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This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. The Arbitrators, parties to the case, and other editors may draft proposals and post them to this page for review and comments. Proposals may include proposed general principles, findings of fact, remedies, and enforcement provisions—the same format as is used in Arbitration Committee decisions. The bottom of the page may be used for overall analysis of the /Evidence and for general discussion of the case.

Any user may edit this workshop page. Please sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they believe should be part of the final decision on the /Proposed decision page, which only Arbitrators and clerks may edit, for voting, clarification as well as implementation purposes.

Motions and requests by the parties

Hipocrite and Mathsci are added as parties

1) Please add the following parties:

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

*Mathsci (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This addition is solely with respect to actions related to the ban of Abd from Cold fusion, the underlying causes or conditions, or the use of administrative tools by William M. Connolley, while involved or showing favoritism, in this or other incidents.

Comment by Arbitrators:

I haven't reviewed the case in enough detail yet to know whether any additional parties should be added. However, at this point, I believe that all the editors who have been listed are on notice that the case exists and that their names have been mentioned, so that they can provide evidence if they wish. If any formal additions or changes to the list of parties are warranted, the arbitrators working on the draft decision will presumably follow up; the key point being that no party be mentioned in a decision or subject to criticism or sanction without fair notice and an opportunity to be heard. Please note that any editor with useful input is invited to make a statement at the accept-or-decline stage, so the suggestion that an editor's having urged us to decline the case warrants his addition as a party is unwarranted. I would also note that while the convention has developed of leaving parties' statements on the case page and moving non-parties' statements to the talkpage, this does not have substantive significance, and where the clerks wind up leaving someone's statement does not govern who the parties are. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:15, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that Hipocrite retired from editing, for unrelated reasons, three weeks ago now. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Proposed. A number of involved editors commented extensively on the Request page, showing strong support for banning they had previously advocated, and for the rejection of this case as frivolous. I have not presented evidence of this beyond their own display on the Request page, however, that should be sufficient to establish a risk to them of admonishment or sanction, and therefore of their right to notice and special participation as parties. The above editors were added to the list of parties by me, ~~before the acceptance of the Request,~~ and were notified, but Mathsci edit warred to remove his name, and William M. Connolley reverted Hipocrite's insertion, then edit warred at User talk:Hipocrite over the notice, which seems to have been a last-straw incident leading to the retirement of Rootology. ~~These parties~~ Hipocrite should be added ~~and their comments restored to the Request page,~~ and notice to Hipocrite should be restored as well.
Hipocrite did not comment on the Request page, having "retired," but previously retired under a cloud, returned, was extraordinarily disruptive while active, and was the primary cause of the two recent protections of Cold fusion and thus of the actions of WMC leading to this case, aside from whatever prior agenda WMC may have had. --Abd (talk) 13:20, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Having now realized that it's reasonable to consider the case accepted when there were four net votes, instead of when acceptance was declared and the case pages set up, and for simplicity, I have withdrawn the proposed motion to add Mathsci, and I ask that Verbal and Stephan Schulz's comments be removed from the Request page, unless they desire to be parties, and I apologize to the committee and the community for disruption that resulted. (It would have been quite enough if someone had suggested to me: once there were four net votes, the case was to be considered accepted and no changes made -- and this should be made clear in general.
To Bilby. Hipocrite was centrally involved in the events leading up to the ban, as evidence will show, and I do not believe that a voluntary, reversible, very recent retirement should be suffice to exclude oneself from consideration. It was an error for me not to include Hipocrite from the start. --Abd (talk) 19:16, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To Mathsci. The other names were removed by Ryan yesterday, but the clerk overlooked the moving of non-party arguments to Talk. Evidence will show that Hipocrite created the disruption allowing WMC's intervention at Cold fusion, pursuing an agenda that WMC favors. Hipocrite accepted the ban because banning me was his goal, and the dual bans gave WMC cover. --Abd (talk) 13:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
To Newyorkbrad. I agree that the list of named parties may be moot, because of notice provided already. No claim was made that, simply by urging denial of the case, editors should be added to it; the additional editors named by me were, in fact, involved in the underlying events; other editors urged denial and were not added. Two issues remain that are not moot.

Hipocrite's notice was removed by a party to this case, so if Hipocrite reviews his Talk page, he may not see the notice. The notice should be replaced pending resolution of this case.
As to the comments left in place, leaving non-party comments prejudices the record; there are good reasons for the practice of removal, and it was only an accident that they were not. All other statements were removed, and the two in question only remain because, at that point, they were listed as named parties. --Abd (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I'm quite opposed to expanding the list of involved parties at this point. Hipocrite, being retired, is unable to be involved in proceedings, and therefore cannot present his case. I agree that he was involved in the events, but I'd be very uncomfortable with including someone in his situation, and in my view that involvement was not central to what is being discussed here. In regard to MathSci, he has strong opinions about Abd, as expressed, but the case is in regard to Abd and WMC's actions. It's likely to be messy enough as it is - it would be far better to keep to focus as narrow as possible. - Bilby (talk) 15:27, 15 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that Abd email ArbCom directly requesting the removal by the clerks of the other names which he added to the list. If Hipocrite has retired and nobody has so far mentioned problems with his behaviour that need to be examined, why add his name? Please drop the motion entirely to keep things simple. Mathsci (talk) 02:59, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm opposed to the adding of MathSci as unnecessary expanding the scope, and the focus should remain on WMC admin actions and Abd's general behaviour - the central concerns. Hipocrite I'm less concerned about, he was heavily involved, but as he's disabled email and retired after an argument with Jimbo it would seem a bit pointless now - and since Abd didn't include him originally, error or not the case wasn't taken with H as a party. Also, he accepted WMCs actions and wasn't then involved with Abd's behaviour. Like Bilby, I think these two editors are not central to the issues presented by Abd or raised in the comments. I'd also ask Abd to tone down his rhetoric a bit (eg "Evidence will show that..."), thanks. I also don't see why my comment, or any others, should be removed - leaving a comment doesn't mean you become a party to the case. Verbal chat 14:25, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would support the addition of User:Hipocrite as he was a central player in all of these events. His behavior at Cold Fusion was disruptive and provocative. His actions directly led to the issue at hand, regardless of whether those actions were premeditated with a specific agenda or simply the result of poor judgment. The treatment of User:Hipocrite in comparison to the treatment of User:Abd by User:William M. Connolley should be examined to shed light on User:William M. Connolley's state of mind regarding User:Abd and his level of objectivity in this case. An examination of whether or not User:William M. Connolley acted in support of User:Hipocrite in some way, whether wittingly or unwittingly, also seems relevant to this case. --GoRight (talk) 23:28, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
RE: "I don't think this should distract everyone from the issues of behaviors of these two editors interactions with each other." - The scope of the case is, as I understand it, whether WMC's use of his administrative privileges was appropriate, or not, as well as Abd's editing that led up to the ban in question. Since the ban WMC issued covered BOTH Abd and Hipocrite it seems appropriate to examine his application of the ban on all parties involved, not just one, as this may reveal an underlying bias.
I really don't think others should be added to this case. The scope of this case from what I'm being told is Abd's editing behavior and whether WMC was involved or not. As for the comment "The treatment of User:Hipocrite in comparison to the treatment of User:Abd by User:William M. Connolley should be examined to shed light on User:William M. Connolley's state of mind regarding User:Abd and his level of objectivity in this case. An examination of whether or not User:William M. Connolley acted in support of User:Hipocrite in some way, whether wittingly or unwittingly, also seems relevant to this case." I don't think this should distract everyone from the issues of behaviors of these two editors interactions with each other. --CrohnieGal^Talk 15:12, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Expand the scope of the case to cover Abd's behaviour over the last two years

2) Apart from the ban itself and the issues surrounding it, this case should also cover Abd's overall approach to dispute resolution, including how Abd's conduct has evolved in the last two years, to understand why he is returning to Arbcom as a party in another dispute with another admin in the same article, just three months after the Abd and JzG case, and why one month ago WMC's page ban was so resoundingly endorsed by the community, to the point of WP:SNOW. The last case already advised and urged Abd to take heed to good-faith advice, but Abd has decided that Arbcom had backed all of his views and that it only decided to give him "some good advice", see here.

The evidence here shows a pattern of repeated complaints about meatpuppeting, too long comments, bad faith assumptions, confrontational editing, etc, issued by many unrelated editors from many different POVs over many months about many topics, ranging from harsh criticism to terse expositions of problems, and it's worrying that, when faced with very recent examples of the criticized behaviour, Abd saw no problem in his editing here. I also stated here that I have only scratched the surface of all the complaints and advice given to him over years.

This case should decide if Abd has been taking heed of all that advice, if he is willing to start doing so now, if Abd even acknowledges that he has a problem with his editing (as in "the first step is admitting that you have a problem"), if Abd is going to keep thinking that there is really a cabal, if Abd will keep thinking that anyone opposing him is either part of the cabal or misguided or wrong, and if a full ban or an extremely strict edit restriction is going to be the only way to stop him to stop that part of his behaviour which is highly disruptive.

If the case closes without addressing this, then I predict that Abd will be swiftly community banned in ANI in a short time, in a drama-filled thread which will leave a bad impression in many editors who have been helped by Abd and who won't understand all the complicated issues surrounding the situation. I also predict that Abd will claim that him not being banned means that Arbcom thinks that he is right, which will only confuse more those editors that trust Abd.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Past tomorrow I will start expanding the warnings list with more diffs so arbs can weigh just how many editors have given Abd advice on what to change and why, and to show that the advice given to him by the end of 2007 is the same that has been given to him very recently, and the same that has been given to him regularly over almost two years. --Enric Naval (talk) 23:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notice that I don't want to cover the events that caused the warnings, I want to cover how not taking heed to all those warnings has brought Abd to the current situation of being banned from an article that he wants to edit, and brought him twice in front of Arbcom in three months. I note that Abd is now directly stating that the advice given to him by me is incorrect, I think that it's up for the arbs to look at the warnings by other editors I collected and decide if they fit my own advice and if they address correctly Abd's conduct in the cold fusion article.

About being unfair to Abd, notice that WMC's administrative actions have been already brought to the community and been widely endorsed by it, while Abd's conduct has been widely criticized by the community over a long time and not just in the cold fusion article, so it's perfectly appropiate to ask that we examine Abd's behaviour in more depth, even if causes complaints of unfairness. Also, Arbcom is supposed to solve the problems that the community can't solve, the community has not found a problem with WMC's administrative conduct, but it has found a problem with Abd's editing. (Arbcom is supposed to have teeth, you see, it's the last recourse on WP:DR, and it shouldn't have to avoid addressing clear problems for fear of looking unfair, arbs should have clear by now that any outcome negative towards Abd is going to be claimed to be unfair anyways, regardless of what they actually do)

Tomorrow I was going to start gathering more evidence, so, I'll be in a better position to show if this motion is warranted or not. If arbs raise issues about the motion, I'll see if I can address them with a better-worded motion, with better evidence, or if I should abandon this motion. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:45, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Enric is seeking to drastically expand this case to cover every possible error -- or courageous action -- I might have taken over the last two years. Remember, the "advice" offered me, so many times, has been quite incorrect. Subsequently, my positions have often been confirmed, either by ArbComm or by editorial consensus. JzG did act while involved. His blacklistings were improper. The blacklist was being used to control content. The link to lenr-canr.org at Martin Fleischmann was accepted. Except for one withdrawn page (which may be resubmitted, I have new evidence on it), and in spite of strong efforts from a number of editors whose comments appear in this case, every page from lenr-canr.org that I submitted for whitelisting was accepted. Newenergytimes.com was delisted. The "proposed explanations" for cold fusion -- there are many, and a few of the theories are covered in multiple reliable secondary sources, some of them peer-reviewed, such as Naturwissenschaften -- were being accepted into the article. That's what Hipocrite edit warred against and that's what WMC removed with his revert to the May 14 version. From our present article, you would not know that these theories exist. That's the "quiet" that is so pleasing to some. Enric has raised many old issues, such as statements by a few editors at RFA/Abd 2, solicited by Yellowbeard, blocked for canvassing and now indef blocked, who sought out prior disputants and invited them to comment. Enric previously promised, if the case was rejected, to immediately take the matter to AN to push for a continued ban, even without any edits justifying that. For him, this dispute has become highly personal. Without his prior move to AN/I over the ban, it's entirely possible that this entire flap would have been quieted. If we assume that I'd edited the Talk page -- I had no intention at all of editing the article -- WMC would have blocked me, I'd have submitted an unblock template, and we'd have had a decision by an uninvolved admin, and that might have been that. Instead, we have this mess. It's not only WMC's stubbornness (and/or mine), it's Enric's passion for banning me, yet he never followed dispute resolution for any of it, beyond warning me, his version of DR; likewise he does not understand that the noticeboards are not part of DR, either. He should be reminded. --Abd (talk) 04:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I think this would be a little impracticable. However, while Abd continues in his evidence to assert there are those out to get him or that there is a cabal, his longer term interactions with the users that he claims are in dispute with him should be taken into account. As Brecht wrote: Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man. Mathsci (talk) 05:09, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm inclined to oppose this: if the scope is widened in regard to all of Abd's actions, then I'm concerned that it is also reasonable to ask that the scope should be widened to cover all of WMC's actions. And even if it was not expanded to include WMC, I'm in agreement with Mathsci that increasing the scope would make the discussion impractical. That said, I would assume that Abd's editing practices in regard to Cold fusion are within scope (in so far as they show cause for an article ban), as are those interactions mentioned by Mathsci, and that any findings in regard to these topics could serve in a potential future RFC/U or community ban discussion. - Bilby (talk) 05:24, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Expanding the scope to cover the editing and behavior of just one of the named parties would be grossly unfair. If the scope is to be expanded to cover a multi-year span of behavior let it be for all the named parties, including Enric. Enric has been on a crusade against Abd and trying to get him banned for quite some time (diffs to be provided upon request) and this motion is simply one more example of that behavior.

Enric fails to WP:AGF on a regular basis, and not simply against Abd. Recently Enric also tried to make a case for having me banned by falsely accusing me of being a sock puppet. Enric has also ~~rabidly~~ vehemently pursued a ban on Jed Rothwell despite that fact that he is currently indefinitely blocked and unable to (legitimately) edit anywhere on the project. His constant droning on about these bannings is disruptive here, on the administrative notice boards, and basically anywhere he edits. I believe that the extent of this WP:HARASSment and the WP:ABF evidence behind it would be an appropriate topic for ArbCom to review. I would issue a motion to this effect, but unlike Enric I am not looking to have those with whom I disagree banned or barred from participating on the project.

Another prime example is the ANI thread that is being discussed here as part of WMC's ban where it purportedly WP:SNOWed against Abd. The only trouble was that the snow was yellow and it was coming from editors like Enric who initiated that discussion despite the fact that at the time Abd had not violated the ban WMC imposed. There was, in essence, nothing to actually talk about in terms of substance or policy violations, it was all drama and it was all started by Enric. And it was all bolstered by involved editors. Such activities are clearly disruptive and waste valuable editor time.

Abd had asked that the ANI thread in question be closed to AVOID disruption. Enric created it. I also suspect that the WP:SNOW seen there was more a function of the ban in question being a strictly limited one of one month and on a specific page. A full community ban would be quite different, I suspect, despite Enric's fantasies to the contrary. --GoRight (talk) 06:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please refactor the word "rabidly": remember WP:NPA. Enric Naval has patiently engaged in discussion with Abd longer than most users. He does not show signs of "acute pain, violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, depression and inability to swallow water". Nor does he appear to be experiencing "periods of mania and lethargy, followed by coma". Please try to avoid using this kind of inflammatory rhetoric. Mathsci (talk) 07:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I chose my words carefully. See rabidly, specifically definition 1b which was the meaning I had intended. That definition is not inflammatory, it is an accurate description of his behavior. One need look no further than this RFAR to see that. Never the less, per your request I have refactored the word accordingly.

"... rather than contribute to the mediation process ..." - You appear to be, let's say, factually challenged. Abd has embraced the Cold Fusion mediation since it first began. Just go look at the discussion there. --GoRight (talk) 08:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mediation cases are privileged as much as anything is on wikipedia and are not supposed to be used in Arbitration. can I suggest you both redact any reference to mediation from your comments? Cheers Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Done. Mathsci (talk) 09:03, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure this kind of motion is needed or necessary. Past actions can be used to illustrate/clarify current ongoing problems. Previous postings can also be used to indicate current patterns of behavior (e.g. offers of meatpuppetry -deleted by Black Kite in '08) which are undesirable and against policies. R. Baley (talk) 16:10, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

R. Baley, if that link refers to something I wrote, which it appears to, I'd appreciate a copy, if the file wasn't offensive or a policy violation, or how about undeleting it so that anyone can read it? I have nothing to hide. (And if I do, I'd want to know!) --Abd (talk) 01:06, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I decline. Request forwarded (diff) to the deleting administrator, Black Kite (section link). R. Baley (talk) 02:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I also decline to undelete it, but if I quote the opening section of it - "This is a page for users to leave articles, essay suggestions, or comments for my review. This may be used, as an example, by users on article or civility parole ... Leaving material here gives me permission to use the material elsewhere on Wikipedia, with me taking responsibility for it as my own edit..." the reason for it being deleted is probably fairly clear. Black Kite 08:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mmmm.... as far as I can see, that is not a violation of any kind, and that Black Kite thinks it is may suggest that ArbComm address this issue of "proxying." It was just a more specified location for that kind of suggestion, and more public than email or my page User talk:Abd/IP, which is important when my Talk page is semiprotected. It's my view that we should always keep lines of communication open with banned users; when we don't, we get Scibaby et al. That communication should only be with consenting editors, so the "exhausted patience of the community" does not apply. We recently had many editors cooperating with ScienceApologist in working on an article, while not only banned but blocked, and I supported that. Why not extend that possibility of cooperation to all banned editors? I request, then, undeletion of that page to my user space, so that I may review the history as well. In order to avoid unnecessary disruption, I will CSD tag it for deletion after I review it, unless others request it remain. --Abd (talk) 15:31, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No, the whole "taking responsibility for it as my own edit" thing seems to directly contradict the GFDL, which requires that all edits be attributed to their creator. Copying content from one page to another requires that you provide a list of contributors or otherwise provide a reference to the text's history. As such, that page is improperly licensed and should not be restored. I note that I'm now the third admin to decline this. Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 16:17, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, the new CC-BY-SA license requires this too, not that it was applied to text contributions at that time. Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 16:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two more weeks to gather evidence

3) I ask arbs to give me and Abd two more weeks to gather evidence before they start making proposals in the workshop (until Monday 3rd August). There are megabytes of conversation related to this case, just reading it takes me a lot of time, and I have only gone throught a fraction of it. I have problems backing up my statements in the workshop because there are so many problems that I haven't sorted through yet. Also, I want to address in my evidence whether WMC's prior blocks have been found problematic by the community, and I want to make clearer wich evidence covers the time frame of the ban, and which evidence is about the current problems with the current ban being just a continuation and/or a logical consequence of long-term problems that remained unacknowledged by Abd over a long time. Arbs will also be able to see better if the evidence supports or not a expansion of the scope.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Diminishing returns for these sorts of cases. — Rlevse • Talk • 23:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not seeing value in this; the scope is well circumscribed, and it should not take more than the standard one week to present evidence here. In fact, if it is taking more than a week, that begs the question of whether (a) the evidence is relevant to the scope or (b) there was a reason to take the case in the first place. Risker (talk) 16:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I want everyone to have a full and fair opportunity to locate evidence and present it cogently to us ... but I would prefer to move to a proposed decision in much less than two more weeks. Ultimately, though, it's really up to the drafting arbitrator, who to an extent dictates the pace of the case from the committee's point of view. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:08, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Proposed. Notice that, for example, today I'll be busy so I won't be able to gather evidence (and, indeed, I shouldn't be editing wikipedia right now!). --Enric Naval (talk) 08:35, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I could use the time as well, in fact, I'm a bit worried about even a week more, it might not be enough. I do have kids, a business to run, and a Meetup in New York this weekend that I've promised to join. Note that this support is not support of expansion of the scope of the case. I'm aware, at the present, that my evidence may look like I'm expanding the scope, but I'm not. The situations mentioned there will be placed in context and the many editors mentioned are not targets, specific wrong-doing is not being alleged. (If it were, I would have notified them, and some of those names were only mentioned at this point so that I could make blanket statements of completeness, i.e., this list of editors was all editors who qualified as stated.) If there are behavior problems with the "cabal," they would be raised as enforcement requests for Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Fringe science, not here. The most that is being shown is a kind of broad involvement that should be a matter of concern, but not necessarily of sanction, except where that prior involvement led these editors to become specifically involved in this much narrower case, as can be seen in those showing behavioral problems in this very request, with warning after warning being issued by clerks. --Abd (talk) 15:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I changed it to two weeks, since I was also wary that one week would not be enough and I would have to ask for another adjourning. I also changed "me" to "me and Abd". --Enric Naval (talk) 16:37, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Two weeks okay by me. There are some wedge issues here, and taking the time to do it right could be quite useful. Besides, I've got some actual article work to do that I should get done before I'm site-banned, as some have been predicting. I suppose I could email some ~~of my meat puppets~~ cooperating editors should I not get it done in time. It's just finishing stuff that I began, stuff that was controversial for a short time, but then consensus was found. Some here -- except for Enric once in a while -- aren't likely to mention that. Maybe I'll ask Enric to "proxy" for me. Hey, Enric, if I email you some good edits that you could easily verify, not controversial, would you make them for me? Or would you think that a violation of WP:MEAT? --Abd (talk) 01:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Don't much care. I've said everything I need to for the moment. The train-wreck remains entertaining; but drawn out for another two weeks it will probably become dull. Abd is busy shooting himself in the foot; given more time he may manage to do so slightly less messily, which would be good. The downside is that I'll probably be tempted into more self-defeating sarcasm, but its a fine balance William M. Connolley (talk) 21:38, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Enough junk; Stephan is correct William M. Connolley (talk) 22:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

I personally would like to see what Enric gathers to get a feel of it all. So far I have found the evidence and the difs very enlightening and would find that the more difs should be an advantage to everyone prior to deciding anything here. The idea of this case is to stop the disruptions so lets give anyone a chance to show what they feel a need to show. If it goes off target it can always be reverted and the situation can be stopped by an arbitrator. Thoughts of others? --CrohnieGal^Talk 11:50, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A period of five days might be reasonable, but really this is up to ArbCom and the clerks, not us. Mathsci (talk) 17:16, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Let Enric have all the time he needs. I admit that I would likely make use of it myself. Scope to remain unchanged by my !vote. --GoRight (talk) 21:53, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Taiwan cannot make enough hard drives to store the amount of low-content text this case will produce in two weeks. The Great Wikipedia Dramaout goes to July 23rd. It makes sense to give participating editors a chance to chime in on the evidence page. But 24 hours are as likely to produce useful results as 24 weeks, in my opinion. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 07:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Let me get this straight. A party proposes this. An adverse party supports it. And the third party accepts it. Consensus of the parties! And Stephan is opposed? May I suggest that he do something useful with the time? Evidence and proposals can be refactored, so, in fact, 24 weeks would be better than 24 hours, this is, after all, a wiki. There are issues, even issues raised here, where a 24 week page, continually refined until settled, would be quite appropriate. What if, for example, the factions involved got together and persuaded "members" to withdraw distracting and redundant comments, leaving only the best and most cogent, or combined and signed proposals? However, there is a point of maximum return for effort, and it's probably quite a bit short of 24 weeks! It's longer than 24 hours, editors have outside responsibilities, etc. --Abd (talk) 14:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd, please move this remark to the section "comment by parties". Mathsci (talk) 15:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Tradition seems to be that parties may respond in the "others" section. Parties get privileged position, that's all. Mathsci, you could have had this privilege too, you could still have it. I'm sure that if you requested to be added as a party, it would be done. A clerk may move the comment if the clerk decides it's better that way. --Abd (talk) 17:02, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I stand by my comment. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Concur 100% with Stephan. Raul654 (talk) 15:40, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But of course as a member in good standing of the "Raul/WMC/SS/KDP/... Majority POV Pushing Society" this would have been understood by all coming in. Your comment here is actually a tad redundant in that respect. (Comment made for illustration purposes only.) --GoRight (talk) 16:03, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The difference here is that, unlike you, I'm not making transparently false claims. Stephan's point -- that giving Abd an extra two weeks would only result in an extraordinarily low signal-to-noise ratio on all pages he touches -- is well taken. Raul654 (talk) 16:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Surely if I add piles of irrelevant and "false claims," this will simplify ArbComm's job; no arbitrator is actually obligated to read all the "twaddle." If I cover up the "signal" with dreck, effectively mooning the jury, surely that would be a great reason to site-ban me or perhaps demand that I find a mentor or some other remedy. What I see on the evidence page, though, is a bit of the reverse. Again, anyone gets to make false claims here, but making false claims can be grounds for being sanctioned, for they are disruptive. --Abd (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@Raul - Am I mistaken here? I thought that this was actually Enric's motion? --GoRight (talk) 17:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It is Enric's motion. What is your point? I oppose it all the same. I don't want Abd filling up these pages with his content-void walls of text, and Enric's motion is bound to encourage exactly that. Raul654 (talk) 18:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As I've mentioned privately to the arbitrators via clerks-l, I feel that extending this case opens up severe risk of further disruption, and I believe the attacks and name-calling in this very section are evidence of that. In any event, there are already several statements that are close to or over the defined evidence limit, Enric's included (although I will grant it has been shortened). Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:33, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Motion to freeze the Workshop page pending completion of evidence

4) For two weeks, while the parties and others prepare and condense evidence for completeness and clarity, the Workshop page should be protected and work on findings and proposals suspended.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Well, since I don't think that anyone needs two weeks to present evidence here (remember, we want evidence specific to this issue, not philosophical treatises), then there is no particular reason to extend the evidence phase. Risker (talk) 17:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See my comment above. Beyond that, I don't see the desirability of "freezing" the workshop, though I do think that everyone should present only proposals that they believe should be seriously considered for adoption as part of the decision, and not mere debating points. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Proposals are being made based on charges that have not been supported with evidence. There is reasonable fear that if more time elapses, the comments will multiply. It would seem to make sense that the community have before it clear and complete evidence before making proposals. Without the evidence being complete, I see a clerk having difficulty identifying what is relevant and what is not, and some editors are supporting or opposing proposed findings based on prior opinions and impressions, and quite possibly factional affiliation, rather than specific evidence. We have the advisory jury of the community debating the verdict before the trial. --Abd (talk) 04:51, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose William M. Connolley (talk) 07:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Oppose, Abd started with proposals before adding any evidence whatsoever so its hipocritical of them to now demand the workshop be frozen because others are making proposals. There is so such data now that its unfair on others to make them stop for Abd's benefit. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not a demand, Spartaz. It's a proposed motion. If ArbComm wants this page to continue to grow ad interim, I have no personal problem with it, though it wastes time for me and others to create proposals and respond to comments that would not necessarily be made if the evidence were all in. I trust that ArbComm will decide based on what it considers best. --Abd (talk) 15:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest you just concentrated on completing your evidence if this is such an important point for you rather then wasting your time on frivolous motions like this. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per comments to proposal of prolongation of period of preparation of evidence, per clerk's comments and per projected date of completion in mid-August. As the initiator of the case, Abd should have prepared the bulk of his evidence before it started. Mathsci (talk) 05:54, 22 July 2009 (UTC) It's 1000 words, not War and Peace — Abd's writing skills are needed on the evidence page not on Wikipedia Review. Chop-Chop. [reply]

I had evidence prepared, and it was filed with the case. However, attempts have been made to expand the scope, and, when this case was open and evidence and proposals started coming in, I realized that the issue of the cabal, which I'd hoped to avoid, was becoming highly relevant. The level of disruption in these pages has diverted me from that task, plus I have RL responsibilities that I cannot continue to neglect. --Abd (talk) 15:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed final decision

Proposals by Abd

Proposed principles

Consensus is fundamental to NPOV

1) The surest sign that neutral text has been found is that all reasonable editors, understanding guidelines and policy, will agree or accept it, regardless of personal POV. Where necessary, and without compromising our fundamental principles, we need take extraordinary care that this consensus is discovered, documented, and maintained, which includes supporting process for consensus to shift and grow non-disruptively.

Comment by Arbitrators:

The first sentence is basically right, although it is overly optimistic to anticipate that unanimous agreement among even "reasonable editors" can be reached in every case. It also is true that consensus can change over time, but beyond that, I don't understand the second sentence. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not persuaded that this is a useful principle, particularly the second part, which seems overly focused on the process of "discovering" consensus than it is in writing NPOV content. Risker (talk) 02:11, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Support. This cannot be overemphasized, it was part of the founding vision of Wikipedia. Where we actively pursue true consensus, not merely a rough consensus that excludes minority views, we settle disputes and broaden the community which has an interest in stability, instead of motivating and maintaining disruption. --Abd (talk) 14:50, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Newyorkbrad. Thanks. Unanimous agreement isn't necessary, but is desirable. In fact, consensus organizations which establish good process find that complete agreement is more attainable than expected, but my own conclusion from many years of experience is that majority rule is an important operating principle, necessary for efficiency, that becomes damaging when the strong desirability of full consensus is overlooked. When there is maximized consensus, long-term efficiency is maximized. It's established that consensus can change, but how is not well established. While we may assert some kind of abstract NPOV principle, we have no way of objectively measuring it except through the measure of consensus. If a consensus exists at one time, but is not documented, if the evidence and arguments for the consensus haven't been made explicit and accessible, there is no guidance for the future except an assumption that existing text is "consensus," and the boulder must roll inevitably down the hill, and we will have to push it up again, which is so much work that we often prefer to revert and block a dissident, instead of engaging and recruiting the new editor to help extend consensus by reviewing the basis for it and pointing out, if possible, any defects. --Abd (talk) 16:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@Newyorkbrad, IMO, Abd means in his second sentence that we should held terribly long discussions with dozens of editors involved, so we can then measure consensus using some unnecessarily complicated rule that Abd wants to try out in wikipedia. All of this, of course, with Abd being the one in charge of the whole process. This is what he tried to do with his last poll right before he was banned from CF. (see below) --Enric Naval (talk) 16:36, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This preposterous assumption is an example of what I've faced for five months at Cold fusion, raw ABF. --Abd (talk) 17:43, 16 July 2009 (UTC) I couldn't control it if I wanted to, and I don't, not even if the community demanded it, and inefficient discussion would entirely defeat the purpose and would simply fail.[reply]

Enric Naval: That was hardly a productive comment. Please limit discussion on arbitration pages to constructive additions only. AGK 03:13, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but that is what Abd means with that sentence, altough he would have chosen a very different wording. --Enric Naval (talk) 05:41, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

AGK, you are right, my uncivil wording was really inadequate,and it wasn't productive. NewYorkBrad deserves a better explanation (and he doesn't know the context, so he probably doesn't even know what I am talking about). I striked it out and I will make a proper explanation in a couple of hours. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rewording: Shortly before being banned, Abd was Hipocrite were making competing polls. Abd tried to make a poll based in Range voting, and tried to merge two polls in one. He was heavily criticized for moving votes around, modifying the poll at mid-polling, using too complicated rules, WP:OWNership issues, etc, and was told to stop touching the poll and even to drop it completely. His behaviour at the poll was part of what triggered his ban. Despite all this, he thinks that the poll was a success, and now he is here making proposals of measuring consensus without giving any acknowledgement or indication that he was ever heavily criticized for his methods. Editors who saw their suggestions and criticims ignored during and after that poll are now understandibly wary of him ever handling any measurement of consensus, since they assume that Abd will not listen to them. (Whether that assumption is warranted is something that deserves a separate discussion, the point here is that Abd has lost the trust of many editors in measurement of consensus) His second sentence looks a lot like what he did in that poll.

Also, Risker points out the sentence is more focused in the process than in the final result. Abd has a long history of supporting new processes of discovering consensus, as he has always been interested in voting systems (yeah, I know, I have to prove this in the evidence section, I will link here when it's done) with his support of Wikipedia:Delegable proxy and his editing in relatively obscure voting systems like Instant-runoff voting or Approval voting, which he edited heavily before getting interested in cold fusion (Abd's edit count) (Abd used Range voting in the poll, and Approval voting is a type of range voting). This makes me fear that Abd is more interested in experimenting with measurement of democratic votes than in measuring WP:CONSENSUS consensus by wikipedia standards. There are more indications that make me think this, but it will be better if I put them into the Evidence page and link them here later. Also, part of a trend where process is put over results, so not an isolated incident that is being blown out of proportion. Posting in talk page. --Enric Naval (talk) 14:52, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Mathsci. This proposal is an expansion on and explanation of the five, not a substitute for them. I thank Mathsci for pointing to the essay and the MfD, which was, when MfD'd, indeed a rant, though in the process of conversion to one more neutral and less topical, with participation and comment from others invited. The MfD, Mathsci nominating, snowed Keep; some of the criticism at the time was justified and may have been addressed, but I'm not claiming it's ready for WP space. A move is not a decision I will make. --Abd (talk) 17:53, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to MastCell. Yes, that's a problem, but it doesn't relate to the desirability of consensus. If we exclude editors without adequate opportunity for them to participate, if they are met with hostility and threats and blocks, most will become, if they were not before, "unreasonable." They may create, as Scibaby did, as many as 300 sock puppets. We don't know if he would have been reasonable if welcomed and channeled toward constructive work on what I call the "backstory," with an opportunity to participate in expansion of consensus, and where intrinsic unreasonableness, if present, would have become obvious, and he'd then have been rejected, not only by those opposed to him in POV, but by the whole community, including supporters of his POV and those neutral. Once we understand that consensus only begins with "rough consensus," and that when we stop there, we may be institutionalizing disruption, we will confine stern response to necessity. It only takes two to discuss, not dozens, and discussion of changes can expand from there as needed. --Abd (talk) 18:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

my response to WMC

This is an ancient debate, actually, I could trace it to fourteen hundred years ago.... "Editor's consensus" in the pollicy quoted refers to local consensus, not to overall project-wide consensus. If there were actually a disagreement between a true consensus of the community and the Foundation, represented by Jimbo or otherwise, we'd have a problem, but, to be brief, it ain't gonna happen. It was not suggested that any principles were to be "superseded." Rather, consensus is how we interpret NPOV, how we judge that it has been found. This crucial question of how we determine that the conditions described exist is why consensus is fundamental. Suppose, for a moment, that there was some real contradiction here. There is article text, of some importance, that has been (how?) determined to be NPOV, but a general consensus considers it biased. What's going to happen? Whoever takes on the job of maintaining that "NPOV" text is going to find it quite difficult, editor after editor will appear and try to change it, there will be endless disruption.

Now, let's narrow this down. Suppose there is a limited set of editors working on an article. Suppose that five of them think existing text is NPOV and meets WP:V. And one sees it differently. She has a different point of view than the five, and when we have a different point of view, we may notice things that are hidden to others. With the same sources, the same facts, there is no effective limit to the possible variety of expression. I've described a situation where the local consensus is at 83%, we'd normally call that "rough consensus," easily. Should the five editors resist efforts to change the text to satisfy the lone dissenter, or should they attempt to find text that they still consider NPOV, but that is also acceptable to the dissenter? To me, the article will become more reliable and more stable if consensus is at 100% than if it is at 83%, and it is less likely to attract outside disruption. Then the question becomes how the majority is to consider the problem. Should they all discuss it together? I'd suggest not, in fact. I'd suggest that the lone editor first attempts to identify a member of the majority who might be the most willing to consider the problem, most likely to understand and respect a different point of view. If the two of them can agree, we've doubled the support for new text. If the two of them can convince another, we've removed the consensus on the old text.

Suppose, though, that the single editor can't convince any of the five. What can the editor do? Let's suppose that there exists some text that would satisfy all the editors, but the five can't be bothered to look at it. Let's even assume that this reluctance is quite legitimate. After all, as far as they can see, the text is just fine! Would we agree, though, that 100% consensus is better than 83%? We have various ways of addressing this, but they aren't necessarily as efficient as they could be. I wasn't, here, specifying how we would do it, but we do have, for this, RfC and other WP:DR processes; but if an editor is considered disruptive because they are in the minority, if they are defined as a "civil POV-pusher" because they attempt to convince others to improve the article, we defeat those processes. And that's the point here. We need take care to maximize consensus, it's important, and if we don't do it, what we will see is continual disruption. The short term gain (avoiding debate on what seems settled) is balanced by long-term, continual loss in terms of energy to maintain the project, to stop it from sliding back down the hill. There are ways to do it that are efficient, we use them irregularly, but they take discussion. Not necessarily large-scale discussion, it might be discussion between two editors. It might just be one writing in an attempt to find another editor to agree. To the majority, this is likely to look like "POV-pushing." And this is why banning editors from Talk pages is far more damaging to our process than banning them from articles or restricting reverts.

And this is why, when Hipocrite was edit warring at Cold fusion, and complained to RfPP that Abd was edit warring again at Cold fusion, when, in fact, he was the edit warrior, and I didn't revert him at all that day, and when he had, after requesting protection, made a totally outrageous edit to the lede, thus leaving the article in seriously damaged state, I offered to agree to a mutual page ban on the article. He grabbed at the chance. That was the situation when WMC declared his ban; we were already page banned, by agreement, though details hadn't been worked out. What WMC did was to extend it to Talk.

The effect? We've blocked or banned the most knowledgeable of our editors on the topic: ScienceApologist, Pcarbonn, JedRothwell (COI editor who confined himself to Talk since 2006), and now myself. (I'm not an expert, but I have spent six months researching the topic, in serious depth, and I was familiar with it in 1989, but skeptical since then, until I did this research.) The article is a disaster, nobody who knows the field is likely to respect it. It looks okay if you don't know what's in the recent peer-reviewed and academic secondary sources, sources that the article pretty much claims don't exist. --Abd (talk) 05:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm returning this comment, but collapsed, because obviously it was too long for WMC's tastes, and collapse is one standard response to claims that comments are too long, rambling, or off-topic. In time, I will bring out of collapse a summary of what's most important about this comment. Meanwhile, it is, in fact, on-topic, in my opinion, and it should be readily accessible to the arbitrators who eventually must go over this mess, hence it should remain here. Arbitrators will decide whether to read it or not.

--Abd (talk) 14:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, that explains at least part of the edit warring ([1][2][3][4]): WMC believes that this is his section. Take a look at where this is: Proposals by Abd. And this does make clear what the case is about: WMC develops some opinion, and then ignores all rules to implement it. Sometimes it's brilliant, that's why we have IAR. But sometimes it is ... not. And he hasn't learned how to back down quickly. --Abd (talk) 15:03, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Not the way most WP articles are written and not helpful as a substitute for WP:Five pillars. No need to transfer extracts of the userspace essay User:Abd/Majority POV-pushing onto this page: it was already severely criticized in the MfD by multiple users. Mathsci (talk) 15:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although their purpose is unclear, Abd's second sentence in the proposal and his userspace essay might be an attempt to justify the pushing of a fringe viewpoint by slowly tiring out mainstream (= majority point of view) editors. Mathsci (talk) 18:29, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I believe that the problem here has been in parsing the definition of "reasonable editors". MastCell ^Talk 17:54, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject. This kind of wooly principle has become a staple of arbcom announcements, and this one, to quote from Macbeth, is "... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". WP:NPOV and WP:CONSENSUS are already policies, and MathSci has already mentioned the WP:FIVEPILLARS. The community has already established policy, and that is not a job for anyone else. Unless there happens to be a philosopher king lying around. Verbal chat 18:11, 16 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Curious that Abd chooses to use the workshop for more grandstanding rather then supplying evidence for arbcom to look at. ~~If I were cynical I'd suggest that this case has been cooked up to give them an opportunity to promote their own agenda rather then a genuine disagreement where dispute resolution is required.~~ Spartaz ^Humbug! 18:06, 17 July 2009 (UTC) - struck per instructions. Spartaz ^Humbug! 21:45, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Spartaz, this page (and this section in particular) is for the discussion of the proposed principle, not for making unfounded speculation as to the motives of those involved. Please strike your comment and refrain from making further statements of this nature. Thank you. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 21:31, 17 July 2009 (UTC) (later edit: Thank you for your understanding.)[reply]

Reject. Poorly written and to me, over analyzed. Let's stick with the way we already do consensus, not this new way that has been refused. --CrohnieGal^Talk 11:23, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reject. For one, useful consensus is not typically "discovered", it is constructed. You can only discover the lowest common denominator. NPOV is not achieved by accommodating each and every opinion, but by weighting arguments and sources. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reject per Stephan. Raul654 (talk) 15:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Template

2) {text of Proposed principle}

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Template

1) {text of proposed remedy}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed remedy}

Proposed principles

Meatpuppetry

1) Restoring edits from banned users is meatpuppetry. Meatpuppetry is prohibited. Users who act as meatpuppets for banned users may be blocked.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Two comments. First, the term "meatpuppetry" has a variety of meanings to different people, and using it can divert attention from the substance of the discussion to quarrels over definitions. It would be better if this were expressed directly in terms of the underlying conduct (e.g., "Restoring edits from banned users is prohibited"). If the conduct is prohibited, it is prohibited regardless of what label is put on it. Second, as reflected in the discussion below, we might be best served with a somewhat refined or more nuanced version of the proposal. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:22, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Oppose. Restoring edits from banned users is not meat puppetry, per se. The use of the term "banned" here is also not necessary. Blocked users are in the same position. Edits from blocked or banned users may be reverted on sight. Raul has, below, quoted me accurately. There is no policy as claimed. It is acknowledged that acting as a meatpuppet for a blocked or banned user -- or any user, for that matter -- can result in a block. However, once an edit has been made, the edit is in the database and can be read by anyone unless oversighted. Whether or not to restore an edit should depend, not on the ban or block status of the original editor, but on its usefulness to the project. I'm insufficiently familiar with the Scibaby case to say much about it; I reverted a Scibaby edit back in without any reasonable notice that it was, in fact, Scibaby; however, the edit itself was to User talk:GoRight and my judgment was that he'd rather see the edit directly; the whole thing was rather silly, since GoRight can read it anyway; GoRight later decided to restore it to respond to it. The other alleged "meat puppetry" would be with User:JedRothwell, who is not banned, there has never been the required community ban discussion; if he's banned, it's an administrative ban, originally issued by JzG, in the presence of his involvement in long-term conflict with the editor; that account is blocked, but it was an inactive account, not used since 2006, blocked during a recent RfAr/Clarification for unclear reasons. JedRothwell, however, is a well-known expert in the field of Cold fusion, he knows the literature extremely well, having edited much of it. When he pops in as IP, he often has much to say of relevance to the article or what's going on. He's also blunt and caustic, but no more so than another COI editor we tolerate at the article: Kirk shanahan. With one restored edit from Rothwell, I recall removing the arguably uncivil part (usually it is on the level of a general claim of Wikipedia bias or general uselessness). It has never been found that a specific reversion to restore an edit by Rothwell was, itself, disruptive or improper; what's been claimed over and over is that such reversion is prohibited, but IAR recognizes no absolute prohibitions, and, as noted, there is no policy prohibiting such, unless ArbComm decides to establish one. The existing policy allows restoration of content if the editor restoring is willing to take responsibility for it, and "content" is a general term that does not solely refer to articles.

Those who claim that I inappropriately restored edits, please provide specific examples where the content violated policy. --Abd (talk) 06:39, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Jed was banned exclusively for his comments in Talk:Cold fusion (since it was the only page he posted to) and you restored his comments, taking full responsability for them. In other works, per our banning policy, we should have had to ban you too if you hadn't stopped. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:43, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, banning from a small number of incidents, and with no showing that the specific restorations were disruptive, would be a tad overreactive, I'd think. Enric's interpretation would be correct under the proposed principle, however, which is why it's so offensive. Restoring edits from blocked or banned editors, which takes place quite in the open and with obvious personal responsibility, is not "meat puppetry," per se, nor is it "proxying"; to establish these would require verification of improper intent. It is an editor making a decision that content (for articles or for discussion) is useful, and that's why I requested -- so far no satisfaction of this request -- that specific examples be provided. Enric has always argued, since the beginning of this dispute, that restoration was per se contrary to policy, and that's a serious misunderstanding, and an obvious one. I restored a spelling correction to Cold fusion made by ScienceApologist, that had been reverted because of his topic ban, and under the proposed principle, that would be "meat puppetry." This was, in fact, taken to AE, where the complainant, Hipocrite!, was pretty roundly criticized for disruption. I'm amazed that Enric or others would edit war with me over some harmless content on a Talk page, but I did not revert war back, nor did I pursue DR; quite simply, it wasn't important enough. Nor did any editor pursue DR with me. Now that there is a nice coat-rack erected, all this is being brought up, even though it was totally irrelevant to the page bans issued by WMC, as far as I've seen. What does Raul's proposal have to do with this case? --Abd (talk) 17:12, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Given Abd's behavior with respect to Jed Rothwell and Scibaby, and his own misconceptions about what our policies are (To wit: There is no policy against restoring reverted edits of banned or blocked users if the edits themselves are not disruptive or policy violations - Abd, July 14, 2009), a clear principle to this effect is needed. Raul654 (talk) 23:44, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that that particular statement is misinformed; edits by banned users are to be reverted on sight, regardless of merit. There's a (rarely used) CSD criterion for specifically this purpose, WP:G5. However, once reverted, if the edit does have merit and an editor can independently verify its worth and has independent reasons for making it themselves, they can do so to put it in under their own name. Granted, though, that's a little complicated and can elicit suspicion itself. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 01:53, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Hersfold here. I think Raul's interpretation is not at all what the policy states, per WP:BAN: "Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called 'proxying,' unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them." (emphasis mine). There is no rule prohibiting Abd or anyone else from restoring a Scibaby edit provided they have verified the legitimacy of it, and realizing that by doing so they take full responsibility for the edit. Oren0 (talk) 05:57, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Verifiable" means restoring edits to articles which improve the article, and can be verified against reliable sources. Given that Abd was restoring, among other things, talk page edits by banned users, he fails that exception on both counts -- his edits were neither verifiable nor did he think of them independently. Raul654 (talk) 06:03, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, yeah. I can't think of any reason you'd need to restore a talk page edit; that is proxying. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 06:05, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps then "Unless they can be independently verified and there is a good, editorial-based reason for doing so, restoring edits..." ? Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 06:06, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question, what is the definition of "restore" being applied here? A simple revert? Adding a comment that contains the same or similar content? What is the time duration required to have elapsed before the topic mentioned by a banned user is once again safe to discuss? These are all applicable questions given the manner in which this principle is likely to be applied. --GoRight (talk) 07:07, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject: "Restoring edits from banned users is meatpuppetry." - This is a ridiculous statement. This would allow Raul to block anyone expressing even a vaguely skeptical statement related to AGW. Once they had done so he could easily twist it into resembling something Scibaby said some place. While policy allows the edits of banned users to be reverted on sight, and for good reason, it does not forever ban any mention of a topic of the same or a similar nature. This proposal is merely a transparent attempt to ban minority points of view. Meat puppetry is inherently acting at the direction of another user, not simply the act of restoring material that may have value to the project. Current policy clearly states that users are permitted to restore edits of banned users so long as they are willing to take full responsibility for the content. --GoRight (talk) 07:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a banned user makes a spelling correction and their edit is reverted, must we now leave the word misspelled lest we be blocked for meat puppetry? This could easily happen with a RollBack could it not? --GoRight (talk) 07:17, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. proxying for banned users is simply unacceptable. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problem with this statement depending on the definition of "proxying." Does proxying require that the user be acting at the direction of the banned user, or not? How do we distinguish between "proxying" and WP:AGF adoption of a valid point that happens to have started with a banned user? --GoRight (talk) 07:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It depends how consistently the user is doing it. Reverting and restoring a minor edit is within policy. Advocating on talk pages on behalf of fringe views put forward by banned users is clearly not acceptable. Starting a crusade to advance the agenda of the banned user is even worse. Where you fall on that continuum is why we expect admins to exercise discretion and common sense Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:45, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

You did not address the fundamental point of my question. To be a meat puppet do you need to be acting at the direction of the banned user, or not? Is merely expressing a similar POV sufficient to label someone a meat puppet? --GoRight (talk) 17:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect the correct answer is somewhere in the middle between the two poles you cite but that is undoubtedly something the arbcom will look at. I know where I stand and I can guess where you stand but I can't see the point arguing the point because ultimately it doesnt matter two hoots what we think as were aren't arbiters. Spartaz ^Humbug! 17:42, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Banned/blocked means you don't edit, period. The spelling errors and other minor things will be noticed by someone editing the article. --CrohnieGal^Talk 19:33, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question for Raul: I thought that the scope of this proceeding was limited to a review of the actions of the involved parties as they relate specifically to User:William M. Connolley's page ban of User:Abd. Am I wrong on this point? Has the scope been increased?

Assuming I am correct for the moment, what is the relevance of your proposed principle to the case being discussed? Did User:William M. Connolley allege meat puppetry as part of his reason for issuing the ban in question? I don't recall seeing any such allegation but I could have missed it. If so, please point it out. On the other hand, has User:Abd accused User:William M. Connolley of being a meat puppet of someone else in this matter? I don't recall seeing such an allegation on his part either. --GoRight (talk) 21:15, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Carcharoth's comment in accepting the case. I'd say it's safe to say that the arbs may look at things a bit more broadly. Guettarda (talk) 05:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Rather obvious, perhaps in a slightly rewritten form. Neither Abd nor GoRight seem to understand wikipedia policy. Mathsci (talk) 22:08, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. This is not controversial -it's basic. Though occasionally one may take responsibility for the rare and helpful mainspace edit, it should never appear as if you are seeking out a banned editor's edits to restore (could be construed as disruptive). "Comments" by banned users (almost any non-mainspace edit) should never be made at their direction or restored. R. Baley (talk) 14:34, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What degree of similarity in comments would you require to label someone as a meat puppet? How would you prevent this from being used to extend the bans of some individuals to others who are not otherwise banned but hold similar points of view? --GoRight (talk) 20:36, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support - although I also don't like the use of "meatpuppet", and I think it can be more neutrally worded. - Bilby (talk) 00:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Banning policy says this: "Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry. Users who reinstate such edits take complete responsibility for the content by so doing." My interpretation of it is that reinstating such edits is not absolutely prohibited (the policy uses the words "generally" and "may be viewed", and for reinstaters the policy says "full responsibility for the content", not "automatically regarded as a lackey to the banned user"), but that a great deal of caution should be exercised when doing so, because the reinstater needs to make sure the edit is indeed a good one. This kind of quality control is something most editors do for their own edits, but it needs to be taken special care of when reinstating an edit that you yourself didn't write. I think the blanket term "is meatpuppetry" goes a little bit too far, because it implies that any reinstatement of an edit from a banned user must be a bad edit. A reinstated edit from a banned user should be assessed on its objective merit and value to the article, and if the edit is good, the reinstater should not be sanctioned for it. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree with this interpretation Sjakkalle if we were only discussing edits on article pages, but my understanding is that the main objection came when Abd starting restoring talk page comments from banned users. Fixing occasional spelling and grammatical errors in actual articles is one thing but inserting a banned user back into a discussion of content that they have specifically been told they can't contribute to - by virtue of being banned from the project - is clearly not something covered by this interpretation. Spartaz ^Humbug! 14:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's fair enough. I too have a hard time imagining a situation where a talk page edit from a banned user would be something which should restoration. If someone wants to make the discuss something on the talkpage, and just happen to have a legitimate viewpoint similar to that of a banned user, they should be able to write it in their own words. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you may have a misinformed impression of the level of reverting actually taking place in some cases. We are not simply talking about bald reverts of banned user comments. They are also complaining about even taking some nugget of the comment from a banned user which is pertinent to a discussion of improving an article, and pulling that into the talk page under your own signature. [Insert hypothetical administrator who would propose such a thing] would have you banned for such practices.

To give a hypothetical example, Scibaby is known to want to introduce material into the global warming articles related to methane and cow flatulence. Now, if some editor sees a comment from Scibaby on one of the talk pages that mentions this topic and it even provides a reference to a peer-reviewed paper in a scientific journal discussing such effects, and then that editor thinks hey, maybe this SHOULD be mentioned in the article and they pluck the same reference out of Scibaby's post perhaps including a bit of explanatory text and repost it Raul (mentioned here because he is the main Administrator chasing after Scibaby) is highly likely to call that reverting the comments of Scibaby. I disagree. Scibaby is banned, but discussions of cow flatulence and the effects of methane on climate change are not. --GoRight (talk) 15:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilawyering

2) Wikilawyering [refers] to certain quasi-legal practices, including... Misinterpreting policy or relying on technicalities to justify inappropriate actions. - Wikipedia:Wikilawyering

Comment by Arbitrators:

Just as with "Meatpuppetry" above, "Wikilawyering" means many things to many people. It might again be best to avoid the use of this type of term and just focus on the specific types of conduct that are being prohibited or discouraged. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Not hard to see why this is needed here. Raul654 (talk) 16:48, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, this practice needs to be stopped as it always causes disruptions. --CrohnieGal^Talk 11:27, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support, see Abd's response in the meatpuppetry section above -to my recollection, this is pervasive throughout his editing history. R. Baley (talk) 14:40, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed findings of fact

Abd has engaged in meatpuppetry

1) Abd has engaged in meatpuppetry on behalf of banned users Jed Rothwell and Scibaby [5].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Preposterous. It's not even on the map with Scibaby, but Raul hasn't presented actual evidence with any clarity. That's typical for Raul. He's a checkuser and oversighter, after all, why would he need to bother with real evidence? He's too busy whacking the moles in the game he helped to create. As to JedRothwell, again, where is the evidence? JedRothwell has expertise in the field of Cold fusion and makes occasional comments that are worth considering. (He's not banned, but so what? There is a block against an old account of his, issued three years after he last used it, based on ... what? He may be considered a blocked editor, but it's all quite shaky. I've never argued that editors could not revert his edits on sight, I've only claimed that restoring them may sometimes be appropriate.) I will, in my evidence, I expect, cover the edits involved, but allegations of meat puppetry were not part of any discussion connected with WMC's ban, as far as I'm aware. (Enric Naval has long made this charge, over and over, and he might have mentioned it before AN/I where it would have, again, been quite peripheral. However, it has never been shown or decided by consensus that my rare restorations of content from blocked or banned editors was improper. I've never been warned over it, as far as I recall, by any neutral editor, nor have I been blocked for it, and, from Raul's history with other editors, it's quite clear that if he believed he could make the Scibaby charge stick, he'd have blocked me.) --Abd (talk) 17:26, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"I've never been warned over it, as far as I recall, by any neutral editor" <-------------- but you have been warned multiple times by editors that you don't consider neutral, right? And what did you do about their warnings, may I ask? --Enric Naval (talk) 17:52, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I considered them and either accepted them or rejected them or compromised. I usually explain my position quite thoroughly, that's one of the complaints against me, actually. Only when an editor repeats the same spurious charges, over and over, do I start deleting them without comment or asking the editor to refrain from posting to my Talk. What, pray tell, am I supposed to do? I consider the positions on meat puppetry expressed here to be preposterous, and, while it's certainly not a common action for me, I've reverted in enough edits from blocked or banned editors without consequence, most frequently with no comment at all, and if the reality were as is being claimed (it is wikilawyering to claim that reverting a banned editor's content back in is a violation of policy based on a literalist interpretation of "ban," and a misinterpretation of "may be reverted" to morph it into "must be excluded"), and given that I've been closely tracked since WP:PRX days, I'd have been blocked. Instead, there never has been a community discussion that involved me and confirmed this position. I claim that if the project is improved, any editorial action like that is allowed, and unless an action is clearly against policy, AGF and IAR establish a presumption that what is not prohibited is allowed, and an editor may follow their own lights on this, until consensus against it becomes clear or there is collision with the rights of other editors. With policies, that means broad consensus, not just a local handful of editors screaming for blood because they are attached to a particular outcome. Or it means an ArbComm decision. Can anyone point to a relevant discussion or decision, if the policy is as alleged?

Once again, this proposed finding is not based on specific evidence provided, as far as I've seen, just general claims and charges. Verdict first, trial later. The alleged Scibaby meat puppetry only happened once, period, so I can assume the incident! It's this sequence: Original edit by alleged Scibaby sock], revert without comment by Raul654, my restoration with explanation, an explanation I've seen many times when I was so bold as to remove vandalism from an editor's talk page, and this wasn't vandalism. By the way, I've claimed in some places that I wasn't aware that this was a Scibaby sock. From my edit, I now see, this was obviously not true. Now that I see the discrepancy, I think I know what may have happened. My original simple revert was lost in a profusion of windows, and there may have been an access problem, Wikipedia was giving me error messages frequently, or I just closed the edit window accidentally. Later, when I realized that the edit hadn't been saved, I'd already looked around more, I knew more, and I redid the edit, and added the note about Scibaby. But I'm not sure. R.Baley -- recognize the name? -- reverted me. And I then commented, and more discussion ensued. GoRight eventually arrived and confirmed my impression that he'd want to respond to the edit. Now, tell me, was GoRight "meat puppeting" for Scibaby by restoring that edit? If so, and if this was done in the full view of a series of administrators who watch that page, and who had been claiming he'd be blocked for "proxying" for Scibaby, why wasn't he blocked or even warned? Discussion continued and Raul eventually made this enlightening comment. Raul watches GoRight talk and looks for edits that he suspects might be Scibaby, then checkusers the editor. Cool, eh? Wouldn't you like a tool like that? To use whenever you like? To check IP for a user who has a POV that is banned? Oops! We don't ban POVs, do we? I mean a user who has a POV like that of a banned user. If someone has been banned for what Raul thinks is your POV, checkuser restrictions, where disruptive editing is required before checkuser may be performed, apparently mean nothing. --Abd (talk) 02:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

@both Abd and GoRight. I expected Abd to stop and think "Hey, if so many editors are warning me about doing a certain thing, then maybe I am wrong about that thing?", and then stop doing that thing. IMHO, this is the root problem here. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:21, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Follows from above. Raul654 (talk) 16:38, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:46, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

He is proud of it. Mathsci (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject. ~~Abd cannot be a meat puppet of Jed Rothwell because Jed Rothwell is not banned.~~ Abd cannot be a meat puppet of "banned user" Jed Rothwell because Jed Rothwell is not banned. No direct community discussion of banning of Rothwell has ever been held, nor has a clear community consensus in support of a ban ever been demonstrated. Reverting the comment on my talk page was a courtesy to me, not a demonstration of support for Scibaby. --GoRight (talk) 23:01, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It's possible to be a meat puppet for anyone; if you edit on their behalf, it qualifies. If person X asked me to !vote on an AfD a certain way, and did so without question or independent review, I'd be their meatpuppet. I'm not saying this has been done, necessarily, just that your statement above is inaccurate. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:35, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In general you are correct. I have clarified my meaning above. You do point to a key point, that such editing had to be at the direction of ther other user (i.e. "If person X asked me to ...") in order to be a meat puppet of that user, correct? Where is the evidence that Abd acted at the direction of either Jed Rothwell or Scibaby?

Support. I think a couple of editors should read WP:MEAT again if they haven't already the User:Hersfold explains the problem pretty well. Also, an editor can be banned by an administrator and continue to be banned as long as there is no one available to unban. Please stop saying the editor isn't banned when he obviously is. For disclosure, I do not know the editor Jed Rothwell.--CrohnieGal^Talk 11:33, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Also, an editor can be ~~banned~~ indefinitely blocked by an administrator and ~~continue to be banned~~ as long as there is no one available to ~~unban~~ unblock, that block may be considered to be a ban." - That is a more accurate description of what WP:Banning policy actually states. So the question becomes, how do you know that there is no administrator available to unblock Jed Rothwell? Without such a determination Rothwell is more accurately described as indefinitely blocked than banned. --GoRight (talk) 21:05, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well until an adminstrator comes along and unblocks them they are banned, we don't need to poll all 1800 or however many there are these days. And to answer your earlier is obvious Abd was meatpuppeting because they knowingly restored the edits of a banned user. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:22, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Well until an administrator comes along and unblocks them they are ~~banned~~ indefinitely blocked." - Sorry but this statement disagrees with WP:Banning policy as it is currently written. The indefinite block only becomes a ban after we know, for a fact, that there IS no administrator willing to unblock. The policy is currently mute on what process is to be used to actually determine that no administrator is willing to unblock. If you find that situation unacceptable, well help find a consensus on how to address it in the policy. --GoRight (talk) 06:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry but this statement disagrees with WP:Banning policy as it is currently written - Gee, I wonder why that is? Raul654 (talk) 05:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can only assume that you somehow missed this, which restored the text of the policy to its state at the time of the events being discussed here and was performed well in advance of my comment here. You wouldn't be trying to give people any false impressions, would you? Regardless, I stand by my comment under either wording. --GoRight (talk) 17:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to indicate that Sarah had also changed the text to that state. However she reverted herself because she couldn't deal with the current page (which was filled with lenghty rantings and it was ridiculous for anoyone from outside to come in and the discussion and that others thought like her), and that she had to go to bed and she hadn't time to start a new section to discuss it[6]. So WMC wasn't alone in his opposition to that change. Also notice how experienced admins have later explained why the change is not good. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Enric Above "And what did you do about their warnings, may I ask?" - What would you have him do, Enric, simply give up and let the majority POV pushers have their way even though his actions do not violate any policy? Do you not think that there is any benefit from requiring such warnings to come for neutral parties? Given your apparent alignment with the individuals in question I guess I can understand why you might take this position. --GoRight (talk) 00:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd's wikilawyering

2) Abd frequently proffers his own interpretations of policy which are at odds with what policy actually says. He uses these false claims about policy to justify his own inappropriate behavior. This is wikilawyering.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Very accurate. In my evidence you can find the comments of many editors telling him over many months that he doesn't understand or misunderstands policy, but at this point in time he still thinks that he has the correct interpretation. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:47, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Opposed. Let me translate Raul's proposal. "what policy actually says" is not what policy actually says, it's what Raul believes it means. This proposal is internally contradictory, not uncommon with Raul's bullying bulls or fatwas. "Wikilawyering" doesn't refer to attempts to state the substance or meaning of policy, but to relying upon the actual wording of the policy in contrast to the substance. Thus, if I were "wikilawyering," I would not be stating what is at odds with what the policy "actually says," I would be doing the opposite: I'd be doing what he asserts in the second part: making a false claim about the real policy, i.e., the "intent of the law," based on accidental meanings of the text, in order to justify my own behavior (or that of others.) Occasionally, I consider that the wording of a policy does not reflect the intention. Further, I may sometimes err in my understanding of actual practice; after all, I've only been seriously editing this project for less than two effing years. I'm quick, but not that quick. But I do understand the basic principles on which this project was founded, why it worked to the extent it has, and why it has fallen short of the original ideals, in some respects, and I do express this native and instinctive understanding, which, to those who are rule-bound, can be puzzling. And to those who want everyone else to follow rules, with IAR applying only to them, infuriating. Underneath this case is a phenomenon I will need to address, as will ArbComm. My very presence can sometimes be disruptive, this did not begin here. However, I will say this: I've been ejected before for "disruption," where those with the power made that decision, and the results have not been good for the organizations, not necessarily because I was crucial, though sometimes I was, but because a society which rejects "gadflies," or those who mention the nudity of the emperor, has become rigid and unable to adapt to changing circumstances. For good social reasons, though, mentioning the nudity of the emperor needs to be properly confined and contained. It is not a simple problem.

I will note one fact: it seems that whenever Jimbo makes a bold decision, the community descends into an uproar. His activity is disruptive. For better or for worse? My position is that we need this kind of disruption, but we should take measures to contain it, and what it will require is nondisruptive means of rapid and efficient development of deep consensus, and this is something that is vigorously opposed by those who might lose some power were it to happen, or, at least, that is what they fear. --Abd (talk) 17:56, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

An extremely common Abd behavior. Raul654 (talk) 16:57, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Seems accurate. Mathsci (talk) 22:13, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reject. Abd's statements regarding policy are always backed by the clear text and spirit of the policy in question. --GoRight (talk) 23:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely, almost a textbook case. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:48, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree Sadly I have to agree to this. I have been talking a lot to editors about this case, including Abd, and I find a lot of wikilawyering going on to justify things. --CrohnieGal^Talk 12:02, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Endorse. Also note the salient point from Abd's long response above, "I've been ejected before for 'disruption,' . . ." -apparently from multiple "organizations". Food for thought, R. Baley (talk) 22:42, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. No way around it. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd/GoRight disruption of dispute resolution proceedings

GoRight and Abd have on multiple occasions attempted to derail dispute resolution proceedings against the other.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Mutual trolling societies are harmful to the project. Raul654 (talk) 21:53, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject - This is as ridiculous as Raul's claims on his WP:ATTACKPAGE page (a policy violation ... and note that Raul does not accuse me of misinterpreting that). This is also a prime example of his modus operandi. The fact that Abd and I tend to "participate" in some of the same proceedings is obviously an attempt on our part to "derail" the proceedings. We have our own little two person cabal, it seems, and Raul fears we may destroy the project. At least that's the view from inside Raul's myopically POV world. It would be amusing to write a parallel to Raul's screeds (here and on the evidence page) titled "Raul/WMC/SS/KDP/... Majority POV Pushing Society" and I could easily provide just as many examples (probably more) of where those same individuals support one another's positions in dispute resolution proceedings. However unlike some individuals who engage in disruptive activities for their own amusement, I do not. Last but not least, could Raul please explain how this is even relevant to the case at hand, or is he just using this proceeding as a stage to get attention for himself or his own amusement? --GoRight (talk) 01:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
- Last but not least, could Raul please explain how this is even relevant to the case at hand - because it gives the arbitrators a good idea of how much credibility to assign to your statements -- namely, none. Raul654 (talk) 14:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Looks that way to me. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it seems like it. Mathsci (talk) 07:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can say that when I see one the other is usually nearby. I've been curious about why this is.. --CrohnieGal^Talk 12:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Common interests. Common views. Nothing surprising or nefarious. --GoRight (talk) 00:02, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd has driven away subject matter experts

Abd has actively driven away subject matter experts from cold fusion articles, at least one of whom has cited Abd by name as the reason he quit.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Subject matter experts are a rare and valuable resource to the project. I can think of nothing so harmful to the project as Abd's behavior in this regard. Raul654 (talk) 17:18, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to be the case. See Kirk Shanahan's email quoted below. In discussions with experts who have simple points to make (EdChem, Kirk Shanahan), Abd does not appear to be taking in what they are saying and instead talks about unrelated things. He dismisses Shanahan as narrow: how can he make such an evaluation? It appears the two experts above agree on the cautious evaluation of sources on fringe science: Abd has been unwilling to accept this and his persistent meandering and evasive discussions do not create a fruitful environment for editing. His absence from cold fusion since the topic ban has seen a return to normal conditions of editing. Experts in chemistry are likely to be very irritated by Abd's frequent statements that cold fusion deserves to have many new articles written on it to chart the progress of this emerging science. However, this seems to be his personal view - so far there seems to be little evidence that it reflects cold fusion's place in mainstream science. The constant repetition of these extreme fringe views is unhelpful and disruptive. Mathsci (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reject Subject matter experts who argue against Wikipedia Policy we do not need. Shanahan's complaint is not with Abd, he names several people calling them all wiki-lawyers, and then adds this: "In order to get a NPOV article, the RS rule must be relaxed to take this situation into account, and no one seems to be willing to do that. So, any time I try to contribute, I get Wikilawyered." I guess you missed that part, Raul. Hmmm. A subject matter expert that wants to add material for which he cannot produce a WP:RS. That sounds like a likely WP:COI to me, like he has some WP:OR that he wants Wikipedia to endorse. Shouldn't the User:Pcarbonn topic ban be applied to him given that it seems others want it to be applied to Jed Rothwell for those exact reasons? --GoRight (talk) 20:13, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think this is a subject-matter expert grappling with the limits and edge cases of Wikipedia's content policies. Kirk's summary of the problem:

no one is doing _any_ work in the field except the fanatics (who have abandoned critical review), and thus _no_ negative articles get published and there is no base of information for news reporters to use to write cogent descriptions of the mainstream side. Yet a chemist can look at the pro-CF papers that are published and tick off multiple problems in analytical technique that invalidate the _conclusions_ presented in the papers, and it is those conclusions that end up in news reports and in Wiki articles.

In other words, our basic content policies are in tension with one another. We want to present a neutral, properly weighted and contextualized view of cold fusion (per WP:NPOV). However, the only people publishing on the topic are what Kirk termed "fanatics", restricting the available range of reliable sources such that simply counting them yields a false, non-neutral impression of the true state of knowledge and expert opinion. That's a real problem, cogently expressed by someone with actual expertise who has presumably left Wikipedia, and I'd be a little hesitant to disregard it as "he didn't want to follow our policies, so good riddance." I think he wanted to follow our policies, but found them in irreconcilable tension in this case. MastCell ^Talk 20:25, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

Abd banned

1) Abd is banned from Wikipedia.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Abd is a net negative to the project. When he was a fairly quiet net negative, that was merely irritating but tolerable. Now he seems determined to be a noisy net negative, this would appear to be the best solution William M. Connolley (talk) 18:40, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

A one year full ban could finally make him get the message that he has to change his behaviour in order to collaborate productively in wikipedia. And he woldn't be able to re-interpret it as an endorsement of his position, like he did with the advice in the last case (see #6 of here in evidence). The evidence I found shows that advising, encouraging, criticizing, etc, has gone on for months with no effect, and no acknowledgement of being a problem in his editing. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:57, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Mind you, a shorter full ban could serve the same purpose. Also, this has to be coupled with an indefinite ban from Cold fusion and its talk page, and from editing policy pages and their talk pages. If he wants to edit those again, he has to ask for a review of his edits by the community or by Arbcom. --Enric Naval (talk) 09:15, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

He contributes little and causes many problems. Clearly a case of someone we are better off without. Raul654 (talk) 16:46, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Its hard to see anything that Abd has contributed recently that hasn't been a ridiculous drain on other editor's time and energy. Their abject refusal to adapt their approach to meet the needs of other editors is unacceptable. Spartaz ^Humbug! 16:55, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

On a technical point, ArbCom has traditionally issued bans only up to one year. Stifle (talk) 20:16, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recently they have been banning outright. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:49, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately at present his own private agenda seems to take precedence over wikipedia policies. His net contribution is negative at the moment. Mathsci (talk) 22:11, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject. Abd has provided tireless services to the project and always seeks to find a fair and reasonable position duly supported by discussion and consensus. This is the ideal of the project and his efforts should be commended, not punished. --GoRight (talk) 23:07, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Approve Abd has been a disruptive influence on the cold fusion talk page, and dismisses criticism. For example, after I suggested he write shorter text on the cold fusion talk page and focus on the main article, he responded with this: [7]. Olorinish (talk) 01:07, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Undecided at the moment but leaning towards this if necessary. The dif above from Olorinish is some of what I've seen that tells me that Abd has too strong an agenda that he wants to go forward with if this case goes his way. I feel that Abd feels he has done a lot 'of research' on this subject that he feels he is an expert of sorts to build this article and more. I also don't like the feeling I'm getting that Abd is experimenting with the project towards some goal he has. This case has a feel like when Guido was experimenting with the project which was also rejected. I really think that Abd needs to start reading and listening to what the other editors are saying to him. --CrohnieGal^Talk 12:21, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GoRight prohibited from intervening in dispute resolution proceedings to which he is not a party

2) GoRight is prohibited from intervening in any dispute resolution proceeding (including but not limited to noticeboard threads, RFCs, or arbcom proceedings) in which he is not named as an involved party. GoRight is prohibited from requesting to be added as a party to such proceedings.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Needed in response to the "Abd/GoRight disruption of dispute resolution proceedings" FOF above. Raul654 (talk) 17:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Rude and uncalled for: People can make their opinions known wherever they wish, and the decision makers can weight them accordingly. Calling someone a troll and saying their opinions merit no weight are personal attacks and everything that's been said about GoRight following Abd around and defending him could be said about you and WMC. That you are an admin and GoRight is not does not give you any more right to give your opinion in a dispute resolution setting than he has. Oren0 (talk) 02:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

people can make their opinions known wherever they wish, and the decision makers can weight them accordingly. - aye, they are, and I'm making sure they have *all* the facts -- including GoRight's previous history of throwing sand in the gears of the dispute resolution process where Abd is concerned.

everything that's been said about GoRight following Abd around and defending him could be said about you and WMC - except that (a) I don't follow WMC around, and (b) I have not defended him. In fact, I haven't so much as mentioned his name in a single post here.

Calling someone a troll and saying their opinions merit no weight are personal attacks - see Wikipedia:Call a spade a spade, and specifically Users too often cite policies, like our policy against personal attacks and our policy against incivility, not to protect themselves from personal attacks, but to protect their edits from review.

That you are an admin and GoRight is not does not give you any more right to give your opinion in a dispute resolution setting than he has. - nice non-sequitur there. Nowhere did I say that admin opinions should count more than non-admins -- I said that GoRight's opinion should count for nothing because based on his past history, his comments are (a) mostly fallacious, and (b) designed to obstruct the dispute resolution process. Raul654 (talk) 03:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Truth be told, I'd like to see this sort of remedy implemented more often and more aggressively by ArbCom across the board. Any parties who are consistently contributing far more heat than light to any proceedings ought to be given the boot. (A variation on this theme was extremely effective in one of the Everyking cases.) I wonder, however, if this ought not start out as an injunction – temporary or permanent – so as to offer immediate relief to the participants in this case. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:28, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's not a bad idea, but it has to be proposed by the parties to the case. Enric or WMC - as parties to this case, would you please suggest an injunction prohibiting GoRight from further participation in this case? Raul654 (talk) 17:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed enforcement

Template

1) {text of proposed enforcement}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Template

2) {text of proposed enforcement}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposals by User:William M. Connolley

Proposed principles

WP:BURO

1) WP:BURO is reaffirmed: Wikipedia is not governed by statute: it is not a moot court, and rules are not the purpose of the community. Instruction creep should be avoided. Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are descriptive, not prescriptive. Do not follow an overly strict interpretation of the letter of policy to violate the principles of the policy. If the rules prevent you from improving the encyclopedia, ignore them.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Compare the somewhat similar/related proposals I made under principles and remedies on the workshop in the Abd and JzG case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:25, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by parties:

Generally I'm strongly against the pointless reaffirmation of policy, but this one seems to get forgotten far too readily and people need reminding William M. Connolley (talk) 18:46, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It would probably be better to provide a short summary here rather than simply "we have this policy" - that's the usual way these principles are handled. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:37, 18 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I've plucked out some of the bits I like William M. Connolley (talk) 18:24, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, but it needs a short summary, like Hersfold says. --Enric Naval (talk) 08:58, 19 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support, with a caveat: increasingly, as the language of the policies and guidelines matures, it should, in theory, become increasingly accurate as to actual practice; substantial deviation between the text of policy and the practice is harmful to the project, as editors will expect, for example, to be protected against administrative abuse by the "letter of the law." The proper balance between IAR, which is essentially the normal discretion of the executive function, and "equal protection under the law" is one which always involves some tension. I have not argued that WMC could not ban me under IAR. It's remarkable that he seems to assert, on the one hand, that his ban was proper under that principle, but, on the other, that this was not his reason (perhaps I'll come back with diffs.) However, IAR isn't restricted to administrators, it applies to all editors, and the problem arises when an admin takes a tenacious position, especially when there is a level of involvement or bias. If I believe that, for example, global warming criticism is pernicious and inherently disruptive and damaging to what society needs to do, urgently, and that, to boot, it is Not True, I may easily believe that IAR would require me to act to prevent this garbage from being put in articles, and blocking the editor might seem the most efficient action to me. Hence we require evidence of policy violations to justify blocks, long-term. Short term, in my opinion, an admin can do just about anything, provided the user affected is experienced, and that the community responds with a just decision quickly. We've lost a lot of admins and editors who retired because of some problematic IAR decision by another admin that wasn't promptly corrected. Rootology may have just retired, partially over WMC's revert warring with him at User talk:Hipocrite over notice of this very RfAr. WMC was ignoring rules, Rootology was trying to follow them. How did the community respond? Were WMC's blatant violations noticed? Where an admin's actions consistently Ignore Rules, they should probably be reviewed for possible bias or incompetence. The ignoring, itself, isn't the issue, it is the result, as well as, especially with administrative actions, the appearance created of Wikipedia adminsitrative capriciousness, quite damaging. --Abd (talk) 18:18, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd, this section is for discussion of the proposed principle. Your comment, particularly near the end, seems to focus more on past events in a rather accusatory tone (edit: with no apparent information to back up the claims) rather than the merits of the principle. Please remove it and focus more on the latter. Thank you. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 23:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

A useful restatement of policy, "Thou shalt not wikilawyer". Mathsci (talk) 07:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by User:Stephan Schulz

Proposed principles

Expert opinion is essential

1) Many topics covered on Wikipedia are so complex that expert knowledge is necessary to properly understand and contextualize them.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

support William M. Connolley (talk) 11:14, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. However, just as with the expertise that is essential to good medical care, the final decisions should be in the hands, not of experts, but of ordinary editors, the "patients." Expertise should be solicited, welcome, and respected, but it should not dominate or control. Generally, true experts may be COI on the issues. I do not believe that experts should be excluded from writing articles -- at all -- but where controversy appears, experts should refrain from incivility and from edit warring to maintain preferred content, but patiently explain the issues to the community. The consensus that we should seek with all articles obviously should include the consent of experts as to the accuracy of the articles and their freedom from the kinds of misinterpretations that non-experts may easily fall prey to. Experts, as well, who have extensive knowledge of fringe fields, should be similarly welcome in discussion and be a part of the consensus we seek. By the way, Cold fusion is an interdisciplinary field, that's one reason why it's such a problem article. --Abd (talk) 13:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. I have found this problem both in science-related and in history-related articles. We needed the help of experts to untangle certain points in the articles, and to counter some POV pushers that misrepresented sources in ways that a non-expert could not notice without a lot of investigative work in that field. Also, assesing which sources are really important and which ones aren't, and knowing where to search for sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:23, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is particularly true of interdisciplinary topics in science. Mathsci (talk) 09:49, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is undeniably true, but it's dramatically at odds with the project's prevailing ethos and self-image, where real-world expertise is treated as an unnecessary luxury - nice if it happens to be available, but hardly essential. Real-world expertise has never saved an editor from being drowned out, blocked, or banned if they can't figure out The System. I'm hopeful that as the project has grown, the old attitudes toward expertise are evolving (case in point). On the other hand, most of our articles - including our best work - continues to be written and maintained by enthusiastic and curious amateurs. I don't think we can resolve this fundamental tension in this ArbCom case. MastCell ^Talk 17:00, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"essential" is incorrect. If that were true we would have no science articles at all, or at least significantly less. Change "essential" to "useful" or even "highly desirable" and perhaps I could by in. Having made that distinction clear, I otherwise agree with User:MastCell on the cultural aspects. --GoRight (talk) 05:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cough - the reason why some of our scientific articles are so good if because of the involvement subject experts helping to write them. Driving them away with relentless drivel, rampant tinfoilhatism and never ending walls of text does little to ensure that the quality of articles in other areas improves. (not this is not specifically aimed at Abd but if the tinfoilhat fits as they say you are welcome to draw your own conclusions. Spartaz ^Humbug! 17:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that experts are driven away by masses of ignorant commentary, or long commentary, on Talk pages, and that's irrelevant to most science articles anyway, long comments mostly arise when there is serious controversy. No, they are driven away because they discover that making an article right is pushing a boulder up the hill, and then it rolls down when some other editor "improves" it who doesn't know beans. Yet experts alone may sometimes be responsible for this; if the article were crystal clear in the first place, if it explained the subject very well, those harmful changes would be less likely, and general community support in maintaining the article more likely, since anyone reviewing the damage would be more likely to recognize it. I will be talking in New York about how we might improve this process and make it more reliable. Experts -- and many others -- are driven away by Wikipedia's incredible inefficiency, and it's essential we address that. It can be done without sacrificing the wiki principles. --Abd (talk) 17:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Having Abd give a talk on expert retention and our treatment of science articles is sort of like having the fox give a lecture about hen house security. Raul654 (talk) 17:38, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support with caveat: This particular arbitration arose mostly because of Abd's efforts in the Cold fusion article. THAT subject isn't so complex as many others, simply because if CF is real, nobody yet knows for sure how it happens. Should it be real and become thoroughly understood, then at that time the article's complexity is likely to increase significantly. But until then, if it ever happens, the article can only be about what is known: Claims vs Counterclaims, and many experiments that were mostly conducted under the radar of the more prestigious journals. ALL here are likely qualified to edit the article at that level! I therefore submit that this section of this page is not particularly relevant to this Arbitration case. V (talk) 20:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus is not achieved by default(ing)

2) Meaningful consensus is only achieved by informed editors agreeing on a question, or at least agreeing to disagree. It is not achieved by wearing people out with sheer mass of text, wikilawyering, and nagging. So-called "consensus" that is only achieved by driving off or wearing out all opposing editors has no value. Discussion styles that have this effect are disruptive and wasteful.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Agree. Abd's comments have that effect on other editors, even if he doesn't believe that they do, and even if he thinks those long comments are necessary for discussion, as shown here. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Mathsci (talk) 16:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support with caveat: Nobody is required to study all of a long post. Why is there an implication that just because some long post exists, it must be studied entire (not skimmed or ignored)? Abd's many long posts haven't worn me out, at all.... V (talk) 20:43, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly disagree with V's comment above. People who want to contribute to a wikipedia article are likely to attempt to read or skim every recent post on the talk page because those posts often lead to article edits. I have done this for the cold fusion article for two years, and I believe Abd's text is extremely tedious and distracting to the other editors. As I see it, he does far more soapboxing than improving the article and should therefore be banned. Olorinish (talk) 02:58, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Olorinish, soapboxing and repetitions can be ignored. Abd's text is tedious only if one forces oneself to read all of it. The CORRECT counter to "freedom of speech" is the right to not listen. Shall I say to YOU: "I don't like the way you say what you say; therefore you should be silenced?" No? Then why are you saying that about Abd? V (talk) 14:32, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The purpose of the wikipedia organization is to produce a useful encyclopedia, not to provide a forum for people to have free speech. Editor time is valuable and limited, so filling talk pages with useless text should not be allowed. Therefore, the correct counter to someone who fills talk pages with useless text should be a review by a panel of authorized experts/administrators, possibly followed by a ban. Olorinish (talk) 16:07, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Who defines "useless text"? Anything that does not support your POV? Most of Abd's text has been about Cold Fusion, one way or another. A considerable portion is about reasons why some particular item (usually a pro-CF item) might be included in the article. Which is exactly what the Talk page is for. When the proposal is opposed, that's where a lot of repetition enters the discussion. Did it ever occur to you that if there was less opposition to including something (either "pro" OR "con") in the article, there would be less argumentation about it? See my comment farther down, starting "I support Shanahan's point..." V (talk) 16:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is why talk comments need to be on point and brief to allow everyone to participate in discussion so consensus can be reached. Long rambling blocks of text either disenfranchise the writer or the reader and - most worrying - they tend to disenfranchise the reader when the writer insists on repeating the block of text ad nauseum. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Concur with everything said by Olorinish. Raul654 (talk) 05:41, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. "Discuss until consensus is reached" does not equate to "drown one's fellow editors in verbiage until they give up." Also note that "you don't have to read it" is erroneous, because Abd bases his subsequent actions on what he has written before. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:44, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I support "Meaningful consensus is only achieved by informed editors agreeing on a question, or at least agreeing to disagree." but not the rest. I agree with V's comment above. I would disagree with Boris above in the following sense: one can easily skim Abd's posts to see if there is anything of import at the time in them. If there is, you read the relevant portions only. If there is not, you simply ignore it. If at some later time Abd takes an action pursuant to something you missed you are free to object at that time and must read the relevant post in detail only then. I find it simply absurd that the length of Abd's posts has become the main rallying point against him, not their substance. If that is the worst of Abd's sins here on Wikipedia then ArbCom's decision should be quite easy IMHO. --GoRight (talk) 16:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, GoRight; I was about to say some of the same thing. And Boris is a bit wrong on one point; Abd does not base his actions ONLY on what he has written before, else why would he be asking for consensus? And, I might remind all here a basic thing about the Editing Process: It involves distilling a lot of information. Duh, Abd provides a lot of information. If a would-be editor can't distill it, by skimming for gems and ignoring redundancies, what good is that person AS an editor? Whose competence should ACTUALLY be on trial here? V (talk) 16:25, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I do hope you're not trying to imply the other editors involved in this case are incompetent... Hersfold non-admin^(t/a/c) 17:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would also support the following from V above: "And, I might remind all here a basic thing about the Editing Process: It involves distilling a lot of information. Duh, Abd provides a lot of information." This is an excellent point in Abd's favor here. It would be hard to argue that Abd is anything other than thorough and industrious at pulling together material for the things that he is focused on. When Abd is focused on content, as he was in Cold Fusion, these qualities can be highly beneficial to the project because he knows the policies well and he pulls in much applicable material for consideration that is otherwise hard to find. Even if that material is voluminous as some claim, it is none the less far more compact and digestible for other editors to review than is the entire of the internet and all other published sources. This seems obvious to me. YMMV. --GoRight (talk) 17:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed findings of fact

Not enough experts

1) Wikipedia has difficulties in attracting and retaining experts. Especially for topics that are also subject to "balanced" coverage in the popular press, experts have a hard time defending real NPOV (reflecting the considered opinions of experts on a topic) against popular misconceptions. Randy in Boise seems to be able to tie up valuable contributor time forever.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Alas, all too obvious William M. Connolley (talk) 11:15, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. However, in some fields, experts are more likely to be blocked or banned than ordinary editors. Experts tend to imagine, funny thing, that they know the field better than others, so incivility can be a problem, as an expert tries to explain an issue to someone who either doesn't have the background or doesn't have the patience to follow the explanation, and loses his or her temper. And it can take a lot of words, and experts can think their topic of expertise is highly interesting! My own view is that we need far more sophisticated ways of dealing with the problem of experts. For starters, many or most experts have a COI on the topics of expertise, so it is arguable that experts should advise us in Talk, and leave the editing to non-experts. We need both protect experts from unreasonable behavior by other editors and protect other editors from abuse by experts. Itchy block fingers don't help. Mathsci asserts expertise in math, and I have no particular reason to doubt that. However, it's clear what the result is for him: heavy attachment to articles he has substantially edited. When an editor finds that the article is unnecessarily obfuscatory or full of jargon that might take a huge amount of research and study for an ordinary reader to follow, and tries to edit it to make it comprehensible, Mathsci may edit war, or call for administrative assistance, and there is a fairly clear case of that recently involving WMC. Mathsci, to demonstrate his credentials as an editor to me, pointed me to articles he'd created. With The Four Seasons (Poussin), I commend him for his fascinating article. I assume he has no WP:COI there. However, Differential geometry of surfaces and Plancherel theorem for spherical functions, he also asserted as examples, are impenetrable jargon, very poorly written for a general-audience encyclopedia. I'm pretty confident that these topics could be far better described in ordinary language, if not thoroughly explored without establishing the specialized language (which can be done,it's an aspect of good technical writing. What we have here is what some kinds of experts will produce if not stringently edited. There is a reason why experts use specialized language: it's precise. But that very precision can be a barrier to understanding; hence an introduction to a topic will avoid the specialized language at the beginning. But this introduces lack of perfect expression, which can be horrifying to an expert. Mathsci's profession is a barrier to his being a good managing editor on topics where he is expert. A much better article would result from a cooperative interaction between experts and ordinary readers, and the latter would insist on comprehensibility, while the former may be more concerned with accuracy. If they find consensus, it's likely to be pretty good! But would Mathsci permit this "ignorant editor" to work on the article? From my observations, not. --Abd (talk) 19:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As to Kirk shanahan, see Mathsci's comment below, he is a kind of expert, to be sure, and he confines himself to Talk, as he should, but his suggestions can be highly misleading, he knows his own subspecialty and is a bit obsessed by it, and his comments about other editors can be quite uncivil, making my point above. He is a rare bird, one of the most recently published under peer review with criticism of the excess heat phenomenon that was the core discovery -- or allegation -- in 1989. Most other scientists, among those who have reviewed the evidence in depth, as can be documented, have accepted excess heat as real, or possibly real, explanation still not clear. Shanahan is actually quite isolated, but valuable as someone who has criticized cold fusion since the early 1990s, so sometimes he can point to evidence that the rest of us would miss. He does so with heavy bias, though, his interpretations and reports of what is in RS are unreliable. Pcarbonn, apparently an expert, currently a researcher employed in the field, topic banned. ScienceApologist, a physicist and possibly a particle physicist, still allowed to edit Talk, but banned from the article (as he possibly should be from COI), but he doesn't. I wish he would. And JedRothwell, possibly one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on the overall topic, not as a scientist, but as a writer and editor (he edits papers for scientists whose native language is not English, apparently he's currently working on papers on cold fusion for Naturwissenschaften), blocked and considered by some to be banned, even though he confined himself to Talk since 2006. An IP editor showed up in December whose POV resembled, to a non-expert (JzG) that of Jed Rothwell, blocked by JzG as a sock, quite blatantly an error. Basically, if an expert in the field, someone familiar with the research, starts editing the article, or even just commenting in Talk, they will meet severe opposition. That's what happened to me as I developed my knowledge of the field through reading the sources, and reported what I found, and even more opposition when I stopped talking and started actually editing, adding sourced material. Yes, sources satisfying WP:RS. I'm still not a true expert, but am far more so, I'd guess, than any other current editor I've seen show up at the article. It's all relative. SA has more knowledge of nuclear physics, I'm sure, but is Cold fusion a nuclear physics article? There is a contradiction involved in asserting that it is! Does he know the recent research published under peer review, and the peer-reviewed secondary sources on this particular topic? It is quite arguable that it's a chemistry or electrochemistry article, and opinion among electrochemists -- experts in calorimetry -- and nuclear physics -- experts in physics that developed largely with an assumption that the chemical environment was irrelevant to nuclear processes -- is apparently quite divergent. What's the mainstream view? Mainstream what? --Abd (talk) 19:17, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Support Every once in a while you encounter a "Randy in Boise" guy, and it takes ages to get rid of him, or even to get him to understand his position that is not supported by sources, and to explain the problems with the sources that he presents. Experts have better things to do with their lives than wasting time in volunteer projects that allow this thing to prolongate so much in time. If they don't see clear support from wikipedia then they will just go away, or they will go to more obscure articles with no controversies, leaving those articles to be controlled by Randy in Boise, who will makes a mess that someone will later have to clean up. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:23, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Support. One such expert Kirk shanahan has privately communicated with me by email his own experiences at cold fusion. He has given permission for his comments to be disclosed if that is deemed appropriate. Mathsci (talk) 09:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC) I have replied to part of Abd's irrelevant and rambling comments about me on the discussion page where this sort of off-topic stuff belongs, if anywhere. [reply]

Here is Kirk shanahan's email that he has said I may reproduce:

“

The problem with getting more involved in the Wiki CF article is not whether I have the time or not, it is in whether or not I can expect any return on the investment I make. So far, after two attempts to modify the Wiki article (2005 and 2008), I have to conclude I can expect no return (the 'return' being an inclusion of why the mainstream doesn't think cold fusion is real in the article). Therefore any addition to the debate going on (on Cryptic C62's CF page right?) is pointless.

You see, everyone is happy as long as there is no one trying to add mainstream thought to the article. But as soon as I try, the Wikilawyers come out of the woodwork. First it was PCarbonn and Jed Rothwell, then V, then Abd. I suspect the supply is endless. The fundamental problem is that Wiki editors are unwilling to realize that there is nearly no RS on the mainstream side, since, as is noted in the current article, the field was declared 'pariah' around 1993-4. They don't want to understand that that means no one is doing _any_ work in the field except the fanatics (who have abandoned critical review), and thus _no_ negative articles get published and there is no base of information for news reporters to use to write cogent descriptions of the mainstream side. Yet a chemist can look at the pro-CF papers that are published and tick off multiple problems in analytical technique that invalidate the _conclusions_ presented in the papers, and it is those conclusions that end up in news reports and in Wiki articles. In order to get a NPOV article, the RS rule must be relaxed to take this situation into account, and no one seems to be willing to do that. So, any time I try to contribute, I get Wikilawyered. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result to occur. I like to think I am sane, so I have deliberately stopped any significant contributions to the CF debate at Wiki, except to occasionally point out some facts like my most recent comment on the Widom-Larsen theory and the SPAWAR results. It's not really relevant to the science anyway.

”

In my experience, the problem is that the people who most readily adopt and self-apply the mantle of "expert" tend to be closer to enthusiastic amateur than true subject-matter expert. And the more loudly someone asserts their "expertise", the more likely they're pushing a minoritarian point of view way out of proportion to its actual relevance. To extend Stephan's analogy, Randy in Boise is likely to assert that he is an "expert" on the sword-skeleton theory, since he has researched and published extensively on it (on his own website) while Thucydides, Donald Kagan, and Victor Herbert Davis are totally silent on the topic.
People who are working to make this a more serious, respectable reference work don't need to constantly fall back on their "expertise" - they have recourse to actual reliable sources. MastCell ^Talk 17:03, 20 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly don't mean this to be a snide comment, but is there a point here? What is it? Yes we have trouble retaining experts. So what? Are you planning an as of yet unwritten proposed remedy for this? I am also a bit vague on how this applies to the case at hand. This just strikes me as being a random fact. Can you please attempt to enlighten me on these points? --GoRight (talk) 05:36, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes we have trouble retaining experts - Abd and other anti-science crackpots are actively driving away actual subject matter experts. But since GoRight is having difficulty making the connection to this case, perhaps Stephan Schulz should rewrite this proposal to be less abstract and make the Abd connection more clear. Raul654 (talk) 05:40, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I support Shanahan's point that, basically, there has been too much demand for WP:RS over WP:Verify in the CF article. The demand prevents much data that readers might find interesting (regardless of "pro" or "con") from getting added. The demand is also somewhat inconsistent with respect to the whole of Wikipedia, in my opinion, since many articles include news of recent events, without waiting for third-party reviews of second-party descriptions of those events. For them, WP:Verify seems "good enough". To the extent that CF detractors insist that the phenomenon is not real, it seems to me that WP:Verify should be good enough for that article, too, for sources of claims and counterclaims. But if it should ever become Officially Verified (whatever that means in the scientific community), then at that time it could be quite appropriate to clamp down on sources, restricting them to the WP:RS set like the other solid-science articles. V (talk) 21:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Nevermind Stephan, I have done so myself above. Raul654 (talk) 17:19, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Raul is making serious charges with no evidence. "Driving away actual subject matter experts?" Examples? The history shows the opposite, the experts who have been driven away were not driven away by me. Does anyone notice that the "expert" Shanahan is arguing against RS guidelines? I've stated he's valuable, but his view is highly biased and highly misleading. He tells half the story, and what he says is often not supported by the sources. Cold fusion work is now being published, for example, in Naturwissenschaften, which is a mainstream, major interdisciplinary journal. That's been happening for some years now. Surely there would appear some skeptical responses (and, indeed, there are some); at least if the "rejection" of cold fusion was based on science, and not simply on fear, which it appears much of it was. Simon covers this: for quite some time, and there is evidence it still is true, if you supported cold fusion, or even tried to research it, there went your career. We have one impoverished article for a field that could justify many articles, on the history, the various kinds of research and the techniques, the theories, of which there are many, and the very name "cold fusion" is misleading. It might not be fusion at all, though the consistent, verified detection of helium correlated with excess heat makes fusion very likely as a part of the explanation. It's clear that it's not what was expected in 1989, and that explains a great deal of the difficulty in the field. --Abd (talk) 17:25, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Abd could you move your comment to the appropriate section or could a clerk please move? Thanks, R. Baley (talk) 17:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, my understanding is that parties may respond in situ, the "parties" section is a privilege, not a prison. It seems that R. Baley is not alone, so I'd appreciate clarification from a clerk or discussion on Talk. I could see an argument for avoiding threaded discussion on the Workshop page as well as on the Evidence page, but that isn't the status quo. --Abd (talk) 17:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No matter how you interpret the "Parties" vs "Others" section, it's self-evident that this comment would be better placed as a comment to Raul's actual suggestion, and not as a reply to his announcement that he made one. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals by User:GoRight

Proposed principles

I am actually a tad reluctant to even make these proposals as they are being made strictly in response to Raul's proposals above. For that reason I see them as being out of scope and arguably a distraction from the case at hand. However, since Raul has seen fit to make this proceeding a WP:BATTLEGROUND for his personal grudges which are wholly unrelated to the case at hand I feel that I must present some additional good faith alternatives to his proposals above.

Pursuant to this comment I have considered each of my proposals below. To the limited extent that the partial reversion of a few of Jed Rothwell's comments is pertinent to this case, I believe that all of these proposals are applicable, in scope, and I would ask that they be given serious consideration.

I believe that adopting them would have benefits which reach far beyond this one case given the stated intentions of certain administrators which are likely to cause additional disruption across the project unless these points are made clear.

The policy was written so as to specifically recognize that in cases were there is benefit to the project for doing so, the content of even banned users may be reverted so long as the editor performing the revert has verified its content, has their own reasons for considering it beneficial to the project, and is willing to accept responsibility for the content under their own name.

Restoration of Constructive Content

1) The simple act of restoring content, either by revert or refactoring, which is pertinent to the advancement of the project and otherwise within policy shall NOT be construed as proxying or meat puppetry regardless of the origins of that content or the namespace in which the restoration occurred. Any user who performs such a restoration takes full personal responsibility for the content actually restored.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

No. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:59, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed The advancement of the project should not be hampered by the automatic and unthinking application of other principles or policies such as WP:MEAT. If constructive content is identified it should be adopted regardless of its origins. --GoRight (talk) 16:40, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject. Patently contradicted by Wikipedia:Banning policy, which states: Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them... Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry. Users who reinstate such edits take complete responsibility for the content by so doing. Notice that it does *not* say "taking responsibility" for an edit is not meatpuppetry, nor does it say it is not a violation of policy. Also notice that policy only allows someone to take responsibility for edits which are "verifiable" (presumably referring only to article edits) and where the person doing the restoration has "independent reasons for making them" and that GoRight has conviently omitted both of these conditions from his proposal. This is a rather transparent attempt by GoRight to retroactively justify his and Abd's violations of the policy. Raul654 (talk) 16:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them." - Note the key phrase "at the direction of" requires an established communication between the puppet and its master. Note also that "unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them" does NOT limit its scope to mainspace articles as Raul asserts.

"Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry. Users who reinstate such edits take complete responsibility for the content by so doing." - Note the key phrase "reinstating edits", again no restriction on mainspace articles. Note also that the key phrase is "may be viewed" not must or shall be viewed. Note that the phrase "unless they are able" which suggests that such edits are permissible as long as they are verifiable and the editor making the restoration has independent reasons for doing so. One such reason might be that the edit actually contained constructive content that was pertinent to the advancement of the project. ArbCom should affirm that that such cases do not constitute meat puppetry.

Now note the part that Raul leaves out from the banning policy, "Wikipedia's sock puppetry policy defines "meatpuppetry" as the recruitment of new editors to Wikipedia for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus. It strongly discourages this form of editing, and new users who engage in the same behavior as a banned or blocked user in the same context, and who appear to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose, are subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining.". Note that Abd is clearly NOT a new account, nor is he editing solely for any of the purposes called out above. I would argue that the same applies to myself as well, but you can come to your own conclusions on that count. --GoRight (talk) 17:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note the key phrase "at the direction of" requires an established communication between the puppet and its master. - it requires no such thing. If I do an action because someone else did it first (like restoring their edit, or reposting their talk page comments), I am acting at their direction, even if I have not had an a-priori contact with them.

Note also that "unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them" does NOT limit its scope to mainspace articles as Raul asserts. Yes, it does. Talk page edits are not required to be "verifiable", while article edits are (--Wikipedia:Verifiability). The sentence is clearly referring to article edits, GoRight's wikilawyering not withstanding.

Note the key phrase "reinstating edits", again no restriction on mainspace articles. - that's because the immediately prior sentence restricts it to "verifiable" mainspace edits.

Note also that the key phrase is "may be viewed" not must or shall be viewed. - Restorations of banned users' edits should be rare and only done in non-controversial cases. Determining whether or not an edit was meatpuppetry is up to other Wikipedians. If *any* of them choose to call it meatpuppetry, then it is meatpuppetry. And that should serve as a big red flag to anyone thinking about doing it.

Note that the phrase "unless they are able" which suggests that such edits are permissible as long as they are verifiable and the editor making the restoration has independent reasons for doing so. - nice try, but you are totally ignoring the sentence that directly addresses this point: "Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban." This means that such edits should be avoided, even if they are permissable under the letter of the banning policy.

Note that Abd is clearly NOT a new account, nor is he editing solely for any of the purposes called out above. I would argue that the same applies to myself as well, but you can come to your own conclusions on that count. - GoRight is hanging his hat on applying the restrictions against acting as a meatpuppet as applying only to new users. Well, the arbcom is not obligated to follow that precise definition -- if they choose to view Abd as acting as a meatpuppet for Jed and Scibaby, despite the fact that Abd is not new, they they are well within their rights to do so. Raul654 (talk) 18:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"If *any* of them choose to call it meatpuppetry, then it is meatpuppetry." - I think that given the context this clearly demonstrates Raul's ultimate goals in making these proposals. Well, that coupled with his prior statements regarding the impact of such ArbCom rulings on the community. He is merely trying to setup ArbCom to be his excuse for blocking people he disagrees with by labeling them meat puppets of Scibaby on his say so alone. Note that this discussion, [8] [9] [10] [11] in regards to Raul's checkuser practices is also quite illuminating, especially given his recent admission at the end of this. Quite a bit of power he is trying to carve out there. I would urge the Arbiters to consider this point carefully in their deliberations. As to the rest of this I have made my points and shall rely on the arbiters to render a fair and even-handed ruling. --GoRight (talk) 20:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that given the context this clearly demonstrates Raul's ultimate goals in making these proposals. - You have acted as a meatpuppet for Scibaby on a number of prior occasions, and have tried twice now to wikilawyer your way around the consequences (first by editing the banning policy, and now by trying to get the arbcom to adopt these ridiculous proposals that have no basis in policy). My ultimate goal here is that nobody is allowed to meatpuppet for him, and if you continue to do so, that you are banned for meatpuppetry. Clear enough? Raul654 (talk) 20:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, your disruption of this proceeding in the pursuit of your own personal grudges which are totally unrelated to this case is duly noted. --GoRight (talk) 21:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My disruption of these proceedings? Pot, meet kettle. Black. Raul654 (talk) 22:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly reject. Please reread the policies and not over analyze things. --CrohnieGal^Talk 13:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What possible reason could you have to "strongly reject" the restoration of constructive content? Please elaborate. --GoRight (talk) 13:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Doesn't seem helpful. Mathsci (talk) 16:54, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Meat Puppetry Inherently Requires the Direction of a Puppet Master

2) Meat puppetry inherently involves having the puppet act at the direction of a puppet master. To successfully demonstrate that an editor is acting as a meat puppet requires that reasonable evidence be presented to demonstrate that the accused is explicitly acting at the direction of another editor.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Too narrow interpretation of policy, basically renders it useless. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:01, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed --GoRight (talk) 17:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Reject. Flatly contradicted by Wikipedia:Banning policy, which says that Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry.. Notice there is no requirement that the person restoring the banned user's content be doing so at the behest of the banned user. As with GoRight's other proposed principle, this is a transparent attempt by him to retroactively justify his and Abd's previous violations of the policy. Raul654 (talk) 17:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Note the selective nature of Raul's quoting of policy. Just a few minutes ago he quoted this above: "Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user". Highlighting is mine. --GoRight (talk) 18:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

GoRight seems to think "at the direction of" requires direct communications between the banned user and the meatpuppet. He is wrong -- it means acting at the behest of another user, even if you've never talked with him or her. GoRight's interpretation is contrary to both the spirit and the usual application of the policy. Raul654 (talk) 18:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I shall rely upon the arbiters to decide whether Raul's implied meaning of "at the behest of" means the same thing as "at the direction of". The policy clearly states "at the direction of". --GoRight (talk) 18:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What poppycock. The contortions you are going through to enable Abd's disruption are becoming laughable now. Spartaz ^Humbug! 19:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you are correct then undoubtedly the arbiters will see it as you do. Regarding the actual meaning of "behest", I simply refer you to an impartial source. So, if by "contortions" you mean "a clear reading of the actual text", then I stand guilty as charged. --GoRight (talk) 20:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

actually i'd prefer you not to try and reinterpret my text in your own meaning, nor would i like you to put words in my mouth. Spartaz ^Humbug! 21:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It was never my intention to do either, but if I did I apologize. If you want I can give you a revised response but please provide a clarification of your original meaning first. If not, then we appear to be done here. --GoRight (talk) 22:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly reject. Please reread policy and guidelines about this. It's been made clear on multiple ocassions that this is not what is meant. --CrohnieGal^Talk 13:13, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I would respectfully suggest that you might do the same. If this is not what is meant then perhaps the policy and guidelines should be updated to reflect what actually is meant, as you claim, since it has also been pointed out on multiple occasions that this IS what the actual text says. --GoRight (talk) 13:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Incorrect interpetation of meatpuppetry. Mathsci (talk) 16:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Portions of the existing WP:BAN policy are acknowledged and reaffirmed.

3) The following [highlighted] portions of the now existing WP:BAN policy are hereby ~~emphasized and affirmed~~ acknowledged and reaffirmed:

In section titled "Editing on behalf of banned users":

Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them. Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect may be reverted. Wikipedia's sock puppetry policy defines "meatpuppetry" as the recruitment of new editors to Wikipedia for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus. It strongly discourages this form of editing, and new users who engage in the same behavior as a banned or blocked user in the same context, and who appear to be editing Wikipedia solely for that purpose, are subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining.

In section titled "Enforcement by reverting edits":

Users are generally expected to refrain from reinstating edits made by banned users in violation of the ban, and such edits may be viewed as meatpuppetry. Users who reinstate such edits take complete responsibility for the content by so doing. It is not possible to revert newly created pages, as there is nothing to revert to. Such pages may be speedily deleted. Any user can put a {{db-g5}}, or its alternative name {{db-banned}}, to mark such a page. If the banned editor is the only contributor to the page or its talk page, speedy deletion is probably correct. If other editors have unwittingly made good-faith contributions to the page or its talk page, it is courteous to inform them that the page was created by a banned user, and then decide on a case-by-case basis what to do.

NOTE: The highlighting above only illustrates the points which are being ~~emphasized and affirmed~~ acknowledged and reaffirmed within this principle. There is no intent that the actual text of the policy be so modified.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

No. Goes against the spirit of the policy, renders it useless, tries to write policy in stone by having Arbcom reinforce it (I expect GoRight to later point out at this principle every time that he tries to restore the edit of a banned editor). Others points other flaws below. Kind of reminds how Martinphi wikilawyered about WP:FRINGE so he could run loops around it. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:05, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by others:

Proposed --GoRight (talk) 14:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification My sole purpose in making this proposal is simply to explicitly affirm that these rules are not cast in stone nor is someone that makes a good faith restoration of content automatically a meat puppet. Exceptions, as Raul would refer to them, are written into this policy and reflected in actual practice for good and valid reasons and other proposals being made appear to downplay or eliminate entirely any notion of such exceptions being valid in any way. --GoRight (talk) 17:09, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - GoRight has highlighted basically every caveat and exception in the above policy, and wants the arbcom to affirm them as if they are somehow representative of the policy. They are not. The policy is that edits by banned users should not be restored. "Affirming" exceptions to this rule is perverse. Raul654 (talk) 15:01, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WMC reaffirms WP:BURO above. My proposal simply extends his affirmation into a specific policy as it is currently written. My proposal also makes WP:IAR, another policy BTW, explicit in this context for when there is good reason to do so. Note that "at the direction of a banned user" is not an exception, it IS the rule. Neither is the bit about users taking responsibility an exception, that IS the rule. Note that both of these statements would be wholly unnecessary in the text of the policy if your interpretation thereof were, in fact, the correct one. --GoRight (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

My proposal simply extends his affirmation into a specific policy as it is currently written. - translation - after two failed attempts to rewrite policy above, you've decided instead to try to get the arbcom to re-affirm the parts of the policy you like -- which coincidentally are exceptions to the rule.

Note that "at the direction of a banned user" is not an exception, it IS the rule. Neither is the bit about users taking responsibility an exception, it IS the rule. - no, the rule is that you shouldn't be restoring edits by banned users. The exception to that rule is if a banned user happens to make a verifiability good main space edit, you can restore it (although other users are perfectly free to label it as meatpuppetry). You want the arbcom to re-affirm the exception, rather than the rule. Raul654 (talk) 16:05, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I simply cannot let this slip by. Your statement, "you shouldn't be restoring edits by banned users" is more accurately stated as "you shouldn't be restoring edits by banned users at their direction" if one wants to reflect the letter and the spirit the actual policy. --GoRight (talk) 16:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, if one wants to adhere to the actual letter of the policy, you shouldn't be restoring edits unless you are "able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them". I notice you seem to keep neglecting those two requirements and have instead repeatedly tried to substitute the meaningless phrase "for the advancement of the project" in their place. Raul654 (talk) 16:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not neglecting anything. I am proposing principles that ArbCom is free to accept or disregard as they see fit. And note that I have highlighted those very points in this very proposal and you complained about it calling them exceptions. No, Raul, you are the one that wishes to discount them, not me. See your own proposals in that regard. I'll tell you what, Raul, if I add those points to my other proposals will you remove your objections? --GoRight (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Arbitration is not for changing the emphasis of wikipedia policy and it is outwith the purview of the arbitration committee to do this. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am not suggesting that the emphasis in the actual policy be changed. The emphasis here merely highlights the points being stressed and affirmed by this statement of principle. --GoRight (talk) 15:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose The policy already exists - no need for emphasis. None of these proposals of GoRight have been helpful, Mathsci (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Response to Enric "Goes against the spirit of the policy, renders it useless" - I would simply point out that I have not changed a single word of the policy here. All of the highlighted text already exists. An affirmation here merely acknowledges that fact, so it cannot go against the spirit of the policy or render it useless. --GoRight (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose The Wikipedia community has a term for "asserting that the technical interpretation of Wikipedia policies and guidelines should override the underlying principles they express." The term isn't regarded positively. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:40, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is true, but in what way is this proposal "asserting that the technical interpretation of Wikipedia policies and guidelines should override the underlying principles they express?" It does not. I assert the the underlying principles that you refer to specifically include the points I have highlighted. If they did not why were the highlihgted portions included in the text of the policy in the first place? I am quite confident that whomever drafted this description of the underlying practices was both diligent in their efforts to reflect the actual practices involved and careful in their wording. Can you provide an explanation for why the highlighted portions of the policy where included and phrased the way that they were if they do not constitute any reflection of an underlying principle? --GoRight (talk) 17:12, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Certain administrators and others would refer to the portions highlighted above as being "the exceptions". I just want to make an important point crystal clear: these are NOT exceptions to the policy, they are exceptions which are part of the policy. As such they cannot simply be ignored as some might desire. --GoRight (talk) 17:00, 23 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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@@ Line 529: / Line 529: @@
 :::''That you are an admin and GoRight is not does not give you any more right to give your opinion in a dispute resolution setting than he has.'' - nice non-sequitur there. Nowhere did I say that admin opinions should count more than non-admins -- I said that GoRight's opinion should count for nothing because based on his past history, his comments are (a) mostly fallacious, and (b) designed to obstruct the dispute resolution process. [[User:Raul654|Raul654]] ([[User talk:Raul654|talk]]) 03:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 :Truth be told, I'd like to see this sort of remedy implemented more often and more aggressively by ArbCom across the board.  ''Any'' parties who are consistently contributing far more heat than light to any proceedings ought to be given the boot.  (A variation on this theme was extremely effective in one of the Everyking cases.)  I wonder, however, if this ought not start out as an injunction &ndash; temporary or permanent &ndash; so as to offer immediate relief to the participants in ''this'' case. [[User:TenOfAllTrades|TenOfAllTrades]]([[User_talk:TenOfAllTrades|talk]]) 13:28, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
+::That's not a bad idea, but it has to be proposed by the parties to the case. Enric or WMC - as parties to this case, would you please suggest an injunction prohibiting GoRight from further participation in this case? [[User:Raul654|Raul654]] ([[User talk:Raul654|talk]]) 17:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 ===Proposed enforcement===