 2006. I originally had a fairly neutral version of this the article, Herbert W. Armstrong, which I was working on in October 2006. User jebbrady started editing it at the end of that month. I tried to reason with him but he could only bring in his POV, continuing to revert all my suggested changes. In December 2006, I asked for a third opinion to resolve the dispute amicably. Even with the support of the third opinion, User:Amatulic (see the diff here), jebbrady refused to cooperate. As I was alone on this case and without support, I stopped editing the article and stopped the discussion as it was clearly like talking to a brick wall. However, it is clear from the description of SarekOfVulcan, this user has continued to act in the very same way with other editors. Clearly his behaviour does not change, despite the fact that all editors have tried to deal with him civilly. I see no other solution than to solve this through arbitration. --RelHistBuff 20:07, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Lisasmall

I also ask the arbitrators to review this case. My problems with the user (with diffs and references) are laid out in the WQA. The article about a 20th-century American religious figure is not the problem; any random group of editors would be able to produce a good article quickly. The user who owns the article is. He assumes bad faith at every turn, and has repeatedly stated his belief that being civil is a strategy against him. As a voluntary courtesy, I let him know July 31 that I would disengage while he planned to work on a comprehensive re-write. I used the time to contribute elsewhere; he believes I spent it adopting new identities to bedevil him. Many patient attempts have been made by me and other editors to work with him, but the article continues to suffer and now the editors brought in via RFC, THIRD, ASSIST, etc. are suffering too -- from exhaustion. (Some of these steps have been tried more than once). Please consider his repeated disregard of WP:SOCK (particularly the audit trail provision) and his lack of cooperation with earlier conflict interventions when you decide whether to review the case and when determining its outcome. -- Lisasmall | Talk 05:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/3/0/0)

• Decline as premature; a user-conduct RFC would be more appropriate at this juncture. Kirill 17:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
• Decline as premature. Paul August ☎ 18:42, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
• Reject, premature. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Iasson request to lift ban

Initiated by Sjakkalle following e-mails from Iasson at 06:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Iasson (talk · contribs)
• Sjakkalle (talk · contribs)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

I have informed Iasson by e-mail, and he was aware of the post on the Admins' noticeboard.

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Iasson was previously banned for a year after an ArbCom case. Prior to this there was at least one user conduct RFC filed against the user.

I have made a post on the AN following an e-mail request from Iasson asking to be unblocked.

Statement by Sjakkalle

Iasson was banned for a year in the spring of 2005 after this ArbCom case. The reason was persistent disruption to the Votes for Deletion process, abusive accounts, and failure to keep accounts secure. All this coupled with a lack of constructive edits to the encyclopedia.

Iasson's ban was extended multiple times due to ban evasion by sockpuppets, including a User:Bank of Misplaced Pages series of accounts. On May 22, 2006 I blocked the account indefinitely due to the presence of another suspected sockpuppet, User:Gorbrown. I made a note of this on the ANI page, where the indefban was endorsed by three other users, although one expressed doubts on whether Gorbrown was the real Iasson or an imitator.

I have now received two e-mails form Iasson asking to be unblocked. Since e-mails are private correspondence I will not reproduce the here, but the basic statements made by Iasson are that

• he is/was not Gorbrown (both e-mails)
• he is/was not Bank of Misplaced Pages (second e-mail)
• he will no longer "mess with" the AFD process although he still disagrees with it (second e-mail)
• he will try only to work with Misplaced Pages articles (both e-mails)

I put a post on the AN following the first e-mail . Following this second e-mail, I have decided to give the committee an opportunity to review the ban.

With regards to my view of the matter I will say that

1. Iasson's conduct prior to the ArbCom ban was entirely disruptive, and his conduct on the user conduct RFC is very illustrative in this regard. The original ban was entirely justified.
2. I am not sure on whether Gorbrown is a sockpuppet of Iasson, though I am quite sure that several of the identified sockpuppets were truly sockpuppets.
3. Since I am no longer an admin, having resigned the admin bit in November last year (and having no time to perform any real admin activities any longer), I do not have the tools to unblock. Even if I had the unblock tool, I would not use it unless I had support from a sizable number of other administrators.
4. I recognize that over a year has passed since the ban was extended to indefinite, and that a review of the ban might be in order. That is my reason for posting this here.

Some responses

• (Resp to Panoptical). My interpretation of this page is that the "motions in prior cases" section is restricted to arbitrators, hence my decision to post this on the main "requests" section. I would guess that if this case is accepted, it would wind up in the motions section and not as a separate case with a workshop/evidence page/etc.
• (Resp to 194.110.221.94) I respect your opinion, and the attitude displayed in your post reflects a healthy attitude towards bans in general. If we are dealing with a user who, while unacceptably disruptive, has made good and constructive edits as well, I would almost certainly support your view. I will note that in none of the e-mails I received was any remorse expressed, it was more like a "promise to be good", not a "sorry about the trouble I caused". In my view, the sincerity of the promises made in the e-mails to me is uncertain.
• (Resp to decline votes from arbitrators) I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be heading towards declining this... I brought this case here so that someone with the authority and ability to make a decision in this matter can do so. I will not be protesting leaving the ban in place, nor would I protest accepting the case for reviewing the ban.

Sjakkalle (Check!) 11:52, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by anonymous 194.110.221.94

I am disappointed at you declining an appeal by someone who wishes to return. What happened to Assuming good faith? It's true Iasson might edit sometimes and defy the ban, but he seeks to be accepted by the comminuty once more and you can't be sure whether or not his remorse is sincere. Take this as an opportunity to reform an otherwise wayward editor. 194.110.221.94 10:57, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment by uninvolved Panoptical

Shouldn't this be moved to the "Motions for prior cases" section? After all, this is a request to remove the ban placed on due to a prior case. Panoptical 05:52, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by VoltronForce

I think that Iasson does deserve another chance. While I can't be sure of what accounts were really created by him, I can be certain that he probably did it because he felt that if he requested readmittance his request would be turned down. And here we already have 3 members shaking their heads.

Clerk notes

Arbitrators should advise whether Iasson should be unblocked for the limited purpose of allowing him to participate, or if they would prefer to follow the practice of hearing this type of appeal via the mailing list. Newyorkbrad 10:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/4/0/0)

• Decline. I find it difficult to imagine that Iasson could become a useful contributor and have no interest in second-guessing the community's conclusions. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 16:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
• Decline. Paul August ☎ 16:16, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
• Decline. Kirill 17:03, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
• Reject. Note that the indefinite ban is not an ArbCom ban, but a community ban, and it is the community who should be consulted on removing it. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Digwuren and Tartu based accounts

Initiated by Irpen at 17:59, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Digwuren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• impossible to precisely know number of Tartu-based accounts. Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/DLX and Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Digwuren must include the legitimate users too. Exhaustive list of accounts requires the ArbCom investigation.
• Community

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Digwuren
• community informed in the ANI thread

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Current ANI discussion permalink updated as of 9:31 August 15, 2007 (UTC) (note, may have changed in the current version.)
• Last ANI discussion: four threads starting from Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive272#Complaint about user Petri Krohn, and this thread at the same ANI archive page
• Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/DLX and Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Digwuren impossible to sort out due to the networking issues.

Statement by Irpen

Digwuren (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is a notoriously abusive POV-pusher and a fierce revert warrior with the record of gross disruption.

The case here is crystal clear. Without spending time going over details of his past disruption and block log (his last one-week block being not even a month ago) it is enough to take a look at Digwuren edits within the last 12 hours. There are a total of 93 edits.

• Of his 58 article space edits, over one half of which are purely non-content formatting changes, I still counted 18 pure reverts, most of them using popups, undo or TW, thus implying opponents' vandalism (none are actually vandalism-related)
• His talk page edits made in the same time frame include:
  1. grossly offensive entry directed at one content opponent saying: "How come that a Great Russian Patriot like yourself does not live in Russian Federation but in Canada?"
  2. accusation of stalking
  3. non-repentant resentful response to a long overdue admin warning. In response to being cautioned for an offensive talk page entry and characterizing his opponent's edits as vandalism, Digwuren wrote: "I stand by all these characterisations, and resent the accusation of incivility. Digwuren"
  4. This was soon followed by offensive accusation towards the warning admin: "It would seem that you've taken up an anti-me crusade, likely triggered by the situation at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Don't you consider such WP:POINT-making contrary to Misplaced Pages policy? Digwuren"

Looking at the edit summaries of his reverts, one sees that he routinely accuses his opponents in vandalism and not by merely using the undo button, but specifically using the vandalism undo option in twinkle:

• To his most frequent content opponent: reverted 1 edit by Petri Krohn identified as vandalism (make sure to look what he "identifies as vandalism")
• six more of the exact same vandalism accusations of his opponent

You are welcome to dig deeper to find more of the same. After the last debacle, he promised to solicit opinions from other editors to rectify the situation. The promise earned him an unblock but he failed to deliver on his promise. He was later reminded of it by an unblocking admin and promised again to rectify the situation with no result to this day.

A devoted revert warrior, he is as of the day of this submission, Aug. 14, 2007, one step under 3RR at Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, Occupation of Estonia by Nazi Germany, and Alyosha Mirny and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The disruption would not have reached the current level if he was not receiving a consistent encouragement and support from a small but well coordinated group of editors that feel sympathetic to his fringe POV. Judging from the past record, I believe this encouragement and support is bound to continue. What prompted me to submit this case for arbitration without further wait is the extent of disruption, meatpuppeting in edit wars, discussions of deletion, renaming or ANI, thus effectively bombing those discussions. Just today I noticed a fresh single-purpose account Ptrt (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) whose entire short activity consists of the support of Digwuren in edit wars followed by the immediate joining of the 5-edit old account to the ANI discussion, once the appearance of a new SPA was mentioned there.

The fact of multiple users editing from the Tartu University from behind firewall makes even a checkuser less than conclusive to sort out this mess. Immediate appearance of the familiar faces at any discussion, board, talk page, edit war that involves Digwuren is mind-boggling. There is also an undeniable evidence of the permanent line of the off-wiki connection among the POV-pushing (even legitimate) accounts as the coordination in synchronous revert warring, talk and board page postings is impossible to explain otherwise. Sure enough, coordinated posting will follow below.

Finally, there is an unprecedented fact of the complaint by the blocking admin that his computer faced the intrusion from Estonia-based IPs during the block period.

This is all too messy and complex for ANI and warrants a more thorough look by the ArbCom members armed with the checkuser tool and experience in dealing with POV-pushers of the most disruptive pattern. I did not even go into Digwuren's edits themselves, which are notorious for extremely blatant pattern of POV-pushing on all fronts, to save space as the ArbCom intervention is clearly warranted by the facts outlined above in their own right. I don't believe there is even a need at this stage to analyze content-wise this tsunami of POV-pushing while Digwuren's friends are to attempt circumventing the discussion of his disruption by presenting it in terms of some global content conflict. This is nothing like the much more complex in assigning faults and finding remedies Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus. The Piotrus' case involves top-notch editors from all sides dangled into their content disagreements and largely revolves around the notion of ethical conduct, also very important but much more difficult to judge or remedy. However, this case is about a clearly disallowed pattern of behavior spelled out very well in our policies and guidelines.

The mess of the egregious POV-pushing and disruption by Tartu-based accounts has got to be sorted out at last with:

1. illegitimate accounts banned
2. valid disruptive accounts placed on various paroles
3. Digwuren receiving the punishment called for by the degree of the disruption caused by him.

If ArbCom has no way of determining the illegitimate accounts, still 2 and 3 above is within its purview if it agrees that the action is needed. --Irpen

Comment by Moreschi

Eastern Europe is something of a battleground (understatement of the decade), and I'm sure everyone's heartily sick of the sight of this sort of thing (not another case...), but I don't think this can be ducked. Yes, ANI does not equate to dispute resolution, but I think the Arbitration Committee is needed here to sort things out. This has been coming for a while. Moreschi 18:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

• Note to arbitrators: yes, something can be done here. Yes, we already know (I see that the Piotrus case has just closed) that Eastern Europe is all screwball, but in this instance there are some genuinely worrying accusations of atrocious user conduct that deserve investigation. I don't think this can be fully fixed, and perhaps it never will, but at the moment the Committee is better placed to attempt some sort of fix than the wider community. Moreschi 12:35, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
• Oh, for heaven's sake, that was a comment on Eastern European Misplaced Pages articles. Do get a sense of proportion. Also, no legal threats. Attitudes such are yours as doubtless part of the problem. Moreschi 16:02, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Martintg

This seems like a snowjob. No evidence of any real dispute resolution such as mediation or RFC being attempted by the complainant in the first instance. Do we really want to short circuit this and go straight to Arbitration for what is essentially a content dispute over the interpretation of Soviet history? Martintg 20:05, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks to Bishonen for resurrecting Petri Krohn's RFC, which btw was deleted due to insufficient prior mediation before bringing case for RFC/U. As an aside, it must be said there was a good faith attempt at mediation by one side during the existance of the RFC/U, thanks to the efforts of DrKiernan, but was subsequently ignored by the other party, as indicated here . However, I don't see how Petri Krohn's RFC could in any way be possibly used as a substitute for an RFC on Digwuren. Irpen wasn't a party in that previous RFC and Petri Krohn is not a party to this current RfA. The kernel of this complaint is the interpretation of Soviet history, in this instance concerning Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, the rest, such as the so called "Tartu based accounts" and groundless accusations of computer intrusion is just fanciful embellishment with no basis in fact. Certainly Digwuren's behaviour is comparably better than Petri Krohn's as documented in his disqualified RFC/U.
• If Irpen was serious about this he should have taken it to mediation as a first step, therefore I propose this RfA be declined and mediation attempted first. Martintg 22:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
• Irpen mentions the nebulous "Tartu based accounts" in the title of this RfA and as one of the parties to this RfA. Who are they? It's not clear to me, what has this mysterious group allegedly done to warrant ArbCom intervention? Where is the evidence of mediation, as required by ArbCom when groups are involved. And the accusation of intrusion and hacking an admin's computer, as if a regular editor would know the IP address of an admin, what a complete joke. This RfA is ill considered, malformed and premature, and a waste of time until other dispute resolution methods are exhausted. Martintg 10:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
• p.s. Digwuren appears to be presently offline, so I doubt he is even aware of this RfA. Martintg 10:13, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
• In regard to RJ CG's statement in regard to "co-ordinated effort", perhaps he should realise his edits may be against concensus. Estonians ought to have some idea of their own history and be able to form a consensus without having to "co-ordinate". The notion that Estonian editors are somehow massively disrupting and edit warring Estonian related articles and should thus be punished is truly mind boggling. Digwuren was blocked for a week for attempting to expand an article anti-Estonian sentiment, thanks to the "Administrator with balls" FayssalF Since when did blocks become a tool in resolving content disputes? Why wasn't he given the opportunity for mediation for this particular article, rather than a block without warning out of the blue? Martintg 06:32, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Response to Petri Krohn

"absolutely no contributions", !!! Wow, what an amazingly audacious lie! Digwuren is one of the most competent and balanced editors in Misplaced Pages, with over 4000 edits to his credit since joining in May. A great contribution by any standard. As for you claims of incivility, it is certainly a case of the pot calling the kettle black! Martintg 23:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What I would like this arbitration case to achieve if accepted?

As per Alexia and Sander, continued unsubstantiated accusations of sock puppetry by the so-called "Tartu based accounts" is also uncivil and a slur, plus FayssalF admonished for slurring Digwuren's reputation with unsubstantiated accusations of computer hacking and intrusion . Martintg 20:55, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Response to Ghirla's statement

Ghirla's anti-Estonia sentiment is very much a reflection of the view many Russophones hold towards eSStonia. It is a rather extreme view that has no place here in Misplaced Pages. As an aside, Digwuren's one week block which Ipen cites as evidence of bad behaviour was for defending the article anti-Estonian sentiment, against someone who was blanking and turning it into a redirect , a redirect that Irpen himself subsequently objected to . Ghirla's idea of a central committee on Eastern Europe-related topics is positively frightening, and I would oppose as it goes against the whole philosophy of Misplaced Pages. Martintg 21:13, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Alexia Death

There have been threats of Arbcom from almost the very beginning I and other Estonians now labeled "Tartu accounts" or "Korp!Estonia" became active and I personally am sick and tired of the constant attacks, the accusations and the mindless POV pushing based an national level animosity of certain editors. It needs higher level attention, and it needs it NOW. If it is to be a an ArbCom, very well! Lets air this matter for good.

Lets get the facts straight

• Editing from behind UT firewall - I graduated from University of Tartu two years ago and have NEVER edited WP from its infrastructure or knowingly used its proxy. These claims are plain WRONG. I have never knowingly met any of the editors associated with me in his manner.

• Accusations of "hacking" - Making an accusation of hacking against someone and refusing to release details sounds like slander to me... FayssalF-s assumption that Digwurren would "hack" him shows that he has failed to assume good faith. User:Suva insists knowing the ATTACKERS ip in question, not FayssalF-s. There is no obstacles releasing info on the attack he claims as it did not happen on Misplaced Pages. So, what kind of an attack from what IP? Hacking accusation is a far fetched thing in the era of zombified computers. A directly internet connected machine(not a smart move, you really should firewall&NAT you connection) will be constantly scanned for open ports and if you have SSH on port 22, soon there will be bots and zombies trying to force it. You can see the attacks coming from all over the world. Saying that one one of these random attacks is Digwurren trying to hack you is silly. If it is something more that makes you say this, you better show proof. Also, to attack you, Digwurren would need to know YOUR ip. He is not an admin so he has NO ACCESS to that information. FayssalF is mistaken and owes Digwurren an apology unless he shows some proof.

Comment on Digwuren and his woes

I became active on Misplaced Pages pretty much on the same time as he did. I've participated in the same "battles". The difference between him and me is that I refuse to follow the examples set by opposition. With Ghirlas and Petri Krohns attacks constantly tolerated and double standards enforced, I'm not surprised that he now tends to act almost like the gentlemen above, but with at least some discretion. Ghila tried in an AfD to sort voters by the voters nationality, in an effort to show witch votes would be worth more than others. Result? Just a a moderate "Don't do it!". Petri Krohn Wrote a long tirade accusing Estonian editors of having "Nazi skeletons in the family closet". Result? - 72 hour block. First actual action to make the animosity stop. And these are just the highlights. The constant name calling("extreme nationalist Estonians", "Korp!Estonia", "socks on wheels" - this I actually found to be funny), constant accusations of vandalism ... no wonder it has rubbed of on someone fairly new to Misplaced Pages. We tried RFC/U with Petri, but in spite the overwhelming amount of evidence, the case was rejected because, apparently we had not tried hard enough to make up. Another proof that acting like this WORKS on Misplaced Pages. I believe this was the turning point of Digwurren. We had tried to do this right, but it did not work. Why bother with being good all the time if the system favors being bad? May it be noted that this is not an excuse, its a reason and as long as the rules are not enforced fairly and equally on everybody, there will be others leaning from current "role models".

Comment on now undeleted RFC/Petri_Krohn

The "outside" views are actually views of two camps that voting clearly displays. One side acknowledges that these views are really not outside, the other not. And then there are just plain racist slanderous slurs like this. When things like this are okay, with accusations that make every civil person outraged, what compromise can there be? And how come this a valid RFC/U to be displayed against Digwurren but not valid enough to be actually certified? I had high hopes for this RFC/U to resolve the situation. I worked hard in trying to put it together and I was seriously disappointed with he whole process when it failed. Now the failing happens all over again. Something that I and others hoped would solve the situation is now put to use of aggravating it. This all is rather sad.

Comment on RJ GC-s accusation of collaboration.

Take a peek at Wikiproject Estonia. There is a really helpful script for monobook.js that shows at your watch page a list of Wikiproject Estonia recent changes. Its written by Sander Säde. Thats how Wikiproject Estonia members are so operative, they always have an overview of whats going on in the topics in its scope. This accusation is rather ridiculous. (PS: not thanks needed for restoring Bishonen-s comment you accidentally overwrote.)

Naming community as a party to this Arbcom by Irpen

I do not understand it. We do not have any problems with community. We have problems with a pretty limited subset of that community who we have a content dispute over politics and history of Estonia. Before we came along their POV dominated the articles, and now they are sore that theres a balancing POV being inserted. I find claiming that community as a whole supports this action unfounded and rather rude. With the low number of statements presented here, its pretty oblivious that its a narrow circle of editors that are involved.

Extending Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus/Proposed decision to this case

If it is made clear that this case is also extended here then the two last wishes on my resolution list are handled. That would still leave the constant accusations of some form of "co-operation" between the "Tartu accounts" and the matter of unsubstantiated hacking accusation.

Thoughts on how bad co-operation is...

It has just hit me how stupid this witch hunt is. Misplaced Pages is a collaborative effort. Working together should be encouraged not people prosecuted for suspecting collaboration. Why people complain about collaboration? because multiple editors agreeing means multiple passes on 3RR. Force should not prevail and 3RR should apply per change(+once if content is found inappropriate in talk with consensus or if no consensus can be found by process similar to AfD with and uninvolved party deciding) not per Editor. This takes the numbers matter problem out of the equation and allows and demands discussion and collaboration to get changes accepted.

What I seek from this case were it accepted for arbitration

• An end to the "Korp!Estonia" and "Tartu accounts" accusations.
• WP:CIVIL enforced equally regardless of your edit count or other merits.
• An end to ruthless Russian/Soviet POV pushing campaign in articles about Estonia. NPOV should be respected, views attributed and content reliably sourced. And all this needs to be enforced just like WP:CIVIL.

Comment on the "non-involved" individual

If administration allows this kind of incivility then this project is doomed. Most of his post is one gross insult, and it is starting to be one too many. I hope Godwins law is enforced here.

As to a proposed board to oversee the controversial topics, It would be rather welcome. However, none of the content creators can be on that board. These people need to be free of bias in these topics.

Last modified: --Alexia Death the Grey 15:44, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Question by GRBerry

Would the proposed findings at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Piotrus/Proposed decision be sufficient (if so, reject the case), or is more needed?

Statement by FayssalF

I have to say that i've spent around 90 minutes to get all the following facts posted as they look below now. That's really a hard and unencyclopaedic task. I'd have rather gone editing. But well, for the benefit of Misplaced Pages? Hell, yes. There you go...

I have to agree w/ my fellow admin Moreschi in that Arbitration Committee's intervention is needed here to sort things out. Estonia-related articles have witnessed a massive edit warring w/o any attempt from any side to take that seriously and try to go through WP:DR. It has been a ground for multiple accusations from multiple parties.

Well, in brief. I was the admin who blocked Digwuren back on July 2007 as well as a couple of 2 other users which i'd identify as the "other side" in what follows.

Timeline

• I don't know about all past behaviors of User:Digwuren but i know since a couple of weeks that Digwuren's first edit was at Talk:Bronze Soldier of Tallinn on May 1st, 2007. A good start for a first edit. Trying to discuss!

• The first time i heard about the conflict was on 11 July 2007 ? AN/I thread. The thread was started by User:Suva claiming that User:Ghirlandajo pushing his political POV in inappropriate places. As you'd see from that thread, admin Bishonen and myself saw no admin intervention was needed.

• I can't recall the which lead to the following but i'll leave that to maybe someone else who can find the link. This is the link which i got from user:Irpen. That's the link and that's the one i referred to. One of the keys to this enigma is there.

• Blocked Digwuren (talk · contribs) for 1 week.
• Blocked RJ CG (talk · contribs) for 48h (the other side)
• Blocked Petri Krohn (talk · contribs) for 72h (the other side)

• User:Dc76 accuses me of bias and posts a thread at the AN/I. According to reviewing admin Tom harrison FayssalF rocks!.

• Admin Deskana convincing me of letting Digwuren edit conditionally. After a few hours, i accepted and Deskana posted it at the AN/I as per my request.

• On July 19, 2007, i received a kind of a "barnstar" from User:Petri Krohn (the other side). According to , i am an Administrator with balls.

• On July 20, 2007, i've experienced some online intrusion attempts made against my machine (for what i could record, the experience lasted no more than a couple of hours). I've already got a C# userbox posted at my userpage. I am saying this responding to User:Suva's request to know about the IP in question. I am a programmer. I know about hacking but please don't accuse me of hacking anyone. The problem is that User:Suva insists in knowing about the exact location of the IP in question. No, that's IMPOSSIBLE as long as you are not an ADMIN. I've explained to everyone that any admin can contact me to know about this issue. Suva, i am an admin and admins are trusted by the community. Only an admin can get that kind of information. So please, stop insisting. I've already explained that it was not my intention to talk about that but since matters arrived to this point then i considered it is right to talk about it.

• August 14, 2007, A new AN/I thread involving the issue. And here we are.

I could have easily blocked User:Ptrt indef as it is clear that the account has been created for a single purpose as explained above by User:Irpen. Anyways, this case would make that clear. -- FayssalF - 22:57, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Petri Krohn (in reply to GRBerry)

The cases cannot be compared. User:Piotrus is one of Misplaced Pages's most valuable contributors. User:Digwuren on the other hand had absolutely no contributions to article space when I took up the issue in June. (See: ArbCom or block?) Since then there has been notable improvement in his contributions, but his uncivility and disrespect for WP:NPOV have remained. -- Petri Krohn 23:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by JdeJ

I must agree that Digwuren is a particularly unhelpful contributor. Looking at other comments here, it's obvious that he's defended by some other Estonians as Alexia Death (whom I consider a very good editor) for taking part in conflicts regarding Estonia. For the same reason, it's clear that those who have held the opposite views on some of these matters aren't too fond of him. Personally, I find some articles where I disagree with his opinions and others where I do disagree, but that's beside the point because: regardless of whether I think his opinions are right or wrong, I always find his way to behave out of line. My first contact ever was when he left a message on my talk page, calling me a "crackpot" . The reason he did so was that I had dared to request a source for the claim that Estonians are the oldest people in Europe. After that, I've seen him revert pages he doesn't like with no explanations given, I've seen him call other users vandals for reverting his own edits etc. So the user is a consant POV-pusher who often attacks other users. JdeJ 07:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment on Digwuren and his woes

In reply to Alexia's statement, I'm not familiar with the user Ghirlas but it's true that I've been surprised by Petri Krohn's actions many times. Looking at the topics in which Digwuren and Petri have both been involved, my sympathies have almost always been with Digwuren as I consider Petri to be engaged with very weird kind of ]. Having said that, it does nothing to defend Digwuren. I can understand him becoming frustrated, but that is no reason for him to start acting in a disruptive and uncivil way himself. There are people you don't like at Misplaced Pages. If you cannot deal with that without copying their behaviour, Misplaced Pages might not be the best place. So I understand the frustration he must have felt but I can't see it being very relevant to this discussion. JdeJ 17:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by RJ CG

I would like to bring to community's attention another example of coordinated efforts of group in question , see times of edits , , , . Within 3 minutes after one member of the team exhaused his revert limit (and within a minute after I, being an author of a change not to the goup's liking, reverted), another member of the group popped up, failed to identify his changes as a revert in edit history but did not contribute anything BUT a revert. RJ CG 16:27, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Sander Säde

• "Behind Tartu University firewall" accusation is ridiculous and can be easily verified by a checkuser. I have never edited Misplaced Pages from Tartu University - I've even been in Tartu only twice during last year, both times less then three hours and without using a computer. I guess that Martintg (from Australia) is also flying daily to Tartu? Tartu University cache servers are 193.40.5.245 (talk · contribs) and 193.40.5.100 (talk · contribs) (both IP's from DNS queries). Afaik, all Tartu University IP's should start with 193.40.* (hey, I just remembered my old IP from while I was in Uni, 193.40.8.80 (talk · contribs). Sad, isn't it? I can remember an IP I haven't used in years...).
• As for RJ CG's accusations of "coordinated efforts" - I have my watchlist as a RSS feed in FF live bookmarks, I tend to check it every 15..30 min or so when I am using the computer. Also, some time ago I wrote a script, cleverly named "Estonian articles to watchlist page" that utilizes AJAX to display changes in all WikiProject Estonia articles on top of your watchlist. Said script can be easily changed to support any WikiProject or category. That helps people easily to see changes in WP:E-related articles without a need to add them to watchlist.

For both "Korps! Tartuensis" and "coordinated efforts", I think that next user who accuses us to be sock/meatpuppets or coordinating "attacks" outside en.wikipedia without rock solid evidence must apologize. If he fails to do so, I think that he should be warned by a block.

• Now, as for hacking accusation, I see no way to verify that it actually happened. Even if it did, there is no way to link it with any Wikipedian - as none of so-called "Korp! Tartuensis" is not an admin and therefore just would not know FayssalF's IP. I recommend that he creates a checkuser case with all of us and the IP. However, note that checkuser admin must do a reverse DNS and actually check what IP's are proxies (major ISP's redirect all traffic through proxy servers) and what are geographically close to each-other. Last checkuser cases involving Estonia were ridiculous, accusing basically all Estonian editors to be sockpuppets. Note, that I am unaware what data do admins doing checkuser queries see - or how knowledgeable they are of networking in general.
• And finally, to Digwuren. I fully agree with Alexia and Martintg - Digwuren followed the behavioral patterns of users such as Ghirlandajo and Petri Krohn (I could mention few other users, some who have given their statements here as well). There is no forgiving for behavior such as this, for all three of them. But, there seems to be a special "out-of-the-jail card" if you have a lot of edits - and Digwuren does not have yet 20000+ edits. Others do.

However, he always sources his edits, is fully willing to overturn his own edits when new sources contradict them and follows NPOV guideline by trying to give a neutral viewpoint and sources from both "sides". He is also willing to discuss controversial edits in talk pages. All that cannot be said by far most Misplaced Pages editors. If you follow his edits, then you can see how he gradually became more and more frustrated when other editors (so-called "other side" or "opponents") are making unsourced or one-sided edits - or even insert clear falsehood to the articles.

In many ways it is Digwuren, who revived WikiProject Estonia - although I wish us WP:E editors could have more time to actually contribute, instead of wasting our time to patrol for pro-Soviet/anti-Estonian edits and be involved in cases such as this. Digwuren has contributed to great many articles and if he stops behaving in the same way as those Estophobic users, I see him as a very valuable editor to Misplaced Pages - in future, perhaps among most valuable contributors. He is relentless in chasing sources and improving articles.

I've said it before, my recommendation is for an admin to warn Digwuren about his edit summaries - and clearly state that he will be blocked unless he stops those. It might be useful, though, if an uninvolved administrator follows all changes in WP:E articles for a while - if not for nothing else, then to actually witness what we have to go through daily.

• As for the "Statement by non-involved Ghirla" below, I think that is the biggest pile of hypocrisy I've seen on Misplaced Pages. Far from being "non-involved", he has been the biggest "inspiration" for Digwuren when it comes to incivility. He is accusing (once again, without evidence) of sock/meatpuppets, being a fascist/neo-nazi, tendentious editing ("neo-Nazi flavoured revisionism" - which strangely enough, has been published in scientific journals... Those evil Estonian Nazis must have taken over those as well.). How long will this have to go on until he will be warned for personal attacks and incivility?

Ghirla has one excellent idea, though - committee on Eastern Europe-related topics. I would include Baltics to the scope of that committee as well - apparently Ghirla forgot, that Estonia (and rest of the Baltics) is a part of Northern Europe, not Eastern Europe. Committee on Eastern bloc, perhaps? Committee such as that is badly needed - to check that edits follow valid sources.

What I would like this arbitration case to achieve if accepted?

1. End for "Korps! Tartuensis" and sockpuppet accusations, unless someone actually manages to find some proof. So far there is none. Any editors continuing such attacks to be blocked.
2. Rules must apply equally for all. Huge edit count is not an excuse to insult other editors, disrupt Misplaced Pages or misbehave. Civility is not optional.
3. An uninvolved administrator (or more then one) to keep an eye on changes in WikiProject Estonia articles. Hopefully that would be enough to stop this smear campaign.
4. Digwuren to be warned - and if he doesn't change his ways, blocked for a month. Same applies for all other involved editors - warning for any signs of incivility and block if that is continued.

Sander Säde 19:06, 16 August 2007 (UTC) (updated 19:10, 17 August 2007 (UTC))

Statement by probably non-involved Ghirla

The Digwuren case is crystal clear. If there is a troll in the project, he is one. User:Molobo was blocked for a year for less serious revert-warring sprees and boorishness. I have seen no useful edits from Digwuren, except provocations, taunting, and reverts. The leniency of the community to the obnoxious tendentious accounts is appaling. Before Digwuren's appearance in the project, Estonia-related topics were the only quiet haven in the Eastern Europe-related segment of the project. He has effectively turned Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Estonia into a hate group. An attack page against Petri Krohn is a good example of what it's all about. Given the number of vocal meatpuppets, only ArbCom may realistically ban him from the site, for a year at least.

I don't consider myself a party to this case. I'm not interested in Estonia and I don't give a hoot about Estonia-related topics, but I cannot help being alarmed about the way in which the dispute has evolved. A weekly diarrhea of sterile ANI threads is particularly distracting. As soon as I opine in favour of deleting an Estonia-related tendentious page, I have to face harrassment and provocative remarks ("a clearly bad-faith vote", etc) from an indetermine number of Estonian accounts. Briefly put, their strategy is: 1) to make a provocative edit and to wait for my angered reply; 2) to report the perceived "infraction" on the administrators' noticeboard; 3) to repeat the complaint again and again, one after another, so as to make the thread appear as long and beefy as possible. Some of the dormant Estonian accounts instantly resume their activity once they see me cast an Estonia-related vote, prompting me to defend myself on the administrators' noticeboard for hours. I can't spend all of my wikitime debunking allegations of Estonia-based accounts, especially as I have no interest in anything related to Estonia. This relentless campaign of public harassment made me remove all Estonia-related articles from my watchlist.

I infer from this activity that there is simply no way of countering POV-pushing on this scale, involving a dozen accounts, most of them based in the same institution and recruiting friends in real life. You may neutralize a revert warrior or two or three, but not a group of determined users who share the same real-life background and exhibit divergent patterns of behaviour. I really don't think ArbCom may devise a remedy against this sort of disruption. We are thinking of some sort of committee on Eastern Europe-related topics that would include a trusted wikipedian from each nation. Such a committee could take care of mild content arbitration, that is, of determining whether a complaint has some merit before bringing it to the attention of the entire community on WP:ANI, WP:RfAr, or elsewhere. The ArbCom's examination of the proposal is very welcome. --Ghirla 12:51, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Comment by Bishonen

There is no RFC on Digwuren to point the ArbCom to (and it's no wonder people can't face starting one). There is, however, an RFC from June 2007 on User:Petri Krohn, brought and certified (inadequately) by Digwuren, Suva, Alexia Death, and E.J.. This RFC was deleted after 5-6 days, by DrKiernan, for want of good-faith attempts at dispute resolution, but before then it was used for lively discussion of the issues at stake here, especially on the talkpage. As RFCs will, it scrutinized the behavior of both sides, and the accusations of Digwuren et. al. against Petri Krohn throw light on their own practices. Therefore I think it serves quite a bit of the same purpose as an RFC on Digwuren would do. I have temporarily undeleted it so it can be referred to for this purpose. Bishonen | talk 10:30, 15 August 2007 (UTC).

Comment by Erik Jesse

I noticed this thread days ago, but thought it wasn't worth of a response. But now the “non-involved” Ghirlandajo has also started commenting and he'll certainly soon be followed by his admirers. As I won't have computer access for some days, I'll better say sth before taking a break. The so-called Korp! Estonia – existence of which no-one has proved, only assumed – is of course blamed here again. The meatpuppetry and Estonian conspiracy accusations have been quite ridiculous in Misplaced Pages context, for some time I thought they even didn't deserve an answer. The point is certainly not, whether some of Estonians co-ordinate their efforts by e-mail etc. The practice of co-operative editing, incl edit warring, however, is hardly founded by this alleged Korp!. One just look how certain Russia-related articles are 'edit-warred' - first you'll surely see Ghirlandajo there, he'll be joined by Irpen soon (how come that they find each other so easily?) When these two are there, A.Bakharev may join in with his admin tools. (Not to forget Grafikmfr, once a prolific author, who has sadly stopped contributing in fall 2006, but quickly finds, as if by magic, when his brothers-in-arms need his help at reverting or voting (this 'phenomenon' has of course been already noted ) I affirm once again, that to my knowledge, the Estonian users included in this arbcom request, are not personally acquainted and most probably keep track with others only by checking the contributions and the Estonia-related watchlist.
Now to Digwuren. I absolutely agree with Martintg and Sander Säde, who are much more experienced here. I'd add that I am not surprised at all that a competent user like Digwuren may sometimes over-react in case of provocations by his opponents. After all, if obvious vandals or trolls, proud blackhundredists (cf. this 'statement' !) or self-described National Bolsheviks are allowed to troll in Estonia-related articles, don't be surprised if one is sometimes uncivil when dealing with legitimate accounts or doesn't follow all the guidelines you have discarded long time ago. So that, first look into mirror, dear cartel USSR forever!, or how we're going to call you. Erik Jesse 06:02, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Suva

I myself have stopped editing for all. And am trying to talk us out of the situation. Digwuren is one of the few people who still tries to edit and haven't stood back like most others. Don't know if it's good or bad. But I can fully understand him. One thing is sure though, we can't get anywhere with editwarring, neither are any kinds of blocks going to help much, only upset people more. I myself call all the parties for a debate or just chat in IRC or MSN, maybe we could settle our differences in more direct communication, or atleast find better ways to continue. Suva 07:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Sockpuppet accusations

The main editors, Sander Säde, Digwuren, Alexia Death are all real people and more or less known in estonia IT circles. They are also enough normal people so it is highly unlikely they have any sockpuppets. About meatpuppetry, there seems to be some polarization going on where people align on sides and vote accordingly.

At the same time, if someone says "Police beated peaceful people on streets" most estonians who were on tallinn or viewed the TV live broadcasts would get upset and revert. It doesn't need any meatpuppetry if someone writes blatant lies and people who has seen the truth with his own eyes cares to disagree with him.

Suva 16:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments by uninvolved Vassyana

I believe that the Piotrus case is sufficient to set bounds for this dispute. It specifically places the articles in question under probation and grants a general amnesty for most users, with a stringent call for immediate compliance with Misplaced Pages rules. It empowers sysops to deal with continued edit warring, or other behavioral issues, sharply and decisively. Since the checkuser results have been inconclusive, there is no demonstration of substantive attempts to resolve the dispute and bad faith accusations are abundant, this case should probably be rejected. A possible exception may be if the arbitrators wish to specifically examine the behaviour surrounding this dispute or of particular users, to determine if there should be exceptions in this instance to the general amnesty being offered by the Piotrus decision. Otherwise, this case seems well-covered by the proposed decision for the preexisting case. Just some thoughts. *hands out grains of salt* Vassyana 09:54, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments of probably involved Alex Bakharev

I want to ask arbitrators to accept the case there are a few reasons why I think it is worth valuable arbitrator's time:

1. The first reason is personal, User:Erik Jesse alleged that I have improperly used administrative tools in the Estonia-related disputes. Obviously, I want to either clear my name or be desysopped.
2. The second reason is the allegations by User:FayssalF that Digwuren attempted to hack his computer. I think the allegations are serious and by there natire require some confidentiality. I do not see any other body other than arbcom could either confirm or deny the allegations.
3. The third reason is Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Digwuren and Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/DLX. A large group of Estonian editors were identified as identical as far as Check User is concerned. It is the third case in my career as an admin then I was able to unblock editors blocked by the results of a "confirmed" check user case. In the previous two cases the condition of the unblocking was that the suspected multiple accounts never edited the same article again. This case is different many of the suspected accounts are clearily belongs to different people. Still there constantly surface a number of new accounts that jump directly into the Revert wars, XfDs, or AN/I discussions and then disappear. I guess the Checkuser of them will be useless. Still some sanity must be kept. Can we decide that in Estonia-related themes any user with less than say 500 edits is discouraged from reversions and !voting? To be fair lets have the same rule for all participants.
4. The fourth reason is that many admins fail to persuade Digwuren to label good-faith contributions of the established users as vandalism. In the long run it is very annoying. It might help to have some parole on such edit summaries.
5. The fifth reason is the usual bunch of the problems that many Easter European edit wars have: stalking User:Petri Krohn, absurd near trollish edits on Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, etc. I think application of the Piotrus remedies might be helpful

Digiwuren seems to be a useful editor, who generates some content. I am strongly against preventing him doing good job. On the other hand he is very disruptive and drains energy from many very productive editors. This disruption should be somehow stopped Alex Bakharev 15:03, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Comments of probably involved Grafikm

Digwuren's case is, all political considerations set aside, a clear disruption to a huge sector of Misplaced Pages. 3RR violations, total NPOV ignorance, personal attacks, trolling, stalking, possible sock/meatpuppetry, you name it, you got it. He's already got a sheet as long as my arm and shows no intention of changing his attitude. Alas, some users support him purely out of ridiculous political reasons and prefer breaking WP rules rather than following them.

Alas as well, it would seem that ANI board and community discussion are not enough anymore to sort such a clear-cut case out. That is why I believe the ArbCom should accept this case. However I must insist that it is infinitely less complicated that Piotrus case, since the Misplaced Pages rules' violations are so blatant.

Finally, to answer Uninvited's question (even if I'm not Irpen): Digwuren is a classic case of a problematic editor that admins are unwilling, for whatever reasons they might have, to deal with. So the case should IMNSHO be about his behaviour and obviously about puppetry as well. It should also perhaps be about personal attacks made by other users, such as the trolling and offensive statement made in this very case by this Erik Jesse guy. -- Grafikm 17:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Termer

So what’s up here? The students from the Tartu University are making the life difficult for the editors that have become used to writing the history for Estonians, etc .(I’ve seen similar attempts made on WP against articles about Latvia as well) So now you'd like to shut them off so that you could go on like in the old days, without getting disrupted? Well, I’m sorry but I have bad news for you, (and please don’t kill the messenger) it’s a wrong century for this kind of attempts. Please get used to it since Estonians have arrived on WP and obviously are not planning to go away. Therefore I’m sorry to point out, the former masters and landlords of Estonia, Latvia etc. can’t have the monopoly over the subjects any more since the peoples are going to write their own histories from now on. The opponents are welcome to participate as long as all claims are properly sourced. Any claims or facts not referenced can and will be challenged by any editor any time and removed if felt necessary. Any elimination of refd and sourced article content from WP, without reaching a consensus first, also any altering or manipulation with the facts or content that has been directly sourced, such an activity in case persistent, is going to be listed for consideration at Misplaced Pages:Administrator intervention against vandalism. Please do not attempt to back up any personal opinions with further personal opinions: that is WP:Trolling. Since the only thing that matters while editing an encyclopedia is citing verifiable sources. Please have all the related articles under dispute formatted according to WP:NPOV polices, meaning: the neutral point of view is a point of view, not the absence or elimination of viewpoints. The acronym NPOV does not mean "no points of view". The elimination of article content cannot be justified under this policy by simply labeling it "POV". The policy requires that where multiple or conflicting perspectives exist within a topic each should be presented fairly Etc. Thanks!--Termer 07:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

PS: regarding the case against the accused: as far as I'm concerned this is a politically motivated Personal attack against User:Digwuren. Even though in my opinion he/she could take it easier a little while fighting the viewpoints of the Radical nationalism in Russia on WP, I appreciate his/her efforts made by protecting the related articles against the attacks. The idea that User:Digwuren is Sockpuppeting... that’s just an attempt to shut down the Tartu university accounts in general, As even the direct oppononents of User:Digwuren, anybody that had anything to do with him/her, should admit that there is no other editor on WP with a behavioral pattern like User:Digwuren. Therefore basically suggesting that he/she uses multiple accounts would be like diagnosing the multiple personality syndrome over the internet. --Termer 09:17, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• Re: MoreschiYes, we already know that Eastern Europe is all screwball,.

Well is it just me or has the EU become more tolerant towards ethnic bias? As far as I'm concerned, this kind of statements in the US could lead to legal actions, so I'd suggest Moreschi to rephrase this statement, or simply remove it and apologize. Thanks!--Termer 07:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

Under the format of this page, each user should please edit in his or her own section only. Threaded dialog will be removed. Newyorkbrad 10:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Refactored to adjust headers and move comments to their own sections. Picaroon (t) 00:10, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (3/0/0/1)

• I'm not entirely sure if there is anything we can do about this. The checkuser results have been inconclusive when requested at WP:RFCU and I don't see how they would be any different for us running queries ourselves. Would Irpen or others who want us to take this case like to summarize the kind of relief they seek? The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:23, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. Comments and requests suggest that we can help sort this out better than the community can. FloNight 12:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. Paul August ☎ 18:40, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Artaxerex

Initiated by Shervink at 14:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Involved parties

• Artaxerex (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Shervink (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• SG (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• The Behnam (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Mehrshad123 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Rayis (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Dfitzgerald (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Numerous discussions on , , , and finally an RfC on user conduct , all of which failed to bring about any progress.

Statement by Shervink

Artaxerex (talk · contribs) has continuously attackd me and others by making personal attacks, false accusations of vandalism and sockpuppetry, and has himself resorted to sockpuppetry several times, and pushed his POV and OR. He has accused others of fascism, racism, anti-semitism, and revisionism. While continuing on the same line after being blocked twice for sockpuppetry, he increasingly attacked me personally and systematically tried to tarnish my image on wikipedia. He has attempted to divide[REDACTED] along political lines, accusing other editors of setting up a "monarchist gang". (Even on his statement regarding this arbitration request, he is again accusing me and others of sockpuppetry, setting up a gang or group, racism, and brings up a case of uncivility on my part for which I apologized to him at least three times.) His behavior did not change the slightest bit over several months. Even after issuing a half-hearted apology under the pressure of the user conduct RfC case, he repeated his personal attacks towards me and another editor who tried to engage in a new discussion with him. Considering the fact that all the efforts so far to convince him to improve his behavior have failed, I would like to ask for the ArbCom to have a look at this matter. Shervink 14:00, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

note 1 - Artaxerex has been confirmed to have used sockpuppets even after his apparent change of mind on the RfC . Considering that he has already been blocked twice for similar things , it is safe to conclude that he has learned nothing from his past mistakes. Even on this same ArbCom page he is using one of his sockpuppets (Vazgen) to edit his own comments! This is not a user who has created two usernames in good faith to use them independently. The level of abusiveness of this editor simply leaves no other choice but ArbCom to resolve this issue.Shervink 07:28, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

note 2 - I am deeply shocked that even on this ArbCom request, Artaxerex goes on personally attacking me, attributing to me racist ideas which I have never expressed, calls me pro-Aryan, fascist, speaks of my cohort, etc. I would like to note that the tone of these comments is just an example of the almost daily abuse which others and I have been dealing with for months now whenerver trying to discuss with him. Shervink 09:13, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

note 3 - Artaxerex quotes me incompletely and incorrectly in order to create the impression that I have made anti-semitic remarks. You can see here what I have actually said. Contrary to his claim, I have never said that Iranian Jews and Arabs are not Iranians. In fact, I have said the exact opposite of what he attributes to me. Shervink 11:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

note 4 - Artaxerex has become so bold in his uncivility that he is directing personal attacks at me and others on a daily basis, even now where there is an open ArbCom request and after an RfC has failed to improve his behavior. He is regularly calling me chauvinist, racist, fascist, and the like. While he is repeatedly accusing me of racism and anti-semitism, I have never supported any racial ideas nor have I ever been even remotely supporting anti-semitic or Aryan superiority ideas, which I think are total nonsense. Moreover he still denies any wrongdoing with regards to his repeated sockpuppetry. see for example.Shervink 12:26, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Artaxerex

• Shervink and his group (meatpuppets?!)' are trying to ban me by whatever means possible. The sole issue is my focus on the POV tone of the two articles on Pahlavies which I am trying to balance with solid academic sources. I have been called A****, and a Wana-be-historian by shervink, a "Palague", and a "worst kind of human being" by SG, and other names by Merhrshad 123. I have offered various suggestions for improvement of the article but shervink has alwayes refused any change. He finds all my western academic references unreliable. His group specifically has asked me to provide only Persian sources. They use their majority to veto every slight change by resorting to edit wars. They have not provided a single reliable source for thier claims. etc. etc.
• He accuses me of Sockpuppetry, due to the fact that I am sharing a wireless IP with a number of students and researchers, some of whom had participated in these discussions and are banned unfairly due to accusations by shervink and his group. It is unfortunate that no attempt was made by anyone to contact these people in order to assess their qualifications.

• It is unfortunate, that nobody has looked to the way this group operates. From shervink's talk page one can see how this group operates. They target various minority groups like Kurds and impose their own extreme Pan-Iranist and Aryan nationalist views to silence them.

• Nevertheless, the real isuue is a content dispute on extremely biased page in Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Reza shah pages as it is clear from the evidence shervink has posted above. In particular, I object strnogly to the racist tone of these editors who claim and insist that "Iranians are Aryans" which implies Iranians of Jewish, Arab or Assirian roots are not Iranians. This is of grave concerns for me and, I hope, for any decent arbitor (as I am certain it is). Apart from this issue I have apologized in good faith to him for everything that he asked me to apologize for. But he refuses any attempt for the balancing of the lead. He always finds a way to evade or install the discussion.
• I am not a Jew, an Arab, or an Assirian, but the pro-Aryan remarks made by these editors greatly offends me, as it should offend any decent individual. They cannot claim that they are unaware of the impact of their remarks, as I have provided them with the memoirs of a young Jewish boy during Shah's regime that was forced to sing "We are Aryans!".

• I wonder why editors like Melca (who has supported my edits in his RFC submission) are not invited here!!

• I wonder why servink has deleted the RFC? What happend to its discussion page?

• I pledge to abide by the verdict of this arbitration committee, and I do hope that we can find a way to go back to edit.

It appears that Shervink has been succesful again to prove that I have used a sockpuppet (since a person who shares my IP has posted in a totally unrelated page). Behnam has promised him that he will ban me for at least six month for this abuse. I have informed them that should they fail to ban me I continue to provide valid sources to stop the spread of the Aryan-racist propaganda by shervink and his cohort. and will try to balance the articles with an open mind.

Response to Shervink

It is rather sad that shervink still shows ignorance w.r.t his racist remarks. He also has brought this content dispute to a totally unrelated page of an artist (Guity Novin) and at the same time has not waited for the outcome of this arbitration and has started another process requesting my banishment.

Please note that shervink's srtong pro-Aryan views can be acertained from here; where he writes to Behnam an editor/(admin?) to explain why he believes "Iranians are Aryans". He writes:

"When I say that Iranians are not semitic, I mean that both their languages and their culture are quite distinct from those of the semitic people."

In other words he means Iranians of different race (Jews, Arabs, Assyrians etc.) are not Iranians (or are Aryans!). This is not my spin as you can see from Behnam's response to him here:.

I have written to him here which reads; "You wrote: ...it is not only the Shah who did not think that Iranians are semitic. Iranians are not semitic. That's nothing new." Your statement is False. There are many Semitic Iranians. Jewish Iranians are Semitic, Arab Iranians are Semitic. In fact, anybody who argues that Jews who have lived in Iran for more than 2500 years are not Iranian not only would be wrong, but also anti-Semitic. I am really disgusted by the above statement, and I hope you really wrote it inadvertently. Artaxerex 19:05, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

note 1; As another example of shervink's chauvonism please see his confrontation with the minority Kurdish people, where he and his so-called Iranian-watch-dogs forced them to merge their page on celebration of their new year as part of the Iranian celebration. In fact, shervink wrote here "I have no problem at all with the fact that Kurds have their own culture, language, music, dance, etc. In fact, that's truly beautiful. What I have a problem with is that some of these editors deny their ancient ties with the people around them, most importantly the other Iranians, going as far as speculating whether they are more related to jews and arabs rather than Iranians!" )

Statement by SG

I enjoy it when Artaxerex takes comments out of context. Yes, I called him a plague and the worst kind of human being, along with a full explanation of my thoughts in four paragraphs (and explained it again later in three more paragraphs). Artaxerex does not work well with others. If the history of the Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Reza Shah talk pages are viewed from the time Artaxerex began editing, it will become very clear that the other editors maintained proper etiquette and were quite kind towards Artaxerex at the beginning. However, as time progressed, Artaxerex never backed down from his position and began engaging in an edit war through the use of sockpuppets, thus we have all become incredibly tired of this user and his actions. Due to Artaxerex, I have not edited the actual article since April, and several other editors have left the page in its entirety. It is also rather irritating when he refers to us as "Shervink et al", "Shervink and co", "Shervink and his gang", "Shervink and his group", even though we have told him to stop several times.

My attempts to reason with Artaxerex and prove that what he is writing is false have been futile, as he has completely ignored me in the talk pages and instead argues with Shervink or talks to The Behnam directly, rather than actually responding to my points; this way, he can actually avoid any meaningful discussion which proves him and his statements wrong. We have on many occasions agreed with Artaxerex, though he has never done so with us, even after we have proven him wrong. We have even collaborated with him in writing a more neutral article, yet he always refuses to accept anything and instead rewrites the page (particularly the lead) in a manner which he finds acceptable. Artaxerex himself has at times agreed that what he is writing is not neutral (and that he'll make it more neutral "later", or that we should make it NPOV for him, or even that we should balance his statements by writing the opposite, ie. praise for the Shah).

My problem with Artaxerex is not his prior use of sockpuppets, nor do I care about his insults. My main issue is that he brushes off all meaningful discussion, he never accepts that he could be wrong, and he refuses to listen to our suggestions or arguments. In short, as I said before, he does not work well with others, period. ♠ SG →Talk 21:49, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by GRBerry

I note Misplaced Pages:Requests for checkuser/Case/Artaxerex, which shows use of multiple accounts. At Misplaced Pages:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Confirmed sockpuppets, request for block one admin determined that there is no current reason to block any of the accounts because of this. GRBerry 04:29, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Statement by Rayis

I can't really add much but my point of view regarding dealing with this user, which is consistent with everyone else's. Ever since Artaxerex got involved with the Pahlavi articles he has pushed his POV, with no respect to Misplaced Pages rules. He has used multiple sockpuppets as well as meatpuppets to edit war and make sure the article gets locked at his version. His constant edit warring made sure that the articles make no progress in months, maybe even a year or so.

Furthermore he has constantly called all other editors of the article a gang, attaching all sorts of accusations such as nationalist, bloggers, etc etc - showing no respect at all for anyone else's opinion but himself.

Many users tried to settle the issues in the article but gave up, one of them being me. After months of editing Misplaced Pages, the constant problems with this user wasted a lot of my time, and he was one of the main reasons that discouraged me from editing here. Users such as Artaxerex are exactly the ones that Misplaced Pages does not need. --Rayis 10:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/1/0/0)

• Decline. RFC shows a lack of community support for this matter. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 04:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. Unable sovle the dispute with a RFC. FloNight 01:21, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. Paul August ☎ 01:51, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept to review behavior of all involved. --jpgordon 04:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
• Accept. James F. (talk) 14:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Requests for clarification

Place requests for clarification on matters related to the Arbitration process in this section. Place new requests at the top.

Zen-master

The year-long ban on Zen-master (talk · contribs) has recently expired. IIRC, one of the actions that resulted in his ban was his perennial harping (and creating multiple Policy Proposals) against using the term "conspiracy theory" in articles. It took him less than a week to drop back into his old behavior, as evidenced on this "new" proposal (now userfied), canvassing, spamming edit warring, and pointless debate. Frankly I find it hard to find any edits in his contribs log that do not relate to his POV pushing. I suggest that his presence is not only a net negative, but an overall negative to the project. >Radiant< 13:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Clerk note: The prior decision involving this user is at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Zen-master. Newyorkbrad 16:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Some users are trying to ban me because of what I discuss on discussion pages, is that really a bannable offense? Resubmitting a proposal after 2 years have elapsed is perfectly acceptable under Misplaced Pages policies as far as I know. Also note some editors are trying to ban me because I discovered that the race and intelligence article utilizes a racism inducing method of presentation, see the scientific racism article. If you think the phrase "conspriacy theory" is neutral feel free to disagree with me, but please don't try to ban me just because I don't think it's neutral. zen master T 16:37, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the one-year ban was converted into an indefinite block on August 27, 2006 by user:Samuel Blanning on account of "evasion via sockpuppetry indicates no inclination to serve ban." See Category:Misplaced Pages sockpuppets of Zen-master. On August 8, 2007 user:Zscout370 unblocked the account, "giving him another chance". In a related action, this user's account on Wiktionary was blocked due to POV pushing in the "conspiracy theory" entry. Among other things he'd been using the Wiktionary definition, that he'd written, to support his assertions about its use on Misplaced Pages. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 19:23, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually I was blocked on wiktionary allegedly for my behavior on Misplaced Pages according to the admin that blocked me on Wiktionary, Connel MacKenzie, who has yet to list and explain how any wiktionary edits are indefinitely blockable offenses. I'd also like someone to explain how any of my Misplaced Pages edits, especially me recent edits, could be considered blockable offenses? Why aren't any users complaining about me linking to any of my edits? Answer: because none violate policy. Just because a coordinated group of users don't like my User:Zen-master/Conspiracy theory title neutrality proposal doesn't mean you should let them block me over it. zen master T 19:47, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually you were blocked for sending a rude email to Colin (a very senior admin over there)Blueboar 20:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

That is not true, my email to his wiktionary account had the same tone as my post to his Misplaced Pages discussion page here. And I only emailed him after he had already blocked me indefinitely. I've pasted below my posts to his Misplaced Pages discussion page:

Why did you block my Wiktionary account?

Hello Connel MacKenzie, please list and explain here what wiktionary edits for "Hollow are the Ori" are in any way blockable offenses? Why did you make the block indefinite?

If there are any other wiktionary.com admins reading this page please look into this case. zen master T 21:30, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Please stop spreading falsehoods that my email to you regarding your unjustified block of my wiktionary account had a bad tone. The tone of my email to you was the same as my tone is here. I repeat my request for you to list and explain here how any of my wiktionary edits are indefinitely blockable offenses? zen master T 23:23, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Why aren't any of the editors complaining against me listing any recent Misplaced Pages edits of mine that could be considered blockable offenses? Why is there a group of coordinated users conspiring against me and my proposals? I repeat my request for someone to list and explain how any of my Misplaced Pages edits, especially recent ones, are blockable offenses? Recently all I've been doing is pretty much discussion on discussion pages, how is that a blockable offense? zen master T 20:33, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Radiant's original message links to specific problems with your edits. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

None of those edits list anything that violates policy, normal[REDACTED] edits. And please link to specific edits rather than just article history. And how is debate on a proposal page a blockable offense? It's a very sad state of affairs if someone can be blocked for alleging that a phrase used in article titles isn't neutral. Feel free to disagree with me but don't block me because we disagree. zen master T 20:49, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Disrupting Misplaced Pages is a legitimate cause for a block. Your edit warring at 9/11 Truth Movement was not productive, and may have violated WP:3RR, or at least come very close to doing so. You've been blocked ten times for 3RR violations previously. You edit-warred before your ban and you don't seem to have changed your behavior. Spamming and canvassing are also disruptive. Pointless debate is not productive either. Can you explain why you asked for your block to be overturned and what productive edits you've made since your return? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 20:59, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on you to try to make a case for why I should be blocked, not the other way around. zen master T 21:05, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Zen-master's behavior is the same as it was before his ban: Edit-warring, and trying to ban the phrase "conspiracy theory" from article titles. Zscout370 unblocked to give him another chance, and Zen-master has chosen not to take it. Tom Harrison 21:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I was wrongfully banned the first time around and it looks like I will be wrongfully banned again. I followed[REDACTED] policy in making my proposal that the phrase "conspiracy theory" is not neutral enough for use in article titles, it's a very sad state of affairs if making an unpopular proposal can get someone banned. zen master T 21:24, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

How about agreeing to stay away from any page (in any namespace) dealing with conspiracy theories? I don't think a complete ban would be necessary if these pages were voluntarily avoided. Chaz 02:26, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

What about discussion pages? I actually prefer to have the entire arbitration committee fully review this case and re-open the original case since it was and is wrong. zen master T 02:31, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion, discussion pages seem to be a big part of the problem. I personally don't believe you're going to accomplish much by attempting to re-open the case, but it's your choice on how to proceed. Chaz 02:36, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

So someone can be banned for discussion on discussion pages? This is ludicrous. The principle of neutral presentation should prevent the use of language such as "conspiracy theory" that is ambiguous, discrediting and deceiving at a subtle unconscious level. No one has made a case as to how any specific recent edits of mine are blockable offenses. zen master T 02:45, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

• If I may cite Kosebamse's law, "People of strong opinion are not banned or blocked for promoting strong opinions. Eventually, they are banned or blocked for violating social standards in the attempt to defend their views." >Radiant< 07:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Are you saying there is a social standard against discussion on discussion pages? That is ridiculous. Just because you "strongly disagree" with my User:Zen-master/Conspiracy theory title neutrality proposal doesn't mean that's a blockable offense. zen master T 14:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

was my reasoning for unblocking the account. Sorry if I cannot provide more details, since I don't keep IRC logs. Whatever actions the ArbCom or other decisions make, I will not oppose them. User:Zscout370 09:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

When is the full arbitration committee going to start reviewing this case and re-open the original arbitration case? zen master T 14:20, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

I have indefinitely (re)blocked Zen-master. Tom Harrison 14:37, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Personal Attacks

Many arbitration cases have endorsed the principle that making personal attacks on Misplaced Pages is not acceptable. Is the introduction of off-wiki statements largely unrelated to Misplaced Pages or its editors at a request for adminship for the apparent purpose of disparaging the candidate's moral character, as occurred at Misplaced Pages:Requests for adminship/Crockspot#Q15, considered to be a personal attack? If so, what remedies, if any, are available when it is reasonably believed that a request for adminship failed as a direct result of the presentation of such personal attacks therein, and off-wiki canvassing for oppose votes containing repetitions of such personal attacks? John254 00:05, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Regarding Bmedley Sutter, there is information on Misplaced Pages Review strongly suggestive that he received that negative information from the banned user Fairness and Accuracy for All. I have already blocked and warned Bmedley Sutter for another post that was a proxy edit for FAAFA and for taunting Crockspot. I did not know at the time about the RfA issue. If Bmedley Sutter continues to post content at the request of FAAFA he can be banned for a year under the prior case, and I will also extend FAAFA's block, which I forgot to do before. Any Admin who wants to issue a longer block or ban against Bmedley can do so; if no other admin unblocks, it becomes a community ban unless he appeals.

Regarding the RfA, contact the bureaucrats and ask them to reconsider, pointing out that WR was used to canvass against it. I do not believe it is within ArbCom's jurisdiction to overturn a closed RfA and declare a winner, you'll have to talk to the bureaucrats. Thatcher131 00:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I am grateful that the candidate's comments were brought to light, and apart from whatever offenses Bmedley Sutter has committed, I thank him for linking to them. Editors' off-wiki behavior is often used when evaluating their conduct, and I see no reason why simply pointing out what the candidate has said can be construed as a personal attack. The only reason this is being suggested is because the candidate's statements were so vile. After the off-wiki comments were brought to light, the community consensus rapidly turned (see graph at right) and I would be appalled if a bureaucrat decided to ignore this obvious will of the community. ←Ben 03:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm confused. If there is serious reason to question a candidate's moral character, we should be thanking the people who introduce such evidence. -Amarkov moo! 04:16, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Would a more succinct expression be "Any stick will do to beat a dog?" Tom Harrison 18:26, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

A more succinct expression unfortunately is that the community, upon learning that the user in question had used racist and homophobic epithets, decided that the user in question was not fit for a position of leadership on the website. The RFA more than anything is a statement for better or worse on what the current users of this website consider to be acceptable social behavior by potential administrators. It not within ArbCom's purview nor of any Steward or Beurocrat to supercede the decision of the userbase in a matter like this. Having "conservative" administrators, or as you put it on the RFA talk page, (paraphrasing) "not promoting someone to admin because they don't share your social justice is a problem" isn't in fact a problem. If the community doesn't trust a user, so be it. They don't need to be an admin.

As for whether Crockspot's inappropriate behavior on the Conservative Underground was admissible evidence for RFA, why not? Are not such things admissible evidence for matters such as RFAR? 88.73.104.70 18:53, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, they're not. ArbCom does not consider off-wiki behavior unless it relates directly to disruptive behavior on-wiki. Someone who has a blog attacking X will not be sanctioned here if their behavior here is generally good. Someone who runs a web site attacking X who edit wars and is uncivil with respect to X-related articles is likely to be sanctioned, but would be anyway based on behavior. RfA voters can have their own standards, of course, but that has generally been ArbCom's position. Thatcher131 19:19, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Right, but there's also a difference in what's being judged; Arbcom's charter is to review abuse cases or conflicts on-wiki. Requests for Adminship is looking at whether we (the community) trust user X with the mop and a few potentially moderately dangerous permissions bits. Someone who's behaved well on-wiki but In Real Life has deeply held fringe opinions or beliefs which most may find offensive or troubling may not be someone we want to mop. Past good on-wiki behavior by someone with past bad off-wiki behavior is still potentially a real problem.

There's a legitimate serious policy problem here, a collision between on-wiki user privacy standards (including encouraged use of pseudonyms, etc) and the rest of the world. I find myself troubled by the implications in both directions. And glad again that I don't bother to hide my identity here at all (not that this helps resolve the policy question raised...). Georgewilliamherbert 19:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

While I do not support posting on a banned users behalf, the question of if an admin is racist or homophobic is in fact directly linked to if they can be trusted to be impartial. While I do not particularly approve of the source, the information was obviously seen as valuable to those who were "support" and changed to "oppose." --SevenOfDiamonds 04:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

So when the RfA fails and Bmedley posts "Crockspots, this is a message from an "old friend". He says: (quote) " PWNED ! LOL ! REMEMBER ANDY ! " " to Crockspot's talk page, that's ok too? Thatcher131 11:41, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure why this is under my post, as I was addressing the issue of the RfA and the contents of a racist nature posted there, admittedly by Crockspot on the CU forum. --SevenOfDiamonds 12:11, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, no, acting in an obnoxious, gloating manner rubbing somebody's defeat in their face is not a good idea regardless of the merits or demerits of either side in the controversy. This is entirely independent of the issue of what facts ought to be brought up during the debate itself, however. *Dan T.* 18:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually the question is, what would have happened if the question had been added by a checkuser-confirmed sockpuppet of FAAFA. Obvious indef block based on using sockpuppets to evade his ArbCom-imposed one-year ban. But instead he fed the information to another editor (proxy editor or meat puppet) who posted it. What should happen to the proxy editor? Thatcher131 19:22, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

More worrysome and general problem: What do we do when a well known admin or longtime user in good standing comes across off-wiki information of equal import to a pending Request for Adminship, and posts it in a more polite manner to the RFA page?

It's easy to say "This was FAAFA using a proxy, just deal with that", but the policy issue of the information itself... yuck. Georgewilliamherbert 19:31, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I have written Misplaced Pages:Make personal attacks at requests for adminship as a satirical critique of the present trend of making personal attacks against RFA candidates. John254 11:24, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

The pseudoscience category precedent

The pseudoscience RFAr contained some rulings related to the use of Category:Pseudoscience (specifically, principles 15, 16, and 17) that are being used in the arguments in a CFD for Category:Denialism. There are obvious similarities between denialism and pseudoscience, e.g. both present arguments that run contrary to what is widely accepted. However denialism is arguably a more strongly pejorative term and is less well-defined (to the extent that no one has identified any dictionary that defines it). While Timecube may serve as "obvious pseudoscience" deciding what is "obvious denialism" (aside from say Holocaust denial) would be difficult and there isn't exactly a community of experts to turn to for deciding what is or isn't denialism.

Given that a substantial fraction of the argument at this CFD is based on drawing parallels to Category:Pseudoscience, I think it might be helpful if one or more of you would express an opinion on whether or not you find those parallels compelling in this instance. Dragons flight 22:14, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Renaming of User:COFS

As per the proposed remedies on Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/COFS, the user has requested renaming prior to the completion of the case. Do you want us to do it now or hold off until the case is closed, or case closed and any ban finished? Secretlondon 19:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer to see it done now rather than waiting. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:48, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Nothing gained by waiting.

James F. (talk) 15:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Paranormal Clarification on the use of qualifiers as discussed in various holdings

Five arbitrators voted to take on the Paranormal case; the two who stated their reason for taking the case indicated it was for "conduct issues". Of the 29 principles, findings of fact, and remedies that passed, most did deal with conduct issues; however, an important minority dealt with some of the content that has been at the core of the protracted disputes about paranormal-related articles. I apologize for the length of the following explanation of what I see as the core content paradox within the ArbCom holdings, but I have used examples in order to, I hope, make the situation as clear as possible:

The Misplaced Pages article on psychic raises issues with the recently closed Paranormal ArbCom. Finding of Fact #5, "Cultural artifacts", states: ""Psychic" or "clairvoyant" and similar terms are cultural artifacts, not people or things which necessarily exist. A psychic may not have psychic abilities, nor does use of the term imply that such abilities exist." Principle #6.2 states, in part, "Language in the introduction of an article may serve to frame the subject thus defining the epistemological status. Examples include ... "paranormal", "psychic" ... or "parapsychological researcher". ... "Purported psychic" or "self-described psychic" adds nothing."

Lemma 1 the Arbitration Committee sees the label "psychic" as a cultural artifact. Saying that Jeane Dixon is a psychic does not imply that she has psychic abilities or powers, or even that such abilities or powers exist. This is true to such an extent that clarification, such as "Jeane Dixon is a self-described psychic", is disallowed.

In reading the article on psychic, however, I became confused and concerned. The psychic article's lede itself states that psychic denotes paranormal extra-sensory abilities that are inexplicable by "known natural laws". This doesn't seem like a typical cultural artifact, in that this statement implies that there may exist some unknown natural law to explain it (i.e., the description invokes science, not culture). However, several sentences later we learn that the existence of this ability is highly contested. Does this resolve the situation?

No. While this skepticism helps a reader understand that psychic abilities may or may not be real, it still leaves the reader with the impression that "psychic" means "someone with scientifically inexplicable powers" - it's just that now we recognize that such people may not exist. That is, thus far, the word "psychic" has always been used to mean "someone with paranormal powers". The infobox on the right side of the page is even more explicit: "Definition: An ability or phenomona said to originate from the brain, but to transcend its confines. Primarily in relation to Psi" (see the box on the righthand side of the article).

Lemma 2: So what is a psychic? The article repeatedly indicates that a defining feature of a psychic is "an ability". There is no ambiguity. It does not say that psychics have an apparent ability. It does not say that psychics may or may not have abilities. It says that a psychic has these abilities.

Imagine that instead of psychic we were talking about a rare device, the PerpetualMotionMachine (psychic). An article states that the PerpetualMotionMachine is an infinite (paranormal) power-output device (ability). The article also has an infobox that defines PerpetualMotionMachine as "A device or product that originates from the Midwest and is capable of infinite power-output." At this point, it's pretty clear that a crucial quality of any PerpetualMotionMachine is that it is an infinite power-output device. Then, I get to the sentence, "the possibility of infinite power-output is highly contested." Now, I still believe that PerpetualMotionMachines are infinite power-output devices, but now I recognize that the term "PerpetualMotionMachine" may have no real-world referent. I now understand that there may not be even one single PerpetualMotionMachine, but if there were one, a defining quality of it would be that it could output infinite power.

Likewise with the paranormal article. It asserts that psychic powers are paranormal abilities, inexplicable by known natural laws. It also tells me that there may not actually be any psychic abilities in the real world. However, from the definitions, I still gather that if there are psychic abilities in the real world, then they cannot be explained by known natural laws. The phrasing here does not strike me as a simple cultural artifact. Just reading the sentence, I am inclined to think that scientists of various disciplines must have looked into this and decided that known natural laws cannot explain the results.

This is in contrast to the holdings of the Arbitration Committee, which found that the term psychic is just a cultural artifact. The Committee held that "psychic" may not imply that the "a psychic" actually has scientifically inexplicable abilities. Therefore, even if a psychic does exist in the real world, they may not have psychic powers. ArbCom: "Psychic means someone who has, or claims to have, these powers. These powers may not exist, but the term still refers to real people." Article: "Psychic means someone who has these powers. These powers may not exist, and in that case the term has no real-world referent."

Lemma 3: The ArbCom's operative understanding of psychic differs in a subtle but crucial way from the psychic article. Actual paranormal powers are an intrinsic quality of a psychic according to the psychic article (although the existence these powers is contested), whereas paranormal powers are not intrinsic to the ArbCom's understanding of psychic (so even if these powers don't actually exist, there still may exist psychics).

A comment was made on the psychic talk page that I think exemplifies the potential for confusion: "When we call a person a psychic we convey a constellation of meanings, all or only some of which may apply. We might be saying the person has psychic powers, performs on stage as a psychic, makes their living doing readings, fraudulently bilks people out of money by claiming paranormal abilities etc. The word has "a" meaning which is multifaceted and contradictory, and all notable ones should be contained somewhere in the psychic article. One part of the meaning of "psychic" is that a person has powers. Another part is that the person may be self-deluded or a fraud. Another is that the person may be an entertainer, comforter, psychologist..... All of these things, or any one of them, may be conveyed by use of the term psychic. It is largely up to the reader to decide which is appropriate." Such a multifarious term could reasonably, from time to time, be misunderstood.

For consideration: Due to subtly different interpretations, there exist diverse understandings of the word psychic which persist, even within Misplaced Pages. Judicious, appropriate, and infrequent qualification of "psychic", "paranormal", and similar terms should be allowed when such qualifications are contributory to the clarity and meaning of the epistemological status of a subject. This is especially true given the content of the psychic article. This is suggestion is closely in line with Principle #6.1, and Findings of Fact #6, #8, #9, but somewhat at odds with Principle #6.2 and Finding of Fact #12.

Thank you, Antelan 08:14, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Heaven, Soul, and a whole host of other terms that refer to something that may or may not exist do not bother saying that it is "claimed" to exist. Only terms that show up on a skeptical watchlists do. It's an issue on Energy (spirituality) but not on obscure terms that don't make it to the list like Prana. Psychic is a cultural artifact because everyone in the world already has an opinion on whether or not psychics are real, or totally bogus. Misplaced Pages does not have to inform them that psychics may not exist. They are quite aware of it already. No one will realistically read a technical definition at Misplaced Pages of psychic that says it refers to "supernatural forces, events, or powers" and walk away thinking "Holy cow, Misplaced Pages says psychics are real!" It's not even plausible. They have already formed their own opinion. All the other encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc. that don't bother saying that it may not exist don't waste the reader's time, or insults their intelligence, by pointing it out. If nothing else, it fails to meet the notability standard. --Nealparr 09:11, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

When we call a person a psychic we convey a constellation of meanings, all or only some of which may apply. We might be saying the person has psychic powers, performs on stage as a psychic, makes their living doing readings, fraudulently bilks people out of money by claiming paranormal abilities etc. The word has "a" meaning which is multifaceted and contradictory, and all notable ones should be contained somewhere in the psychic article. One part of the meaning of "psychic" is that a person has powers. Another part is that the person may be self-deluded or a fraud. Another is that the person may be an entertainer, comforter, psychologist..... All of these things, or any one of them, may be conveyed by use of the term psychic. It is largely up to the reader to decide which is appropriate.

So to state it the way I have at other times that the meaning of the word "psychic" is "A psychic is someone who has psychic powers, but those powers may not really exist," is not quite accurate. Rather, the word psychic conveys many meanings. The two most important to skeptics and believers, however, are the two I stated- powers and doubt about thier reality. Both of those meanings are contained in the word psychic, and both are reflected in the current Psychic lead, which is well-framed per the ArbCom. –––Martin _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 19:29, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Nice prose, but I'm still not buying it. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:00, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for giving it your consideration. Antelan 00:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Who are you talking to? Me or Antelan or Nealparr??

The psychic article says "People who are thought to have these abilities or to be able to produce these phenomena are often called "psychics". " Thus, if we call someone a psychic, is is saying just what Antelan says it should say: "psychic" = "thought to have these abilities," and of course the full understanding would be that the person might or might not. –––Martin _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 21:04, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Antelan's was the nicest. --Nealparr 21:18, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, yes, that's true -it was very well done- and UninvitedCompany said "still," which must have been referring to his having not bought it before either. –––Martin _{(Talk Ψ Contribs)} 21:42, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Saying someone is a psychic is the equivalent of labeling them a faker. It is not necessary to say they are a faker so long as they are labeled as a "psychic". Fred Bauder 13:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Clarification on ED

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not an ED troll, but an interesting question was raised at a recent DRV (see bottom) for it. In Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/MONGO, it was ruled that ED links and material is banned from Misplaced Pages. However, it was questioned in the DRV that even if reliable sources that established notability were found, would it come in conflict with the ArbCom ruling in that case? Kwsn 04:10, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

The ED article itself has clearly posed internal problems for us. I think the turning point for me would be this: Are there sufficient reliable sources about ED which demonstrate that ED so clearly inside our inclusion guidelines that our project would be incomplete without it? If that were the case, I myself would support an amendment to the MONGO decision to permit an article. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 21:08, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh my goodness. Well, I can't see much more reason to edit this website if the arbitrators are going to support the recreation of an article about that website which has attacked a number of our contributors in ways that simply cannot be put into words. Oddly enough, the article on me there is hardly one of the worst.--MONGO 22:09, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Relax. We have lots of articles about things, people, and organizations we don't like, and your concern is hypothetical since there aren't reliable sources covering ED. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 04:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

In my own opinion, the ArbCom way overstepped its proper bounds in imposing a flat and absolute link ban, and this has had ongoing pernicious consequences; one of them has been to turn me from a strong supporter of Misplaced Pages to somebody who's largely disillusioned and disgruntled, because of my scuffles over this silly policy. Also, labeling people "trolls" for disagreeing with a clique here is hardly productive. *Dan T.* 18:07, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

You don't see us linking pages to uncyclopedia all the time. Having links to ED in individual pages outside of the ED article (if it is re-created mind you) is pointless. Part of the reason for the ban is the numerous amounts of attack pages on the site, how would you feel if someone posted the link to a page blatantly attacking you on your userspace (talk included). Regarding the "trolls", in a nutshell, what they are doing is trolling, just not on-wiki. Kwsn(Ni!) 17:47, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd find it funny, actually... a while back when I was on both Daniel Brandt's Hivemind and Jeff Merkey's Merkeylaw, with some silly attacks on me in both places, I actually linked to them on my own userpage to laugh at them, something that wouldn't be permitted these days under the silly "no links to attack sites" policy. *Dan T.* 19:51, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

To each their own then. Kwsn(Ni!) 19:53, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

No attack sites was rejected. Or at least the form I have seen was - people seem to be thinking it IS actually policy though! Viridae 05:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

If the article on Daniel Brandt can be a redirect, then surely anything ED-related can be a redirect also. What he's done carries far more clout and legitimacy than what they've done. Durova 16:30, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Instantnood3

The arbitration committee has closed the above case.

Restrictions applying to Huaiwei:

• Huaiwei (talk · contribs · logs) is restricted to proposing only one page move, poll of editors, or policy change relating to Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (Chinese) per week. he may be blocked, for up to a year in repeat case, if he violates this restriction.
• Huaiwei (talk · contribs · logs) is placed on Misplaced Pages:Probation indefinitely. Any administrator may ban him from any article he disrupts, for cause.
• Huaiwei (talk · contribs · logs) is placed on General Probation indefinitely. Any three administrators may, for good cause, ban him from the site.

The above is the shorthand restrictions placed on Huaiwei after an ArbCom case more than a year ago. Several months ago, it was found that Instantnood was not only being generally disruptive but also running farms of sockpuppets to disrupt votes/discussions and Instantnood is now permanently banned. Huaiwei hasn't been in any other kind of dispute resolution before or since the Instantnood issues.

It's clear to me that while Huaiwei was wrapped up in Instantnood's belligerence (as were a half dozen others on the periphery) it was Instantnood's wiki-stalking of Huaiwei (which continues with sockpuppets even now) that caused the problem, and not a general problem with Huaiwei as an editor. Without the instigation of a bad actor, Huaiwei is an excellent and dedicated Wikipedian who has been with the project for several years. These restrictions and potential punishments hang on him like an albatross.

I'd like ArbCom to review Huaiwei's contributions since the permanent banning of Instantnood and remove the previous restrictions.

SchmuckyTheCat

• You mean, like, the six blocks for edit warring he's received since then, most recently a month ago? --jpgordon 07:57, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Instantnood was banned on 16 April. Huaiwei was blocked only one time after Instantnood was banned. --Kaypoh 09:54, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Right, Huaiwei has one 3rr with one user that is not Instantnood. I think the sequence of that one was, slow revert, Huaiwei realized he went over and reported it, both got blocked. He was also using the talk page to try and work out what was going on with someone belligerent.

One instance does not justify such harsh restrictions. SchmuckyTheCat

Well, that one instance is not the justification, the entire history is. I'd like to see three clean months before I support lifting the restrictions, though. --jpgordon 16:43, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I believe that in a similar situation recently, the committee voted that someone's probation from a prior case would be ended if he remained out of trouble for a specific period of time. That might work here. Newyorkbrad 16:17, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• I'm nowhere near a neutral party here (too many underlying reasons), but I second what NYB says. - Penwhale | 23:58, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Note: See motion in arbitrator voting section, below. Newyorkbrad 05:50, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Motions in prior cases

(Only Arbitrators may make and vote on such motions. Other editors may comment on the talk page)

Huaiwei (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Note: See also the discussion in Section 2 above.

I move that the restrictions, now over a year old, from the Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Instantnood 3 case on editor Huaiwei be lifted. While Huaiwei appears to have been involved in some edit wars and has received a number of 3RR blocks, I do not believe that the probation and limits on participation remain relevant at this point.

As there are presently 13 active arbitrators (of whom one is abstaining), a majority is 7.

Support:

1. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 05:24, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
2. James F. (talk) 09:56, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Paul August ☎ 13:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
4. Kirill 17:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. First, I would like to see a clean block record for at least 3 months and no evidence of edit warring. FloNight 11:20, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Abstain:

1. As I suggested above, I'd like to see a bit more time. --jpgordon 16:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Betacommand

With the passage of time and Betacommand's continued contributions to Misplaced Pages, the Committee hereby restores Betacommand's administrative privileges under these stipulations:

• Betacommand may not operate any bot that utilizes administrative privilege without prior approval. For the avoidance of doubt, the term "bot" is to be construed broadly to include any full or partial automation of the administrative functions not already in widespread use by other administrators. Prior approval may come from the Bot Approvals Group (BAG), or for bots that provide partial automation that would not ordinarily require BAG approval, this committee.
• Betacommand must observe the notification requirements and delay periods specified in policy prior to deleting images.

As there are presently 13 active arbitrators (of whom one is abstaining), a majority is 7.

Support:

1. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Raul654 15:25, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
3. --jpgordon 15:54, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Uncomfortable with this, given his continually controversial behavior. Kirill 17:07, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
2. Paul August ☎ 03:11, 14 August 2007 (UTC)
3. Oppose. Blnguyen (bananabucket) 03:13, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Abstain:

1. Abstain until I discuss with Betacommand by email his views on blocking established users. FloNight 21:56, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Archives

• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Completed requests
• Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Rejected requests (extremely sparse, selective, and unofficial)

• Misplaced Pages arbitration
• Misplaced Pages dispute resolution
• Misplaced Pages Arbitration Committee