User talk:2over0

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Let's chat for a second about Sirwells (talk · contribs)

You templated Sirwells (talk · contribs) with the climate change template - his only edit of the year - wait, sorry, year and a half - was to revert the lead of Climatic Research Unit hacking incident to remove the sourced information about the response of the mainstream to the emails.

Now, I could revert him - but wait, I can't, because I wasted my revert, and yes, I'm talking about it as an entitlement, on a driveby lead reverter from yesterday. I guess I could pull out my iphone, walk down to starbucks, create a whole bunch of accounts, and play the same game that the denialists are playing - that would probably work. I mean, every new participant gets one free revert, right? Wait, I know, I'm supposed to engage him on the talk page. Here, I'll write something on the talk page. It'll get responded to by the usual suspects, but Sirwells? He's in the wind. We'll get another reverter tommorow - I guess I should respond to him on the talk page!

I suggest that this attempt at probation has failed. All edits that are by editors who did not discuss them on the talk page prior should be revertable on sight without penalty. If the editors are discussing their edits on the talk page, not reaching consensus, and making the edits anyway, sure, I'll jump through the stupid probation hoops. I don't know why I need to waste my time on driveby SPAs, however. Hipocrite (talk) 13:18, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

That could have been put less confrontationally, and I wish you had, but the substance is correct. SW's history is:

1. 2010-01-12T06:50:45 (hist | diff | all) Climatic Research Unit hacking incident ‎ (missing citations, vague, violates npovWilliam M. Connolley (talk) 14:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC))
2. 2008-06-09T02:14:19 (hist | diff | all) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→3RR concern)
3. 2008-06-08T23:05:18 (hist | diff | all) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→3RR concern)
4. 2008-06-08T23:02:00 (hist | diff | all) Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ‎ (→3RR concern)

so this is someone who has been called in from outside to revert. I *don't* agree that the probabtion has failed, though it could be tweaked to be better. Allowing people to revert driveby SPA's, as H puts it, seems fair. Would need a clear edit comment (a la "claim BLP exemption to 3RR") and a clear defn of driveby. Is it needed? Not sure. I would be nice to have, but the obvious suspects will whinge William M. Connolley (talk) 14:05, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries on the tone - I understood from User talk:Hipocrite#Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement and my good friend Captain Obvious that there is a great deal of frustration associated with trying to build and maintain a quality article in this kind of environment. One revert per editor per day is easy to enforce and a simple modification of existing editing standards, but is even more prone to the same sorts of gaming as 3RR. Providing a perverse incentive to create socks or collude rather than collaborate is definitely a problem. It also creates an artificially sharp distinction between the cases where two undiscussed drive-by editors choose to contribute within minutes of each other as opposed to hours apart - reverting two edits at the same time as edit-edit-revert-revert only counts as one revert, but edit-revert-edit-revert counts as two. Then there is the problem of imbalance of time and effort from the good faith contributors. The system should be designed to make simple maintenance easier than continual disruption (on a somewhat related note, I have been fairly loose in semi-protecting climate change articles that I notice seem to be attracting a lot of socks or blog-recruits, but am bad about remembering to check RFPP - do please feel free to drop in if it looks like an article might need attention). I admit that sometimes in my editing I will revert with only a cursory edit summary, and only bother with the effort of a full explanation on the talkpage if anyone comes back to object; in some ways this pattern is less than ideal, but I do understand the desire to leverage your time effectively.

Personally, I prefer to focus on content rather than editors - let everyone revert any edit for free unless it has been discussed and consensus reached first. This puts a pretty heavy bias on whatever Wrong Version is in place when this is instituted, but most of our articles are pretty good most of the time. Documented obstructionism and negotiating in bad faith to be topic bannable, of course. This has all the usual problems with Consensus and probably encourages polarization, but it at least increases the cost and behavioral detectability of maintaining a sock army (and, you know, might lead to better articles than if all the discussion is via edit summary).

Instituting an exception for "obvious but not vandalism" reverts makes a certain amount of sense, but if we all could agree on a definition of "obvious" WP:Dispute resolution would be a lot less noisy. It misses the spirit of WP:Edit warring, but unfortunately hits the letter. Please keep in mind that this is just my extemporaneous musing on the topic, not policy. In the spirit of brainstorming, would revert any and every edit that is undiscussed, with re-insertion to be considered edit warring be viable? This would be a fairly dramatic departure from the wiki-wiki model, and would require an active buy-in from at least most of the active contributors at a particular article; it also creates a pretty heavy enforcement burden - checking content against the talkpage and every previous revision takes time and effort and is prone to errors.

Better suggestions and pointing out the weak points and instances of failure continue to be welcome. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:33, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I came here looking to complain to 2over0 for unbalanced harrassment on my talk page and I find this. Guys, I haven't made a single edit on any article in over a week. I AM NOT A SOCK OR MEAT PUPPET. I know you may not like my talk page contributions, but frankly that should not be my problem. I tell it the way I see it and my posts are intended to address the active discussion, and to try and bring balance to what is obviously a one-sided forum. We all know it's the RC'ers and alarmists who have control of wikipedia. My suggestion to all of you is: find a more constructive use of your time than to make personal vendetta against me. I'm a short-timer here anyways. Sirwells (talk) 23:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I apologize if by word or implication I have given the impression that I think you are a sockpuppet or meatpuppet. My interest in those articles extends solely to encouraging collegial discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 00:31, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Question about filing request

Hey 2/0. I was wondering whether there was any reason for one not to file requests for sanctions against users who recently filed requests for sanctions against oneself (sorry, I couldn't really figure out another way to phrase that). I'm mainly curious what WP policy has to say but if there's a common sense reason not to as well I'd love to hear it. E.g., I don't want it to be thought that I'm retaliating, as that isn't/wouldn't be the case. Thanks!--Heyitspeter (talk) 18:09, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

As long as you carefully document your case, specifying the behaviour you find problematic and the steps you or others have taken to discuss the matter, there should be no reason not to. Frivolous countersuits and vexatious litigation are definitely frowned upon, of course, but requesting enforcement is not a free pass for one's own actions. It is standard practice to look at the behaviour of the filing editor, same as at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring, but, well, complex issues can be difficult to tease out after the fact and may be missed. I was just chatting with Hipocrite here with some thoughts on decreasing the percentage of those reports that are actionable, if you would like to read some of my further thoughts on filing probation requests. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Are steps supposed to be taken to discuss the matter prior? I wasn't contacted by Hip prior to his request... I imagine you must mean discussion of some other kind?--Heyitspeter (talk) 23:30, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Best practice, in my opinion, includes negotiating in good faith at the talkpage, informally discussing a perceived problem at usertalk, and a more formal specific warning before bringing an enforcement request. Some people dislike it when certain other people post to their talkpage, in which case making such a post is decidedly not part of dispute resolution. The only step that is absolutely necessary, though, is the first one - WP:GS/CC/RE is not a content board. How the case is received depends very much on how much you can demonstrate that the party against whom sanctions are requested should have known better or whatever the particulars of the case. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:51, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

More on the revert issue

I tried out the new process and there's still a problem. On the edit notice we link to Help:Reverting which contains yet another, even more benign definition of revert, and not Wikipedia:Reverting which contains the new language. I suggest we change the link or (add the plain text). Helping edititors to revert is probably not what was intended in this context :>) JPatterson (talk) 20:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes! Free reverts for all! Any editor who does not revert an article at least three times in a given day may be blocked from editing!

Er, sorry, I do not know what came over me there. I suggested over at Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Climate change probation#Proposed Change to the Article Probation Warning that the WP:Edit warring#Reverting might be the best place to point that, but so far the only change I have made is to point to the probation page itself instead of the talk. I would like to wait to see if other editors would like to weigh in on that discussion before changing it - tomorrow should be soon enough. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:11, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I added in whole or in part to the introduction of Help:Reverting - thank you for pointing this out. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments invited

I have indef blocked a user that you previously sanctioned. Could you review the block and comment at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Block_review_of_User:Jpat34721? Thank you very much. I respect your opinion and neutrality. If you think the block should be refactored, or undone with conditions, or just undone, feel free to take whatever steps you feel are proper. Jehochman ^Brrr 04:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Well that was a bit of an amazing furor while I was away. I think the net result is good - I am not ready to give up on the productive potential of this editor despite some of their more ill-advised posts of late. I will try to leave some more detailed advice over there before the block expires. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:12, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Apology (2)

I wanted to apologize for my implication in my article ban appeal that you acted in bad faith. At the time, my confusion regarding what constitutes a revert lead me to feel like I was in a kangaroo court. I now realize there was know way for you to know about my misunderstanding and that you were just doing your job.

Thanks again for your help in getting the revert issues worked out. Regards.

JPatterson (talk) 22:50, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. Echoing the sentiments of a few threads up in another section of the same name, I would need to be quite oblivious not to expect a certain amount of backlash from trying to tamp down the present storm, but I certainly appreciate your consideration. I can see how, if you had not seen me around the rest of the topic area, WMC's post might be misconstrued as calling in a friendly administrator instead of just one who is already up to speed on the probation but had been slacking at the WP:GS/CC/RE board.

I think that you really hurt your public image in terms of being perceived as here to build an encyclopedia with the nature of your appeal (though the appeal itself is, of course, perfectly agreeable - consistency across the project concerning what constitutes editing and adminning norms is important for long-term stability) and CoI thread (discussed elsewhere, so I will confine myself to expressing mild surprise at how long that thread went on, especially after the previous thread citing the same opinion piece was linked).

I recognize that you were engaged at the talkpage, as I expect did BozMo, which was part of the consideration that an article ban for one month would be more productive than a topic ban or a block. Reading the last week and a half of your contributions, you seemed to be arguing tendentiously. Obviously I am not privy to any of your actual motivations, and there a few significant instances outside the pattern, but taken as a whole that is how it appeared to someone outside of the discussions. I cannot speak for the other participants in the enforcement discussion, but personally I barely considered the issue of 1RR - strict enforcement of a technical violation in the pursuit of a stable compromise is not always the best approach. For example, WMC slipped up himself yesterday (see here); I probably would have blocked him briefly if I had been active at the time, but self-reverting is a much better solution in terms of creating quality articles and promoting a collaborative atmosphere. I will also state that I consider the unblocking bar to be pretty low in such cases; it is an entirely different matter, of course, if future edits do not show an earnest attempt at greater care.

Your attention in harmonizing the policy, guideline, and essay pages is particularly welcome. I am not sure that I had more than glanced at any of those pages except WP:Edit warring (which reminds me - I hope WP:AN3 is not getting backed up while I am distracted over here). The term revert is being used in its usual sense, but it is still something of a term of art and should be well-defined.

Topic areas subject to significant debate outside of Wikipedia are something of a conundrum for the continued growth of the encyclopedia. They are among the most likely to attract new editors to leap the first-contribution hurdle (the other being popular television shows and other media; somewhat tongue-in-cheek, WP:OVERLINKING should not apply to WP:FICT and WP:MOSFICT), but among the worst places to start in terms of acclimating to encyclopedic writing and the steepness of the expected learning curve. The rampant sock puppetry in such areas (read Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/The Troubles if you have time on your hands and would like another example) does nothing to foster the collaborative and welcoming environment we would prefer to prevail everywhere and especially to present to new contributors. I genuinely hope that you expand your editing interests, as indeed you seem to be doing, so that you can experience the more positive aspects of encyclopedia-building. The joy of reading a well-written comprehensive article and being able to say I had a hand in that is what keeps me, and I suspect most of us, coming back year after year. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful remarks. Lots of good advice. I really do want to be constructive player here. I take from above that the reason my sanction was so much more severe than the others that day was because of the additional charge of tendentious editing. If by that you mean article editing (as opposed to the talk page), my error, I think, was in applying WP:BRD in a context where evidently it is inappropriate. Perhaps it would be wise to place some discussion of WP:Bold and WP:BRD in the context of an article on probation on Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation.

I don't have a good feel yet for the role admins play in refereeing disputes as part of the probation process but you wrote somewhere that one of your roles is to "restore a normal editing environment" in the climate change space. In that regard, I wonder if I might get your feedback on this exchange which led up to the incident in question. Assuming you agree with my theme which runs throughout my Talk:Climategate interactions, that we're here to chronicle the controversy, not pass judgment on which side is right (and if you don't please set me straight), I'd like some feedback on the process to follow in the future when faced with this kind of intransigence. I also have some thoughts on article probation in general here that you might be interested in. Thanks again for taking the time with this. JPatterson (talk) 17:00, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Pretty much, although arguably the block on Dcowboys3109 (talk · contribs) was the more severe sanction, as your contributions outside of that article are still welcome (and good from my brief glance at them the other day - rock on), while theirs got a big ol' no thanks for a day (the standard block length for minor edit warring blocks). Editing confined to the talkpage can still be disruptive, and is generally taken into consideration in topic ban discussions.

On most articles, BRD is a good compromise for promoting article development without getting bogged down at the talkpage while still moving to the discussion phase before the battle lines are drawn. Most people, I think, have far more nuanced positions and well developed thoughts on the issues they edit than might be apparent from their edits in hotly contested areas. On less well trafficked talkpages, it is not uncommon to find comments from months or years ago to which nobody has felt the need to respond - clearly a case where just making the edit and waiting for any comments is the best course for building the article. On heavily monitored articles like many of those within the scope of the probation, however, it can be that there is enough information already on the talkpage to understand who and why will object to a particular edit. It is better in that case just to skip the initial edit in favor of hammering out a consensus that everyone will defend first. The make a change and then edit war over it until somebody gets sanctioned method still seems popular, though, perhaps for its potential to silence the opposition. Bad faith proposals and tactical use of sanctions would, of course, themselves be in gross violation of policy, which is part of why the entire situation is considered at those cases. It is difficult to divine the motive behind a bold edit, but the discussion-first model has the advantage that editing against a clear and obvious consensus is disruptive. The basic advice if you feel a discussion is not proceeding productively is to wait for or seek outside input. Perhaps input from a new perspective will induce one or another participants to change their mind. I cannot overemphasize the importance of clear, concise writing - not only will it minimize misunderstandings, but it also is much more encouraging to potential outside input than ream after ream of discursive or circular discussion and general incivility.

Personally, I consider that my time will yield better results for less effort whenever articles get past a few dozen edits per day (try getting a word in edgewise at 2010 Haiti earthquake). Worse, the rapidly evolving nature of the coverage makes any consensus tenuous and subject to tomorrow's news cycle. All of this, though, is within the normal editing environment. The ultimate goal of the WP:GS/CC/RE page is to make the sanctions redundant for reason of the topic area being full of editors discussing, perhaps vehemently but certainly politely and in good faith, all points of disagreement until everyone is equally (un)happy with the articles. It is when the battle lines are drawn, the clarion horn sounded, the less-impassioned and less-disputatious editors driven off, the WP:POINTs sharpened, and "winning" is measured in steepness of MYPOV instead of NPOV that the community needs to step in with a gentle but firm reminder that this is an encyclopedia. meta:How to win an argument and User:Deacon of Pndapetzim/How to win a revert war should be required reading for anyone in my position.

I think pretty much everyone agrees that the raison d'être for articles here is to reflect the reliable sources according to their prominence. The disagreement comes once specifics are in play. Should the focus of Climatic Research Unit hacking incident be the fact that data traveled from their servers to one in Russia in contravention of established procedure? Or should it be what the emails etc. contained? Or is reporting what has been said about the coverage of the incident most encyclopedic? Then people who agree on the grand focus contend with each other that this source or that is unusably biased and involved in one side or another of the controversy, or a particular point is unweightably minor or should be covered only alongside some other point or must (not) be included in the lead.

The evenly dispersed nature of content control is a perennial conundrum. Ling.Nut and Cla68 were discussing some sort of content court of appeals the other day, and might have some more thoughts on that part of your retrospective. That sort of discussion usually goes to the village pump, though understanding what has been said before on similar matters is generally advised.

As an admittedly pedantic aside, I think you mean wikt:aspersion rather than wikt:dispersion, and wikt:exacerbate rather than wikt:exasperate. Regards, - 2/0 (cont.) 02:04, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that's quite a lot to digest. I think the nutshell of the advice I was seeking is contained in "The basic advice if you feel a discussion is not proceeding productively is to wait for or seek outside input." I'm not sure of how one goes about doing that (I guess that was my question) but I'm not sure that in the case of the Climategate article more input is the thing that's needed :>) I hope you are right about universal acceptance of the raison d'être you spoke of above but when a Mom-and-Apple-pie appeal like this one gets the response it did, it does shake one's confidence in that view.

"Should the focus of Climatic Research Unit hacking incident be the fact that data traveled from their servers to one in Russia in contravention of established procedure? Or should it be what the emails etc. contained?"

I guess my answer is yes to both. I thought the idea was to chronicle the controversy. People seem to be trying to apply the same WP:Weight arguments that would be perfectly appropriate in article about the science of AGW into an article that is only peripherally related to the science. Twenty years from now, the scientific issues will be settled. Regardless of who turns out to be right, the hacking incident will remain an interesting historical footnote which perhaps will have had a profound effect on politics and policy. I want WP to accurately reflect the history ans it's the history we miss if we pretend that the only one qualified to speak to the issues raised are those sympathetic to the implicated scientists or worse, the blatant POV-pushing view that was expressed in the exchange I pointed you to, that the role of an editor, and by implication, WP, is to prevent skeptics from turning a molehill into a mountain. The outside world will decide if its a mountain or a molehill, our job it seems to me, is to frame the debate and chronicle its effects with encyclopedic tone instead of the current disjoint cascade of he saids/she saids that too often characterizes WP articles on current events. JPatterson (talk) 06:13, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Whoops, I meant the comments above as a generic commentary on some of the hurdles that have to be gotten over when writing about current events and not to veer into prohibited territory. But then again, you brought it up ;>) JPatterson (talk) 06:20, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Heh, I suppose I was talking about the cesspit that shall not be named a bit, there. On the other hand, I am relatively confident that you have not been using this discussion in a subtle bid to try to influence me to edit that article on your behalf. Call it a hunch.

Outside input can come from editors involved at the article but not in a particular discussion. Too often I see a back-and-forth from two editors run in the span of a scant few hours the gamut from a polite request for clarification to little better than a flameware. This quick progression limits the chances for other editors to weigh in before intransigence sets in. Taking the time to consider each post, perhaps waiting a few hours or a day if tempers are running hot, increases the signal-to-noise ratio of a talkpage.

Wikipedia:Dispute resolution has some good general advice, as well as laying out where and how to attract fresh input. Every step requires time and patience, though, both of which tend to be in short supply on hotly contested evolving topics. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:38, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Picky point

Re Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement#Jpat34721 On the one hand, I suspect that Jpat34721 will be pleasantly surprised to see his banning period is over, and perhaps he'll marvel at how fast time flies. On the other hand, you may have meant 2010-02-13. Frankly, I haven't finished my 2009 MBO's, so I wish it were still 2009, but I don't always get my wishes.--SPhilbrickT 00:23, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

/embarrassed Ah well, it is good to know that somebody reads those things - thanks. At least at less than two weeks into the new year I can claim habit instead of plain ol' not knowing what year it is. - 2/0 (cont.) 01:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

That's funny, because to be quite honest, half the reason I posted was to show that someone is actually reading.--SPhilbrickT 18:25, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

A question on my article ban

Am I allowed to engage with users on their TPs regarding the article in question? Thanks,JPatterson (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. The idea of a partial rather than site ban is that a user can probably be a productive contributor to the encyclopedia, but needs to disengage from a particular area. Using various usertalk pages as a proxy for Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident would not serve that purpose. If a user approaches you with a specific limited question, it is probably okay (though less than ideal) to render an answer including reference to this temporary ban; users who repeatedly make such approaches after being informed of the ban might be engaged in baiting, attempting to game the system, or otherwise editing disruptively. Thank you for seeking clarification. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:21, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

ok, thanks JPatterson (talk) 22:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight's block statement

In your block statement there is a mistake that you should correct. Diff #3 needlessly inflaming an already passionate discussion doesn't go to an edit made by GoRight , but to an edit made by some other guy. I looked at the history and GoRight has never edited that article nor its talk page. --Enric Naval (talk) 00:47, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

From 2006, probably indicating I dropped a digit in the copy/paste. Thank you for noticing, I will dig out the correct one soonest. - 2/0 (cont.) 00:51, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

User:GoRight would like you to know

GoRight asked if someone would alert you to this conversation. I told him I would. It's all yours, --CrohnieGal^Talk 18:56, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I have been following along at home while trying not to add to the noise of that discussion, but I think something more from me is required there in the near future. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:54, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

procedural Question

Hi 2/0, I'd like to get out of jail re the CRU hacking incident article. Could you point me to the proper forum for initiating a review? Thanks. JPatterson (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents would, I believe, be the best venue. Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation#Remedy has a link for a handy template that may help in formatting the discussion. I would advise waiting a few days before opening the discussion so you can point to a solid week of uninterrupted productive contributions to other areas. This is by no means required, it is merely my personal opinion that that will bolster your case. I would also advise pointing to the original WP:GS/CC/RE discussion, the first ban review, and any related discussions - somebody will bring them up fairly soon anyway, and doing it yourself gives you the best chance to state your views on the concerns raised therein. Our discussion on the precise meaning of the term revert is also a mitigating factor, though somewhat tangential to the final decision. I am honestly not sure right now what would be best for the project, but good luck anyway. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:51, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I was thinking it had been a week but I miscounted. I'll take your advice. I'm busy with other stuff anyway. JPatterson (talk) 20:14, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Would it violate policy if we handled this quietly here? I am anxious to get all this behind me but it seems the last thing the community needs right now is another forum to play out the us v. them meme. I have absolutely no desire be a foil in that fight (a pox on both houses as far as I'm concerned). This experience has given me a better idea of what's expected in this new environment and I am confident I can contribute in a constructive manner. I propose the rest of my "sentence" be converted to probation, revocable by you at your whim. JPatterson (talk) 16:12, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

I think so, but I have asked BozMo for advice. Moni3 wrote up some advice for editing the article covering the recent earthquake in Haiti (linked from the first Signpost article at the top of this page), some of which also applies to other emerging stories, paralleling some of your own concerns. I definitely am interested in not stirring up more drama, but I also want to be careful not to ignore the original community discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:04, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

In mulling this over, I would ask both of you to consider, given the reception I received here upon my return to editing after a three year break and the battle mentality on display by both sides (diffs upon request), that my conclusion that this was the behavioral norm was reasonable. I realize now that I entered the fray at an inopportune time, shortly after this probation thing was put into place and admins were trying to restore order. It was not my intention to exacerbated the situation, nor is it my intention to jump back into the fire. My interest remains in creating an article that reflects the controversy accurately, but I intend to concentrate on the social, political and policy impacts that have occurred, subject matter that should not be nearly as controversial. JPatterson (talk) 19:23, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Is this going anywhere or should I just go ahead with a community appeal? Thanks. JPatterson (talk) 16:52, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Let me ponder this a bit more, please, as it is a bit of a thorny issue. You should have a right to a timely reply, though, so please feel free to make your appeal to AN/I if I have not responded in the next 12 hours or so. For the direction my thoughts are currently trending - how would you feel about being unbanned from the talkpage only? - 2/0 (cont.) 09:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning re your half-a-loaf offer or how it would work. I'm interested in improving the article, would I be allowed to suggest content on the TP that then would have to be implemented by someone else or not allowed to make content suggestions at all? JPatterson (talk) 14:43, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

You know better than anyone the mitigating circumstances surrounding all this, knowledge you didn't have at the time you passed judgment. If you can honestly say you'd impose the same sanction today knowing all that, fine, I'll just have to scratch my head and move on. If not, you can fix it. Since I understand certainty is impossible, I repeat my offer that you can reimpose the original sanction at your whim and without a whimper from me. JPatterson (talk) 15:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Complete and unfettered ability to edit anything and everything except Climatic Research Unit hacking incident itself - what say you? The expiry for that would remain at the day before the anniversary of the Saint Valentine's Day massacre. The edits to the article should already have a strong consensus before anyone edits the article, so this restriction should not be particularly onerous. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:45, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd take it with the understanding that charges of tag teaming or meat puppetry would be inappropriate in this context as I would only be able to affect content via proxy. JPatterson (talk) 16:59, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Um, that is not really how it works - you would be a voice at the talkpage, same as any other, free to participate in collaborative discussion. If there is a consensus at a particular discussion, it should not matter who makes the actual edit and the question of proxying for a banned user should not even arise. If there is not a consensus, then nobody should be editing the article anyway, and again the question should not arise. Please, please do not think of this as going back into battle. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:37, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

You misunderstand my remarks. If I intended to go "back into battle", my proposal to give you a hair trigger would have been pretty stupid, no? I intend to avoid antagonism like the plague. My concern is about a few editors there who seem more than ready to pounce on anyone they perceive as standing in the way of Truth, and who have shown themselves more than willing to use the clubs probation has put in their hands. I can imagine a scenario where content I suggest gets inserted by someone else after consensus, and then a RfE gets filed on the technicality that I am acting through a proxy. Just because I'm parnoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get me :>) JPatterson (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, that makes much more sense and is much better in accord with the impression I had formed of you from these discussions - thank you. The hair trigger pretty much has to be there in any case, but I do appreciate your transparency, as well as your stated intentions. I am going to go ahead and lift the talkpage ban, then - good luck. I left a note on your talkpage to that effect. You are free to do whatsoever you please with it, but it might be nice to have some sort of pointer to the unban for the next little while, as I do not know how many of the active editors there are aware of this discussion. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your consideration here. I am happy we could find accommodation. Please feel free to offer constructive criticism as I try and tip toe through the mine field. Cheers. JPatterson (talk) 23:12, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Words of wisdom from the King

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. ... Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
~ Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have a dream, that someday all editors will be judged by the character of their content and not the color of their state. (or something like that). JPatterson (talk) 01:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Javascript tool to help with external-link review

Hello - if you're like me, you've often been frustrated that Special:LinkSearch doesn't have a facility to restrict an external-link search to a specific namespace. (After all, we usually care most about links in articlespace). Like any self-respecting wannabe amateur, I've hacked together some Javascript to address this lack. I thought you might be interested. If so, you can go to User:2over0/monobook.js and add the line importScript('User:MastCell/el-namespace.js'); there.

After you refresh your browser cache, the next time you go to Special:LinkSearch you should see a drop-down menu where you can specify the namespace you want to search. Technically, the script intercepts your click on the "Search" button and sends an AJAX query to the MediaWiki API. I've set it up to display the results in the familiar format. There are still a few kinks to be ironed out, but it works well for me so far. Anyhow, if you're interested, give it a shot and let me know how it works for you. MastCell ^Talk 05:55, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes - thank you! - 2/0 (cont.) 06:05, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Let me know if you have any problems with it. It needs a little cleanup, but I think the only major issue remaining is that the internal wikilinks in the results table don't work right if you're on the secure site.

My next project is more ambitious. Have you ever noticed that there are a few people who add very little substance to discussions, but who are irritatingly difficult to ignore? The idea would be that you have an "ignore list" in some central location. Each time you load a discussion page, a piece of Javascript runs the content and collapses, shrinks, disemvowels, or completely removes any comments from the offending editors, thus enabling you to focus on content issues without irritating distractions. Unfortunately, it's hard (for me, at least) to come up with a functional, elegant, efficient algorithm to remove comments from a specific editor that will robustly handle edge cases (poor indentation, breaking up others' comments, etc). But a person can dream... MastCell ^Talk 20:02, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Leaving the issue of 'is it a good idea' aside, one way could be to leverage the ability to see exactly what edits the user has done on the page in question. Unomi (talk) 17:48, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

It's like the atomic bomb - let's develop the technology first, then worry about whether it's a good idea. :P I can pull edits in diff form, but that doesn't work so well since later edits can overwrite or alter them, in part or full. I haven't looked in detail - are there existing tools that can reliably identify a specific editor's contributions to a given revision of a page? MastCell ^Talk 19:08, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight requests a response

Please be aware that GoRight wishes to draw your attention to his responses at [1] and he awaits your reply. Thanks. --ChrisO (talk) 08:49, 20 January 2010 (UTC) (On behalf of GoRight.)

Hi, can you help me simply see (or point) to what your would like to GoRight to agree to, so as to remove his block and proceed? I may be able to help you obtain a resolution. My request was prompted by his [2] here. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 15:16, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I have not offered unblock terms to GoRight at present, but I am considering the several they have proposed. Civility parole, partial or total restriction from editing climate change articles and talkpages, dispute resolution limitations, and finding a mentor are churning to the top of my mind at the moment. I am not aware of civility parole ever working or failing to incite drama, no matter the intentions of all involved. I am uncomfortable with any dispute resolution restriction that could be used to stifle legitimate review. Mentorship is generally more useful to newer editors learning the ropes and wanting to integrate better with the community; it also must be completely voluntary on all sides. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:11, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. As I have discussed with GoRight, I feel the issues that have held him up are really about his intentions and possibly misunderstandings about them. I hope you agree he has talents that could be put to better application, if they were properly focused with a sense of purpose as direction and the feeling that wikipedia life can be meaningful beyond disputes. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Spelling fix

Thanks for the spelling fix ... apologize I didn't catch it. I've had my deal of typo / transpose trouble today. Likely means I should be doing something else more important. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:27, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

No worries, it is simple enough and I was entertained by the mental image of a talkpage with sprawling estates. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:40, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

That must be it! ... I just returned from touring the 67 acre manors at Cà_d'Zan and Florida real estate shopping. Be thankful I didn't slip and include the circus images. Cà_d'Zan is impressive. (smile) Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful country down there; I was not familiar with Cà d'Zan, but reading and looking at that article it certainly seems I should be. Be sure to check out the Florida Aquarium north a bit in Tampa next time you are in the area - it is worth spending the day. - 2/0 (cont.) 15:24, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Will do, the best fish sights this time were at Epcot Center and flying a Waco bi-plane over the reef near Marathon in the Keys. Amazing ecosystems. Just learned the Gulf may have been created by an astroid. I bring this up to disclose my belief that an asteroid impact is a greater threat to climate change than human induced causes. Also note, John Ringling suffered nearly a complete great economic depression loss, after building that wonderful estate.Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 05:30, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Wassup here?

I've been tweaking and rejigging discussions for quite a while on Wikipedia, and now I'm encountering quite a lot of flack because my attempts to stop discussions becoming straw polls are described as disruptive. Obviously I'm going to stop because it's annoying some people. But a thoughtful comment or two would be appreciated. The comments on my user talk page in the section "WT:PROD" and the one that follows ("Re: Why I removed the bolding") are from completely different people with no conceivable connection so obviously I'm doing something seriously controversial. My aim is to stop discussions turning into ugly, divisive, up-down votes, but obviously there has to be a better way than this. --TS 23:29, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Growing pains? As the Wikipedia editor base expands, the proportion who have been around for as long as you have gradually diminishes and the community norms get an Eternal September effect. The pace at which discussions become unmanageably long remains static even as the number of voices to be heard grows. Personally, I think it can be useful to make sure everyone is on the same page after a long and complicated discussion, but moving to it too soon can short circuit the consensus-building process. On the other hand, people dislike having their posts modified or moved, so treating the !vote tally as a summary for tl;dr and responding solely to the points raised may be the best option. It might be helpful to encourage through example the convention of putting the rationale first, with the one word summary bolded in the last sentence or so for ease of parsing.

I saw an interesting graphic a few years back attempting to plot the positions of the US public and the US House of Representatives on a one-dimensional left-right spectrum. The plot for the public looked pretty much like two broad Gaussians with maybe a 10—15 point std, peaked at about ±3 points on a scale of 100 (presumably "0" was defined by averaging the data points). The plot for the House showed a deep dip right just most of the citizens were in basic agreement, with the peaks at around ±10, well outside those of the general public, and a much stronger showing percentage wise towards the extreme ends of the spectrum. Binning continuous data too coarsely is bad for NPOV.

As for actually useful advice, well, leading by example is pretty much the end of it - respond to the points raised, incite discussion, and ignore the head-counting. You are pretty good about not just falling in with one of two pre-defined positions and refusing to change your mind, but one thing I would really like to see more of in the climate change disputes is people taking their own side to task when they screw up. Defending a person or position based on anything besides the strength of arguments does the encyclopedia no favors, but also does the proposer no favors by making it socially more difficult for them to state a change of opinion. Ah, well, maybe next week. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:07, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Hey, a thoughtful response! Thanks. There's a lot of good thinking there and I'll try to incorporate it into my activities. --TS 19:44, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight's block

2/0, please unblock GoRight.

At the beginning of the year, whilst most of us were away from our computers, a small group of climate change editors set up a new forum and called it, "Climate Change Probation." The idea was proposed by a boy who appears to be in his early 20s, probably too young to have ever even had a job.

Whilst the intentions of some involved may have been good, there was no authorisation from the Wikipedia Foundation or ArbComm to do this, and since many of the editors involved in setting it up are POV pushers from the warmist camp, it is natural that skeptics are offended and will react to it.

(As for what would work, as far as fixing the corruption & poisonous atmosphere within the climate change pages, it would be mediation by parties known by both sides, advocates & skeptics, to be neutral. Neutral here would mean, an editor who has never shown any interest in the climate change debate, but he would likely suppose that the IPCC is probably right. Both sides would agree to the mediation. This much is common sense, but unfortunately, it seems, the warmist camp, with too much admin power taken too liberally, couldn't help themselves and have set themselves up as mediators in their own dispute with the skeptics. Honestly, this must look far, far worse to the general public than anything found in the Climategate letters. Whereas the IPCC is merely waning in credibility as a result of a number of scandals, Wikipedia appears corrupt to the core.)

I don't, personally, want anything to do with the climate change probation, given its illegitimacy, so I have largely just ignored it. Others have reacted differently, and that is understandable.

However, GoRight immediately objected, and, sure, he has reacted badly since. So it looks like he was provoked by the community with climate change probation in the first instance, and now is now banned less than 20 days later by the very same climate change probation, after reacting. This is, of course, what everyone expected probation to turn out to be: a weapon to be used against skeptics, rather than the real problem editors, POV pushers from either side.

I believe that you are, yourself, sincere in trying to fix the climate change pages, and so I appeal to you here: this block needs to be lifted. Alex Harvey (talk) 16:42, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I have to say that your depiction of the climate change probation, and particularly how it came about ("a boy ... probably too young to have ever even had a job" - WTF?), is complete fantasy. If you want anyone to take you seriously I think you have to do a lot better than that. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I'll note as an aside that this user's recent comments on GoRight's block have not exactly been a model of restraint: [3]. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Although to be fair, they deleted that comment between when I saw it and when I might decide the best way forward from there. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:22, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

True, but it seems pretty clear where this user is coming from. I suspect that this will be a self-correcting problem though - if he acts as he says he's doing (i.e. ignoring the probation) then he will end up getting blocked or topic-banned before too long. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:32, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that you asked GoRight a question related to an exchange between him and me in which he parroted my words back at me [4]. I don't think that was really much of a problem. I just calmly asked him what he meant and then fixed my wording to remove the possibility of my words being misinterpreted. As that was a discussion on his talk page and if anything he would have felt under pressure and not I, I think it was well within acceptable parameters. I'm grown-up enough not to hold someone in high dudgeon for being a bit sarcastic. Not an ideal response to an editor coming to you with serious concerns, but then again not problematic in itself. The issue on which I wanted to express my concern was more important, both then and now. This was GoRight's creation of a pretty big essay on the Pcarbonn ban into the page at WP:AN. I don't think GoRight is intrinsically difficult to interact with, as long as you accept that he tends to adopt a fairly antagonistic style. As you're no doubt aware he isn't alone in these problem areas in adopting a battleground mentality. --TS 20:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

@AH: I am aware of the problems surrounding the genesis and implementation of the climate change probation, but I think it has rather more support from the community and ArbCom than you indicate - [5], [6]. Disclosure: while I do not think I was the first to suggest such a solution, I argued for something similar to this probation in the first of the preceding links. That said, I did not invoke the discretionary sanctions in my blocking rationale. I am currently working with a few other editors to hash out a set of conditions under which they may continue to contribute to the project. Creative ideas that do not create an undue burden of enforcement are particularly welcome. @TS: Thank you for your perspective on your discussion, I will take it into consideration. I had read that exchange as considerably less productive than you describe. I think one of the problems with the battleground mentality is the stick (banning/blocking) is much more visible than the carrot (satisfaction at having contributed to the best encyclopedia possible). When editors start antagonizing each other, it seems that most people either get in on it or leave - what we need is some way to break the cycle, and catch and defuse it wherever it starts. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:58, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if my intervention at that point was soured by the misconceived enforcement request I had filed against GoRight the previous week. In retrospect it might have looked as if I was just looking for an excuse to have him censured. Since then as you know GoRight has increasingly perceived me as an enemy. My position (as outlined elsewhere) is that I want him editing articles and commenting on talk pages, but I want him to be talking about the topic, not the people. If he wants to talk about the people he should follow dispute resolution. I think we're all on the same page with this. We just need to build trust in the possibility of a solution. --TS 23:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2over0, you said it all "the stick (banning/blocking) is much more visible than the carrot (satisfaction at having contributed to the best encyclopedia possible) to make the carrot visible, I been looking into gestalt coaching principles. When unknown editors are viewed as potential assets to be grown rather than whipped into compliance, then Wikipedia's potential will grow too. Each crack of the whip, takes a toll on the whole community and should be conducted prudently, an effectively. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 04:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

2/0, if GoRight has been blocked for having a battleground mentality, you need to check out my talk page. This is what I put up with daily due to the perception that I am a climate change skeptic. Right now, three editors are harassing me for the remark I made about Ryan's photo. William M. Connolley is demanding an apology for "grotesque" incivility whilst in the same breath telling me that my conversation there with Ryan is "pathetic". I wonder, what on earth has this got to do with William anyway? Then Stephan Schulz came along and added some pointy sarcasm, and finally, Tony Sidaway warned me that I am not allowed to make personal remarks on my own talk page. (Um, what?) Are they going to be warned in turn? I don't think so. Alex Harvey (talk) 14:20, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

As indicated by the level of activity at this page lately, I am currently somewhat overextended. This is precisely the sort of dispute that takes the longest to review, but failing to investigate the relevant background would be a disservice to all involved and an abuse of my position as an uninvolved administrator. Please escalate the issue to the appropriate noticeboard (probably WQA, from your description) if the matter cannot be resolved amicably at usertalk. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:50, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The latest unblock request

I am troubled that the substance of GoRight's latest unblock request does not comfortably line up with his recent conduct. He appears to be continuing to do his very best to encourage, direct, and inflame disputes despite being confined to his talk page. Ten hours before the unblock request ([7]) GoRight was endorsing the misuse of the climate change probation enforcement talk page by ZuluPapa5 as a platform for harrassment and namecalling directed at his perennial target, William M. Connolley: [8]. He is apparently watching quite closely, as he was the first to notice ZP5's violation of 3RR on that page and encouraged him to self-revert to keep his edit warring within the letter of 3RR: [9].

Encouraging vexatious misuse of dispute resolution pages and gaming of 3RR limits to enable edit warring is not, to my mind, "mak[ing] use of all noticeboards in a judicious and constructive manner", nor does it seem to "place far more focus on finding collaborative resolutions to disputes. While a sufficiently twisted interpretation could perhaps let his 'guidance' of ZP5 fit around (behind, under) those terms, I would much prefer to see him understanding and abiding by the spirit of his propsed commitments before he is unblocked. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:58, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

It was "misuse of the climate change probation enforcement talk page" by WMC [10] which seems to have caused a stir for GoRight. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 23:11, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

TOAT, if there was a war by me there as you describe, who was on the other side? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

While I'm not questioning the sincerity of GoRight's pledge, it would seem far more useful and constructive (to me, at least) to have concrete, specific criteria going forward. Pleasant-sounding but vague and totally subjective pledges to be judicious don't tend to work out very well in these sorts of situations. That's just my 2 cents; the decision isn't up to me. MastCell ^Talk 01:30, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Making it simple

Seems like GoRight would like to make this simple and move on: User talk:GoRight#What are the terms under which you will allow me to continue editing?. Let me know how I can help? Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 22:42, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

2overO, regarding a simple solution, this seems relevant to me, Wikipedia:Disruptive_editing#Blocking_and_sanctions_for_disruption regards. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 20:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Framework for unblocking GoRight

I would recommend strong, specific conditions for any unblock of GoRight; the framework that you've outlined forms a reasonable basis. While I am sure that GoRight offers his pledges in all earnestness, the fact remains that he has a demonstrated history of falling short of such commitments in the past. The last two (un)blocks in his block log are instructive:

• Unblocked 3 December 2009 (after disruptive editing of Scientific opinion on climate change) with a commitment to pay special attention to WP:CIVIL and avoid further edit warring on the page [11]. Unblocking admin's log entry: "per request and good-faith agreement on user talk page".
• Unblocked 6 January 2010 (after a general, broad pattern of disruptive editing) with the affirmation "OK, upon further reflection and off-wiki advice, message received. I hereby agree to be more constructive." [12]. Unblocking admin's log entry: "per promises to improve behaviour".

Regrettably, since you've had to reblock GoRight for essentially the same problems, it would strike me as counterproductive to unblock without clear boundaries to guide his future contributions. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:10, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Creative Proposal

Hi .. I appreciate your are being pulled in many directions now a days (seem to show evidence for fairness and I know that takes time) ... when you have some time ... please review the Creative Proposal for GoRight's redemption on his talk page. Thanks Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

While some degree of lateral thinking is definitely called for in this situation, I do not think that that is the way to go with it. Thank you, though. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:48, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Well ... my opinion is Wikipedia is the ideal place to enact Restorative_justice (with restitution agreement) because no one owns anything that would require retributive payment (and retribution could be perceived as retaliatory). In cases where intentions are the key question, then a block may cause a confusing message. The cure should be for the WP:CIVIL offender to demonstrate honorable intentions in some way. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

User:Jpat34721

Are you reviewing his reentry into editing the one talk page he was banned from? Hipocrite (talk) 19:43, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

The ban was lifted. See User talk:Jpat34721#Unbanned from Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I am aware of that. I am wondering if 2/0 is watching his problematic return to the talk page. If I though he was still banned, I'd just ask a bunch of people to block him. Hipocrite (talk) 19:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see what you mean now. -- ChrisO (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Not yet, but that was next on my due diligence list. I have high hopes for this one, but I am a cautious optimist. Without having reviewed Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident as of this post, the sorts of clashes my crystal ball predicted should be amenable to the polite collaborative discussion at usertalk method. Hopefully. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:57, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Go crazy. I'm inches away from filing another enforcement request. I suggest you inform your charge that copy-pasting a huge list of references without any proposal to use those references or any proposal to make any change to the article is disruptive. I suggest you inform your charge that suggesting the same shit he suggested over and over before he was banned, using the same reasoning over and over from before he was banned that has the same chance of garnering acceptance as before he was banned will lead to him being banned again. It's like he's fundamentally incapable of even considering middle ground. It's tremendously frusterating to finally - FINALLY start watching some headway being made on that article just to find that someone is unbanned just to start being the boulder in the middle of the road. Hipocrite (talk) 20:03, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I've left a polite message on Jpat's talk page suggesting that he might want to reconsider his approach. I agree that it seems unconstructive, at the very least, but let's see if he's a one-track-mind editor as well as a single purpose account. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:15, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Wait, what's the problem? He listed sources which indicate that the term "Climategate" has extensive real world sources. Why is this considered a problem? Really, this badgering of editors who don't share the pre-ordained POV has got to stop. 2/0, I certainly hope you treat this frivolous request as you have for such requests from the other side, and topic-ban these 2 editors as you did JPat. ATren (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I article-banned Jpat34721 following discussion at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement/Archive1#Jpat34721. It will probably be tomorrow before I can catch up on sorting through Climatic Research Unit hacking incident, Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident, and related issues. If in the meantime you would like to make a specific enforcement request, please use Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:18, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

2/0, if you don't mind, would you please elaborate on your reasons for article-banning JPat? I've looked at that section, and there are only two diffs provided as evidence. Neither is abusive. At worst, this was a 2RR, nothing more, yet you article-banned him for a month. Furthermore, that article ban was used as justification for a block when JPat raised a legitimate COI/N request. I realize your ban has been lifted, but as we can see here, others are still using it as justification to take further action against JPat.

So based on my view of the evidence, I believe your article ban was incorrect. If there's evidence I missed, I'll gladly retract that, but if there was no other evidence, then I think you should retract your action, and admit it was a mistake (or, at least, an overreaction). This would serve to "clear JPat's name" so that editors don't try to use this (IMO) ill-advised ban against him, as they have done here.

Note: I do not assume bad faith in any of this. I realize how difficult this task is, and how easy it is to misjudge a situation. But I do believe a mistake was made, and if so, it should be corrected. Thanks. ATren (talk) 00:21, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

ATren, I appreciate your comments I really do but I don't think it's productive to rake those coals again. 2over0 and I have reached accommodation after much discussion and I really would hate to see him have to expend more time on this. Thanks. JPatterson (talk) 00:43, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, I understand and respect that, JPat, but I'd still appreciate a response from 2/0, perhaps by email to avoid further on-wiki drama. This ban seemed way over the line, and continues to create drama (see above). I think it's important to get to the bottom of it. 2/0, feel free to contact me via email. ATren (talk) 00:50, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

As I mentioned in the original ban appeal, Jpat's contributions especially to Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident had come to my attention when I was looking for hotspots in the probation area. The diffs I reviewed included all contributions in the 1—2 weeks preceding the enforcement request. The pattern of diffs is not recorded, but there is extensive discussion here leading up to the partial unban. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Rememebr what I complained about last time? The giveaninchtakeamile problem? It's recurred. How would you go about dealing with that? Hipocrite (talk) 22:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Here's my contribution to Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident thus far. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]. I would appreciate feedback on what is problematic with any of these. I don't see anything the least bit antagonistic in my remarks. These responses ([22] [23][24][25]) are in my opinion entirely unwarranted and unnecessarily inflammatory. JPatterson (talk) 22:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

I genuinely do not know how to resolve the general issue here. Pointing to consensus at earlier talk threads works ordinarily, but the continuing unfolding of that topic and the recklessly disputatious atmosphere of discussion there both contribute to making any consensus particularly tenuous and open to reasonable or disingenuous debate. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:43, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not know how to parse this to mean anything except, there is not now and never was a consensus, which means my post was perfectly legitimate (and if you'll read where the discussion went from there, constructive). A collegial editing environment is going to difficult to achieve as long as some editors think the purpose of probation (win,wink, nod, nod) was to give them new weapons to drive the bastards out.JPatterson (talk) 15:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

question

With regards to the probation, might i ask if a deletion is the same as a revert if it is the same text being removed? [26] or is this a loophole in the probation? --mark nutley (talk) 22:08, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

This is a normal edit, and was mentioned on the talkpage. Thank you for bringing this up. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:26, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Deletions of text can be difficult. In a sense, *any* deletion of text is automatically a revert, because someone added it sometime. But that would be overly strict. Within the context of 3RR, which this largely follows, a deletion would not be considered a revert if the text removed was sufficiently old - sufficient would vary by article; but if its addition was severeal hundred edits down the history list, or added several years ago, and was not obviously part of the existing revert war, it probably doesn't count as a revert William M. Connolley (talk) 09:40, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Link to reply.

Hi, I commented here regards. Off2riorob (talk) 18:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:32, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

CRU Hack Rename Fracas

This Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident#Article_move completely broke down into name calling and reprehensible behavior by a lot of editors that should know better. I'm not sure how to request an enforcement action on it, but it got really ugly. Ignignot (talk) 22:30, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Dam and blast, I thought there was move protection on that article. Ah well, SarekOfVulcan has corrected my oversight. I will take a look in a bit, thanks. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:35, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

If you've got a spare moment, Wikipedia_talk:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for_enforcement#Rules of_the_game needs an answer. PS: aren't you pleased? I'm nothing to do with the CRUhi rename disaster area :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 22:44, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, yes I am. I am closing some of the open reports at the RE page even now - look for it soon. - 2/0 (cont.) 22:52, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC refactoring case

Well nobody has screamed the house down over this proposal...yet! I don't know, maybe everybody agrees with you--or maybe they're all too busy playing the finger-pointing game on other parts of the enforcement page. I must say I find this recent slew of filings disappointing. There are some valid issues there but I get the impression it's turned into a game to see who can get sanctions passed against "the other lot." -TS 23:50, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Sadly I must agree; I do not feel surprise that people are trying to use the RE page to call down the thunder on people with whom they tend to disagree, but there is some degree of disappointment. Still, I pledged in my RfA that I would strive to ensure that my use of the tools would not be the means by which one PoV-warrior wins over another, and I intend to live up to that. - 2/0 (cont.) 00:05, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

2/0 I believe closing down this [27] was a mistake, do you not think another admin should have looked it over. Is it possible that you are being overrun with all the CC related issues and have not had enough time to look through it all? --mark nutley (talk) 00:25, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Color me unsurprised. No complaint against WMC is ever acted upon. He's persistently rude to those he disagrees with, and nothing is ever done. Your close is just another step along that road. UnitAnode 00:28, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

No action means no warning or no, I don't want the abuse my way. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC is getting a warning following the section I did not close. There seems little point to warning him twice in one day, so I closed the one that had somewhat more screaming all around. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, good shout on this one 2/0 [28] Straight back to reverting and removal of text with no consensus. --mark nutley (talk) 09:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Request you cease action on GW probation

2/0, I think you should withdraw from action on the GW probation pages. The JPat action raised concerns for me, and your closing of the WMC request with no action is evidence that you are unable to act with neutrality here. JPat's violations were far less disruptive or abusive than WMC's (or Hipicrite's, for that matter) yet you imposed stronger sanctions on JPat than either WMC or Hipocrite. In addition, even when confronted with your error on JPat, you were very slow in reacting. Then there's the GoRight indef block -- while I do believe there are issues with GoRight, your handling of that has been quite suspect and probably over-reaching given the temperature of these pages.

All of these factors, when taken together, indicate that your attempts at even-handedness have failed, and I am requesting that you withdraw. ATren (talk) 00:50, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this what has been happening all along, though? Attempts to drive out editors by one side or another, and then (as we saw in the GoRight case with his ideas that somebody who had censured him before must be "involved") attempts to drive out administrators who looked like they would try to stop the fun and games? --TS 01:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Whatever, Tony. 2/0 has clearly demonstrated his non-neutrality here. If I cared, I'd pursue it further, but I no longer do. Eventually it will all come out, the years-long POV push that's been going on at these articles with the blessing of non-neutral admins. I'll look forward to that, but I won't be a part of it. ATren (talk) 01:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Personally I think he's a saint for even attempting to make some lasting changes in this wasteland. Do you honestly think that punishing one ex-admin is going to improve the articles? I do not - while sometimes a little hasty, WMC's edits are almost always good in the end. The goal of cleanup has to be a movement beyond the usual cliques ganging up on one person after another, talking endlessly past each other about the same things, and pushing everyone who is not in a camp into one. The problem is with editors whose edits are almost always bad in the end. Ignignot (talk) 02:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

That is enough of that, if you please. - 2/0 (cont.) 16:47, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

---

The person who has clearly demonstrated non-neutrality in all of this is ATren, with his relentless vendetta William M. Connolley (talk) 11:39, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, only a few hours after being told to be civil WMC is here accusing aTren of a vendetta, real polite boy. mark nutley (talk) 11:58, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Do you think we might stop this descending to the usual bickering? For someone claiming to be concerned about politeness, "boy" is inappropriate. As to the vendetta stuff - ATren has accused me of much the same - I don't see you complaining about that. Can you say "one sided"? William M. Connolley (talk) 12:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

1. I have no vendetta. 2. Please remind me where I accused you of having a vendetta. ATren (talk) 16:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Do i see Atren accusing you here? No, how therefore am i to complain? Has Atren just been asked to be civel? No. The use of Boy is a cultural affection (IE How`s it going boy) and i will use it if i so wish. Accusing me of being one sided when i pointed out that you were being uncivil is just a pointless insult, as it was you my comments were being directed at, not ATren. mark nutley (talk) 12:37, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't bother, Mark, you'll be accused of harassment. See my graph below, upper right quadrant. ATren (talk) 16:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

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

I agree with the other editors. Your involvement is clearly disruptive and one sided 2over0. While you maintain an abusive block on GoRight based on dubious and nebulous assertions, you continue to protect William no matter how many times he engages in clear incivility, refactoring, and abusive BLP violating COI editing as evidenced in countless diffs. You've also failed to address the attack pages he keeps in his userspace. This isn't acceptable behavior from an admin.

Even here on this talk page when he makes uncivil accusations telling another editor that they are engaging in a vendetta, after he's been warned repeatedly to stop being uncivil, you ignore his improper behavior. Meanwhile you've accused me elsewhere of "personal involvement". If I've done anything inappropriate please provide diffs. I filed an enforcement request with a diff providing an example of the behavior that needed to be addressed and I notified the editor concerned. I also responded to their posts on my talk page (even though they've been asked to disengage since they don't want me posting on their talk page). I have no personal involvements with other Wikipedians and haven't kissed anyone I've met on Wikipedia. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• And now I see that you protected an article [29] with a version that numerous editors have objected to on BLP grounds. Policy indicates that the BLP issues should be resolved FIRST and consensus reached before content that raises BLP issues is restored. ChildofMidnight (talk) 18:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

ChildofMidnight, it was locked because of the edit war over the pic. 2/0 knows it was locked on the wrong version [30] give the guy a break here, he is one of the few admins trying to cover the climate related pages and is overrun. If it was you or me i suspect a lock on the article until the conflict was sorted in talk would have looked like the best option. Lets all try and calm it down a bit, tempers are running high over the latest probation sanction brought against WMC, which i still think was closed prematurely btw :) Hope you don`t mind my butting in ChildofMidnight (is there a short way to do your name btw?) --mark nutley (talk) 19:31, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

If there is a BLP issue, my understanding is that policy demands that be addressed FIRST, for obvious reasons. And I don't see a consensus for the pic's inclusion based on the talk page discussion so far (I lean towards it being included, but that's not really relevant). You can call me anything you like Mark, as long as it's relatively appropriate. ;) "CoM" is pretty popular. I also think 2over0 needs to explain why clear violations are allowed from one editor while another editor is blocked for nebulous "disruption" accusations. And finally, his claims of "personal involvement" needs to be explained. I am pretty good about trying to avoid interacting with uncivil attackers who want to feud, so it's problematic that 2over0 would launch unsupported attacks on my good faith efforts to get violations of our editing policies addressed by suggesting I'm trying to provoke a conflict. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:36, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion

The problem with the Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley picture is that, while obviously there are better pictures, I take a very conservative view of activating the WP:BLP exception for fear of chilling effects. If another uninvolved admin feels that in this case the potential for harm from that picture is sufficient to warrant removal under the BLP exception, I would not object (please direct them to this post if anyone asks); there are enough good-faith arguments that the picture is policy-compliant that for myself I am not comfortable unilaterally declaring that it is not. You are also free to raise the issue for outside opinions at WP:BLP/N. If you do so, please check the archives for the last time this issue was raised; please also let me know so that I may state the above position.

For an unrelated but similar issue, see Talk:Lawrence Solomon#Environmentalist (2).

Thank you for your understanding, Marknutley. I am trying to self-limit the number of issues I take on, but sometimes a conflict is deceptively complex, and comments elsewhere must wait while I try to tease out the full context. Even so, I would be enormously surprised if there are not still matters of dire importance that I overlook. The WP:GS/CC/RE board helps with that by distributing the diff-searching load, but less so the less focused a discussion becomes. - 2/0 (cont.) 05:55, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It's been raised at BLP/N by another editor. MastCell ^Talk 07:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

A good 49 minutes before I suggested it - wow, this new tachyonic interface is really zippy! Thank you for the note, I have now commented there. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:25, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Censure of CoM

You admonish CoM here: Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement#Result. This is puzzling because I don't see any prior warnings or concerns brought to his attention, either on his talkpage or on the General Sanction page (short of "next time would you please use the template"). As is you appear to be censuring CoM for filing the request at all, which is inappropriate. I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting. If not, do you think you could remove that part of your statement?--Heyitspeter (talk) 01:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I reviewed their recent contributions as due diligence before commenting on the report, and considered that some form of request to concentrate on improving the articles without personally engaging with other editors would be warranted. I am certainly open to different wording, though. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:09, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I understand your concern, but I think it should be noted that the filing of requests such as CoM's can be a significant contribution to an article in addressing surrounding problematic edits. If these are your grounds for the ["]admonishment["] I'd like to see it removed entirely.

Also, I want to thank you for trying to work through these climate change articles without bias. It seems they're often avoided by admins as too much of a headache. I'm not particularly happy I came across the "climategate" article myself. Consider this a plaintext barnstar? --Heyitspeter (talk) 17:46, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

New wording - see if you like it. I most certainly do not want to do anything to discourage those reports, both for due process reasons (better there than here or at some other poor sucker's talkpage) and because distributed monitoring just plain works better. Well, as long as people do not try to bludgeon each other with cherry-picked REs, staying just within the enforcement line while baiting their fellow volunteers, and sending every request into yet another death spiral of bickering; ah well, maybe if this can be tamped down to the point where everyone offers the appearance of good faith then some actual collaboration might slip through the cracks. Also - thank you :). - 2/0 (cont.) 06:53, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I really like the last wording you posed, and second the editor's comments you linked to. It was really frustrating to see the request phrased in that manner and it cheapened the claims being made. That other editors had to add the diffs needed to make the complaint actionable was ridiculous. In any case, see you around. --Heyitspeter (talk) 08:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Because anything worth knowing is worth graphing...

The Pritchard Scale.

This is sort of how I think about things. Any administrative decision can be made by quanitfying an editor's work in AU (arbitrary units) and plotting them on both the X and Y axes. It's sort of like the Pritchard Scale of Wikipedia. People in the top right never come across your desk. People in the bottom left are depressingly common but predictable; you can find them demanding an admin smite their enemy, or complaining about said admin's bias when he is insufficiently quick to smite their enemy. The real challenges are the upper left and the lower right. MastCell ^Talk 06:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Dear me, I found Dead Poets' Society slash fiction before I got the reference - it has been a deuce of a long time since I saw that movie, and mostly I just remember the book-desecration scene. That is much more elegant than the description I gave at RfA: good-content/bad-conduct editors, bad-content/good-conduct editors, and other complex cases. (On an unrelated note, why have I felt the need to quote that page twice today?)

Adding a third note for a full chord of unrelatedness, I got a drive-by vandal to this page today - these admin perks just keep getting better. To be fair, they might have been following someone else, though. - 2/0 (cont.) 06:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Like you need an excuse to read Dead Poets' Society slash fiction. WTF did these folks do before the Internet was invented, anyway? Incidentally, I thought of illustrating the graph with a few representative editors, and went as far as plotting a few of my favorite archetypes before I recognized that the idea would not fly. MastCell ^Talk 07:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Of the three people I know who have admitted having written slash fiction, two work in bookstores and one in a library - ideal venues for meeting fellow bibliophiles. I wonder more about flamewars - has anyone ever Godwined an OpEd column?

The issue as tabulated by Goofus and Gallant. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, people did used to compare the publishers of the Daily Mail to the Nazis. Then again, the Daily Mail actually was pro-Hitler. I think the immediacy of the Internet is a key component in facilitating flame wars. People argued in print back in the day, but when you have to wait a week or two to see your responses, and your adversary's, published, you probably lose interest and start going outside or talking to your family instead of posting obsessive rebuttals. It would be interesting to see a list of the top ten all-time flame wars. I think Gore Vidal-William F. Buckley would be up there. MastCell ^Talk 19:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

A graph for admins

The ATren Scale for Admins.

MastCell's graph inspired me to produce one of my own. Here's my take on admins at Wikipedia. The graph shows edit count on one axis and POV on the other. When an admin encounters a conflict, every involved editor falls somewhere on this graph, though the vertical axis is, of course, specific to each admin. For the very best admins, action taken against editors is scattered all around this graph, with the net average hovering around the origin.

Unfortunately, many admins deviate from the ideal. When an editor misbehaves, such admins act according to which quadrant they fall into:

• lower left - the "indef block quadrant" - have to nip them in the bud.
• lower right - the "topic ban quadrant" - indef blocking is not going to fly for someone with their edit count, so a topic ban neatly removes them from the topic in question
• upper left - the "polite warning quadrant" - the editor is gently reminded of the rules of engagement, is directed to relevant policy pages, but ultimately is left with a pat on the back and encouragement to keep editing.
• upper right - the "blame the accuser quadrant" - an upper right editor is highly valued by admins, and is protected at all costs. When such an editor violates policies, it is usually best for the encyclopedia to find out why they did it. Usually the blame can be deflected to the lower-right (or worse, a lower left) who reported them. The accuser is thus sternly warned not to harass the upper right; the accuser is also filed away as a future topic ban candidate.

I was tempted to graph the activities of admins on the GW articles, but I didn't think that would go over well. ATren (talk) 13:26, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Boris correct party approved graphing

File:Mondrian Broadway Boogie Woogie.jpg

Correct version of graph appearing now. Loyal Party members being proudly in far left. Provocateurs in lower right upper central quadrant. Lumpenproletariat not reading between the lines. Decadent bourgeois stooges in path of oncoming vehicles. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 13:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

That looks like a cross between the diagrams in my latest paper, and my breakfast :s Verbal chat 13:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

A five-state two dimensional Ising model for social dynamics in a distributed online project, by Piet Mondrian, Phys. Rev. E (submitted). - 2/0 (cont.) 15:54, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Does that delineate the intricacies of Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing? Stares at it, goes cross-eyed. ;-/ dave souza, talk 17:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Have I just been outed? Verbal chat 17:49, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

What!?! Who leaked you the floorplan of our latest chip? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:00, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Proposed close

I object to your proposed close. I need to reply on the sanctions page, but this is difficult to do in the current circumstances as the attempt to clarify the rules of teh game remains as muddy as before.

I would like a clear statement as to whether off-wiki statements re usable as evidence or not (or under what circumstances), and I would like any of the disucussion pertaining to statements that are deemed unrefable removed.

At the moment that talk page discussion has no clear result, it is just a discussion.

William M. Connolley (talk) 08:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia talk:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement#Rules of the game. I will add something to the RE page on external links, but I think that for the time being this is going to need to be examined on a case-by-case basis with the understanding that only very rarely would off-site writings be cause for sanctions. - 2/0 (cont.) 17:44, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Since Connolley is often linking his blog as a way to insult people then it is justified in his case. TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:12, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Where do we stand on this. I object to your modified close, but (whilst not exactly enthralled) will live by your original (23:07, 25 January 2010). If that is OK with you, please close as such, and no-one needs to spend any more time or effort on this. If it isn't, then I'd like an opportunity to convince you otherwise, which will involve much tedious raking over of the evidence, which I'd rather not do William M. Connolley (talk) 22:04, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

The modification of requested to required in the no-refactoring clause? I think that you have stepped over the line in some instances (diffs available upon request), as apparently does Lar. Most of the refactorings I recall offhand seeing from you have been productive, but sometimes a gentler touch is needed. You will still be free to call for a thread to be closed or request that another user rephrase their own comment. You are also free to appeal this sanction (I am assuming at this point that it will be placed), either immediately or after some weeks. In the latter case, having generally been engaged in productive discussion and showing examples where a clearly necessary refactoring was delayed overlong would probably help. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:16, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, over-the-line diffs would be useful, to see if we agree where the line is William M. Connolley (talk) 08:32, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Still need those. Meantime, since Lar is insisting on "required", I object to he is further warned to refrain from using septic and similar derogatory terms, on the grounds that I haven't used that at anyone William M. Connolley (talk) 16:58, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

88 hits, almost all from WMC, many recent. If I said "bullshit alarmist" 88 times, would I still be editing here? ATren (talk) 17:15, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Connolley, you had a section in your userspace devoted to calling certain famous scientists as "septics," which is also a massive BLP violation. Are you really so unaware of your own actions? TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

88 hits, and not one of them a PA on anyone (and "many recent"? Including User talk:Silverback? Come on, do your work properly rather than scattershotting). This is as bad as failed google searches. Provide diffs of *actual* PA's William M. Connolley (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It was never notable, but pushed in by the septics at the time. - "septics" referring to the editors who added the claim. This edit was last week. Couple with the recent "waste of time" and "fool" references, and we have a pattern, even during this probationary period. If we go back further, the pattern is shown to be long term.

And, BTW, the other dozens of "septic" references may not be direct attacks on editors, but they are soapboxing, and most likely BLP violations. If a noob showed up here calling climate scientists "alarmist morons" or something similarly derogatory, you would immediately revert as soapboxing, and they would be topic-banned if they did it more than a few times. You've used the "septic" smear dozens of times, over several years, at least one directed at editors, and you still defend it like there's nothing wrong. ATren (talk) 19:27, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Your diff fails: there is no ref there to individual editors: indeed, you don't even know who I might be talking about. All the rest fail, for a similar reason. Go on: provide even one recent one referring to a psecific individual William M. Connolley (talk) 20:52, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

<outdent> Here you specifically categorize a number of people, by name, as "septics." Please explain how we are misunderstanding you - I can't wait. TheGoodLocust (talk) 04:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• The whole mess around this one is the biggest concern - the multiple collapses seem to have been received as antagonism. Quite generally, I wish I had seen that section before it got too out of hand; TenOfAllTrades actually mentioned it here, but I got distracted by other matters and forgot. I think that the issue of whether or not collapsing was good for the community is outweighed in this instance by the struggle over it, which was bad for the community.

• That section was entirely pointless, as I think time has clearly shown. However, I'm prepared to leave stuff like that alone in future, if it makes you happy William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

It would, thank you. Or, better yet, point it out and be the first on your block to up the level of discourse. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• On the one hand, yes, the two removals of Will looked a bit petty, especially at the RE page; arguably, this was the point. On another hand, Miss Manners would not approve of addressing someone by first name without a formal introduction and permission; personally, I wish that all sales clerks everywhere would learn this and stop bloody taking liberties with over-familiarity (plus they get my nickname wrong). I think part of the problem is that the address was replaced with [PA redacted], which covers everything from mildly insulting to immediately bannable. I think simply replacing it with a preferred mode of address and noting in the discussion that you had done so might have worked better.

• This was only done in cases where I had specifically asked the users in question not to do that. They were indeed doing it as a PA William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was intentionally rude, but I do not think that reacting as you did either helped highlight the issues with that thread (I, at least, treat them like AN3 reports and consider it negligent to fail to investigate the dispute(s) leading up to the request - muddying the behavioural waters does you no favors) or lessen the likelihood of recurrence. My biggest worry with this restriction is that some people may take the opportunity to taunt and poke and deliberately provoke you into violating it; I will have no part in rewarding that sort of behaviour, as it is a large part of what the probation was enacted to stop. You are not expected always to take the high road and "be the bigger man" or whatever (though, honestly, that would be nice), just to avoid adding to the problem when this sort of distraction crops up. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was intentionally rude - so can you point to the place where you've warned those editors not to repeat it? You've now banned me from removing what you yourself consider deliberate rudeness, so that would only be reasonable William M. Connolley (talk) 21:58, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• [31] - good idea, poor execution; yes I saw the thread at MN's talk wherein both diminutives are explained - it was still poorly done.

• So you agree it should have gone - what would have been a better way of getting it out? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Replace it with the subject's actual name, request that the poster don't do that, and follow up with the counterexample using their own name at usertalk. If it becomes a pattern, file a report. Yes, diff-gathering for a report kinda sucks, but the status quo was a broken editing environment. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• [32] - this one is odd. On the one hand, simple formatting fixes are well within the TPG. On another, I think it might be better if you were to be extra especially careful with respect to editors with whom you are engaged in an active disagreement, as it is not unlikely that words and actions will be seen in the worst possible light, leading to escalation.

• You can't possibly complain about that diff (and I don't thinnk MN has, has he? I fixed his errors - as you say, this is well within guidelines) William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, though I think it is resolved now. This goes to being aware that your actions will be misinterpreted, willfully or innocently. Yes, I am aware that this is blaming you for the reactions of others, and that you noted the refactoring. I do not think that this is an enforceable diff, only that it would be nice to avoid such situations all together.

• [33] and [34] - yes, that thread was unlikely to lead to any actual edits to the article, but it was active basically on topic. It would have been better to propose that it be closed, either first or after the revert. Also, the first edit summary was not really the best; it pretty much invited a revert.

• The edit comment was deliberate: it invited anyone who disagreed with me to undo it William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

That is how it should be interpreted, yes; it could also be interpreted as provocative. Potential ambiguity is not your friend when trying to de-escalate a hotbed of dispute. The second close should have waited, either for someone else or for the discussion to die a natural death. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

In summary, it is when the refactoring starts to be part of furthering or escalating a dispute (or can be misinterpreted that way - and people will tend to misinterpret things when engaged in a dispute) that I start to worry. I also proposed over at RE that archiving stale threads is uncontroversial, with a staleness threshold of two weeks - does that sound like a reasonable line for old discussions? - 2/0 (cont.) 18:45, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I think we should use collapses more; the problem is space on the talk page, not when it gets archived. In fact it would be better to end up archiving sections that were collapsed, as a general principle William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah well, despite talking you're not listening, it would seem. Consider all my responses above to have been struck out William M. Connolley (talk) 22:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Barnstar

		The Original Barnstar
		For your patient and considered, and hopefully continued, efforts in the AGW area. You are performing well above and beyond what could be expected from a volunteer editor, and have shown that faith in you is well placed. Well done, and keep it up! Verbal chat 12:42, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Fixup

I've fixed up your cot/cob: I think the small was getting in the way. When I looked, everything below was collapsed. Also, I moved the cob to include some comments that I *think* you wanted inside the collapse; apologies if I've erred in this (oops: I've now looked at the history: there has (and continues [35]) been some edit warring over the tag. OK, I'll not touch it again, up to you) William M. Connolley (talk) 19:07, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Edit warring again at monckton

You have done it again, fully protected Monkton, have you made a report to the probation board? Off2riorob (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

• Terrible protection. You waited until FormerIP had restored a truly terrible photograph, and THEN protected. I hardly think that's a coincidence. UnitAnode 22:17, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
• Also, from what I can gather, the pro-AGW crowd is claiming they have "consensus" for inclusion of that terrible picture, based on a rough 8 to 6 count. For such an awful picture, on a BLP, that isn't close to "consensus." It's in there, simply because it makes him look truly strange, and you need to either undo your protection, or remove the picture yourself. UnitAnode 22:20, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

@Off2riorob - no. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

@Unitanode - http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Christopher+Monckton,+3rd+Viscount+Monckton+of+Brenchley and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley - 2/0 (cont.) 08:31, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

A suggestion

After watching just some of the comments going on about the climate articles in a couple of places I find it absolutely ridiculous all the way around. The behaviors are just not acceptable and the constant poking is just silly. You have to be exhausted already with all of it. May I suggest that maybe locking each and every article where the editors refuse to play nice? I mean, think about it, it give you and the administrators a break plus the other editors will have to find other places in the project to work, which would probably be a good thing. Two months of a lock down of the articles and the talk pages. After that time, see if everyone is ready to edit properly. I don't think it would hurt the project to shut down a half a dozen articles esp. since it would seem like nothing is getting done anyways. Thoughts? ;)--CrohnieGal^Talk 20:22, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

2/0 is doing a good job (I know you're not disputing that, Crohnie). Other admins have fallen over when being nagged to do something, but at the moment 2/0's being asked not to do anything. So I suggest he continues doing what he's doing - not making rash calls, but responding after consideration in the best way he knows. He's not perfect, but he's the best we've got (that still sounds insulting - it isn't meant to be!) Verbal chat 20:45, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Considering this diff of your then I'll take your advocacy of 2/0 as proof that I'm right about his bias. Hell, I was "inspired" to do an RfA because of his actions and now he's closed my well-formulated section about Connolley in the probation - despite being asked twice by another admin to re-open it. TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:15, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I find harassment of anyone offensive, including the harassment of 2/0. I don't see how my actions prove anything about anyone else. Please remember, this isn't a battleground ... Verbal chat 21:21, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Well, you flat out called for everyone who reported Connolley to be blocked despite the well-documented case of his various abuses and now you are saying 2/0 is handling the situation admirably. You also said those you wanted blocked wanted a "fringe view" in the articles and so a logical assumption is that your advocacy of 2/0 is because you think he is doing a good job suppressing this "fringe view." TheGoodLocust (talk) 21:53, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Help, help, I'm being suppressed! WMC has been putting a lot of thankless effort into maintaining due weight to majority scientific views on the topic, a concept many new editors find very hard to grasp. Incessant calls to highlight denialist views published in unreliable sources get pretty wearing, and 2/0 is showing good judgement. Admittedly in my opinion 2/0 may be getting a bit too much swayed by the numbers using civility claims to push minority viewpoints, but it's a difficult call and a willingness to be fair is clearly evident. Please assume good faith. . . dave souza, talk 22:24, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Wrong, this meme that WMC is "defending science" is demonstrably false by looking the actual edits. I guess that's a good thing to tell anyone who is uninvolved and uninformed. TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I have serious reservations about Lar and LHvU being considered as neutral administrators regarding WMC, given WMC's bête noire status at a certain external forum in which they participate. But I suppose there's nothing that can be done about that. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 22:34, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Lar and LHvU are no less neutral than 2/0 has been. ATren (talk) 02:10, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Verbal, I think by now 2/0 could probably need a break from all this bad faith dumped on him. Thegoodlocust, you are lucky to have an administrator like 2/0. Your rude behavior here and elsewhere probably wouldn't be tolerated by a lot of administrators. He is trying very hard to weight the issues and make fair decisions. What does he get for all of this? Nothing, you should be ashamed of yourself. Sorry, but I don't think any volunteer should be treated the way you are behaving. --CrohnieGal^Talk 22:38, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but I don't think an admin should controversially close a complaint that highlights 10+ blatant BLP violations and refuse to correct that error when asked several times by other admins. TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Lar has asked 2/0 to reopen the thread and he's hardly been given a chance to respond yet. At least wait for him to say "no" before voicing concerns with the imagined decision. I agree that the thread shouldn't have been closed, but it doesn't help to lose cool. Everything, will be alright everything, will be alright everything, will be alllriiiiiiiight as they say. :)--Heyitspeter (talk) 02:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Crohnie, nobody is holding a gun to 2/0's head... ATren (talk) 02:13, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Crohnie :). Just for that, I will do my best to make sure that the 35 °F weather my computer says we have outside right now does not make it down your way.

That is certainly an interesting idea, and it would get around one of the problems with locking articles - too often, people just move smoothly to the next dispute on the list, leaving the issues unresolved. - 2/0 (cont.) 08:53, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't do 35 degrees, I wouldn't be able to move physically. :) You keep the cold up where you are, please. We are in the high 50's right now and though movement is difficult it actually feels good for a brief time. It's funny, hubby and I just heard the news right now about your 36 weather and laughed that I was commenting to you here about it. :) I figured from watching all of this without any care about any of it, that locking them all would give a needed rest. The pattern I am seeing is that when administrators see an article in a major dispute, the editors seem to take the issues to another article to dispute the same things. It's like a constant battle you all have going on. If the articles are locked down, I'd say a week or two to start, and the editors have to take discussions to the talk then maybe some resolutions can occur. If all of the articles are locked, there would be no other choice than finding a consensus. If a consensus is found about a dispute the editors can ask that the article be edited to add that part. The way it is now, the only thing happening is both sides are constantly making changes and nothing is sticking. Anyways, this is something that hasn't been tried that might be worth a go at to see if any progress can be made. If bad behavior continues at the talk page I would think the administrators watching could tend to them a lot easier. Anyways, just a thought. Don't get too cold! I don't know about you but I don't have clothes for these types of temps, at least not for any length of time. ;) --CrohnieGal^Talk 13:02, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

One week is fine

[36] but this should also include prematurely collapsing threads as well. TheGoodLocust (talk) 18:20, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Archiving is in this instance being used broadly to cover collapsing a thread, putting it in a discussion-box, and removing it as well as moving to the archive. Thank you for pointing this out, though. - 2/0 (cont.) 21:02, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Re-open second WMC thread?

Hello 2/0. Lar has asked a couple times [37][38] - but interspersed within other comments and so perhaps unnoticed - that the second WMC thread be reopened. It addressed other issues with WMC's editing that weren't covered in the current edition. I wanted to second that here. Would you mind opening it yourself? Otherwise I'd be happy to file another request myself. Maybe I can draft a clearer / more focused version anyway...

He's still making problem edits. These are all from today:

• WP:V and WP:Civil violation
• WP:Civil
• Unproductive jab ("utter rubbish").

Thanks!--Heyitspeter (talk) 19:43, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

• I agree. I nearly reopened it myself a short while ago. If it's not reopened and dealt with after awhile, I'll reopen it myself. WMC's behavior has been ignored and hand-slapped long enough. UnitAnode 19:47, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggest in any reopening, it should be clear than an incremental effect in the result of both threads for WP:CIVIL behavior is desired. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 19:57, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

All of these are just vendetta-type stuff. There is no substance. In particular, no, Lar does not get away with calling for everyone to raise their game but somehow exempting himself (and I don't see any evidence that *he* did object) William M. Connolley (talk) 20:49, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I just added a diffs to my comment to this thread so you can find the two instances where Lar asked that the thread to be reopened. Sorry about that. I realize these requests get unwieldy and become difficult to follow closely. --Heyitspeter (talk) 21:32, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Everything's a "vendetta" when people complain about you, it seems. If you continue apace, you're most likely going to find yourself topic-banned. The GW-related articles will not fall apart, even without their self-appointed panjandrum. UnitAnode 21:19, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

"Pointless", "Waste of time", "boring" and "dull" are the words I received in the past for anything related to correcting the editor who chooses to ignore warnings. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:28, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

I've also noticed the continuing (it seems even to be increasing?) pattern of problematic edits made by William. For example he responds to a notice that he should refrain from editing other people's comments (I thought that was a well established rule already?) and to refrain from deragotary terms by saying the reminder he was given is a "victory for the yahoo's (sic)". Are these continuing problems going to be addressed by you 2over0? Are editors posting notice of them to the appropriate noticeboard going to be threatened and attacked? I'm very uncomfortable with your involvement because you've been so aggressive in going after good faith editors trying to get these problems addressed and have left GoRight blocked all this time, but refuse to take any action when William's issues are pointed out again and again and again with diff after diff after diff. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:04, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Fairness can take some time; however, I agree GoRight and WMC seems to be a challenging comparison. AGF with GoRight, would be in order now. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 23:33, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

After a couple of months of steady harassment of WMC by a wide variety of IPs, sockpuppets, and named accounts, his behavior has started to deteriorate. There have been continual attempts to push a certain factually incorrect attack blog posting (and works derivative of that blog posting) into article after article. Claims of COI that have been repeatedly dismissed continue to be raised over and over again on page after page. In one of the coincidences that are so common on Wikipedia, there is considerable overlap between the accounts that have been harassing WMC and those that are complaining about him. Perhaps some people need to be told to back off. However, calling Global Warming skeptics "septics" was childish, and I support 2/0's action in telling WMC to stop. Cardamon (talk) 20:40, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

For myself, I've attempted insertion of material from the New York Times, BBC and other major news outlets only to be told they weren't "right" (against WP:VERIFY. Also, Connolley has demonstrated a long-term pattern of BLP violations against skeptics and edits the articles of journalists and scientists that are critical of him. The only harassment is that people are finally getting fed up with the double-standard. TheGoodLocust (talk) 22:15, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

• WMC's behavior hasn't "deteriorated." It's just that now it's not being ignored. UnitAnode 22:24, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

GoRight is asking for a reply to his question

User_talk:GoRight is asking for a reply to his comment from 3 days ago. Off2riorob (talk) 01:52, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

 Done, thank you. - 2/0 (cont.) 07:35, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

nudge

[39] From goright :)mark nutley (talk) 19:16, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident

WMC has removed [40] an entire section three times now with no consensus, i have asked him to stop on his talk page but i suspect he will ignore that. Would you please have a word as i do not really want to go back to enforcement. --mark nutley (talk) 19:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I thik it would be a good idea to look at that edit. Note, of course, that MN has conveniently forgotten the self-revert, so it is two times, not three. But the substance is: that section is (a) wrong, (b) has no RS, and (c) has no consensus for inclusion William M. Connolley (talk) 19:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Section is not wrong just because you think it is. There is no consensus for it`s removal. It has a reliable source, newsnight. --mark nutley (talk) 20:21, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Come on, try a little bit of honesty: at least correct yourself over the removed-three-times William M. Connolley (talk) 22:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Is Nigelj's compromise going to stop the edit warring, or does the article need to be locked while Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident#Code section plays out? The article has been quiet for almost three hours, but I am not sure if that is just because almost everyone has used their lone revert. - 2/0 (cont.) 00:14, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Nigelj's edit wasn't a compromise and broke WP:Consensus and WP:OR. You can follow the discussion here: Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_hacking_incident#Proposed_removal. I am personally opposed to the locking of any article on Wikipedia as I don't think it ever improves the editing process, which is what is special/effective about Wikipedia. However I think policy is clearly being broken on these edits and if that's the route you choose to deal with it, OK. Blocks seem to be a better option though.--Heyitspeter (talk) 02:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Or two reverts...depending on who you are... Arkon (talk) 00:22, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Was that snide remark aimed at anyone? I'm not aware of anyone with 2R there - but if you are, I urge you to draw it to 2/0's attention for a block. Hopefully you weren't relying on MN to be accurate William M. Connolley (talk) 08:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I was relying on your own words in this very section. Specifically:

Note, of course, that MN has conveniently forgotten the self-revert, so it is two times, not three.

The reliability of this statement I will leave to your judgment. Arkon (talk) 16:27, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You fail the context test. "Lone revert" refers to per day. No-one has 2 per day William M. Connolley (talk) 21:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess that would be a no - despite being opposed on all sides, apparently that was not an acceptable compromise. The article is now on the pre edit war version (including the source that is either good for nothing except perhaps their own opinion on politics or solid gold). I am trying a soft-lock on that section - any further edits to Climatic Research Unit hacking incident#Code and documentation without consensus at Talk:Climatic Research Unit hacking incident will be considered edit warring. Please do not play at silly buggers with the definition of consensus. - 2/0 (cont.) 09:56, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

you may be sure that given that ruling, MN and HiP will simply continue to insist that Newsnight is a RS for matters of climatology and computing science. Effectively, you have ruled for that nonsense to remain in indefinitely William M. Connolley (talk) 14:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense, If newsnight get an expert in to look at code and then make a professional statement on that code then it is reliable. mark nutley (talk) 15:34, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It is not his code, he never worked for the group in question, your question is totally out of line, and your insertion of your question after I tried to help you save face by removing it is in poor form. Hipocrite (talk) 15:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

@WMC - that would be one way of playing silly buggers with the definition of consensus, yes. Think of it like protecting the Wrong Version, but leaving the rest of the article open for now. I certainly have some awfully trashy code on my computer that I would be mortified to see exposed on the internet (not to mention a few Mardis Gras pictures), so I can sympathize with that position. There may be enough disagreement as to whether they are reliable for these statements that Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard would be in order. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:43, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Dude, are you calling me a nonce? leaving the rest of the article open for the nonce I dunno were in the world you are but over here that is a child molester. I`m assuming it`s a typo but can`t for the life of me figure what you might have meant. mark nutley (talk) 20:21, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a bit of linguistic trivia I wasn't familiar with. For the nonce is an expression meaning for now or for the time being, or even for the present (temporary) purpose. See also wiktionary:nonce, nonce word. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:30, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Whoa! I learned something new today - I meant it in the sense of wikt:for the nonce, meaning for now (as I have edited the above for clarity), not in any of the senses but the first one at wikt:nonce. I was completely unaware of the alternate definitions, and I apologize for what must have seemed an egregious and totally uncalled for personal attack. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Ok that`s cool, i learnt something new today as well :) I figured is was not a personal attack lol, but for the life of me could not figure what you meant :) Thanks. mark nutley (talk) 20:31, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

According to Phil Collins, that's Nonce Sense (cf.Brass Eye). In the UK at least nonce is also a light hearted way of saying idiot, as well as having the meaning 2/0 intended. Verbal chat 20:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Response

What happened? Well, I may as well give you a short play-by-play, as it's probably worth pointing out how this has looked to me:

A thread dealing with WMC's WP:Civil and WP:NPA violations was closed as no action without the violations being addressed. Requests for its being reopened were made by myself and Lar (along with this strange constituency that has congregated around those viewed as fighting the good fight against "overly dogmatic scienctists." The whole thing feels very surreal to me, like being a character in a Feyerabend novel). These requests weren't acknowledged and the thread wasn't reopened. WMC was then given sanctions for other reasons, whereupon he continued to break WP:Civil, WP:NPA, and topped it off with WP:V/WP:Disrupt (deleting a section twice without consensus). At this point it seemed appropriate, advised even, to request enforcement.

I'm sorry if the request came across wrong, but I don't think it was wrong-headed... It'd be great to get a response from you on this.--Heyitspeter (talk) 11:28, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for explaining your perspective on the matter. If you would like me to strike, remove, or alter my comment there, you have only to ask.

I really wish I had done a better job explaining what I meant by no action / merge with previous. Some diffs and discussion from that section were considered, at least by me, in the unified result; some diffs and discussion from that section were discarded. I think if a similar situation arises in future I will attempt a full merge of the discussions as at least engendering different confusion. Also, I read Lar's statements as down there might have been better than up here, but I guess that would be another reason to deal with the hassle of moving comments around.

That section removal touched off some edit warring (blocks forthcoming if it continues), but there is enough talkpage discussion that I would not move it up to WP:DE territory. As for the rest, well, I am still at the wait and see stage. - 2/0 (cont.) 12:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

And thank you for explaining yours. Wikipedia is a very different culture and it's not self-evident to me how actions and reactions will be viewed, so this helps.

Apparently WMC has made very important contributions to Wikipedia in the past, and it seems like this has tinted the lenses somewhat, for better or worse. As people have pointed out, others have been blocked for much less. I just know that since I came across him the very few constructive edits I've seen him make have been of the rv vandalism/copy-edit variety, and the rest inflammatory rants and jabs that have done a lot to create and sustain the polarization you see now.

I don't really care about striking the comment, I suppose, though I haven't looked at the thread since. It's up to you.--Heyitspeter (talk) 23:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• I really would like an explanation for how WMC gets away with calling people derogatory names after your drafted motion "requiring" him to stop doing so? As someone who briefly "tangled" with WMC at Garth Paltridge, I'm sure I'll be accused by him of having a "vendetta", but I would like you to explain how the "required" language doesn't lead now to a stricter sanction based on his very recent behavior, even -- brazenly enough -- at this very talkpage. Regards, UnitAnode 15:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

• There is no need for me to accuse you of having a vendetta. Your comments make tht blatantly obvious William M. Connolley (talk) 21:50, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

What disturbs me is that we were working constructively towards consensus on the lead, making good progress on a very contentious topic when WMC swoops in to stir the pot with his removal (twice no less) of an entire long-standing section without so much as a fare-thee-well. Looking over the diffs provided on the latest sanction request, I can't help thinking what the result would have been if my name were attached to those posts. Since no diffs were deemed required to pass judgment in my RfS it is difficult to make comparisons but I can guarantee you there were no posts of mine that were close to being that disruptive, and certainly I have never stooped to the egregious name calling and condescension that seems to be his SOP. And all this in an article where legitimate COI concerns have been raised and deemed moot because he "voluntarily" agreed to withdraw from that article and hadn't been disruptive "recently". I really am having trouble understanding what the rules are around here. JPatterson (talk) 18:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Demeaning names

I would have thought that considering the only very recent additional civility conditions applied to WMC in reference to demeaning other editors that this edit on his talkpage from yesterday is a violation of those conditions, he clearly refers to editors as the idiots. Could you let me know your opinion as regards this edit, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 11:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Especially in regard to these two parts of the recent closing report from yourself ... he (WMC)is further warned to refrain from using septic and similar derogatory terms and Please be careful when throwing around terms that might be interpreted to refer to your fellow volunteers - even if a subtle dig falls within the letter of WP:Civility, it can still sting and contribute to the level of dysfunction at those pages.... I would have thought that whilst in discussion with SBH about the Skeptic editors on his talkpage that WMC referring to them as the idiots is a clear violation of the sections of the report that I have posted here. Off2riorob (talk) 11:49, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks to me like a case of "if the hat fits, wear it". @2/0: Yes, please do let me know your opinion. You've thrown the trolls meat and they want more. I've been told before "if you don't like the comments on a user talk page, then don't watch it". Perhaps you'd care to offer this advice to O2RR? William M. Connolley (talk) 11:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd care to quit calling people derogatory names immediately after a request for enforcement found you were "required" to stop doing so? UnitAnode 15:36, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I was wondering as I saw you editing, if you could please answer my question, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 20:35, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for understanding that I have a limited amount of time to devote to this website; coverage of matters about which I care more is slipping in some areas, but I would like to think that climate change can be a calmer editing environment than, say Israel/Palestine. As of lunchtime today, I had read every contribution from WMC for the past two weeks; this is basic due diligence in complex cases. The game here is to build the best free encyclopedia we can, and scoring points off each other at the RE board and elsewhere is immaterial to that goal. - 2/0 (cont.) 23:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

You have not even answered my simple request for a comment as regards my simple question. I have spent time and presented my simple question as regards an issue you are appertaining to be the administrator taking actions and reports, I find your failure to answer my simple straightforward well presented question very disappointing. I would like to suggest to you that if this is your position that you stand down from assumed authourity in this issue ans allow another administrator to take charge of a situation that you are failing to action correctly. Off2riorob (talk) 00:26, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

• You've not approached an answer to the question as to your disparity in enforcement between Collins and Connolley. Please take the time to answer the question that has been raised at the enforcement page with regards to that issue. UnitAnode 00:51, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC Diffs since your ruling

These are all diffs since you closed the WMC case.

• In response to your notification on his talk: calls those who reported him "yahoos".
• Later, calls them idiots
• "If the hat fits, wear it" re-affirming the idiots and yahoos charge, and throwing in a "trolls" for good measure.

2/0, does this look like an attempt at compliance, or does it look like blatant defiance? When are you going to act on these? ATren (talk) 12:54, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't you think that diffs to edits on 2/0's talk page are rather redundant. My assertion that you have a vendetta in this looks ever more correct William M. Connolley (talk) 14:05, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I notice you're not denying that you've called other editors "yahoos", "idiots", and "trolls." UnitAnode 15:32, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

mark nutley

You may remember my old probation request regarding MN. (Wikipedia:General_sanctions/Climate_change_probation/Requests_for_enforcement/Archive1#Marknutley). You may wish to review the comment by JzG - "I think at this point the outcome is, de facto, that marknutley is on notice to give more thought to is contributions and to be mindful of the potential to cause drama through ill-judged comments. I think we can probably leave it at that for now, if he does not heed this warning then it is likely we will find consensus for a topic ban of some duration." I suggest that this on your talk page is a direct violation of what MN was directly warned about. MN's "hunch" was pure speculation, backed by nothing more than his obvious dislike for WMC. Is there any reason whatsoever for MN to ever comment on WMC in the future? If you would prefer, I can file a fulsome probation request regarding MN - as you are almost certainly aware, I've been archiving his problmatic conduct for the better part of this month, or you can handle this as you would like. Hipocrite (talk) 15:02, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC has been baiting MN for weeks. MN shouldn't take the bait, but this is just another example of WMC's disruption. Examples: calling him dishonest, veiled insult, incivility, "gratuitously refactor MN's errors" condescending response "This is really not that hard if you pay close attention", personal attack, implying he's a fool, incivility - "you just make yourself look ridiculous" ATren (talk) 15:09, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

So file a report. I'm unhappy with WMC's incivility, but I'm more unhappy that MN is trying to create or propigate a false statement about WMC working for the CRU on wikipedia, you know, because one has real life consequences and the other doesn't, and all. Hipocrite (talk) 15:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

So you think asking a question is in fact an ill judged comment? File your probation request. and please provide me a link to your attack page :) --mark nutley (talk) 15:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

MN, strike the question about his coding. Let them resort to petty ulterior motive accusations, you're above that crap. ATren (talk) 15:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Struck out as requested, which i would also have done had i been politely asked and not had my post edited. mark nutley (talk) 15:23, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Dear Marknutley;

Because your comment remains legible, striking does not fully sove the problem. We do not strike violations of WP:BLP, we remove them. Please remove the struck portion of your comment. Thank you ever so kindly.

Yours in abject politness

Hipocrite. Hipocrite (talk) 15:25, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I asked for politeness, and got it by the truckload :) I deleted the offending question :)

Dear Marknutley;

Thank you ever so much for your prompt attention. Your willingness to be reasonable when approached with politness is a disturbing reminder of how long it's been since I last wrote a formal letter.

Yours in victorian formality

Hipocrite (talk) 15:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

See, was that so difficult? :-) ATren (talk) 15:41, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

(undent) ATren, I believe you've been one of the editors unhappy about "septic", even when used undirected. Are you happy to be describing H's comments as "crap" - does this fit with the standards of civility that you appears to expect from others? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you truly unable to see the difference between describing someone's comment as "crap" and describing a person (or groups of people) as "septic"? UnitAnode 17:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Exactly. But since you have raised it as a concern, I'll gladly strike it. ATren (talk) 17:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

See, was that so difficult? :-) William M. Connolley (talk) 18:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It's interesting that you've completely ignored the fact that ATren was not calling a person or group of people "crap", as you were with "septic." UnitAnode 18:16, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Why is WMC continually given a free pass for his conduct? If anyone else called their fellow editors "idiots", "yahoos" and "septics", action would be taken. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:53, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Not just editors, but he has used them in an obviously BLP-violating manner (categorizing, by name a good sized number of scientists as "septics"). TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:24, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Gavin.collins

Hi 2/0, I'd like to ask that you reconsider your proposal/ruling for Gavin.collins. In my view it's quite clear his comment is no different from the kind of bluster we've just seen from WMC in response to his sanction. Whatever reasons there may be for treating editors differently, which we may or may not agree on, I do not see how the response to a sanction is something that should be treated under different standards. Similarly it seems to me the proposal that he leave behind the merge proposals is at least quite adequate, and that anything else would be somewhat punative and arbitrary, if it is just based on the idea that he can be somewhat difficult to deal with in a general sense. If not then I think a stronger response to WMC is called for, although as I said that is not something I would like to see either. I know you are trying to evaluate these cases neutrally, as I am, and I think you're doing much well. Thanks, Mackan79 (talk) 19:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Other than the fact that many people seem to find them difficult to collaborate with, I really do not see a lot of parallelism between those reports. Gavin.collins is well aware by now that his talkpage conduct has reached the level of disruption, was offered a when it is not working, try something else, eh? solution, but declined. Seeking outside input as outlined in WP:Dispute resolution, which was the obvious alternative to continuing to push a proposal that had been evaluated and rejected, remains an option. - 2/0 (cont.) 20:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

2/0, are you saying that WMC's actions have not been disruptive? You've warned him, and he ignored your warning (in fact, spitefully rejected it with a new attack) yet you still refuse action there. How much more evidence do you need?

I repeat my earlier call that you withdraw from this probation, as I don't believe you have demonstrated that you can enforce the same standard for editors on both sides of the debate. You ignored that earlier request, and therefore I am repeating it. ATren (talk) 20:18, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I concur. The one-sided nature of these enforcements is becoming quite absurd. This is all most likely going to end only if the arbcom steps in and does what the current crop of enforcement admins seem unwilling to do: offer a broad topic ban (or at least a NPA/Civility restriction with some teeth) of WMC until that point in which he demonstrates a modicum of ability to keep from insulting those with whom he disagrees. UnitAnode 20:55, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me there must be a limit on the extent someone's statement of their opinion can be seen as disrupting Wikipedia, when the opinion is relevant to the article, and the statement does not attack other editors or violate policies. One can say, Gavin, if you want to accomplish something here then you might want to try something else, and even, Gavin, please see that consensus on this point has been established so please do not expect further silence to indicate consent. I would not expect that to be the very moment when we say, Gavin, if you express that opinion one more time you will be banned from editing or commenting on this article. You know? Disruption should mean things like starting another RFC after one has just ended, or insisting on making the edit even after it has been rejected, not just stating that you maintain a particular opinion. Indeed, there must be a line between the permissible statement of one's opinion, at any point, and disruptive pursuit of a rejected argument. It is not clear to me where that line was crossed here.

That's a bit of a tangent. The problem is we had a perfectly reasonable proposal to say that the editor shouldn't pursue this issue any longer. Then, because he complains (and in fact it seems you saw some legitimacy to the complaint) BozMo and you decide to raise it to an article ban. This was mostly, but not entirely, BozMo's doing. I am sure you see the need to be perceived as neutral in this venue, and hence to operate by clear standards, and in that light I'm asking you to consider whether this is consistent with the treatment of WMC in the last couple of days. I think it's clearly not, and I don't see any reason in this situation why it shouldn't be. Mackan79 (talk)

You've been asked a question at the enforcement page

I know you're active now, since you imposed your draconian 3-month article ban on Gavin Collins. There have been questions raised about your proposal of no action against WMC for far worse conduct. Please answer them straightaway. UnitAnode 19:13, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

That's a fairly rude and peremptory way to phrase your demand. I'm curious whether you expect your complaints about incivility to be taken seriously when you seem to be unable to be civil yourself. When you believe yourself to be right about something, you seem to feel little need to be polite to people who disagree with you. No doubt WMC also believes himself to be right. Why do you expect him - or anyone - to adhere to a standard that you don't seem willing to live up to yourself? MastCell ^Talk 21:04, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Don't compare my very straightforward (and, admittedly, quite frustrated) request here to what WMC has been perpetuating on his perceived ideological foes for a long time. I'm not the only one who is concerned about the heavy-handedness toward one side, and the kid gloves toward the other. My point was (and remains) that 2/0 has been actively editing, while almost completely ignoring these questions, and letting stand his practically nonsensical "move to close with no action" at the requests page. How is anything I typed above uncivil in any meaningful way? No name-calling, but simply a frustrated request for a response. UnitAnode 21:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I think your comment shows why it is a terrible idea to allow these breaches of probation to continue without addressing them. By not acting, the actions that were reported become the acceptable level of discourse. So now we get lots of people doing what was previously ignored, and boom, arbcom here we come. Now, in response to your comment, I think you have a chicken-egg problem on your hand. Arkon (talk) 21:06, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Michael H 34

Hi,

A RFC/U has been created regarding the conduct of an editor you have had contact with, User:Michael H 34. It can be found here. Please comment if you feel it appropriate. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 17:11, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

WMC incivility thread on WP:GS/CC/RE

Hey there. I was reading the request for enforcement on Climate Change articles page yesterday, and I remembered again why I try to stay out of those subject areas. What a battleground they are. I'm in half a mind to ban a dozen editors from the entire area; perhaps that would calm things down. But that's for another day. As an uninvolved administrator, I did not really agree with your conclusion here, and added my name to a list of people requesting further analysis. Do you think you could take a look at that soon? Thanks, NW (Talk) 17:18, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

I did see that, and I shall post it soon. The request for analysis is perfectly reasonable, though it does take time. Thank you for taking an interest in that board, as it is getting out of hand. Liberal bans and page protections sound like a good idea, though I do worry about damage to the continuing improvement of the articles. - 2/0 (cont.) 18:56, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

nudge :)

[41] Guess who it`s from and win a cigar :) --mark nutley (talk) 22:05, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Third request

2/0, this is my third request; my first two went unanswered.

I am requesting that you remove yourself from enforcement on the global warming probation, and I am further asking that you undo decisions that you've made on that page. I also think you should unblock GoRight, who has for some time been requesting your input for unblock conditions. While I believe GoRight has some issues to resolve, your indef block and lack of action thereafter is unacceptable given your lack of similar action against WMC, who has behaved worse than GoRight and yet he remains without sanction. Best to leave GoRight's status in the hands of other admins who are not as involved as you are.

I believe your enforcement has been biased towards one side of the debate, and while we all appreciate your efforts at remaining neutral, I now feel that there is enough evidence to demonstrate that bias unequivocally. This is in no way an accusation of bad faith; it is a friendly request to withdraw and thereby save the hassle of formal dispute resolution. ATren (talk) 22:30, 30 January 2010 (UTC)