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:Thanks for explaining that context, which relieves the concern that the oversight was an attempt to hide the previous user name. &nbsp; <b>[[User:Will Beback|<font color="#595454">Will Beback</font>]]&nbsp; [[User talk:Will Beback|<font color="#C0C0C0">talk</font>]]&nbsp; </b> 03:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
:Thanks for explaining that context, which relieves the concern that the oversight was an attempt to hide the previous user name. &nbsp; <b>[[User:Will Beback|<font color="#595454">Will Beback</font>]]&nbsp; [[User talk:Will Beback|<font color="#C0C0C0">talk</font>]]&nbsp; </b> 03:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
::Agree with Will; that information eases my concerns as well. [[User:KillerChihuahua|KillerChihuahua]]<small><sup>[[User talk:KillerChihuahua|?!?]]</sup>[[User:Heimstern/Ignoring incivility|Advice]]</small> 12:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)


==the difficulty of self-government==
==the difficulty of self-government==

Revision as of 12:34, 3 October 2009

Discussion of agenda

Agenda

According to the agenda, the development of an arbitrator recall process was supposed to have proposals prepared by 5 September and decided upon by 26 September. I realise that the EE mailing list case has no doubt occupied a lot of time, but the community has been waiting a very long time for a resolution to arbitrator recall. A viable arbitrator recall process could also serve as a template for the long-needed administrator recall process. Would an update on the progress of this agenda item be available? EdChem (talk) 09:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of announcements

Original announcement

  • I disagree with WMC's desysop based on my own principles on what should lead to a desysop. Sure there was bad judgment outlined and the abd block was a very, very bad move - but I fail to see how a full removal of his adminship is of real benefit to the site. Master&Expert (Talk) 01:41, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'll save you from reading about 2 MB of mostly content-free text: The case was moving toward a do-nothing result until Abd tested the page ban and WMC blocked him. This pissed off arbcom, so they desysoped WMC. Arbcom planned to essentially ignore Abd's disruption until Risker proposed the three-month ban in the final days. The end. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's too late, I read through pretty much all of it over the past month in anticipation of the case's end. Pretty much sums it right up, though. Master&Expert (Talk) 01:55, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yet another seriously flawed decision. Just plain lazy on the part of ArbCom. I've applied page bans before. I've also applied page bans on articles in which WMC was helping me out. He's a well reasoned, and highly dedicated administrator. To revoke his mop is childish. Hey ArbCom; Restore his mop. Now. You do not craft policy by holding people retroactively responsible for violating non-existent policy. Hiberniantears (talk) 03:19, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, William violated existing policy. He blocked Abd during the case, when he was clearly too involved to legitimately take action. One could perform a root cause analysis to figure out how things reached that point, much in the same way the NTSB attempts to reconstruct the chain of failures leading to a plane crash, but it would be a depressing and academic exercise. If there is a moral, it's that admins who fail to recognize goading, swallow their pride, and ignore it will not be admins forever. MastCell Talk 04:26, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What MastCell said. There has been several issues of questionable actions with the admin tools in the past, and blocking someone you were in an arbcase with (at the time the ArbCom case is going on) is pretty much not going to fly, ever. SirFozzie (talk) 04:57, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
WMC did violate policy - he responded to the deliberate provocation of an editor even ArbCom agrees is disruptive and tendentious. It would have been wiser for WMC to resist the temptation offered by the bait. More importantly - and much more disappointingly for Wikipedia - it would have been wiser for ArbCom to consider what was in the best interests of developing high-quality encyclopedic content rather to act on the afront it felt about WMC's unwise block. Unfortunately, the messages from this ArbCom case are (i) that ArbCom either cannot or will not control its own case pages; (ii) that the quality of the science content of the encyclopedia is not a priority of the Committee; and consequently, (iii) that the Committee will not offer any encouragement for adminisatrators to work in contentious areas but rather will continue pretending that science-literate uninvolved administrators (a highly endangered or extinct species) are in plentiful supply. The burnout and departure of science-literate editors is also apparently not a reason for concern. The Committee could have acted against WMC with a forced break and acted in a way that loudly reinforced their dedication to the purpose of Wikipedia. I do not doubt the good intentions of the Arbitrators but the decisions their judgements and priorities in this case have been poor. EdChem (talk) 05:29, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aye, it is very foolish to do such things while ArbCom is actively looking at you. It's not smart to do them in the first place, but during an arbitration is asking for trouble, sadly. Still, the main result was right: since his return from a block in 2008 Abd has been on a path of escalation to burnout. It's remarkable he's lasted as long as he has before being blocked for a long time especially given his tendency to scream "cabal" at every turn. After the last arbitration he seemed to believe that he'd been fully vindicated and carried on precisely as before (if not worse), which is one of the things that sent me on a long wikibreak. Life is too short for your hobbies to be dominated by obsessives with no goal in mind other than to hound you for failing to agree with The Truth™. Guy (Help!) 09:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problems with the eventual outcome, but I was alarmed at the degree to which attempts to demonize expert editors were successful. Just because somebody has expertise in a subject, does not mean he has a conflict of interest. We've seen on Wikipedia for some time now concerted efforts by the wilfully ignorant to set themselves up as somehow in opposition to expert editors and to attack their excellent work. Instead of dealing with those people for timewasting, there has been a tendency to treat them at their own evaluation--as somehow being engaged alongside those who have taken the trouble to study the subject in an endeavor to improve Wikipedia. That isn't the arbitration committee's job. It must recognise that some of these "disputes" are in fact political attacks, often openly orchestrated off-site, and intended to distort the facts and weaken the integrity of Wikipedia. --TS 07:09, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Something that should be taken into account by the Committee when considering their practice of allowing people to keep evidence in userspace and link to it from the Evidence case page is that there are hundreds of thousands of bytes of smears and innuendos, insinuations and unfounded accusations about other editors in Abd's user space that were entered as part of Abd's "evidence" in this case. When I complained about the extent to which my positions, intentions, actions and motivations were misrepresented throughout the case, an arbitrator said, as a way of consoling me, that since I wasn't mentioned in the final decision, I could assume that none of that was taken seriously by the Committee, but that if I felt strongly enough about it, I could ask to have the material blanked. Well, I guess I'm not very consoled, since I value my reputation for integrity and am sincerely offended at being so throughly defamed without any discernible purpose, and I'm not sure how blanking the inaccurate and misleading accusations could be accomplished, when the misrepresentations of fact were strewn liberally throughout the case, and much of the offending material is in Abd's user page.
The "cabal" userpage has been nominated for MfD, but a common argument against deleting it is that it is part of evidence in an ArbCom case so can't be deleted. There is an entire page-long section about me on that page, and the "evidence" is just an attempt using synthesis and OR, using a couple of quotes from user talk pages totally out of context to try to make a case that I had an "axe to grind", simply because I said that in my opinion there were sockpuppets involved in the delegable proxy mess, because I felt that Kirk Shanahan's preferred version of the cold fusion page was more neutral than Abd's preferred version, because I had once supported Science Apologist, and because I had said that I didn't find discussion with Abd to be a particularly productive way to spend my time. These are honest opinions, I hold them still, but for them to be entered as evidence of my "involvement" with a "cabal" is simply beyond incredible. There is no credible evidence for any "involvement" with the other editors listed in the cabal, even if collusion isn't part of the definition. I believe this entire page should be blanked; I request formally that at least my section of it should be blanked. It seems to me it's the least the Committee could do, to remedy a little bit of the harm that's been created by this case. Thank you. Woonpton (talk) 14:17, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Don't hold your breath waiting. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I prefer to AGF; after all, I was specifically encouraged by an arbitrator to make this request, so I'm making it. But it's really a bigger issue that I'm raising here: encouraging editors to exceed the evidence limit by linking to unlimited text in userspace can have at least two unintended consequences: (1) it can lead to a proliferation of mudslinging and unsubstantiated accusations cloaked as evidence, as in this case, since it effectively voids the requirement to keep evidence concise and supported with specific diffs, and (2) it creates the problem of evidence in the case not being kept on the case pages and archived with the case. It's just out there in userspace; users could alter it, delete it, add to it, do anything they want with it, rather than it being protected with the case for historical reference. I just think the Committee should think about the consequences when allowing this practice in future. Woonpton (talk) 15:15, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect the problem you describe may be pretty unique to the editor. As for reference, just link to old revisions or copy/pasta into your userspace. Protonk (talk) 23:48, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Woonpton, thank you for reminding me about this. I will go and carry out the courtesy blankings now. Short Brigade Harvester Boris, when you've finished holding your breath, do you think you could give arbitrators a chance to respond before you insert a cynical soundbite like that? Carcharoth (talk) 00:40, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedians supporting the restoration of the mop to William M. Connolley

We closed it because nothing productive was going to come of it. Doing so doesn't necessarily require your assent, though that is preferable. Please stop pursuing this. Protonk (talk) 04:20, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

My thanks to the open minds willing to discuss the transparency of the committee's decision. Oh wait, you arrogantly closed this thread. I guess absolute power really does corrupt absolutely. Once again, any editor is free to disagree with your decisions. Any editor is free to voice this disagreement. Likewise, any editor is free to have these disagreements heard openly. Lastly, any editor is free to wield a minority opinion, and have it not be silenced. I urge you guys to remeber this. Hiberniantears (talk) 04:36, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Policy Discussion

In regard to item 5 of the Arbcom decision:

5. The community is urged to engage in a policy discussion and clarify under what circumstances, if any, an administrator may issue topic or page bans without seeking consensus for them, and how such bans may be appealed. This discussion should come to a consensus within one month of this notice.

I have created a relevant discussion page at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Arbcom_directed_discussion_-_Policy_on_non-consensual_topic_or_page_bans. Manning (talk) 07:16, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. When I have a few moments, I will try to post some background that will be relevant to this discussion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:52, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is also ongoing discussion at Wikipedia talk:Banning policy#Community discussion of topic-ban and page-ban procedure urged, probably the better place. Based on an initial thought expressed there, I have drafted a proposal at Wikipedia:Discretionary sanctions that would generalize the "discretionary" sanctions approach used by the ArbCom in various cases.  Sandstein  17:10, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As an aside, I really don't like the way that arbcom has encouraged what amount to straight votes. The subtext in "should come to a consensus in one month"... The only way that could be guaranteed is by doing a straight vote of some sort, like what happened with Ireland, which has turned into some wet dream for people interested in voting systems. Did everyone forget why we don't usually vote? Gigs (talk) 00:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No voting implied or needed. Discuss things, and if there is no consensus for any change, then nothing changes. i.e. if there is consensus, then make changes, but if not, then don't. What is paramount, though, is to publicise the discussion widely. Get lots of views, of both admins and non-admins. Don't just get the views of those following arbitration cases. Have a look at Wikipedia:Publicising discussions and see if the advice there has been followed or not. Carcharoth (talk) 01:13, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy blanking of case pages

Following on from Woonpton's request above, I have courtesy blanked the following pages of this case: the proposed decision talk page, the evidence page, the evidence talk page, the workshop page, and the workshop talk page. I also intend to blank the user subpages that were used to present evidence in this case (or move them to subpages of the evidence page and blank them, but need to leave a note at an ongoing MfD first). I think Abd and Enric Naval used subpages in this case - will need to check that. Starting this section to enable discussion of these actions because WMC left me a note saying he objects to the case pages being blanked. I don't object to my actions being changed or reversed (e.g. by adding a link to the pre-blanked version in the page history), but if some discussion and input from others (including other arbitrators) could take place first, that would be good. Carcharoth (talk) 08:15, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with this decision and wish it to be reversed William M. Connolley (talk) 08:37, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As a thoroughly naive onlooker, I am perplexed at this flurry of "courtesy blanking"? What exactly is the difference here between "courtesy blanking" and "attempt at suppression"? --Geronimo20 (talk) 08:47, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oooh! Me! I know this one! Courtesy blanking avoids gratuitous hurt while leaving the entire history for anyone who wants to look, whereas suppression is a term almost exclusively used by people who mistake Wikipedia for an experiment in free speech (which it explicitly is not). Guy (Help!) 22:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I too don't get the "Courtesy" bit. Presumably the main effect of blanking is to exclude the content from searches? If so it is a tricky call. It is in all our interests to rebuild Arbcom's credibility and brush some of all this under the carpet. No admin will put the project first if Arbcom cannot be relied upon to be careful and fair. At the same time there is an issue of fairness to WMC and negatives of drawing a veil over the repute of some other individuals concerned which will be unhelpful to the project (e.g. in that it will adversely affect quality of decision making in the next Arbcom elections, it will make identifying other trolls a tedious job from contribution history rather than an easy one etc). On balance WP favours openness so I think the pages should not be blanked. A gui, de to their content might help--BozMo talk 08:50, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Reading through the case it is not easy for an uninvolved editor to get a handle on things in the first place. The de-sysopping of a longtime administrator performing substantively correct administrative actions in protecting the encyclopedia against disruption, over what look to be procedural violations, seems extraordinary. Perhaps I just don't get it. I am certainly going to get it a lot less if Arbcom blanks pages of evidence and deliberations. Arbcom cases are supposed to be handled in a transparent way, aren't they? If you blank the record, I would hope you would vacate any findings and sanctions to which that part of the record applies. Otherwise it becomes a secret tribunal, something that should be reserved for the most extraordinary of circumstances. There are other ways to avoid ongoing damage from unwise things some may have said. Wikidemon (talk) 09:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Courtesy blanking is usually asked for if someone has been needlessly harangued or the parties require some privacy due to real-life concerns. The article history still has the entirety of the information on it, so the information is not being deleted, merely hidden from casual view. -Jeremy (v^_^v Tear him for his bad verses!) 09:09, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And if some other involved party, such as WMC above, feels that "courtesy blanking" compromises the history of what had happened to them, where does that leave things? --Geronimo20 (talk) 09:32, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In the page history, two clicks away. \ Backslash Forwardslash / (talk) 09:42, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Although it doesn't help in deciding what to do in the present case, it is worth noting that a major cause of the problem that now exists is the breakdown in control of the case pages. There certainly needs to be a discussion of the lessons that this case has for case management, and I'd like to know whether ArbCom and the Clerks are planning to have any such discussion, and if so, whether it will be on wiki. EdChem (talk) 09:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Well, even though WMC behaves sometimes like a complete idiot, warranting a thorough rap-over the knuckles, he is still, all in all, one of the more useful administrators Wikipedia has been privileged to have, and something has gone significantly wrong here. --Geronimo20 (talk) 10:22, 15 September 2009 (UTC),[reply]

There is a confluence of interests here. Woonpton is (rightfully) bothered at Abd's unfounded smears. Arbcom completely failed to maintain control over this sprawling case, so it is in their interest to keep it out of casual view. Thus when Woonpton asked for blanking, Arbcom was all too happy to oblige. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 12:57, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Boris, there is no way you can stop Abd from engaging in these problem behaviours short of bannination, and that's not consistent with allowing him his day in court. You'd have to have clerks following him round the entire project, or temporarily restrict him to case pages only (I'd have asked for that temporary injunction but that's because I have previously experienced Abd's obsessive behaviour). Guy (Help!) 10:00, 19 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It rather looks as though C has misinterpreted W's request; see [1] William M. Connolley (talk) 16:16, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy blanking is just that, a courtesy, born out of common decency for others who feel that their lives will be adversely effected by the page being open to casual view. If anyone is so curious as to see the Scandal! that they believe was there, they merely have to exert more effort. Now, we can spin our wheels in glorious cynicism about who is gaining what advantage over the political machinery of a website, but I'm entirely more concerned about maintaining the above common decency on the off chance that someone's real life is adversely effected because of something stupid that happened in the backstage of Wikipedia.--Tznkai (talk) 16:59, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Vair nice, but as it is now clear that W doesn't want the pages blanked, and I don't want the pages blanked, and no-one else has asked for them to be blanked, please explain (since arbcomm, as usual when things get sticky, has suddenly gone silent) for whose benefit the blanking has been done? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:23, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the deal. There's been seemingly overwhelming support to blank the evidence of this case—at least Abd's evidence. Hell, there was an aborted blanking campaign right in the middle of the case[2][3][4] Several users supported blanking the evidence pages in Abd's space, including some of the people commenting here. I found this to be a reasonable request, so the pages are now blanked as a courtesy. If in fact no one wants them blanked, I'm confident we will undo it.

Perhaps this was a mistaken reading of the participant's sentiments, but selectively blanking the pages is not an option we've ever entertained. Cool Hand Luke 18:16, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps this was a mistaken reading -- indeed, Woonpton said "it blows my mind"[5] that Carcharoth (and now you) could interpret her request in this way. But stuff like that doesn't surprise me anymore. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:24, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Alright then. My apologies (I think me and Carcharoth were on a similar wavelength here).
Now that it's understood that blanking is an all-or-nothing proposition, does anyone want the evidence pages blanked? Cool Hand Luke 18:26, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It isn't clear whether you're speaking for yourself or arbcomm at this point; if the latter, how and where this decision has been made. I would assert a distinction between pages in user space and those in arbcomm space. I maintain my desire to see the pages in arbcomm space unblanked William M. Connolley (talk) 19:11, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if anyone wants them blanked, but I say, leave them as is. It is the Arbitration Committee who let things run completely out of hand, and now the involved users feel negatively affected. I don't think that blanking is the solution to that. I don't like rugs, but for those who do, this does not belong under it. --Dirk Beetstra T C 18:44, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't go so far as to say that "it is now clear" that I don't want the pages blanked; the statement on my talk page simply clarifies that my specific request was about a particular section on Abd/Cabal rather than a request to blank the case; it didn't occur to me at that time that anything could be done about the false accusations and extreme distortions of fact that were liberally larded throughout the case, but at least I wanted that one section with my name at the top of it to be blanked. My feelings about the blanking of the case as a whole are mixed, as anyone reading my statement with any feeling for nuance (I'm realizing that this seems to be a scarce commodity in Wikiedia) should be able to see. On one hand, I would prefer that the false accusations, insinuations and accusations about me not remain fossilized here for everyone to see; on the other hand I can see WMC's argument too, that the case should be preserved for the record. But isn't it true that if you go back in history to the version before the blanking, it's all still there? So doesn't the blanking serve both purposes: conceal smears from public view without eliminating the content? Or does it really affect the usability of the information in some way?
It is my personal opinion that this case was a complete disaster from beginning to end, and the damage that the case will have done to the encyclopedia will remain, no matter what happens to the case content. I will assume that if the blanking of the case was indeed done in response to my comment, it was an honest attempt to be responsive to my concern (although strangely late; the problem should have been stopped while the case was ongoing, and I find it curious that arbitrators who had no interest in my complaints and the complaints of others while the case was going on should suddenly become so attentive to our concerns, after the horse is long out of the barn). But I'm not the only one to be considered here, and I wouldn't want my ambivalence about the blanking to be taken as a signal to unblank. There are others who have been equally affected, who should speak for themselves on the issue, although at least one of them is unable to at the moment.
@Tznkai: my concern isn't at present a real life concern; I just don't like being lied about. However, there are others who are affected who may well have real life concerns; I wouldn't want to be seen as speaking for anyone else. Woonpton (talk) 18:52, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the clarification Woonpton, and in general, I think the same principle applies even for mere emotional dislike, though it is obviously less of a big deal than say, impending job loss.--Tznkai (talk) 19:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Beetstra perhaps I've completely misunderstood you (and if so I apologize), but it seems to me what you're saying is the following: 1. ArbCom has mucked up, failing to address 2. a mess where a bunch of people got unjustly attacked and thus 3. ArbCom should not courtesy blank the same so their mistakes are transparent. That seems to leave keeping the mess that adversely effects innocent parties, because you want to punish/expose ArbCom.--Tznkai (talk) 19:03, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@Tznkai: I want Arb.Comm. to come with a real solution? --Dirk Beetstra T C 19:06, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@W: Apologies for misrepresenting your views. Thanks for stating them clearly here. Would it help at all if a header was put clearly at the top of all these pages, something along the lines of "These are the preserved record of an arbcomm case; the presence of an allegation in these pages carries no implication at all that it is true"? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure if CHL's ref'ing [6] etc is trolling or just a failure to understand. Assuming the latter: that was a last-gasp attempt to do arbcomms duty for it and try to keep some kind of order on the pages. Alas it failed; arbcomm voted for the current disaster area. Which is indeed part of the point: you've failed to keep any order during the case; it is just too late now to say whoops lets shovel it all under the rug. If this info was so terrible that allowing people to stumble over it is terrible, then how could it be allowed on the case pages for months on end? That position makes no sense. Also where does There's been seemingly overwhelming support to blank the evidence of this case come from? William M. Connolley (talk) 19:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not trolling. Other parties do not have the right to control the presentation of another's evidence during a case. Nor should others control how evidence is kept after the case is closed.
To clarify an earlier question: I'm speaking only for myself here, and you should always assume that's true unless I explicitly say otherwise. That said, I don't think many arbitrators would support selectively blanking evidence from one party of the case without a really good reason.
There's no rug-shoving going on here. Me and Carcharoth honestly believed that users wanted the evidence blanked. You might note that I didn't even participate in the deliberation of the case; the interpretation of a cover up did not occur to me until several users here made the accusation. Cool Hand Luke 19:29, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Me and Carcharoth honestly believed that users wanted the evidence blanked - I assume that is true. Indeed, you said: There's been seemingly overwhelming support to blank the evidence of this case. However, I've asked you above why you believe that and you're distinctly reticent on that point. Do you now accept that is an error? William M. Connolley (talk) 20:58, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Past tense, per the widespread support of blanking here. I am not now sure whether there would be support for complete blanking, but I do not believe selective blanking is acceptable. Cool Hand Luke 22:24, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]


A point of data: I am generally in favor of blanking procedural pages as a matter of routine (or at least on simple request) at the end of a case. This, obviously, does not include the decision proper; nor does it include deletion. This is a matter of simple courtesy.

Suggestion of selectively blanking parts of pages because one doesn't like them is... ethically unacceptable. I'm surprised anyone would even consider such a thing— obviously that will never be allowable. — Coren (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would strongly discourage you from doing so as a matter of routine, and ask you where you think your mandate for doing this comes from. or at least on simple request is regrettably ambiguous - do you mean, one request from any one participant (not even a party) is enough for you to blank, even against the expressed wishes of parties? A simple majority? I don't think you should do anything after a case that hasn't been decided during a case. If you want this as a matter of routine, you should include it as a routine motion in each case. That would give everyone a chance to express an opinion in an (ahem) orderly fashion, instead of this rather all-too-typicaly disorderly process we've ended up in. Anyone seen Carcharoth around recently, BTW? Blank-n-run seems rather poor form William M. Connolley (talk)
You're making, I think, the unwarranted presumption that there is value to keeping the case pages around after a case has closed. Certainly, the arguments and reasoning have historical value and need to be kept for transparency, but they do not need to be displayed or (worse) mirrored by the myriad leeches out there that are uninterested in keeping that material off search engines.

As far as I and most other arbs are concerned, the evidence, workshop and proposed decision pages (and the talk pages) are mere artifacts of the process, and can be blanked without bureaucracy. In fact, many of us have express dismay on how complicated doing seemed to have been in the past. I would have agreed with your concerns if there was discussion of deleting the pages (which is generally not done), or of altering them in a way that can twist their significance; but a simple blanking that leaves the history intact is at worst harmless and at best can help put a matter to rest and keep possibly prejudicial crap off the search engines. — Coren (talk) 22:05, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

67.122.211.205 (talk) 03:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Coren, this is helpful. Perhaps I misunderstood the arbitrator who told me on the proposed decision page that if I was unhappy about false accusations and inaccurate statements that had been made about me, I should feel free to request that the material be blanked; I understood that to mean that I could request that parts of the case be blanked. (And while no one has answered my question about whether blanking affects the usability of the content, I found that when I went to bring up that diff to link to here, I wasn't able to bring it up. So that's a problem, I agree).
I didn't see any reasonable way to blank comments that were threaded with other comments, so I wasn't requesting that information be selectively blanked out of the case pages, and I wasn't aware that the entire case could be blanked on request. I just made this little request about this one section that had my name at the top of it and was all about me; it was really just a token request, as a protest against the wholesale defamation of editors in this case. I didn't realize that this was not a reasonable request, especially as I thought I'd been encouraged by an arbitrator to request the blanking of defamatory comments. But (to clarify again) I was happy (delighted, in fact) with the decision to blank the entire case and felt that my concerns were finally being heard; my understanding was that the courtesy blanking was "on behalf of multiple users" so I felt this was a response not just to me but to concerns of the community. I thought that was the best solution to the whole mess, so I was surprised (blown away) this morning to see Carcharoth's statement above that it was done solely in response to my request, and I was also surprised to find that there were people who were very unhappy about it. I believe Luke when he says he was genuinely trying to respond to concerns (and he's right that a number of people commenting on the MfD thought the page should be blanked; where are those people now?). I guess I just want to go ahead and leave, and you guys can do whatever the heck you're going to do about this. I thank those who tried to be responsive to my concern, and wish you well. Woonpton (talk) 21:04, 15 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Just a quick comment to say I'm aware of the responses here, and to reply to WMC's "blank-n-run" comment above. If you look at my contributions log, you will see that I started the courtesy blankings between 00:44 and 01:14 last night (UTC). My computer then crashed (as was noted in my edit summaries later on) and as it was late I decided to finish things off in the morning. I saw WMC's comment on my talk page and between 07:48 and 08:22 I replied, finished off what I'd started the previous night, and started this section as a place for discussion to take place (the latter action was prompted by WMC's objections). I then went to work. As it turned out, I had to work late, and then I had to get a bus home because of flooding on the London Underground (heavy rain here today). This is why I haven't been around to answer questions. (If anything is ever really urgent, I can be contacted by e-mail during the day). I had always intended to return to this section, so a bit of patience would have been appreciated, rather than "blank-n-run" comments and wonderings about where I'd got to. Having said that, I do need to deal with something else urgent now (trying to set priorities here, and making this post here was my first priority, but there are some other things that need attention as well), but I will come back to this later tonight (in a few hours), and respond further to what has been said here. I do in particular want to try and clear up any misunderstandings about the blankings. In particular, please note the last sentence of the post I made to start this section. Carcharoth (talk) 00:18, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    Just a brief update to point to what I said here (replying to WMC on my talk page). It doesn't cover everything that was said, but hopefully it will answer some of the questions. As I said there, I want to say more tomorrow, time permitting. Bottom line is that either everything that normally gets blanked is blanked, or nothing. No selective blankings. The diff of what I originally said to Woonpton is here. I think she was looking for that. Hopefully that will clear up a few things. I've been consistent with what I said in that diff, and I stand by what I said there. Carcharoth (talk) 03:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What on earth is all this crap about? Blanking a page changes nothing as to what actually happened on a page. It just removes it from search view. So long as the main ArbCase page remains, every single one of the links are there and as noted, several editors are aware of the History tab. I'd also be thinking that consolidation of several other "evidence" pages should be moved under the parent case page and blanked. Many more than the participants and adjudicators of this case are aware of what a black stain it is - but there is no reason that various search engines should casually pick up and rate the various search phrases, surely that is an unintended consequence. There is no doubt that many people will retain an institutional memory of what happened here and will be able to find links quite easily. So what exactly is the rationale to not courtesy blank all the relevant pages (and move them into case sub-pages)? So long as the main or index page which leads to all the rest is present and public, what is the compelling reason to preserve every one of them? Selectivity is unfortunately not an option here. It's all a bad scene... Franamax (talk) 01:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are you proposing that any other case pages be similarly blanked? What's so speial about this case that they should be? 98.210.193.221 (talk) 05:25, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I propose no such thing, though I wouldn't necessarily object. An "ArbCase SearchPage" function wouldn't be all that hard to design (hint: it would search the 2nd-last version of a page, if the last one had changed radically in size). Blanking of ArbCase pages is not exactly unheard of. But I shan't cite specifics.
In this specific case, whilst we are not apparently faced with a specific request, we have general concerns raised about certain spurious allegations raised within the case. In addition, we're faced with a purported evidence page in a userspace which raises even more spurious allegations. (And other upages of purported evidence, which validity I've not examined) In the one page case of which I'm aware, concerns have been raised to the point of MFD nomination, and the existence (but not text presence) of the page has been defended as it being a record of the Abd/WMC case. Fine, the page should be preserved. What I suggest is that all such userpages containing evidentiary but unsubstantiated suggestions(/accusations) should be moved under the master case page and blanked en bloc, so that no unsupported accusations remain open to search-engine ministrations. We've had enough damage here and many editors will know where to look. There is at least one "evidence" page that should be blanked and more than one are prejudicial to innocent editors. Remember that moving and/or blanking pages hides nothing - it just organizes and creates a different condition for search engine discovery. Franamax (talk) 07:04, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So... lets try to sum us where we all are on this disaster. Its become clear that arbcomm would rather "courtesy blank" these pages, but it now looks like the courtesy is to arbcomm rather than anyone else. Ca now admits that he knew halfway through the blanking tht there was no support for it, but continued anyway to get a fait accompli. His current response is I do in particular want to try and clear up any misunderstandings about the blankings but note that he is very careful to avoid suggestion that he might undo it. Meanwhile, CHL's support turns out to be based on "overwhelming consensus" on some entirely different page. What we're not getting is a restoration of the status quo ante while the matter is discussed; arbcomm are just stonewalling. I didn't think you could possibly make this ill-managed case any worse managed but you have indeed succeeded. Given that no magic pixie dust is going to make this decision for you, please explain just how you are going to acheive "consensus" on what to do William M. Connolley (talk) 07:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WMC, you are being — to be generous — disingenuous. There is no stonewalling, here, and no drama to be had beyond what the copious amounts of bad faith your are displaying generates. Go do something else for a while. — Coren (talk) 13:13, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It seems that bad faith here is any faith placed in ArbCom. Pages in wikipedia arb space should not be blanked without good reason and an official request, with discussion. The blanking of user space pages should be decided by the community, and ArbCom and clerks should have never have allowed Abd to spam his accusations all over the place. ArbCom should have never taken this case in the first case - the community was willing to deal with it. The disaster that arbcom and the clerks managed to turn it into would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that you (the arbs) have actually managed to damage the project. A few individual arbs seemed to be sensible, but I would encourage them to leave the stinking carcass of arbcom before they become irredeemably tarnished - like FT2. Undo the blanking of arb pages until an involved user makes a specific request here or by email (and the request is posted here). I warned Abd off AC, as I knew it would end badly for him, but the ridiculous damage to the project, and the view that arbcom is above criticism, is truly something else. Verbal chat 13:28, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"It seems that bad faith here is any faith placed in ArbCom." Quotable.
At any rate, why do you think that ArbCom views itself as above criticism? As a bloc, we do not want WMC's page to be deleted. I think that criticism is necessary for us to function, in fact. Pile it on. Cool Hand Luke 16:02, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'd suggest separating criticism of the handling of the case from the question of whether the pages should be blanked. I don't think that blanking is an attempt to sweep anything under the rug; any user with 10 minutes' experience on the site can view the evidence in its entirety, and the blanking only hides it from being scraped and mirrored.

If someone involved in the case (including, for that matter, an Arbitrator) feels strongly that the pages should be blanked, then let's do it. It's a courtesy. If no one wants them blanked anymore, then let's not do it.

I understand the urge to criticize the handling of the case, and I hope that some lessons can be learned from its unfortunate trajectory (and that of its logical predecessor), but that won't happen until the ruckus settles and people (myself included) can digest it in peace. In the meantime, if possible, let's use this thread to discuss the courtesy blanking issue; other venues are probably more appropriate for criticism of the case handling if one feels so moved. Just my 2 cents. MastCell Talk 16:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with MastCell's sentiments. Few would dispute that ArbCom members work diligently in a highly controversial arena. It is understandable that editors will, on occassion, disagree (in perfect sincerity) with ArbCom decisions. However, it seems rather irregular to make claims of a conspiratorial cover-up scheme. The blanking is really a rather small issue, and one that should be decided in a collaborative and yielding spirit. —Matheuler 22:27, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My response to WMC (on my talk page) is here. I've stated there my view that there have been misunderstandings and incorrect assertions made by WMC and others about these page blankings, and I've suggested a different venue to resolve those misunderstandings, but the relevant bit here is what I've now said and done about the page blankings (paraphrased below):
  • (A) I've read through the arguments for and against the blankings in the discussion here WT:AC/N, and given that there was some degree of support for the blankings, and that many people (not just those who objected) had aspersions cast about them in those pages, I'm not going to reverse my actions (though I did come close to doing so). However, given that some people have failed to realise that the full text is still accessible in the page histories, I've modified the notices on each page to include a link on each blanked page to the version of the page before blanking, and to the page history, and links to all the other pages in the case (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I know this is not the full unblanking WMC wanted, but I hope it does address some of his concerns, and the concerns of others, about accessibility, and a desire for people to be able to see and judge for themselves what happened in this case.
  • (B) There are a multitude of pages in userspace that still need dealing with in some way. A total of 23 pages. I've made a list here. WMC did ask me not to mix up userspace stuff with what happens to the case pages, so rather than going ahead with what I proposed earlier (moving to subpages of the evidence page and blanking) I've made that list instead, and will leave notices for the users concerned, and then notify my colleagues on the Arbitration Committee, and leave those pages for those users and the rest of ArbCom to deal with.
  • (C) If WMC is not happy with any of this, I've advised him to wait a few days or weeks, to see how he feels at that point, and then if he still wants the case pages unblanked, to file a request for clarification. I will abstain from voting on any clarifications filed with respect to the final disposition of the pages in this case, though I may make a statement if needed. I'll remain active on clarifications and amendment requests on other matters related to this case.
As I said, I have to move on to deal with other things now, but I hope this addresses the concerns of WMC and others. Carcharoth (talk) 00:34, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest that, in future cases, the practice of presenting evidence in userspace subpages be restricted or explicitly disallowed. This looks like a massive pain to clean up, not to mention a potential drama-magnet. Skinwalker (talk) 01:49, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly disagree. The evidence limits are untenable in complex cases. Some of the parties under review have made hundreds or thousands of relevant edits, and to fairly review the case they should all be available. It's rather absurd that Arbcom could presume to take a case and not allow the parties to present all of the evidence. If I am a party and I face that limit, I'll summarize on the evidnece page and create a sub-page somwhere with the complete details. Whould would you suggest? That Arbcom members refuse to read it? That it get summarily deleted? That I be sanctioned for creating a page of diffs? Wikidemon (talk) 01:54, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well, then lift (or liberalize) the evidence limit. No deletion or sanctions. It is almost always unenforced unless someone steps well over the line, and often not even then. My concern is that someone could file MFDs for each and every one of the 23 subpages Carcharoth lists. Not to mention that Abd scattered, at one count, around 500 kilobytes of "evidence" around the case pages and his userspace, most of which consisted of diff-less aspersions. This is a gigantic mess to clean up and monitor. Also, if you think arbs read all of the evidence presented, you probably don't follow many of their proposed decisions. Skinwalker (talk) 02:06, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear, this just gets worse. My response to Ca's inadequate response is on his talk page. As to Co There is no stonewalling, here - that is exactly what there is William M. Connolley (talk) 07:46, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So... given the total absence of stonewalling here, as asserted by at least two arbs (although how that can be reconciled with If WMC is not happy with any of this, I've advised him to wait I don't know. For the record, no, I'm not happy with any of this), when am I going to get an answer to Given that no magic pixie dust is going to make this decision for you, please explain just how you are going to acheive "consensus" on what to do? William M. Connolley (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thought experiment

What do we do if/when we find out there was an off-wiki coordination by cold fusion proponents to delegitimize opponents? Protonk (talk) 05:43, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Heads on pikes.--Tznkai (talk) 05:47, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a fan of drawing and quartering myself. Hersfold (t/a/c) 06:45, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
File it under "blindingly obvious", recognize it as one of the inevitable drawbacks of a top-ten website that anyone can edit, and resolve not to be goaded quite so easily next time? Question the legitimacy of a field whose proponents seem to spend more time litigating their case on Wikipedia than doing actual science? Use the case as a learning exercise to improve our handling of small groups of agenda accounts? All of the above? MastCell Talk 17:52, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I take it you're new around here. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:07, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, just regressing. :) MastCell Talk 18:31, 18 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not finished

I've un-archived this as it isn't finsihed: you haven't yet decided the "courtesy" blanking issue. Obviously you're not stonewalling (because you've said you aren't) so please remind me what decision was made and how? William M. Connolley (talk) 17:43, 26 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See my points A, B and C at 00:34 17 September 2009, above. To reiterate, I reviewed your concerns and those of others, including those who couldn't understand why you were making a big deal out of this, and I made the decision not to unblank the pages, but made the following changes: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11]. Those changes were a response to your concern that the previous versions of the blanked pages were not very accessible to those who don't know how to access page histories. My changes made the blanked pages more accessible. The userspace pages (point B) have not yet been dealt with, largely because of your objections and because I said I would ask others to deal with that (because you objected to me doing so). I have asked another arbitrator to review this (the list of userpages, covered in my point 'B'), but nothing has been done yet. I'll quote point C again in full:

If WMC is not happy with any of this, I've advised him to wait a few days or weeks, to see how he feels at that point, and then if he still wants the case pages unblanked, to file a request for clarification. I will abstain from voting on any clarifications filed with respect to the final disposition of the pages in this case, though I may make a statement if needed. I'll remain active on clarifications and amendment requests on other matters related to this case.

I don't know how much clearer I can make this? Do you need a link? Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification. I've pointed you in the right direction several times now, but you don't seem to be listening. If you just want to repeat the same things you said before, then we will continue to go round in circles. At the moment, from where I am sitting, it is you who are stonewalling, on the decision that you need to make, on whether to take this further or drop it. Unarchiving this noticeboard talk page thread is precisely the wrong way to go about taking this further. Carcharoth (talk) 20:41, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You've now clarified the only unclear point: that this arbitrary decision was made by you on entirely flimsy grounds. You've stonewalled on the unblanking; the trivial tweaks you've made are irrelevant. The place to discuss this is here. You have nothing more to say; fine, don't say it. Perhaps the rest of arbcomm does William M. Connolley (talk) 21:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The "rest of ArbCom" is, in the main, in favor of routine blanking of case material other than the main case page and (obviously) final decision. Mostly confused about why you are making a big deal out of this trivial clerical matter.

To note, I am the one Carcharoth requested handle the user space pages (which I have been distracted from by the current EE mess), and I expect I will be moving them to Arb space and blanking them in a manner consistent with the case pages proper. — Coren (talk) 10:55, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Apology from Casliber

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


Original announcement

Ok, to get consensus from the community, comment below: Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:35, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Erm, shall we archive the next two bits given Ive resigned? Start to move forward? Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Apology accepted (i.e. stick around)

  1. You admitted your mistake and are a great arb. MBisanz talk 23:39, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Nonsense. We all make mistakes. –Juliancolton | Talk 23:41, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  3. If we didn't fuck up, how would we learn anything? --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 23:44, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  4. If I understand what I believe you are referring to then I say this: I believe that you were put in a tremendously difficult situation. You appeared to handle all that you could with discretion and tact. I've never seen any actions by you that were not directed at protecting and/or improving the project. This is a volunteer project, and you've extended great time and effort to aid this site. I see no reason to accept an apology from you, because I don't believe that one is required; however, I greatly admire your integrity, and strongly hope that you will continue to serve the community as you have in the past. Please continue as you have. — Ched :  ?  23:53, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Speaking as someone who knows EXACTLY what you went through, I can't even say I'm disappointed. SirFozzie (talk) 23:57, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  6. I'd rather have Arbitrators who learn from their mistakes. I hope this is the last "open secret" we'll have to deal with.   Will Beback  talk  00:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Understand your situation. I thought that this was common knowledge...apparently not. Either way, you do good work, and I'd hate for this one incident to cause you to resign. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 00:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  8. A mistake for sure, but I have enough confidence in Cas to believe that things like this won't happen again. Far more worrisome is the continuing trend of admins / established editors controversially using undisclosed alternate accounts. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Don't be ridiculous, Cas. You're a fine Arb, and you should not go anywhere. GlassCobra 00:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  10. I'm with Will. J.delanoygabsadds 01:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Cas, you're a great arb. No one is faultless. I appreciate your current honesty and full-disclosure. hmwith 01:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Yes, please stick around for now, but also be more careful about this sort of thing. My reading of this situation is that it's pretty ambiguous and perhaps to an extent understandable that you'd do what you did, but always remember that the community can't afford to have arbs who are even perceived as having something to hide. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 01:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Please stay, everyone makes mistakes and this in no way erodes my trust in you as an arb. I'm sure that now you'd handle it differently were the scenario to occur again. ThemFromSpace 01:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Don't act like an idiot again, because I won't be coming out of retirement again to support you. I agree with everything Wikidemon said below and MBisanz said above oh, how difficult it is to say that -- Noroton (talk) 01:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  15. I am in particular agreement with Nathan's comment in the discussion section below, sans the portion about other banned users and all that. UnitAnode 01:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  16. It is indeed that what Law did betrayed the community's trust on him by gaming the system and violating many others. However, the resignation is purely up to your decision and you at least admitted your fault. On the other hand, I would like first to see apologies from User:Daniel, and User:Ironholds because they exposed the truth, just because of their retaliation even though they've known or assumed Law's previous account for weeks. Truly disrespectful behaviors on their part.--Caspian blue 02:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  17. Please continue as an arb: your bona fides has never been in contention in my mind. This is yet another reason the project desperately needs to tighten up on the use of alt accounts. I see no reason why the standard RfA questions should not include a requirement to disclose. Alt accounts just seem to get us into trouble. It's ridiculous.
    Postscript: disclosing that I've met Cas twice in person and spoken on the phone a few times. Cas, are you prepared to suggest how the ArbCom code of conduct, presently a proposal in preparation, might forestall such a situation in the future? Tony (talk) 10:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)Tony (talk) 02:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  18. The fact that you are willing to submit to the community consensus here says a lot. This was a clear error (Law's RfA should have been the crossing the Rubicon moment), but Law put you in a rather difficult position and I can sympathize with that. My "stick around" support is very much conditional on one thing though: the Arbs need to privately poll themselves on their e-mail list and determine if other committee members are aware of any similar situations where a banned user (or the like) has returned as an administrator, thus gaming RfA in order to do so. The results of that mini-survey then need to be announced to the community. Really this is something that should be asked of all admins, but the ArbCom is good for starters, as we need to be clear that there are not other "open secrets" (apparently you have to be on IRC or something to know these kind of things—but I better not start down that path) of which some committee members are aware. I would suggest that Casliber initiate that process himself right now. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 02:57, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Meh. Full disclosure. I also knew that Law = The undertow for quite some time. To tar and feather everyone involved in this case because of some superficial similarities to other alternative accounts that became admins is not called for here. There is a HUGE difference between a good user who made a single error in judgement some time ago (which led to Undertow's desysop) and users who have shown a long-term pattern of abuse at Wikipedia. Law/Undertow has basically been one of our best editors and admins here, he got caught up in some political shit that messed up his day, and that others were willing to let him come back "semi-incognito" is not about how untrustworthy we have been, but upon how short-sighted and poorly handled his first desysopping was. Casliber has nothing to apologize about here. --Jayron32 03:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  20. You're an asset, Cas. It'd be a shame to see you leave the committee. Your confession evinces your moral fibre and interest in the good of the project. —Anonymous DissidentTalk 06:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  21. ...I don't know that I would characterize this as an honest mistake. But it isn't something that would undercut trust the community might have in you. We balance real or perceived personal loyalties against real or perceived loyalties to community or authority. Sometimes we mess that balance up. Part of my wants to get out the tar and feathers and send a message to anyone else with a little secret in their pocket, but it wouldn't work and it would remove a person from the committee for a matter unrelated to their actions as an arb. Protonk (talk) 06:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  22. To err is human, and this particular error isn't, in my eyes, worthy of any chastising. You did your best under the circumstances given what you knew; it's something that should be commended, not punished. -Jeremy (v^_^v Tear him for his bad verses!) 06:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  23. Comment I'm inclined to support Cas Liber's presence on the committee because he's one of the few Committee members with both life experience and respectable scholarly interests (as opposed to pop singers, role playing games, porn sites and the like.) It's a shame that he chose to put himself on the line for such a mediocrity, who would never have been invited to manage any element of a serious academic project.24.22.141.252 (talk) 06:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Despite this blip, Cas does a good job as an arbitrator, like NYB. It is completely appropriate to keep an arbitrator with a good grip on reality. That is why he rightly received so many votes. That was also probably part of the reason for his dilemma, brought to a head by Sandstein's RfAr. We need more arbitrators like him, not less. Mathsci (talk) 07:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  25. per above (and below -- and elsewhere) DrKiernan (talk) 07:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  26. per what MBisanz has been saying in this debate. I don't see why Casliber is being singled out and I certainly didn't support his candidacy to see him bow this easily to pressure. This isn't an isolated incident, people are allowed back silently on a regular basis. I'll refrain from expanding on this as I'm well aware from experience what the consequences of arguing against the popular opinion here are. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 08:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  27. With the same disclosure as Jayron32. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  28. As with Will BeBack. AGK 10:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  29. Those prepared to fall on their sword should always be shown mercy. BritishWatcher (talk) 12:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  30. You are not required to rat on your friend. So long as you did not affirmatively do anything to facilitate their deception (such as support their RFA), I think you are in the clear. It would have been better for you to stop them, but I think you understand that and would be much more careful, and I'm not convinced that any replacement we could find for you would do a better job. Therefore, you must stay. Please note that I have been highly critical of a particular admin who supported Law's RFA while knowing about the sock puppetry. Rather than burning Casliber, I think we need to make clear that users in positions of trust may not support sock puppetry or rules violations through their sysop actions, votes or comments. Recusing or remaining silent are allowed. Nobody likes a rat, and Wikipedia does not require its volunteers to act. Jehochman Talk 13:49, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  31. Get back to work ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 14:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  32. Strongly, and hoping it's not too late. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  33. It's rare enough that I concur with Jack, but I have before, and I'm doing again here. :) BOZ (talk) 16:15, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  34. This incident is overblown, in my opinion. The skyes have not fallen. This is just a wiki, not real life. So, I see no need in resignation. Ruslik_Zero 18:41, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  35. This was unnecessary. I understand why you did it, but you'll be missed. Cool Hand Luke 20:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  36. I dont see any necessity either. This is an unfortunate turn. Ceoil (talk) 22:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  37. There was no active naughtiness, & in general the turn some people are taking towards making not denouncing other users a wikicrime is bad news. If what was being kept quite had real-world consequences, that would be a different matter - but this was in-house, not that much of a problem, we're all volunteers etc.--Misarxist (talk) 11:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  38. We're supposed to be here to improve the encyclopedia. Keep up the good work. ChildofMidnight (talk) 22:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Resignation accepted (i.e. time to go)

  1. As a friend of Casliber's, I think he should resign. We elected Casliber to ArbCom because we believed he could make the hard decisions and because we believed he could be trusted with sensitive information and how to deal with it. However, I don't think he has shown that in this case. Others may believe that this single incident does not require such a step, but I believe that Casliber will show himself to be a more ethical editor by resigning. To me, this would indicate that he both realized that he made a mistake and accepted its consequences. Awadewit (talk) 00:04, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Awadewit has essentially made the argument that I was going to. –blurpeace (talk) 00:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Arbitrators who learn from their mistakes are good; arbitrators who are not unwise enough to make them are better. Cas either knew that what was happening was inappropriate, and let his friendship cloud his judgment as an arbitrator, or he did not believe it was inappropriate; I find both cases unacceptable. We have not such a dearth of arbitrators that we need to keep those who make poor decisions. ÷seresin 00:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  4. I dont really see the point of this segregation, but I echo Awadewit's sentiments. We really can't do anything when an admin misuses the tools or an arb screws up, 99% of the time; it's up to the offending party. Resigning sends a message and I think preserves integrity all around. I'm not expecting Cas to cave due to pressure here, though, that defeats the purpose. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs (talk) 00:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  5. I'm extremely torn on this one. On the one hand, Casliber, I have the utmost respect for your content contributions and have, until now, had an equal amount of respect for your leadership capabilities and ability to make wise decisions. I believe it well within reason that, as a friend and an Arbcom member, you would first seek to resolve this situation privately; however, once Law ran for RfA that should have been the point where enough was enough. By keeping silent, you assisted a banned editor in evading a sanction that your predecessors imposed. If you disagreed with the sanction, it would have been perfectly appropriate to bring that to the attention of the other members of the committee for reconsideration, but you did not. If I ran the world (or at least the wiki), all administrators who knew about this blatant breach of Arbcom sanctions and did nothing would be immediately desysopped, and, according to the penalties set out in WP:SOCK, the nine-month ban for Law/the_undertow would be restarted, with periodic checks for other socks. And that means that I must also call for your resignation, although it pains me to do so. I'm very sorry that you were torn between the needs of a friend and the duties of your position here; that must have been an awful position for you. Karanacs (talk) 02:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Casliber, I'm disappointed that you have to ask, and that you're putting people in the position of requesting your resignation. You're a member of a committee that routinely desysops and bans people for violating previous bans. You can't be a member of that committee if you're going desysop some of them, but actively cover up for others. It was you who deleted The undertow's user [12] and talk pages [13] on May 26, 2009—eight months after Law started editing, and one month after he became an admin—thereby making it harder for non-admins to follow the trail. I don't know whether you deleted these before you knew he had returned with another account, but what is clear is that you didn't undelete them when you knew he was back, or ask someone else to. This edges closer to active collusion than passive knowledge. If you don't resign, the rest of the commmittee, and more importantly the idea of the commmittee, will be undermined. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  7. I couldn't care less about what you knew or didn't know in this instance, but I still think you should resign because I don't approve of your general conduct as an arbitrator. Everyking (talk) 04:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  8. This at odds with my earlier statement, but after reading more about the situation than just your apology I am suddenly a lot less willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. And asking for feedback is cop-out.--BirgitteSB 05:03, 1 October 2009 (UTC) And your apology probably qualifies a white wash as well. You should have written towards people who were coming in cold not spinning your part in the best light. I know I feel misled by it.--BirgitteSB 05:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  9. I think this pretty ordinary. The only reason Casliber is apologising is because Law/The Undertow has been busted. As a person entrusted by the project with Checkuser and Oversight, it is not just unacceptable that s/he had this information but failed to disclose it, rather it is disgraceful and points to a serious character flaw. S/he should resign all positions of responsibility or be deprived of them. Following that Casliber should be banned without the possibility of return. The only other question Casliber has to answer is what else has s/he been concealing from the Community? Crafty (talk) 05:13, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  10. I'm reminded of the speeches we hear from all those politicians who get busted doing something they shouldn't have. Now, I'm terribly sorry after it all happened. You apparently had a very long time to notify someone of this and didn't. I might have understood had you slept on it and then notified someone. But all the time that has passed? No. Had this not have happened would you have come clean? No you wouldn't. You sat there silently as an editor socked his way into adminship. Would you have said something if he ran for arbcom? How about if someone nominated him a a crat? This incident paints us a rather clear picture of exactly what is wrong with wikipedia. People with friends in high places get all the breaks until those friends just can't make excuses anymore--Crossmr (talk) 07:38, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Echo SV: I'm disappointed that you have to ask, and that you're putting people in the position of requesting your resignation. You're a member of a committee that routinely desysops and bans people for violating previous bans. You can't be a member of that committee if you're going desysop some of them, but actively cover up for others. Also: once you're here, asking, you know what the answer should be. But you're just hoping that enough people will try to persuade you to do the wrong thing. [And for those who might wonder: this opinion is independent of a recent arbcomm case.] William M. Connolley (talk) 07:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Mostly per Karanacs and David Fuchs. If you stay on as an arbitrator, you will do so with my continued trust and confidence; I don't think this error is indicative of your overall judgment/moral fortitude, and I would really love to be able to lay down my tildes in the section above. On the other hand, Wikipedia does accountability badly. This was a big screwup, and I think that in the interests of accountability, you should resign over it, in the same way as perfectly competent ministers of the crown will resign to take accountability for scandals in their departments. Steve Smith (talk) 08:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  13. I know that you, and the other arbitrators are doing a difficult job. But lately there have been some cases where I disagree with how the cases have been handled, with their outcome, and with the collateral damage resulting from outcomes (or maybe lack thereof). Here is, in a similar way, the follow up on cases added to that. I feel that A) arbitrators are working separate, not together; B) arbitrators are not interacting with community (which sometimes is a choice to protect the community, but in combination with A may be fatal); C) there is a lack of transparency (which may also sometimes be necessary, but should not result in questions about propriety of decisions) and D) arbitrators are not controlling situations during cases and apparently also not after cases (I know, especially D is a lot of extra work, but it can't go on like this). Some of these situations can be handled by the community, but other situations are only known to ArbCom, or can only be handled by ArbCom members (as members of the community can't handle them adequately without being implicated in the situation), or are 'invisible' to (the majority of) the community. This is again a situation which IMHO results from a general lack of (internal and external) communication, interaction, transparency and control. And adds to a feeling of disappointment in the ArbCom which is already there in some members of the community (at least in me). I am sorry, Casliber, that this comes to one specific member first, but I think it is really time that you, the other members of ArbCom, as well as the ArbCom as a whole should reflect on that. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  14. I'm sorry but anyone who condoned this should be ashamed of themselves and should really consider whether they have the trust of the community to hold any advanced user permissions. In any event I regretfully no longer have confidence in an arbitor that condones a blocked user obtaining advanced user permissions with a sockpuppet. Spartaz Humbug! 09:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    No confidence. Hipocrite (talk) 10:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC) Not substantially less confidence than my confidence in the vast majority of the comittee, and more confidence than some. As such, I support resignation (of Casliber), but no more so than I support resignation of most of the current panel. Hipocrite (talk) 13:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  15. A clear failure. ArbCom members should be held to a high standard, and if that standard isn't met they should resign. By his own admission this went on for several months, so is a continuing failure - while the concerned editor was the locus of dispute. Whether Casliber has learned his lesson or not is immaterial to whether he should resign. He should stand for re-election and demonstrate this, if he feels that is appropriate. Nothing personal. (added later) Oh, but here is something else: delegating to "the community" in this instance (and on this page) is a cop out. You should decide on the correct course of action yourself, and how it reflects on your ArbCom and your own reputation. 10:43, 1 October 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Verbal (talkcontribs)
  16. Resign now, and if you want to be an ArbCom member again, stand in the next election. If you think that a nine-month block for a friend of yours is too long and threee months or so is more than sufficient, appeal it through the normal channels, just like everybody else should need to do. The way you handled it now is so fundamentally wrong that a simple apology is not sufficient to restore confidence. The RfA was the last time that you could have come forward and acted somewhat like an ArbCom member is supposed to do. You blew that chance. Cases like this one only reinforce the impression that the important thing on Wikipedia is to have the right friends. By the way, people in similar positions who have acted like you or worse (like nominating said user for adminship) should voluntarily resign or be made to as well. Fram (talk) 11:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  17. SV's arguments are logical and persuasive. At the same time, I strongly believe arbcom should take a very, very close look at the positions of the administrators who actively colluded in the fraudulent RFA nomination (that is, desysop them). To let this slide otherwise just makes WP:SOCK a selectively-enforced, bitter joke. Moreschi (talk) 12:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  18. Unfortunately I agree with Awadewit and many others above. I find this extremely disappointing in so many ways. I supported Cas at the elections because I really believed he could make difficult decisions without being compromised and had the personal integrity and ethical framework to perform the role fairly without "fear or favour", and to step back and leave the decisions to his colleagues when he felt unable to do that. I feel very sad to say that I no longer trust you in this role, Cas, and for the sake of the project and the integrity of the committee, I feel you need to resign. I also feel that to remain on the committee at this point places the rest of the committee in an untenable and compromised position of being tarnished by having had a sitting arbitrator giving "mates rates" and actively protecting a friend from his own committee. I also agree with others who say that putting us in the position of having to be "the bad guys" by asking us to do this is unfair. You really should know in yourself the correct course of action for an arbitrator who has sat on his hands for many months knowingly allowing someone who gave up adminship "under a cloud" and was banned by the ArbCom to sock around the ban and regain the tools with a sockpuppet without taking any action or at least alerting the other members of the committee. Cas, you also owe apologies to the people who unnecessarily had their valuable time wasted investigating the account and in dealing with the dispute which led to the recent arbitration request when you knew all along what was going on. I also have to say that I agree with Moreschi's comment above me and if there are admins who knowingly colluded in a fraudulent RFA nomination the committee needs to examine their positions as "trusted users" in the community. Sarah 13:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  19. Many above hit on the key points. I might have been inclined to accept your reasoning up until the RFA. That's where it all changed. At that point you and any other admin who knew had a responsibility to the community. Any arbcom member or admin who knowingly lets situations like this occur have violated community trust too far to pass it off as a "learn from your mistake" situation.--Cube lurker (talk) 13:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  20. My main problem with all of this is Law's position as an admin. Once that happened the time to step forward came and then slowly went by the boards. I am adding that I admire you for being willing to accept the consequences of your actions, and no one can really fault you for anything that has transpired. However others by their duplicity and silence are far more culpable for what has arisen, and not surprisingly far less willing to bear responsibility for their actions...Modernist (talk) 13:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  21. While I can understand the natural wish to protect your friends, selectively applying the rules is something I can't accept from an arb. I'm afraid that your failure to even inform the community of this long-term blocked user even when they ran for adminship means that I no longer trust you to fairly arbitrate. I do want to thank you for doing this stupidly difficult job for the time you did, however. – Toon 16:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  22. Unfortunately feel a need to accept the resignation. There might have been a valid argument before Law became an admin. Once that occurred there's simply no excuse. Given that also well after his return you deleted the Undertow's old userpages, that looks very close to a deliberate attempt to coverup. This year's ArbCom has emphasized the high standard to which admins and checkusers should be held. It would be the height of hypocrisy not to hold ArbCom members to that same standard. Simply put, after this, we can't reasonably trust you to make the difficult, sometimes unpleasant decisions that we elected you to do. JoshuaZ (talk) 17:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  23. The difficult position you were in makes your actions aiming to resolve the situation understandable and evn praiseworthy, the inaction after Law gained admin status is all too human and I'm sure most of us would have found it difficult to do better, but it was the wrong thing to do. Your resignation does you credit, and while I feel with great regret that it should stand, my hope is that you will be able to return wiser and with my full support in future if you choose to stand again. Thanks for your work on Arbcom, dave souza, talk 22:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  24. Those who comply or resort to deception to achieve their ends cannot, by their very nature, be trusted with transparency in a position like this. Spellcast (talk) 09:15, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  25. You were put in a difficult situation through no fault of your own, but your choices under pressure are not compatible with a seat on the ArbCom. Eluchil404 (talk) 10:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  26. After I heard about this mess, I went and looked at Law's RfA: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Law, and I encourage others to read the statements by Law as well. Look at it with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, applying what we know now, to what was said then. When I read that RfA today, it made me physically nauseous. What I saw was not a case of tact or subtle, "We just won't mention that this is a reincarnation of a banned user." Instead, what I saw was blatant, bald-faced, unapologetic lying, such as the part where he says that he wants to be "completely transparent" but omits the part about already having been an administrator.[14] That this was done, was wrong. That it was done with the support of other admins who should have known better, was appalling. That it was done with the complicity of a sitting arbitrator, says horrifying things about that arbitrator's judgment. Resignation is absolutely the right thing to do in this case. --Elonka 02:06, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for reminding us Elonka it's the smoking gun indeed, perhaps you should comment here as well: [15]...Modernist (talk) 03:14, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Prefer not to jump straight to numbered comments in segregated sections

  • Stick around. Resignation/defenestration should be for a pattern of poor behavior, not for one mistake. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:45, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I just structured this for ease of navigation and getting numbers. I am not up to reading reams of text today, believe me :( Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:48, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • You shouldn't be making a quick decision today anyway; if nothing else, this forces you to wait to make a decision until you are up to reading reams of text. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:54, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • True, I wasn't planning on closing this in 6 hours though, and it's a bit out of my hands really and up to the community. Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:59, 30 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think there is a really substantial difference between knowing about a problem while trying to resolve it quietly and being actively deceptive; this issue has editors in both categories, and I think its clear that Casliber is in the first. I'm a little conflicted about the question of resignation, though, because I am truly surprised to find that an arbitrator knew about this and did not find a way to resolve it. It's less than I expect from arbitrators, frankly. On the other hand, I think Casliber has been an eminently reasonable and trustworthy arbitrator in every other respect and he's a quite likable guy - and I've been told that there are other administrators who ArbCom knows are returned banned or desysopped users, and no action has been taken. So on balance, I won't call for Casliber's resignation but I can't argue against it either. Nathan T 00:06, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • You've been told there are other administrators who ArbCom knows are returned banned or desysopped users? Could you please tell whoever told you this to contact ArbCom at the mailing list address, so that we can sort this out and not have this accusation hanging over us that we know more than we actually know. Individuals (as in Casliber's case) may be aware of some things, or have some suspicions, or may discuss things with other functionaries and checkusers, but that is a far cry from the committee as a whole being aware of things like this. Carcharoth (talk) 00:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • I understood Nathan's statement to refer to individuals. Are the other members of arb com prepared to state whether or not they know of other admins in this situation and who they are? DGG ( talk )
My comment describes what informed my decision not to come down either way; if I had actionable information, I'd have posted it. The folks who do have it can post it or not, whether to do so is not my call. Nathan T 00:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cas, something stands out at me in your apology. You say you told the committee you knew yesterday, but Sandstein posted the RFAR 10 days ago. Why the delay? Thatcher 00:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I procrastinated. I am quite busy IRL and there was other arb stuff needed doing. I sat and looked that the Sandstein RFAR and realised I couldn't honestly post anything without some misrepresentation so began seriously thinking about it, but distracted by higher priorities elsewhere. Once the identities came to the attention of the committee, I thought I just better do some explaining. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • The committee was alerted to the fact that Law=The undertow via another source, about 36 hours ago. While it was being discussed within the committee, Cas indicated that he was aware of this. John Vandenberg (chat) 01:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • If Law's representations are accurate, his ban was technically flawed and the Committee explicitly gave him a right of appeal at the time when it enacted the original remedy. Yet although (apparently) arbitrators agreed that decision was flawed they refused to reinstate his editing privileges when he submitted his request. I currently know of five different requests and appeals, submitted privately, which the Committee has failed to act upon for weeks or (in most cases) months. These haven't been rejected; they're stuck in limbo. People sometimes resort to bad judgment calls when profoundly frustrated by months inaction. One of them is a banned editor (I won't give away the userame) who hasn't socked but is near the end of his tether. Privately he's declared a deadline after which he will give up on formal process and resume editing anyway. I've been entreating him to reconsider, but when the process and its custodians themselves make so little endeavor at fairness my words ring hollow. Apologies aren't necessary but corrective action would help. What are you doing, as an arbitrator, to fix these problems? Durova320 00:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • This isn't really the place to discuss this (this section is really about Casliber's actions or inactions). What I would suggest here is that appeals should be publicly listed (just by appeal number if the appellants wish to remain anonymous) and the arbitrator(s) tasked with dealing with those appeals should be listed there as well. That way the delays in the process can be identified and acted upon. But as I am currently responsible for a long delay in a case being heard (an actual arbitration case, not an appeal), I should go and deal with that now. I suggest discussions of arbitrator workload and time management (and questions of how the community can help track this) be moved elsewhere. Maybe WT:ARBCOM? Carcharoth (talk) 00:30, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Where else would be the place? Only one of those five instances is a ban appeal. I'm not even at liberty to discuss some of the others with the Committee via email because the petitioners confided privately. Suffice it to say that in less than half a year two different arbitrators have admitted to looking the other way at admin socking and a third arbitrator had to step down because he himself was an undisclosed sock of a desysopped user. It is very disheartening to see this unfold yet again, and to watch politically connected individuals receive expedited attention while others vanish into a black hole. Hardly anyone has the courage to call that spade a spade, but it does get noticed. It has a terrible effect on morale. Durova320 01:15, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • I said WT:ARBCOM, didn't I? This section is about Casliber's apology, not the backlog in ban appeals. What I would suggest is that you get the five people concerned to e-mail ArbCom asking for an update on their appeals. I will personally look out for those e-mails and give them an update on what is happening. I can't promise a date for when their appeals will be heard, because I'm not dealing with appeals at the moment (BASC duty is rotated for a reason), but I will chase things up for those people and anyone else who is reading this and e-mails for an update. But please don't let this subthread overwhelm this section. Carcharoth (talk) 04:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • Well, right. Corrective action means more than apology. It comes as a surprise that you consider it off topic. Durova320 05:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would generally just echo what Nathan says above (except for the "I've been told..." bit, 'cos I haven't :) I like Casliber and think he's a great content editor and great arbitrator but I'm greatly disturbed that an arb would sit by while a returning and not uncontroversial editor would say "I came from another wiki" in their RFA. I don't understand these supposed "friends" of TU, friends are the ones who sit you down and give you the straight goods, not the ones who sit in the car while you're driving drunk. I'd like to see Cas stay on but this saddens me. I also makes me wonder exactly how many dancing skeletons are still in the Arb closet. Franamax (talk) 00:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sigh. This is not quite resignable, IMHO, but it comes close. Letting someone with the obvious emotional instability of the undertow get through RFA again was a really bad decision that was inevitably going to create drama, because this guy is just not stable. I've been around long enough to remember that he yoyos all over the place. We can't have people like this with sysop buttons. He should have been stopped at the RFA stage, if not well before: Wikipedia is not therapy, and all that. Nobody expects arbitrators to be flawless, heaven knows, but not again, please? Moreschi (talk) 01:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Although it was a lapse, the lapse was shared by a number of administrators who took a more active role in promoting Law to adminship despite knowing it was a sock account. There isn't even a consensus, or admission by those who did it, that this was wrong. Without knowing what it is that got The undertow banned in the first place it's hard to assess the gravity of their collective poor judgment: were they favoring a friend? Shielding rulebreaking by an inner circle of privileged editors? Acting out ofor opposition to the Arbcom remedies? Advancing one faction over another? On the face of it, blocks and bans are one of the most serious duties of administrators, block/ban-evading socks are one of the greatest sources of disruption, and fake admin accounts are a significant threat to the project. Looking the other way, or worse, facilitating breaking the most important rules when one feels like it, is fundamentally inconsistent with the duties of an administrator. That sends a bad message to nonadmins too regarding the importance of rules and the fairness of admins. I think we need to look at the larger issue and get a consensus first that facilitating others is a violation of a policy violation, socking in particular, is itself a policy violation. That's probably worth an Arbcom case, rooting out those responsible. That's not what Casliber did, though; Casliber merely looked the other way, and waited a little longer than necessary to disclose the conflict of interest in being asked to rule on the behavior of an editor who was secretly known by Casliber to be a sock. That's not ideal, but I don't see it as getting to the heart of an Arbcom member's duties. Arbcom is already overworked and needs all the help it can get. Too many are resigning or going inactive. The next Arbcom election is the best time to decide: Casliber can decide whether to run again, and the community can say whether it remains confident. Wikidemon (talk) 01:10, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • This guy is making a lot of sense. In particular, I think that GlassCobra (talk · contribs) making what was essentially a nomination that lied by omission was really going way beyond the bounds of what is acceptable. Moreschi (talk) 01:35, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Is there evidence that GlassCobra knew he was nominating the sock of a blocked user? That's a serious charge.   Will Beback  talk  01:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • For full disclosure: Yes, I was aware that The_undertow and Law are the same person. I have fairly frequent contact with him and am aware of his personal situation. After he created the Law account, we had a long discussion about his approach to Wikipedia and what he thought his place was. He stated his desire to leave behind his clouded past and get a fresh start, with Law as his only account, and I determined that I felt sufficiently comfortable to place my trust in him once again by nominating him. I did purposefully leave out any mention of The_undertow in his RfA nomination; I wanted editors to judge him solely by his actions and edits as Law. I would also like to reaffirm my trust in this editor and call attention to his overwhelmingly positive track record as Law; he has written quality articles, collaborated peacefully with other editors, and used the tools in a manner that is a net positive to this project. It is unfortunate that his identity was revealed this way, and I take this opportunity to note my extreme displeasure with the actions and behavior of the other editors involved in leaking the information. As Georgewilliamherbert has noted, the ArbCom has been aware of other blocked editors contributing under new names in the past. We have precedent of blocked users under new names having friends mentor them and supervise their edits, and some have come full circle to gain the tools themselves. It is quite a mystery to me why this particular instance seems to be generating such a dramastorm. GlassCobra 05:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • I do appreciate your honesty in coming clean here. But do you not see how misguided your nomination was, and antithetical to the notion of governing Wikipedia through policies and consensus rather than personalities, connections, and aggression? Do Arbcom members and popular admins have a special privilege to ignore blocks and policies to "mentor" their online and real-life buddies? What you "want" is not the issue. We all want things. The whole "net positive" stuff is unconvincing, the last defense of an editor's indefensible conduct. What about us regular editors who muck in the article trenches month after month dealing with socks, trolls, vandals, and other disruptive editors without the benefit of patrons to rescue us when we get ourselves in trouble? I've created 120+ articles and there are plenty of things I want too. I want not to have to deal with long-term sockpuppeteers in some weid spooky mental war dragging me through procedure after procedure in a game to add fringe nonsense content to the encyclopedia. I want not to be viewed as some drama queen content warrior and scolded everytime I sincerely bring a editing problem to the attention of administrators. I really want an assumption of good faith. We normal editors get rather short treatment, and we have to deal with the aftermath of the stuff that goes on here. Why do you get what you want, and I don't? It's not giving away much to say that I am a mature adult with some measure of respect and success in real life. Why should I try my best to respect teenagers playing cop, policies even when they're an obstacle, or administrators even when they're wrong, Arbcom sanctions even when Arbcom was out to lunch when they decided them, if others in privileged positions do not share those compunctions? You enabled a sock admin, who just wheel warred to countermand Arbcom sanctions in a case that took many months to resolve (if it is indeed resolved). This generated drama because the sock you helped create just improperly unblocked an editor under Arbcom restrictions for his fourth or fifth violation those restrictions, and wasted perhaps several full days of time collectively of some of Wikipedia's most senior editors, pretty much guaranteeing that we will go through this whole thing again in another week or two. Wikidemon (talk) 06:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • I generally agree w/ wikidemon here. You fucked up big time on that one GC. Nothing that can't be looked past or accepted, but it was a big mistake. Protonk (talk) 07:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
          • I appreciate that GlassCobra is now being honest, but I am very disappointed that a WP admin would actively help a blocked editor circumvent his block and nominate him for admin. That activity shows no respect for the community and its policies. I don't understand how Casliber, GlassCobra, Jennavecia, et al. can feel comfortable blocking some editors for block evasion while aiding another editor in evading his block. Any of these editors could have initiated an appeal or a request for the block to be lifted. Instead they all engaged in subterfuge. That isn't what we should expect from people in positions of trust.   Will Beback  talk  07:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I very much agree with you that we need to reach some kind of community consensus on whether or not it is acceptable for administrators especially to ignore disruptive socking (and per WP:SOCK, this case was disruptive). I'm frankly appalled that so many of those who knew about this case think there was nothing wrong with either their socking or their silence. At least Cas was trying to resolve the situation in the background. Karanacs (talk) 03:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Right, I find that amazing too. A stack of administrators knew about this the whole time - some supported his RfA as if he were entirely new to them, one nominated him, others either remained silent or participated as though he were new... That many people find this to be completely acceptable... I just find that hard to understand. Nathan T 03:26, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think this is up to Casliber to decide based solely on the dictates of his own conscience. The decision should not be based on views of the small cross-section of editors who will respond here. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 01:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • Er, hopefully it is larger than a smidgen of the community. My conscience feels bad but I still feel I have a lot to offer. Casliber (talk · contribs) 02:03, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • First we must demand integrity of ourselves then we must demand from our friends and then we can demand from the community. That is demand not ask. Casliber if the primary reason behind this tardy revelation is because you were unable bite the bullet and place the demands of integrity over those of friendship, then you should resign. If you had real reason to believe the issue was being taken care of and were blind-sided when those plans fell through, then stick around but calibrate your judgment accordingly. Only you can honestly judge yourself in this, we don't have good enough information to decide for you.--BirgitteSB 02:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Fff! Gah! Alt accounts should be piled in the Marianna Trench and nuked. Even the joke ones. Wasted time not spent improving content. Name changes too unless in cases of stalking or some such. This stupid online skulduggery that is employed just because it can be has repercussions. It is inherently dishonest and allows users to manipulate the good faith of users while promoting confusion to perennially clueless editors like me. This site can't go a week without someone being de-masked as a sock of someone else. Christ. Do what you want to do Casliber. You'll catch shit either way. Either learn how to edit without being an ArbCom member or suck up the guilt and own your mistake and say "Yeah, I did that. Won't do it again. So what?" You'll be Wikipedia Review's punching bag for a while til the next sock is uncovered and they move on to something else tawdry. --Moni3 (talk) 02:38, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    I share Moni3's concern about socks and user renames in general. We've recently socks playing WP:BADHAND and others artificially inflating an apparent consensus on various dicsussions. I suggest all alternate accounts of all editors should be banned, except that ArbCom should be able to authorise specific alternates for specific reason, with reviews of these cases at intervals of a year or less. Changes of name are can sometimes be an attempt to walk away from consequences of previous behaviour, and I suggest we discuss possible situations to see if we can work out some principles - possibly at WP:VPP. --Philcha (talk) 08:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Is this behavior to be chastised, or commended? We have a long history of problem users reforming and returning (not the rule, but there are plenty of exceptions who were indef'ed or banned for a year who are now productive cooperative editors). We have tended to look the other way if the returned user self-identified. In this case they were outed by someone else, and not given the chance to come to that decision on their own. Casliber has admitted to working with them to convince them to make the admission. I don't know what the right answers are here - but resignation is premature. I think I would have done something different, but I think I want an arbcom whose members balance protecting the community and in the rare case where it's actually possible, rehabilitating those who were abusers in the past. I don't know that this was entirely the right thing to do, but it clearly wasn't wrong (morally, corrupt, failure of judgement) either. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 03:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • To SV, the deletion was by request for a RL concern voiced by The Undertow (actually) unrelated to Wikipedia. I had not thought of it in relation to this until yesterday, when yeah it didn't look good. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Did you know when you deleted those pages that he was back as Law? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 04:00, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec x 2) Yes. As I have said, I was hoping he'd resign the Law account or come clean himself at some point. I was not thinking about the trail WRT onwiki investigations. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You are saying that, as a member of the ArbCom, you deleted the user and talk page of an editor under an ArbCom ban, who you knew was not only back editing, but who had gained another admin account? Cas, please resign and save everyone a lot of trouble. This can't be justified. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 04:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I thought that user talk pages were not normally deleted. The user in this case certainly didn't vanish. Is there any reason why it shouldn't be undeleted?   Will Beback  talk  04:42, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We're not supposed to delete talk pages, as I understand it, so it should be undeleted. I see that Lara has also deleted Law's pages. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
@SV I wouldn't say it is entirely unjustifiable. I know of at least five incidents in the past when arbcom members knew of improper alt account usage and did nothing. All five cases are long since resolved, but I can't exactly hold Casliber to a higher standard than the community has held members in the past, at least without saying "we are raising the standard for future actions". MBisanz talk 04:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If we let this one go too, then standards have fallen even further. Rather than defend Cas because it has happened with other cases, please tell us what the other cases were instead. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And I'm sure the first case I name will scream outing, the second will scream revenge, and the third will scream drama mongering; you will forgive me for not being motivated to flop my head down on the chopping block I hope. MBisanz talk 05:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Right. Lots of people are worried about speaking up, which is one of the things we elect ArbCom members for. Then we find they're also involved, and to make matters worse won't automatically resign when caught. That we're even having to discuss this is astonishing. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 05:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Those of us who work or have worked in management positions know that if you give people over whom you exercise some authority leeway with regards to the rules, sooner or later it will come back to bite you. The lesson here is, if you're in a management position, and en.Wikipedia arbitrators are in "management", then it's probably safer to abide by the letter of the law in all cases. That's not a very pleasant position to have to be in, but it is safer. Cla68 (talk) 04:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec x 2) yeah, big time...Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • For several months, you were aware that an editor was directly violating an ArbCom-imposed ban. You did not report the issue to the community as a whole, nor to your fellow Arbitrators, on the assumption that you might be able to encourage the editor to reform. You remained silent – for months – even after you found that the account had been granted adminship on the basis of an RfA containing a number of barefaced lies. You only came clean to your fellow Arbitrators after the matter had been reported to them by someone else. In the Abd/WMC case, you (along with your fellow Arbs) endorsed a principle about the importance of administrators "avoiding apparent impropriety" in their actions. Can you reconcile your own conduct with that principle? How does it reflect on the role and responsibilities of the Arbitration Committee if one of its members unilaterally and secretly opts to disregard the Committee's own remedies? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to work something out with minimum drama, which unfortunately wasn't successful. I was trying to be pragmatic. I was also aware of the circumstances behind the sanctions (and some of the factors at the time) and was satisfied then they wouldn't recur. Juggling pragmatism and principles can be tricky. Nonetheless, I have made the statement indicating my apology for the slip-up and noting the feedback. (hence the options above) We're all human and we've all made mistakes, expecting anyone to be perfect is an unattainable ideal. I have taken this view in cases and ban appeals as well. As I said, if the consensus is I should go, I will go. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think it speaks volumes that you either didn't think to, or felt you were unable to, trust your fellow Arbitrators to assist you with this situation. It's not entirely clear to me why a minimum-drama, pragmatic solution could not be arrived at through consultation with the Committee, nor why you chose to go it alone and ignore the Committee's remedy. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It may speak to something, but it certainly doesn't speak to Casilber alone. Perhaps is we assumed (for a moment) that a minimum drama pragmatic solution would not have been forthcoming from the committee or the community, would that make Cas's actions more understandable? Protonk (talk) 07:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I agree that this doesn't reflect solely on Casliber's judgement. The community should find it very worrying that a sitting Arbitrator didn't feel comfortable raising the issue of an editor who gained a position of trust and responsibility on Wikipedia through deception, largely on the basis of activities carried out in direct violation of a clear-cut Arbitration-imposed remedy. If the Committee couldn't be relied upon to treat the testimony of one of its own with restraint and discretion, what message does that send? If this situation is representative of an overall lack of mutual trust and respect among Arbitrators, the Committee is seriously dysfunctional.
On the other side of that, though, is the lack of judgement (or at least foresight) that Casliber showed over a long period of time. The ArbCom has regularly handed out penalties (from simple cautions and admonishments ranging up to desysopping) to editors who have attempted to resolve messy situations but not known when they were in over their heads. At the point where Casliber's months of entreaties failed to result in any openness on the part of the banned editor and that editor assumed a position of trust within the community, Casliber should have been able to see where this was all headed. Once Casliber was aware of Law's adminship, the matter needed to be addressed – discreetly, in camera, as necessary – by the Committee. It was only a matter of time before everything exploded. (As the old saying goes — three can keep a secret...if two of them are dead.) While I sincerely doubt that Casliber ever sat down and said to himself, Today I will arrogate the authority of the Committee, and instead modify and suspend their sanctions without discussion or consultation, that is nevertheless the effect of his actions. It is not the role of individual Arbitrators to rewrite the decisions of the Committee.
One final thought — Casliber was running for (and elected to) ArbCom while this ban evasion started taking place. While I do not and cannot know at exactly what time Casliber first made contact with Law and knew about the alternate account, does he think that his candidacy for ArbCom would have been successful if the community had known at the time about his ongoing activities with respect to this banned user? If he were to run for reelection this year, would he be successful? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:39, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is pragmatic to take care of things immediately before they blow out of all proportion rather and than stalling for a easier option. Stop digging.--BirgitteSB 05:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Casliber, could you share what lessons you've learned from this, and how you'd handle the same situation if it came up again in the future, both in your own editing and in cases that might come to the ArbCom?   Will Beback  talk  05:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Birgitte writes a good summary on the other page - it did snowball (eventually) and didn't go away. I would have ensured it didn't remain secret like it did, and should have taken steps before the RfA especially. Rootology's readminning has been a good example to others that editors can come back from sanctions and win the community's trust. Casliber (talk · contribs) 05:36, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the reply. Rootology did not come back and win the community's trust by creating a sock account. We've now learned that there was an entire group of people who knew about this block evasion and helped it along. This calls into question whether rules are applied consistently, and is not behavior that Wikipedia should expect from its volunteers in trusted positions. If that's all you have to say then I'm not sure that you've learned from this episode after all. If you'd like to think about it more and respond more fuilly that would be helpful. I'd like to know your opinion of admins who aid their frineds in block evasion. Should that be condoned?   Will Beback  talk  08:09, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I mean...is there anyone else you guys want to tell us about? I notice GC copped to nominating law and ommitting his prior account...which just leaves me gobsmacked. People protesting the sock policy talk a big game about how you can't technically enforce it...but that doesn't seem to matter if we can't socially enforce it. I said above that I don't think cas should resign, but I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. Protonk (talk) 06:31, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(ec with Protonk, comment is to Casliber) You made mistakes, but as I suggested above one thing you can do now, at the very least, is clean house on the committee. That is, if there are any other committee members who are aware of similar situations, they should come forward about it and do so right now (in a semi-discrete fashion if necessary). The point being made above by MBisanz, GlassCobra, and others that these kind of things happen with some frequency is ridiculously problematic—not all of us are party to whatever open secrets certain editors seem to have access to. Either banned editors are actually banned until the community or the ArbCom decides otherwise on Wikipedia, or else we just admit that certain segments of the community have decided it's okay for certain users to come back when they are friendly with them and for these kind of decisions to be made off-wiki wherever it is y'alls make these decisions (and, if you happen to learn about this kind of thing, well just relish that knowledge but don't say anything about it). I'd say let's go with the former option, but some confidence restoring exercises are needed here, and I suggest you start with ArbCom coming clean about any other situations like this one. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs 06:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I suspect this is actually more difficult than may appear. If Casliber aided in all of this, then most likely he should resign. If he only was aware of the situation, however, then in fact I am not sure that it was his obligation to report such information. To pose the question: are arbitrators obligated to report all perceived misconduct of which they are aware (to the rest of the committee, or to the community), even if known only due to personal confidences? It may be tempting to say yes, but I think the obligations are more specific, and require additional context. Perhaps, if you are aware of a specific type of misconduct by friends, then you should be able to account for this with regard to your actions toward others. E.g., if Casliber is aware of this then one would hope his actions and his public statements were consistent with such knowledge. Moreover, I can certainly see problems if Casliber was being used for cover, or if Casliber disregarded routine enforcement for a friend. But all of these require additional information. If he only knew about this because a friend told him, then the idea that arbitrators actually have to report individual malfeasance as they personally see it (but their friends may not, for whatever reasons), in all instances, may go beyond what is good policy. This doesn't answer the question as to Casliber, of course, but suggests only that the initial revelation may not be enough to go by. Mackan79 (talk) 08:23, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think Casliber acted extremely foolishly, but perhaps understandably and not necessarily dishonestly. I do largely agree with SV's comments above, but the one I feel contempt for is GlassCobra, for nominating a known sock at RfA. It makes a mockey of an already discredited process, and I find that unforgivable. I don't demand Casliber's resignation, after all to err is human, but I do demand that the entire ArbCom now come clean about all their other dirty little secrets. --Malleus Fatuorum 09:20, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • You'd have better luck demanding that Coke divulge their recipe for Coca-Cola. Badger Drink (talk) 09:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not going to demand anyone's head, nothing good will come of that, but I would like to express my extreme disappointment with everyone who allowed this RfA to run its course without disclosing what they knew. GlassCobra, I find it particularly disheartening that you are unwilling to acknowledge the iniquitousness of your actions. Your deceit only serves to strengthen the notion that contributors are treated far from equally, and the only thing that matters is who your friends are. decltype (talk) 11:24, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • is it really the place of an arb to act as a therapist and try to persuade an offender to do the right thing through personal argument for "many months" while keeping the sock secret from arcom even ?[16]mattisse (Talk) 12:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm really on the fence about this one. On one hand, we have someone who I see as an excellent arb in general. On the other, we have a user who, knowing the policies on the matter, did not disclose the evasion of an ArbCom-imposed ban, and further, allowed the user to become a sysop again without disclosing his past. The correct procedure would have been for The undertow to appeal his ban to arbcom and have it lifted, and then abandon the account. Even then, he probably should have been required to disclose the account before standing for adminship. I think we can all agree that this inaction was a betrayal of the community's trust. Whether it warrants resignation, though, is a trickier question, especially given that we can't see the off-wiki communication that took place to prove that Casliber actually did repeatedly urge Law to come clean. I think that if we had that evidence, we could better examine what really took place. I request that Law and Casliber agree to post the content of the emails for the community's benefit.
If anyone clearly and unambiguously needs to resign, it is Glasscobra, for knowingly and willfully nominating an undisclosed sockpuppet of a desysopped/banned user at RFA. Whether he had the trust of GC is entirely irrelevant, as he should have appealed his ban or disclosed the account. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 14:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

An appeal to the ArbCom

This committee was elected because people were tired of what they saw (rightly or wrongly) as the inconsistent ethical standards of the previous one. The December 2008 election was a vote for change. Each and every committee member who is protecting friends while desysopping others for the same offences; or who has himself been banned or desysopped in the past; or who is hiding anything else they know the community would regard as substantive, is making a mockery of that election and of everyone's faith in you.

Please ask Casliber to resign as an Arb and functionary, and ask anyone else on the committee with similar secrets to step down. The community wants and needs an honest ArbCom. No one should be allowed to compromise its integrity in this way. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • There is the not remote possibility that we will cease to have a committee if that happens. Also, in our infinite wisdom, the Wikipedia community decided that the problem with arbcom was that there was too little secrecy, so when we go to vote for a new set of arbs, we will do so with secret ballots. Protonk (talk) 07:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I suppose if the Committee wanted to get started, it could act on my emails of 08/31/2009, 07/04/2009, and 04/26/2009 and the current members of AUSC could act on the email I sent to them individually on 12/22/2008 and of course there are the one or two other admin abuse matters I've privately communicated to certain arbs that haven't seen the light of day in months and years as well. MBisanz talk 07:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Aren't we about to have another election? Why don't we simply ask all candidates to agree to a pledge of conduct and agree to resign should they violate it? Things like -- Arbcom decisions apply to all editors, there are no free passes for friends; no acting in COI situations, etc. If they won't agree to reasonable restrictions then people can make their own conclusions when they vote. At the same time we should acknowledge that being an Arbcom member is a thankless task that does not result in any real power, riches, or respect in life, it's service more than honor, so let's not make it less attractive to be a committee member, right? - Wikidemon (talk) 07:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A code of conduct would be great. Please, write one. I doubt the committee will have the time to do so. John Vandenberg (chat) 08:42, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I doubt the committee will even have the time to enforce it, or even uphold it in the first place. Badger Drink (talk) 09:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • MBisanz, I can't see an email from you on Dec 22, 2008. If I have found the right email from April 26 and July 4, they are problems of various degrees of wrongness, many of which have been dealt with in arbitration cases; the rest have not been brought to arbitration publicly, and they are not the type of issue that the committee privately deals with. The email from September 1 was a matter that would normally be dealt with privately, but is a long way from conclusive - we did drop the ball on that one by not replying to you or investigating it further. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • A code of conduct is a good idea, but it's a little sad that we'd have to include, "Do not cover up for your friends if they gain adminship while under an ArbCom ban." SlimVirgin talk|contribs 08:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A secret ballot will at least prevent people from being elected just because editors are reluctant to vote against whichever clique they belong to. It's a step in the right direction. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 07:05, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's one of the features. It will also prevent auditing of the results by anyone distant from the committee. Protonk (talk) 07:06, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(Addendum) I should probably stop pressing the point, it is a little off topic. Protonk (talk) 07:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Following the suggestion above, I've created a tentative proposal for a code of conduct. See Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Code of Conduct. All input is welcome. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 09:37, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • John Vandenberg: you say "I doubt the committee will have the time to do so." I say the Committee would have more time for such if it streamlined some of the time-wasting parts of its hearings process (like restating policy and pillars and expecting arbs to pace through with the scroller ticking yes to them, time and time again). And kept to a decent timetable in its hearings. Tony (talk) 10:48, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Tony1, the basic principles at the top of each case are not a time sink; trying to eradicate them to save time is a massive red herring. But that isn't to say that there are a lot of areas where stream-lining our processes will result in time and effort savings. The biggest time saver for this committee has been appointing more checkusers and oversighters.
Back on topic, I am stunned and pleased that Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee code of conduct has existed for years; I've only just seen it now. The committee has talked about a code of conduct on and off for a while now, but we have unseen backlogs across the board to work on, and we are expected to participate in the community as well. The committee doesn't need to write arbitration related policies; the community can, and should, do it. (Thanks SlimVirgin) Also the Arbitration policy improvements havent been rolled into policy yet. If necessary, the committee can ratify them once the community is done updating it.
John Vandenberg (chat) 12:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Something is seriously wrong if an arbitrator (which John V. is, I believe) is stunned to learn that there exists an Arbitration Committee code of conduct! Has ArbCom no institutional memory? There needs to be, apparently, a standard message sent 2 or 3 times a year to all arbitrators which says that the following pages (several, including the code of conduct) are required reading. - Hordaland (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The code of conduct is not policy, it's a long-dormant proposal (well, at least it was dormant until yesterday). Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:21, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What he said↑ See http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee_code_of_conduct&oldid=287519830 What part of "failed to gain consensus" do you not understand? The page was only revived today [17]. *mumbles something about people who make accusations without doing any research whatsoever* J.delanoygabsadds 18:27, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Humbly beg your pardon. Although Boris' info was sufficient and not judgemental. Thank you, Boris.
(I did do some looking, tho clearly not enuff.) --Hordaland (talk) 20:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Going forward: WP:SOCK clarification

I'm not yet sure what I think of this incident, but I appreciate Casliber's candor and thank him for it. In view of the discussion above, I've proposed to write up what I believe the community's expectations are in such cases at WP:SOCK#Disclosure of inappropriate alternative accounts by trusted editors:

Editors who hold advanced permissions (administrator, bureaucrat, oversight, checkuser) and members or clerks of the Arbitration Committee hold positions of particular community trust. When applying for and at any time while holding such a position, they are required:

  • to disclose any own alternative account that could reasonably be considered inappropriate;
  • to make public, in an appropriate venue, any knowledge they have about such accounts of other active editors, except if the alternative account is already disclosed on the editor's user page.

Failure to do so in a timely manner is grounds for removal from their position of trust by decision of the Arbitration Committee.

Discussion of this should probably take place at WT:SOCK.  Sandstein  09:15, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is what I'm thinking of above, and I'll say that I tentatively disagree with such a policy. To state one issue among many, there is a fair amount of gray area in socking, as evident in the double standards that many perceive. Arbitrators also weren't always arbitrators, and come with knowledge that preceded their positions on the Committee. If someone indicates to an arbitrator as a friend that they are using another account, and besides that there is no indication of disruption, should the arbitrator automatically involve himself and disclose it to the rest of the Committee? Even if this disclosure to the arbitrator preceded his or her election? A competing principle would be that of recusal, that an arbitrator who is not impartial with regard to an editor should avoid decision making with regard to that editor. Similarly there is the principle of avoiding rules which can in almost all cases be enforced only through honest personal disclosure, and the principle of avoiding rules that would isolate arbitrators from the realities of the community. Just a few thoughts on this for here. Mackan79 (talk) 09:34, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sandstein, are you saying, that if anyone wishes to run for RFA, they must disclose if they have any socks, or tell the community if they know of anyone else who has socks (like Law for example). This would be both unenforcable and gameable. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 09:44, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Any inappropriate socks. I don't see how this is unenforceable or gameable. It just tells our officials that we expect them to behave ethically, and that they ought not to have any undisclosed affiliations that might impede their ability to act neutrally. Knowing of an inappropriate sock and not doing anything about it is such an impediment.  Sandstein  09:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Quite easily could be used for disruptive purposes, at least in theory. I could run for RFA, and "disclose" that Joe Bloggs has sock John Citizen (which could be a serious allegation), and it could be investigated to no avail, but it'd still cause disruption. This might be faulty logic but I still see a potential issue. Steven Zhang The clock is ticking.... 09:50, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
When, oh when, is en.WP going to get tough on alt accounts. I huffed and puffed at WT:SOCKPUPPET a few months ago to have the policy significantly strengthened, without much success. I'm sick of seeing ArbCom and other parts of en.WP's structure weakened by the little sock scandals that dribble out regularly. How many resignations? How much distrust? Just make it exceptional for a user to be allowed to operate more than one account, and give the information to the CUs. Tony (talk) 10:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would see no problem with requiring those running for such positions to disclose their own socks. But we should make no requirement that they disclose the socks of others. There is no gain to be made in turning everyone into informants on other Wikipedians. --Jayron32 05:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Then let's get rid of all the noticeboards, because that's what everyone who posts at a noticeboard is. Let's get rid of WP:SPI also. "Turning informants on other Wikipedians" is the first step to enforcement, if people are reluctant to "tattle-tale" on other editors then we have chaos. -- Atama 20:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Questions for Casliber

Q1: You state the following in your statement "...confessed to the committee a day ago, after the committee became alerted to the identities by another incident." Could you please release a copy of your "confession?" Were you aware that you had been accused of knowing the identities early in the public disclosure? Do you know if covering up your knowledge of the identities was the counter-factual statement to which CHL refers here? Hipocrite (talk) 13:02, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(a) I cut and pasted much of my statement to the committee onto that which is on the flip side of this page. Other bits pertain to material it is not up to me to release. (b) Yes, I saw my name come up. I had already disclosed to the committee by that point and was considering posting something openly (c) Yes. He was trying to protect me, however I had told the committee before this (which he didn't know). Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I have modified my opinion above based on these answers, specifically b. Hipocrite (talk) 13:53, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update - I'm out

The kicker is looking now at moving on sock discussions. I have always edited under my real name and have hated the idea of socking. I'd like to participate in this but realise my credibility on the topic is busted, so I am resigning. I'll leave it to y'all. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

PS: the other reason is really that upon thinking about it, I have been a passenger for much of the year, and I think the current team have done a great job really, and I think it will be fine without me. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:07, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Oh fuck. Please don't. I told half of the project because I was tired of lying to people I knew. I regretted lying to the other half. Fuck me. This is all my fault, and not anyone else's. I just should have either kept my mouth shut or kept with my resignation. Fuck. I promised I wouldn't comment as the_undertow, but look what the fuck I've done. Admonish me. Ban me. CU me. Fuck this. This is all my fault. Fuck. If I just walked away quietly and let AC do what they do. Fuck. Fuck Fuck. Just ban me. I fucked up. You, (AC) promised me if I went along with our deal that nobody would be hurt. Fuck.— Preceding unsigned comment added by The undertow (talkcontribs)

Everyone is responsible for their own actions. Yours were particularly idiotic, but others also acted inappropriately and must answer for that. At least Casliber has recognized his mistake and is trying to do the right thing now; I wish others would do the same. Karanacs (talk) 15:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is indeed your fault, and it appears its your friends who will be punished because of your actions. Thats the risk of friendship i guess. BritishWatcher (talk) 15:54, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, "deal?" What deal? Hipocrite (talk) 16:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
By "deal," I think he means the unbanning arrangement (rather than any back-room scheming). AGK 20:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • While I agree that we must all take responsibility for our own actions, I think it is also important that we approach matters in a mature, dignified, and civilized fashion. Part of that includes not kicking people when they are down. No offense Karanacs, but there are positive ways to bring about a desired outcome, and I don't consider calling anyone "idiotic" one of them. — Ched :  ?  15:52, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I understand your position. To clarify, I don't believe that the_undertow is an idiot, I believe he did idiotic things (there actually is a big difference there). His actions can't and shouldn't be justified. Karanacs (talk) 15:59, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree. This recent bout of finger-pointing and fault-finding is sickening. –Juliancolton | Talk 16:00, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
      • Julian, I don't understand. When policies are broken, is the community expected to stand by and pretend it didn't happen? When we don't enforce policies consistently we make mockeries of them and implicitely encourage everyone else to ignore them. If the problem is that the policy is unreasonable and unenforceable, then we need to fix the policy. If the policy is unclear enough that users can't tell whether or not they are in compliance, then we need to fix the policy. If the community thinks the policy is appropriate and users X, Y, and Z decide they don't feel like following it that day, then users X, Y, and Z need to be sanctioned, because they broke the rules. The community can't determine which path to take (amend the policy or sanction those who broke it) unless we at least talk about it. Karanacs (talk) 16:08, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        • No, but we must deal with the issue responsibly and like adults, without having a petty argument about whose "fault" it was. The recent events regarding Law, Casliber, et al. are certainly serious; that I don't doubt. However, as a community we need to find the best possible solution and work together to that end to resolve the dispute without singling out anybody. –Juliancolton | Talk 16:12, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree the lack of foresight on the_undertow's part is mind-boggling. How does someone not anticipate this would happen in a blame-happy finger-pointing drama-laden-causing-orgasm culture like this one? Reminds me of Mafia hit men characters who beg for their lives and cry when someone threatens to kill them. --Moni3 (talk) 16:14, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Julian, your position is not something I can comprehend. It's more important to fix the problem than to make sure nobody's feelings get hurt. Sometimes people do stupid things. They should be singled out for it, insofar as doing so is useful in solving the problem at hand. Friday (talk) 16:17, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • My thoughts are basically identical to Ched's ↓ –Juliancolton | Talk 16:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • My own perception is this: We have a website backed by many policies and guidelines - and yet we also have the oft pointed to WP:IAR - to me that speaks volumes. We are here to build an encyclopedia, nothing more, nothing less. We're not here to point to any individuals shortcomings, we're not here to find the faults in others, we're not here to play USENET flamewar games - we're here to build the best online collection of knowledge that we can. Those who are doing so should be applauded, those who aren't should be directed in a more positive direction. — Ched :  ?  16:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • That's why we should be here, but in truth not the reason why many are here. Particularly those administrators who wouldn't even know where to find an article, much less write one, who are apparently motivated entirely by an obsession to punish those who do while bending over backwards to welcome an never-ending flood of IP vandals and pov warriors. I don't particularly blame either Casliber or Law, but I do think that GlassCobra has much to answer for. --Malleus Fatuorum 17:56, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • IAR is not some kind of shield against making mistakes. IAR is best applied when you don't invoke it. Invoking it in fact shows that you know something is wrong with the situation and now you want a get out of jail free card. People who have been here this long should know much better. IAR is best applied to newbies or people getting involved in things they're not familiar with and making mistakes. It means we're happy to let them edit in those situations without requiring them to spend hours and hours reading up on rules before hand. But Casliber is an arbcom member and there is no excuse for being ignorant of the way things work around here. IAR should be completely done away with and replaced with "Don't worry if you didn't read the fine print before you started editing, we won't hold honest mistakes against you". There was no honest mistake here. An honest mistake would have been a day or two, a weekend maybe. Heck I'd even extend it to a week if it took him that long to have a conversation with undertow. But beyond that honest is gone.--Crossmr (talk) 01:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Resignation not accepted by me at least. Anyone is free to walk away, and nobody can make anyone stay. But Casliber, please don't be hasty or get discouraged. Let's see where things go from here. We don't know how this is all going to shake out. I have a feeling this issue - admins and arbcom members socking - goes well beyond this current case. We already know there are several others. The real damage is not the occasional disruption we know about from the socks who, it turns out, should have been banned and stayed banned. It's loss of faith in Arcom and the administrative process, something that won't be cured by the resignations of individuals as they are uncovered and hounded out. If the issue is important enough for Arbcom members to resign, it's imortant enough for Arbcom members to stay and overcome. The past is done. If the community cares enough about the issue, it will demand that we deal with illegitimate accounts. I don't think punishment for past behavior is really helpful, but rather drawing the line going forward, if that's what people want. Wikidemon (talk) 20:01, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reminder: December is only two months away.--Tznkai (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm in favour of the resignation (shame on those admins who also knew and did nothing, and now refuse to do the decent thing)- but I also agree with Wikidemon that there is a much wider problem of admins socking and condoning block and ban evasion by their friends. Every attempt to do something systematic against this problem is howled down by a collection of admins. Arbcom needs to set a good example - so do admins, but I doubt the ability or inclination of many of them to do so. Long ago the particularly idiotic decision to appoint admins for life, and to make it virtually impossible for the community to effectively scrutinize their actions was made - and now any attempt to do so is met by howls of indignation from many admins, who clearly do not regard honesty, openness, or integrity as being beneficial to the building of an encyclopædia. DuncanHill (talk) 20:29, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wish you the best - and we get you back editing more articles :) Here's to your next FA. (Personally speaking I would have supported your continuance but I believe your resignation is a fair and noble resolution that avoids drama. I particularly appreciated your personal willingness to engage the community during the whole Advisory Council debacle and your votes and contributions on ArbCom decisions have in my view always been reasonable and well thought out.) Orderinchaos 09:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

"Deal"?

Could an ArbCom member (or ex-Arbcom member) please shed some light on the_undertow's statement above? Specifically, ". . . You, (AC) promised me if I went along with our deal that nobody would be hurt" (bolding mine). I think it goes without saying that remaining silent with regards to some sort of "backroom buddy deal" and letting Casliber throw himself under the bus would be utterly slimey and reprehensibly cowardly - not exactly out of character for ArbCom, but still rather breathtakingly unabashed in its reprehensibility. Badger Drink (talk) 09:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I read that "deal" as the terms of his original arbcom sanction - 9 month block, followed by no shenanigans. He failed to abide by the deal when he edited during the block. Turn it around; had he complied with the "deal", everything would have worked out - he would have been editing for proper in mid-March, would not have been involved in the late unpleasantness, and wouldn't have given casliber cause to contemplate resignation. So, in context, that's my best guess. If there was some other arrangement, then yes I'd like to know about it as well, but I don't see evidence of one. UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 12:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
This question is for me to respond to, as I managed this "case". The Arbitration Committee received an IRC log where User:Law was having a dispute with another editor, and confirmed that he had previously edited as User:The undertow, early on Tuesday. (As an aside, someone had mentioned to me a "rumour" that the two accounts were the same editor shortly before I logged off in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and I did not press or do any investigation at that time.) As a group, various members of the Committee investigated and collected information that supported the IRC log. There were more than sufficient votes to perform a Level I desysopping; however, it was agreed that an effort to communicate directly with User:Law should be made prior to desysopping, as there did not appear to be an emergency situation. (Neither account was currently editing, and any member of the Committee could immediately activate the temporary desysopping if required.) As I am one of the few members of the current Arbitration Committee who uses IRC to communicate, I agreed to make an attempt to "speak" with Law directly through that medium. Prior to this event, I had never had personal communications with either of the accounts, to my knowledge or recollection. Through intermediaries (whom I thank), Law was advised that I was seeking him, and he contacted me via personal message. I made it clear at the beginning of our discussion that the resolution would be that the User:Law account would be desysopped and that he would be restricted to one account, and that further sanctions may follow, initiated by another member of Arbcom; the discussion was focused on how to accomplish this, with various options considered. As a result of our discussion, User:Law requested desysopping from a steward, which I facilitated, as this account was not SUL and could not post to Meta; the editor elected to return to the User:The undertow account as his single account; the motion was posted; and I blocked the User:Law account. From the time of the receipt of the IRC logs by the Committee to the motion acknowledging Law's resignation of the administrator tools was less than 24 hours.
Subsequent to the posting of the motion, several other related activities have occurred. Former arbitrator Casliber acknowledged that he had prior information, discussed this with the community and elected to resign; that was not known or anticipated at the time of my discussion with The undertow. Some members of the community have initiated a request for arbitration that is related to the actions of other administrators who had knowledge of the two accounts. Other members of the community have initiated policy discussions on several pages. The Committee has also continued to review the information relating to this matter and to consider whether further sanction is appropriate under the circumstances.
I will note that, as part of the review of this situation, it became clear that User:The undertow did make a request to Arbcom to have his block lifted in August/September of 2008, and it does not appear that a formal decision on that request was ever made or communicated to The undertow, based on the records available to this year's Committee. As we are all well aware, last year's iteration of the Arbitration Committee found itself exceedingly short-staffed and in disarray by that time; this year's Committee has drawn lessons from their difficult experience and has established processes to try to prevent such matters from slipping through the cracks, as it appears happened in this case. Risker (talk) 13:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ban Appeal Subcommittee: October

Original announcement

Arbitration Committee code of conduct

Proposal at Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee code of conduct. Input, please. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 09:47, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SOCKPUPPET seismic movements—Arb opinions?

Apologies if I've placed this post on the wrong page. I'm alerting arbitrators to a discussion concerning what the policy says about sockpuppetry and desysopping. I'd have thought arb opinions were important on this matter. Link Tony (talk) 13:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Appoint CU & OS auditing subcommittee

According to the agenda and election mechanism was supposed to be in place by August 15th. Would someone be so go as to point me to it, and let me know when the elections will be held? --Joopercoopers (talk) 07:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The election will be taking place this month. We're just finalising the details so that accurate announcements can be made, probably in about seventy-two hours  Roger Davies talk 07:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Roger. --Joopercoopers (talk) 07:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank God. Thatcher 14:44, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Apology from John Vandenberg

Original announcement

  • Part of me wants to say "honest mistake, thanks for the apology", and part wants to say "for fuck's sake can none of you do your jobs?". DuncanHill (talk) 09:41, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No resignation is required for a mere oversight, of course, and I also believe that recusal is not required either.  Sandstein  09:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking about your own abuses or someone elses? ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
CoM, that was in no way helpful. Your case is being dealt with elsewhere; please confine your remarks here to the issue currently being discussed. Thank you. GJC 23:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • We need to know that emails sent to the Committee or its members are reviewed and handled with the appropriate urgency and consideration. The current Committee has made strides in putting in place proper procedures for handling emails and time management. It looks like there is still work to be done in these areas, and until effective procedures are in place and are followed, mistakes like this are bound to occur. That said, arbitrators qualified, committed and able to function with integrity are far too rare to be dispensed with for such lapses of judgement. I have full confidence in John Vandenberg's explanation and continued service as a member of the Committee.  Skomorokh, barbarian  09:54, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • As you all know, I am not one to dance on graves and enjoy the misfortune of other; indeed no. However, I would like to point out that I am on hand, should the Arbcom want to fill any of the numerous vacancies. I will do my patriotic duty and guide the good ship Wikipedia back into safe and calm waters. Lady Catherine de Burgh (the Late) (talk) 09:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Both Duncan and Lady Catherine's Ghost (aka Giano) make good points. This error is an understandable as it is regrettable and there is nothing to do but move on. Eluchil404 (talk) 10:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Concur with Sandstein; you surely receive a great many emails and if you missed one, or scanned it and missed the thrust of the content, then that is a regrettable oversight but hardly a damnable one. No recusal necessary so far as I can see. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 11:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I generally feel that this was a forgivable oversight. To be honest, given that John Vandenberg didn't have any particular previous involvement with the situation, I would have thought that the functionary in question probably would have been better served emailing the committee list as a whole rather than an individual uninvolved arbitrator... but either way I do not feel this warrants resignation in any way. ~ mazca talk 11:56, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hardly even worth an apology, No doubt lessons will be learned and I personally think that its the kind of thing that should be emailed to the arbitration mailing list rather then left to one arb to deal with. Spartaz Humbug! 12:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No resignation necessary, as this was presumably a simple clerical error. I imagine that we've all missed a message in our inboxes once or twice. It was probably a bit sloppy on John's part, but the functionary involved might have chosen to send a followup message when there was no action or response to his original email. While I'm certainly not inclined to cry shenanigans here, recusal from the issue may be appropriate simply to avoid any appearance of bias or misconduct. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 12:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    this is why I am recusing. I felt like shit this morning, because before I had slept I had said, quite emphatically as is my style, I didnt know about this to the committee and functionaies, and between 07:00-08:00 (oz time, drinking coffee to wake up) I had been asked twice via gtalk by non-arbcom members whether I knew about this, and I said again that I didnt know, both times with the caveat that I had 100 odd emails to read (the joys of waking up). While reading those emails I find that I should have known. I have since apologised to those two people.
    But with such a heavy heart, I am emotional, and so I defer to others to tackle this. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the past I have asked the committee to install help desk software. Inbound requests should be logged, updated, and closed as they are processed. No correspondence to ArbCom should be subject to being lost because one person overlooks it. This is not John's fault. It is a systemic failure that can be improved through the use of readily available open source software. Jehochman Talk 12:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Right now we have a runaway freight-train that no single individual person can stop. Folks throwing themselves in front of it aren't going to help matters. It's time to step up, learn, improve, grow, and move on. If there's a problem - we have a template: {{sofixit}}. If the Arbs have a problem with too much email - create a board (AC/C = Arbcom Communications) that folks can note a "You've got mail" thing like AIV or RFPP - when one of you gets to it - mark it  Done. I greatly appreciate all the folks stepping up and saying "I goofed" - OK - Thank you ... now let's move on to the matters at hand. Let's get to work fixing the things that are broke. — Ched :  ?  12:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • DuncanHill is spot on. Durova320 13:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Per DuncanHill and Ched. We got a problem here -- I've had my own emails "overlooked" by Arbcom and wonder how many more have fallen through the cracks. Instead of blame and apologies, we need to do something that will keep this from happening. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 13:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • This isn't the kind of error that erodes my confidence. A single person can't manage to fulfill the obligations of ArbCom. If confidence in the integrity of the Committee as a whole hadn't fallen so low, these kinds of issues likely wouldn't be ending up in personal mailboxes where there is no one else who around to correct one individual's oversight.--BirgitteSB 15:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think two things drive personal emails like these. First, it is my understanding that the arbs get about 200 list-based emails a day (arb-l, clerks-l, func-en, etc), so a personal email tends to stand out more. Second, there have been instances in the past of the arb-l list being leaked and of course there are over 30 people on clerks-l and more than 60 on func-en, so the sender may not trust at least one person among those large sets and prefer a personal email to avoid a direct confrontation with someone they do not trust. MBisanz talk 16:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Really? Really? On one hand, we have an arb who knew of the situation and chose to do nothing about it. On the other, we have an arb who should have known about it, but didn't, because he didn't see the email. Apology is sufficient, no resignation or recusal necessary. Suggest we all just move on. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 16:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • John: Thank you for your honesty and openness. I hope your immediate honesty here without delay or obfuscating sets an example for other arbitrators in future. I also don't think you need to recuse, resign or be recalled as it sounds like this was simply an honest oversight rather than anything deliberate or intentional or an attempt to cover-up or aid someone you like or have a personal friendship or to try to give them favourable treatment. I don't think you need to recuse but I know you are a man of integrity and will do whatever you think is the right thing to do. Sarah 02:05, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It seems to have been a simple oversight. The situation would have been quite different if the functionary had have elevated to arbcom-l and nothing was done (note I am not suggesting the functionary at all erred - it sounds like the system is the problem rather than anyone's actions under it), but to the personal contact of an arbitrator known to be real-world-busy, yes, things do get missed sometimes, despite one's best efforts. The apology is both welcomed and sufficient in my view. Orderinchaos 08:41, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Question for John

Thanks for explaining this. I see no reason you should resign for a simple oversight. But I'd like to ask you why the functionary was telling you by email that Law was The undertow, and didn't simply block him, or take it to AE. This seems to me to go to the heart of the problem here. There's a feeling that The undertow was being treated differently from any other editor violating a ban, and it would be good to know why. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 12:52, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Who was the functionary? This should not need to be confidential. Jehochman Talk 12:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It was MBisanz. DuncanHill (talk) 12:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No it wasnt Matt, and I am not going to say who it was at this stage. The functionary elevated it appropriately to me, and it is my fault that it was not dealt with after that. The functionary would like to avoid being caught up in this, and I respect that as they did the right thing. There are other functionaries involved, and I hope they speak up. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:11, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, not a functionary and wasn't involved in the Law/Undertow matter. MBisanz talk 13:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly I misconstrued some of his comments here and on your talk page. My apologies. Could you let us know what the other similar cases were that he referred t previously? DuncanHill (talk) 13:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
John, can you explain why the functionary didn't act himself? It's not clear that he elevated it appropriately, or that "elevated" is the right way to look at this. There had been an ArbCom ban, it was violated, and an illegitimate adminship had been gained. The person behind it needed to be blocked. I need we need to know why it was dealt with privately by email to one Arb, and then not followed up. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 13:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec3) Well, that's interesting. I count roughly sixty functionaries at WP:FUNC. Now that you've cast some generic suspicion over all of them, what's the next step? What possible use was there in making a useless announcement like that? Are you asking for a community witch hunt? Was Casliber correct in his behaviour inasmuch as the ArbCom couldn't be trusted to handle sensitive information without making premature, incomplete, drama-generating pronouncements? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
np DuncanHill. Matt has identified a few problems, of various severity. Some are very important and some (I think) are the run of mill admins overstepping appropriate boundaries. Admins do this regularly, often with the encyclopedia at heart. An occasional overstepping is "testing" the boundaries, and can be excused as admin discretion. I appreciate Matt (and others) highlighting these to the committee (or myself directly), as a pattern of overstepping the boundaries, even with the best of intentions, is an indication that an admin is on a mission which is at odds with the community at large. A pattern of that is an admin that is going to incite a counter-offensive from the community, and that admin needs to be alerted to the end game of their actions.
Some of the problems that Matt identified had not made it to my inbox until this morning, and some have and not been adequately actioned (yet?, again, my fault). I have long known that there are people like Matt who knew of problems but I have not gone seeking to learn of them. (my fault again, as this is what I had hoped to fix).
In part this is because we (the committee) haven't been short of problems to do deal with this year. We have been progressive in some areas, but still reactive in many areas. Sadly this morning Matt let me know about a few issues which shocked the crap out of me. A few other emails have also come in letting me know about issues that were not on my radar. There is more work to do; I hope the community feels I am still part of the solution. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
SlimVirgin, the functionary who told me thought that they had offloaded it ... onto me. They did the right thing. It is my fault that I didnt action this email, and I think they did the right thing by staying silent afterwards. They could have poked me to see if I had understood the email, but I can understand that they wanted nothing further to do with this mess beyond letting me know. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Who was the functionary? Why is this information secret? If people have acted properly, they have nothing to hide. Jehochman Talk 13:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Have you considered the exceptional chilling effect outing anonymous tipsters would have? We don't know why they wanted to remain anonymous, but can we respect their wishes? –xenotalk 13:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Per Xeno. Durova320 13:22, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Xeno, the thing is that a functionary is an admin plus a CU or oversighter too. They're elected to deal with these issues, so the "anonymous tipster" analogy doesn't really hold. John, with respect, I don't think this is a good time for secrecy. Would you please ask the functionary to step forward and explain? We need to know why issues involving The undertow seemed so hard to sort out. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 13:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec2) Anonymous tipster? Just above I read that this was a functionary, not a tipster. If a checkuser was run, that checkuser should be prepared to explain their actions. It's a reasonable question. (Durova, would you please stop stalking me.) Jehochman Talk 13:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Jehochman, please keep it topical. Xeno raises a good point about chilling effects. When two active editors disagree it is probably because they have different wikiphilosophies. Maybe I should say no more but I will: the thing that sparked my interest in this particular situation is that Law happens to live in my geographic area. We've made several plans to go to the zoo together over the last few months, but each time the plans fell through. I didn't know he was The Undertow until it arose at ANI. He's very remorseful about how his mistakes are affecting other people and I'll probably go out of my way soon to meet him in person for the first time, just to take him to Starbucks. This is not all about you. Wikipedian decisions are based upon open discussion; administrators do not get to exclude experienced editors from even writing the words "per Xeno". If the stress is so bad that you've lost sight of those fundamentals, then consider a wikibreak. Have a breather; I'd support the removal of your name from both cases if they open. Durova320 —Preceding undated comment added 19:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC).[reply]
(re both) Perhaps they are friends with the user? People have been clamouring that duty should trump friendship, and perhaps it did in this case, but they did not want to act on it themselves. Asking the functionary to step forward is one thing, and I don't necessarily disagree, but announcing it against their will is not on. –xenotalk 13:31, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Fine, let the functionary step forward. We don't need any more cloak and dagger stuff around this matter. I suspect there is a simple explanation. Nobody is calling for heads on pikes here. Mistakes and snafus are allowed. We need to understand what happened so we can strengthen processes going forward. Jehochman Talk 13:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Nobody is calling for heads on pikes here." What? Did you forget "yet"? I'm sorry, Jehochman, but I simply don't trust that if someone steps forward, you're not going to file yet another Arbitration request. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:03, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Functionary A noticed in a log that functionary B had done something that was potentially unusual, and A emailed John. John failed to follow up until now. Either Arbcom or the Audit committee will be looking at B; the referral is at a very early stage. Obviously no good will come from identifying A against his/her wishes, as it might discourage future good faith reports of potential concerns. It is also much too early to identify B, as we don't even know if B did anything wrong. (There may be an innocent good faith explanation.) There is a very important question about different levels of culpability that has not been properly addressed. We have:
  1. An arbitrator who knew Law was a ban evading sockpuppet, objected to his RFA but did not take effective corrective action, and endorsed Lara as an oversight candidate knowing that Lara was enabling a ban-evading sockpuppet.
  2. An admin who nominated Law for RFA knowing he was a ban-evading sockpuppet.
  3. Multiple admins who knew Law was a ban-evading sockpuppet and supported his RFA without saying anything.
  4. Possibly additional admins who knew Law was a ban-evading sockpuppet and either were silent on the RFA, or who found out more recently, and remained silent.
  5. An arbitrator who was informed of a functionary action that suggests the functionary knew Law was a ban-evading sockpuppet.
What are the appropriate responses for each of these levels of knowledge? Should A be held to the same standard of responsibility as Cas simply because A emailed one arbitrator instead of filing a public report? Should Jayron, who has admitted voting for Law knowing he was a ban-evading sock, be held to the same standard of responsibility as GlassCobra, who nominated him? What about the many many other incidents involving Admin friends who stick together, but which did not rise to the level of a misleading RFA? Friends stick together, apparently, and I don't know of any easy answers to these questions. Thatcher 13:51, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I dont want secrecy. Lessons will only be learnt if we can unravel this mess and have a frank discussion about it. However the functionary involved did the right thing, and wants to stay out of the limelight, and I don't see any benefit in denying them that for the time beaing. It is my fault that their action wasnt actioned.

fwiw, they functionary who informed me is asleep right now, and I am not going to mention names until I talked with them, and I am not going to ask them to put their name on the dotted line unless they are happy doing so, unless I see some reason to do so. I will probably be asleep before they are up, so the curiosity may have to wait quite a while. Enjoy the delicious wait ;-) I should mention that at the same time that I informed arbcom, I also informed all functionaries-en of who it is. (minor guess work involved..) bear in mind that there are still functionaries who have not stepped forward yet. John Vandenberg (chat) 13:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

There's a related issue that's relevant to the admins who found very late game that Law was Undertow and didn't do anything. If I (and I suspect many other people) saw that a given person was a returned individual who had now passed RfA and that people who knew him in real life hadn't said anything I would very likely have assumed that the process had been quietly oked by ArbCom or others who were relevant. We shouldn't have a witch hunt for people who didn't have all the facts post the RfA. JoshuaZ (talk) 14:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am leaning towards agreeing with Joshua here. Knowing at the time of the Rfc is one thing; puzzling it out later might lead to the impression that undertow was given a discreet "fresh start" by ArbCom. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 14:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have a question for John, in your apology you write: I can't be certain that I had even read the email until this morning. What exactly does that mean, couldn't you see whether you have opened the letter before this morning or not? Loosmark (talk) 14:21, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If his program is like mine, once you click there is no telling whether you'd previously viewed the email - there is no datestamp for "first clicked on". Also, there is the scan, scan, scan method of going through a long list of emails - he could have clicked, scanned, missed the import, and moved along. That could hardly be called reading the email. In short, I don't see how anyone could reasonably expect him to answer this. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 14:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well then you have a different program than me. In my program the subject of the letter is bold until you have opened it at least once and personaly whenever i open an email i always read it. But anyway I didn't mean to imply anything I was just curious that's all. Loosmark (talk) 14:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I can't determine whether I had read the email, and I can't recall whether I did either.
I use gmail. The email that I received yesterday morning from Keegan was a reply to the email that he sent on August 21. I had starred the original email, which means that when I clicked on the item in my Inbox yesterday morning, both emails were displayed. As far as I know, there is no way to find out when I opened it. If I had opened it when it arrived, it was promptly pushed onto the todo list, and then not done. John Vandenberg (chat) 23:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Thatcher seems to be saying that functionary B appears to have used CU or oversight in the interests of The undertow/Law on or before August 21, though there may be an innocent explanation. Have I understood correctly? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 14:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Broadly speaking, yes, although we don't yet know the circumstances, and Joshua raises a good point. Thatcher 14:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thanks. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 15:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Does this concern the oversighted revisions made on 16 August 2009 at User:Law and User talk:Law ? Cenarium (talk) 20:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For a supposedly flat project governance system, and for a culture that generally aspires to openness, all this secrecy and anonymity sounds a pretty discordant note for me. So and so knows this, but can't say, and other people knew this, but we can't tell you who. Even I got caught up in it on this board, because someone relayed to me the comments of a checkuser that admin socking had been discussed and dismissed on mailing lists. I don't want to identify the people involved, and I understand the impulse of John and Thatcher and others to protect the identity of people who haven't necessarily done anything wrong but who would nonetheless be subject to some vilification if their name came up here. Yet the whole atmosphere of secrecy here, of withholding information when you've decided everyone else doesn't need it, leaves me cold. It also may contribute to why some administrators believed they could withhold obviously relevant information from the community based on their own personal evaluation of "need to know." Nathan T 16:35, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think that we have an obligation to determine whether there is actual wrongdoing before naming names, particularly in an atmosphere where head-hunting is a predominant theme. Thatcher 16:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That's a general principle I agree with, but I can't say I like the atmosphere we've got now where practically any information is withheld unless there is a strong, continuing demand for its release. Everyone is afraid of being hung out to dry for minor errors or nothing at all, so nothing gets said. Protonk's statement on the case request should be required reading for practically everyone, perhaps. Nathan T 17:19, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think Nathan makes a very good point - and let us not forget that it was in large part poor communication and secrecy that led last year's Arbcom to virtual implosion. DuncanHill (talk) 16:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, come on. Suppose I run a checkuser on a vandal and find he shares an IP with you. Should I publish that fact before or after I discuss it with you and you tell me it was a public library. Thatcher 17:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)I'd rather you published straight away than made nebulous "we know something, but can't tell anyone" or "An accusation has been made by someone who won't say who they are, against someone we won't tell you who it is, and anyway we don't quite know if this is covered by policy anyway" type statements. And again, it was poor communication and secrecy that nearly scuppered Arbcom, please don't let the same cock ups be made again. DuncanHill (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What you describe is nothing like the situation we're dealing with here, in which admins and arb(s) knew for certain what was going on. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:09, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I find the head-hunting atmosphere here quite disturbing. You might want to address yourselves instead to my comments above about different levels of culpability. John V. received an email containing a suspicion and did not act on it. The sender suspected the accounts and sent a message to an arbitrator rather than blocking the account directly. Someone else took action that looked suspicious but which has not been investigated yet. Do you really want to hold those people to the same standard of responsibility as a person who submitted an RFA nomination that was fraudulent by omission? I don't think any further comments by me are likely to be helpful at the present time. Thatcher 17:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Quite aside from the fact we are not looking at criminal investigation standards but rather alleged misbehaviour on a website. I agree with Thatcher's comments on cautious disclosure - I was once at the wrong end of one such disclosure by a checkuser some years ago and it took several hours and a lot of drama to get it sorted out, and there is a permanent "mark" on my record as a result of it. If someone had have contacted me and asked me straight out, I could have told them. Had I clearly not been straight with them and the evidence was rather clear, well, the ball would have been in their court to reveal to arbcom or AN/I as they saw fit. Some lessons were learned from my case and I hold nothing against any of the individuals involved, some of whom I actually get on well with today. Orderinchaos 08:50, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

In the interest of disclosure, I believe I fall into category 4 (out of the 5 categories listed by Thatcher above). I didn't reveal that Law was the_undertow when I knew and I'm not apologizing for not saying anything. There are a great deal of other secrets that I know as well that I won't be revealing. Focus on creating an encyclopedia. If the actions of others cause an issue doing that, I'll be first in line to speak up against the troublemakers. Otherwise, assume every user is a sock of another and stop caring. Good grief. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Then we have a problem. At the very least you should not have participated in defending Law here[18] against a claim that he was acting like a cowboy administrator, if you knew he was The undertow, and that's why he was blocked in the first place. Further, the conversation also involved discussion that the editor Law blocked was a sockpuppet. In so doing you effectively played other participants in the conversation for suckers. The right response would have been to say that you endorsed the block, but the administrator doing it is himself a sockpuppet and should not be blocking anyone -- or else, if the community decides this is okay, simply recused yourself because of your familiarity with the parties. Wikidemon (talk) 20:33, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not really going to dignify your reply with a response other than to say that I think it's time you found a new hobby. --MZMcBride (talk) 20:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A while ago you defended Law on a notice board, knowing that Law was a ban-evading sockpuppet of The undertow. You announce above that you held that and many other undisclosed secrets but you will continue to hold them and have nothing to apologize for. I don't think it's okay to knowingly defend a ban-evading sock so I feel my question is reasonable. It's not a huge transgression under the circumstances but it's something that I don't think should happen. You seem to think it's okay. If you don't want to answer that's your choice. If you think my analysis is wrong you're free to set the record straight. But you seem to be accusing me of something for asking the question. Do you think the question's wrong? As others have noted, a number of administrators shielded or supported Law, or looked the other way, and there are probably other undiscovered socks as well. Either we're going to have a policy against sockpuppet administrators or not. If we are, we must ask administrators have to honor and enforce it - who else can enforce that policy? We're not going to de-sysop every admin who knew the truth about Law, but some amount of coming clean, rooting out any other known cases, and agreeing that this will not happen again, is necessary if we're going to bother with that policy. Wikidemon (talk) 22:40, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin or long term user one comes to know a hell of a lot of stuff that one doesn't necessarily need or want to know. (Note I say "I" here but it could be written by just about anybody - and I knew nothing about this Law situation until after it broke.) I know a fair bit of secret information. Much of it is hearsay, a fair bit probably false, some of it is more than likely true but only on the basis of very esoteric circumstantial evidence or a gut hunch. If I was to reveal the information I know, those who told me would not feel comfortable telling me more information, the people it's about could rightly say it is hearsay, probably false and with only esoteric circumstantial evidence or a gut hunch, I would probably be hunted down by the AN/I lynch mob and have to face days of drama for making unsustainable accusations against people with lots of friends, and nothing would happen to the person at the centre of it all. There is a difference between "transparency" and "appropriate discretion". Nevertheless, I do take the point that *acting on such knowledge* (as in, aiding and abetting) and *simply knowing it* are two different things - the former has some level of involvement or investment whilst the latter is probably a wish to avoid Wikipolitics as a domain in favour of more productive uses of one's time. Orderinchaos 08:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Beyond this case

The Committee is important to Wikipedia. We all need to have faith in it. While the Committee can't do much about e-mail sent to individual members, an idiot-proof system to avoid lost and ignored e-mail sent to the list should have top priority. Reduced faith in the Committee is one side-effect. (In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the functionary above mailed JV instead of the list, thinking that mail to an individual was less likely to get lost.)

More important than the Committee's reputation is the resulting time-wasting. In a totally unrelated case, something ArbCom should have done 6 weeks ago isn't done yet because an e-mail wasn't registered. One Committee member has spent hours trying to track down the e-mail, keeping people updated, trying to make good again. Those hours could have and should have been better used; nothing else will get done if arbitrators have to play catchup with many similar cases. This isn't rocket science; clerical routines are essential to avoid bad outcomes and serious time-wasting. Above, users Skomorokh, Jehochman, Ched Davis, and Boris (at least) have made similar points. The Committee needs to solve this problem! - Hordaland (talk) 16:04, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hordaland, this problem has been solved, and was one of the first things we resolved this year. All mail being received at the official Arbcom-L mailing list is logged and tracked and responded to. There are sometimes delays, but they are taken care of. We recently identified that there were problems receiving mail from certain domains, and we have done some reconfiguration to reduce the likelihood of recurrence. We have usurped User:Arbitration Committee and User:Arbcom specifically to provide an easy way to send emails to the Committee itself; the accounts exist solely as a conduit for communication with the committee. Those who want to communicate with the Committee should find no difficulty in doing so.
Each of us, as individual arbitrators, receive upwards of 100 emails a day, between mailing lists and those addressed to us personally. If someone needs arbitrator action on something, their best bet is always to send it to the committee address, where there's a very good chance someone will read it and respond within a day or so. I won't speak for anyone else, but I know it can take me several days to respond to personal emails. Risker (talk) 16:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for responding. Because of the above-mentioned case, I'm not totally convinced. Hoping for continued improvement, yours, Hordaland (talk) 16:34, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hordaland, the email that John mentions was sent to him personally, not to the Arbitration Committee mailing list. Risker (talk) 16:50, 2 October 2009 (UTC) Please note correction below. Risker (talk) 17:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC) [reply]
The email I sent in August was to the clerks list. Has that problem "been solved" too? I don't know the relationship between the various lists and who's responsible for them. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:06, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have the date of the email, I can check the archives quicker. MBisanz talk 17:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I found one for Sun Aug 2 16:47:59 UTC 2009, but the issue is moot, no? MBisanz talk 17:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Moot in the sense that the specific email has now been acknowledged, yes. Moot in the larger sense of measures having been put into place to keep email to the clerks falling through the cracks, as well coordination/management the various mailing lists for arbcom, the clerks, etc. -- well, that's what I was asking about. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ahh, nope nothing official on that front, although now that arbom just brought in new clerks, we are discussing ways to better ways to manage emails, so hopefully the clerks-l will be a bit more responsive to requests. And well I have nothing to do with the other lists out there (unless you are counting dal). MBisanz talk 17:25, 2 October 2009 (UTC).[reply]
My apologies to you Hordaland. My colleague Carcharoth has correctly pointed out to me that you were speaking of a very specific situation. Indeed, that is the situation I allude to in my message, where we became aware that messages from a specific user were not getting through. The email domain he used, one that is frequently associated with mass spamming, had been placed in the spam filter at some time in the unknown past; none of the current list admins had added anything to the spam filter, but when it became apparent this might be the problem, we wiped the spam filter completely and are going to let things run for a while to see if any specific domains really need to be included. So far, I don't think we've identified any. Risker (talk) 17:39, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aaahh, that explains a good deal. Near perfection is as good as it gets. Keep up the good work. - Hordaland (talk) 18:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
There is a little bit more to it than that. I believe I am the arbitrator Hordaland is referring to above, when saying "One Committee member has spent hours trying to track down the e-mail, keeping people updated, trying to make good again." It will take a while to lay out what I think happened here, but because of the nature of the problem, I think it needs doing. I'll do that in a new section. Carcharoth (talk) 21:10, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much. This needs to be done for folks like me. Regards, —mattisse (Talk) 21:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
My advice is, if you want all the Arbs to know something send it to several of your favourites individualy, asking them each to send it to the mailing list. Don't trust emailing it the mailing list yourself, and I have reasons for saying that, trust me on that one. Human error occur, errors of judgement occur and so does downright deceit. Just cut out the middle-man and hedge your bets. Giano (talk) 21:46, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The arbitration clerks also have direct write access to the Arbcom mailing list, so their messages don't get queued or filtered. Asking a clerk to forward a note to the Arbcom list will ensure that it gets posted properly. Thatcher 22:56, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Then I am glad to hear that things have improved over the last few years. For that was not always the case! I shall certainly always continue to use my own methods. Giano (talk) 23:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I know I took a while to write the promised section that goes into more details (I'm about to save it after reading through it one more time - did I say it was long?), but you guys could have waited. Mattisse and Giano, this year at least, there have been several list moderators and only one example that I am aware of where there was an accidental discarding of a message that should have gone through. If you suspect that any e-mails you sent have not got through, now or in the past, just submit details and that can be checked against our archives - it is a trivial matter to carry out such checks going back many years. Thatcher, although clerks do have write-access, it seems that some actions of the spam filter can over-ride that. It is possible that only list-member access can over-ride spam filter settings, though maybe not even that. I could test that, but don't want to play around with the settings too much and end up blocking half the committee from the mailing list. The point is that the results seen by a sender with write-access (nothing) is the same as that seen by someone discarded by the spam filter (nothing). Ideally, someone with write-access who is not a list member would still get confirmation from the software that their message was accepted and got past the spam filters, but it seems they don't. It is easiest, in my view, to just turn off the spam filters. Carcharoth (talk) 23:43, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Keegan

Wow, y'all have been busy.

I am the functionary that emailed John, I'll go through the sequence of events from my perspective.

I didn't know Law, except for participating in his RfA and doing a couple other wiki-related things with him. I had no idea that he was the undertow, nor any suspicion, nor any reason to suspect.

What occurred was that I was looking through a log trying to find something I did as a noob functionary to submit it for review. I accidentally discovered that an IP had "outed" Law on his talk page. Please note at this point that I was not a participant in any of this action, I just saw it. At that point I sat back for a couple minutes and thought about how to proceed, and for what reasons behind everything in the decision that I made. I decided that the best course of action was to email someone on the AUSC, and selected John to email. My email was two sentences and a link, as he stated it was not explicit nor accusatory, more of a "Hey...uh...I hope you guys know this/see this just in case the shit hits the fan."

At the time my concern was for both our community's integrity as well as for Law himself. It was posted by an IP, so obviously the secret was if not out, going to be out. But, I did not know if the allegation was true. If it was not, it could have damaged his integrity just as badly as if it was true. I didn't email the committee as a whole, because this was all new to me and I thought I'd send the buck up one ladder before trying to make a mountain out of something that might not even be true. I never heard back from John, and I never told anyone I emailed him out of the interest of Law's privacy, not my own. The purpose of the email was not to snitch, but to inform in case this was true and would subsequently needed to be handled by the committee in the most prudent way possible. The fact this one email got lost in the cracks seems to have resulted by the actions of others in the very drama that I was hoping to avoid.

A day or so later I ran into Law off-wiki and talked to him on the phone for about an hour. My concern was that he had put a retired template on his page the same time the "outing" occurred and announced intent to leave Wikipedia. I was interested in maintaining his privacy should this all be subject to off-wiki harassment and how much this might impact his life. Law informed me his retirement was unrelated to anything that may have been said, and he never confirmed to me himself that he was the_undertow.

Since Law said he was retiring and was okay, and I had emailed John, I put the whole gruesome affair behind me and moved on since I had done my duty as a Functionary (at least I believe so, I hope others do). I honestly assumed that the Committee knew, and was working on a strategy to take care of all this in the aforementioned least drama-prone way, as this was going to come up eventually I thought they were prepared. It seems not, I was honestly surprised that the Committee didn't know, and I expressed this surprise to which John wanted to know whom I had emailed. It was him, oops :) He's apologized to me for the miscommunication, and that's an apology I accept. We get a lot of emails, we read a lot of emails, we have lives, and there's only so many hours in the day. I'm not going to discuss the private information about suppression, that's none of my business as I accounted for myself.

Professionalism and integrity is how I try to conduct myself at all times. I am not perfect, I make mistakes like everyone else. I do not expect anyone else to not do the same. This is a colossal sequence of events to lead up to this, as are most major things in history. Hindsight is 20/20, I know I did the right thing and I know that others would have done so as well had they the opportunity.

I love you all, happy editing to you. Keegan (talk) 20:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

*hugs* --MZMcBride (talk) 20:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Keegan, thanks for stepping forward. Can you clarify the issue that Thatcher raised, namely that functionary A saw in the log that functionary B had done something in relation to User:Law that A felt it wise to report? I'm not sure whether Thatcher was talking about you (as A) or someone else. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:37, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure Keegan was "A". Thatcher 20:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am A, and I still assume that B was acting in good faith for basically the same reasons that I was. Keegan (talk) 20:47, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, so piecing this together, Keegan saw that an anon had outed Law as The undertow on Law's talk page. The talk-page history shows that two edits were oversighted on August 16, the page protected, and the anon blocked. The implication is that someone used oversight to hide that Law had violated an ArbCom ban and had gained adminship by lying to the community. And that other admins blocked the whistleblower and protected the page against further revelations.
If the above is anywhere near correct, this isn't something anyone should be covering up. I appreciate your point about the atmosphere of heads rolling, Thatcher, but this is not a good situation. I'm thinking in particular that these admins and the oversighter wouldn't have helped someone violate an ArbCom ban unless they believed the ArbCom was okay with it. What's puzzling me is what was special about The undertow that this would happen. Is it just that he was friendly with people on IRC, or am I missing something? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:55, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, just to be clear, was Law outed as The undertow, or was his real name posted, or both? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 20:58, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm about to be afk for a few hours, so I'll try to help you out with this. I have no idea the motives of B, I assume good faith. I know that my motives were for the better of Wikipedia's community in how I approached the situation. There was no real name released, just linking the accounts. I fell into this whole thing by accident, but could not reasonably turn a blind eye. Following that, I did what I thought I should and moved on from the whole damn mess. Did I run into Law on IRC? Yes. Do I pal around with him there? No. I idle in #wikipedia-en for the !oversight and !admin pings, I saw him there. That's the extent of my IRC participation in this affair. Hope that helps. Keegan (talk) 21:09, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, that's helpful. You told someone, Keegan, so you did the right thing. As for the oversighting, I can't think how that wouldn't be a clear misuse of it. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 21:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Keegan and SlimVirgin, the Audit subcommittee was made of aware of the matter today by John and we will be reviewing the situation according to our usual practices. FloNight♥♥♥ 21:18, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the clarification, Keegan. You clearly made the right moves with this situation. JamieS93 21:53, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Keegan's explanation is perfectly reasonable. If B would step forward with their explanation, that would help eleminate speculations. Jehochman Talk 21:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see anything wrong with Keegan's actions. But I am beginning to notice that many of the participants on both sides of this matter either attended the Nashville Meetup last month, or belong to the Bathrob Cabal.   Will Beback  talk  23:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The timing of this event taking place two weeks before the Meetup is completely coincidental for me, you have my word on that. Keegan (talk) 23:36, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I totally believe you. That observation includes several people - I just happened to post it here. Nothing personal. Another non-personal point: You say you saw a posting on Law's talk page from an IP which revelaed that Law was The undertow. I checked the history and can't find any such posting. I do see that two edits from an IP on August 16 were oversighted.[19] Does anyone know who oversighted those postings, and why? If it was to hide Law's on-wiki identity then it was probably inappropriate.   Will Beback  talk  23:57, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
FYI, I've sent a message to the Audit Committee regarding the oversighting so no answer is needed here.   Will Beback  talk  00:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

For communal information: I checked the link above and found the suppressed items. They were correctly suppressed; containing attempts to post purported real-world private information that I have no idea if accurate or not, as well as a long string of invective and offensiveness, gross sexual insults, and several occurrences of "fuck" and "shit".

They mentioned undertow but only in an irrational and mis-spelt context that nobody would necessarily make sense of; for example in the middle of various ramblings, one of them did state "...<blah hate attack><Blah Fuck>Law is the underto!!!!Fuck<blah more hate attack>", which, mis-spelt and in the middle of an outing post and irrational/lengthy swearing and attack vandalism, I would be amazed if anyone specifically noticed or saw other than as meaningless rant. There was no statement in either to alert a reasonable reader that Law was socking; this was in August and both would appear to be strings of random invective plus purported real-world information to any normal oversighter review unless the oversighter had clear prior information of some kind.

The oversighter was not an arb. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:27, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for explaining that context, which relieves the concern that the oversight was an attempt to hide the previous user name.   Will Beback  talk  03:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Will; that information eases my concerns as well. KillerChihuahua?!?Advice 12:34, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

the difficulty of self-government

We are no longer a club working on a private project. Whether or not we like it, we have in reality acquired a public responsibility for maintaining a resource important to the general public on an international level. In practice, becoming an arbitrator requires such a period of activity here that it is impossible to avoid having friendships and preferences within the community. A very few people can put these entirely to pone side in a cold-blooded fashion--most people cannot, and it is in any case questionable whether such people would have a sufficient understanding of human behavior to serve properly in the position. We might need at the highest level people who are independent of the community they will govern. Should we consider replacing arb com with a group either selected from people working only on other Wikipedias -- there are many responsible people there with a sufficient knowledge of English--or of obtaining funding to hire professionals. They may in each case have their biases but they won't have the personal feelings.

Short of this, the minimum is establishing technical barriers against the worst forms of abuse: as a first step, the work of an not just an arb but an admin is sufficiently sensitive to require positive identification of all sitting and future people in this position. The immediate preliminary need is requiring all members of arb com to disclose their knowledge of admins using undisclosed accounts, or any variant of this. DGG ( talk ) 18:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

But how would these folks get 'tuned in' to what the community actually wants? –xenotalk 19:13, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A witch hunt? Sounds like a great idea! We set up and enforce a system where editors who get into trouble with Wikipedia's arcane rules and bullying justice system are left with no sensible choice but to create a new account. Then go after them like crazy if they make the huge mistake of actually disclosing to anyone who they are. And round up anyone who knew of their good faith efforts to turn over a new leaf with the only means available.
There was no abuse by Law. He was a good editor and a good admin. Instead of this nonsense we should be cracking down on POV pushing abuse and actual socking and cabalism used to distort our article coverage. This is an encyclopedia and we should work to improve it instead of engaging in this disruptive score settling. Put the thing to bed. In fact, give Undertow adminship and revoke it for those who have used this circumstances to further their own agendas. We need more good admins and to weed out the bad ones. This whole circus reeks of hypocrisy and abuse, but as per Orwellian rules on Wiki the accused are the ones who tried to do right. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:20, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
it is apparent that some of the people involved have a different standard of doing right than I do. I am not proposing to be their judge. And this is my point: we can all agree to remove those who harm Wikipedia, but it is harder to judge whom they are. I am not sure any of us who are involved here can judge fairly. DGG ( talk ) 22:17, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Transparency and accountability

Why is that Arbcom does so much of its business in secret? I read about all these e-mails with dismay. It's no better than the admins and their cat rooms. Stop hiding and come into the light. ChildofMidnight (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

errr ... cat room? ... I for one only have a "puppy" room. ;) — Ched :  ?  19:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The reason ArbCom does any of its business in secret is the same reason why only a few people are allowed to have access to the CheckUser tool and the Oversight tool: The information they deal with can have far-reaching results in the real world. For example, it would be utterly inappropriate for me to reveal people's IP addresses without a very good reason, and unless I have no other choice, I will never publicly connect someone with their IP address, regardless of what they do. And ArbCom deals with far more sensitive information that I do as just a checkuser. I cannot understand why you are always complaining about ArbCom and others acting in secrecy. While doing SPI cases, I sometimes come across established users when doing who happen to be editing from the same ranges as vandals, particularly on Tiscali and some other British ISPs. Would you like it if I happened to see your account on the checkuser data, and in my report of my findings, I listed all of your IPs and user agent strings on an SPI page or somewhere, where any crank can find it with a minimum of effort? Purely by chance, in the relatively short amount of time I have had access to the checkuser tool, I have come across information such that I could probably give you the location of around 20 established users to within around a hundred kilometers. Even better, many of these users are editing with their real names, or at the very least, their real names are well known. Do you think, in the interests of some convoluted notion of "GIVE ME TRANSPARENCY OR GIVE ME DEATH", I should publicly out these people's real-world identities on one of the largest websites on the Internet? And again, what I have found is purely through random chance. ArbCom has people directly telling them what I can only infer circuitously. J.delanoygabsadds 19:49, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The work that the Committee does in private is done so because it is not appropriate for public viewing. Simple. AGK 20:24, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Per the above. The Arbitration Committee does everything they can in public. Unfortunately, there is a lot of private information tossed around, and if that were to leak out, Bad ThingsTM would happen, both here and in the real world. Transparency is a priority, but they can only do so much. If you want them to do more, you'll have to get the Foundation to change the privacy policy. Hersfold (t/a/c) 20:29, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

As a member of this Committee, I have come into possession of personal information of hundreds of Wikipedians; many of them may not even know that I have done so. Like J.delanoy above, I have coincidentally seen revealing information about editors when carrying out a checkuser. I have oversighted hundreds of edits purporting to "out" one editor or another. I have received endless gossipy emails, some of which I barely bother to scan. I have had private discussions with editors in which they have revealed the names of their children, their employers, their financial status, their sexual orientations, their real names, and their photographs. We have talked about cars, travel and weather as often as editing interests and wikiphilosophies. None of this information is the community's business. You can rest assured that I am withholding a great deal of irrelevant information from the community. In some cases, I am withholding relevant but private information from the community as well, such as health conditions of certain editors or exact IP addresses and useragents. That is as much a part of being an arbitrator as is transparency and fiduciary responsibility. I hold the Privacy policy to be more important than just about all others, and I genuinely believe that doing so is what the community expects of me. Risker (talk) 21:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you have " private discussions with editors in which they have revealed the names of their children, their employers, their financial status, their sexual orientations, their real names, and their photographs... We have talked about cars, travel and weather as often as editing interests and wikiphilosophies", then it means that arbitrators are not focused on real arbitration business. Perhaps the suggestion of an outside consultation to suggest ways to work more effectively is warranted. Why is Wikipediia so different than real life concerns about privacy and related issues. Surely a Human Resources department of a large company would be privy to man such "secrets" but it would not eat into their usable work time. —mattisse (Talk) 23:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's called being human. Wikipedia is just like real life: everybody has problems; life is hard. The centerpiece of civility is thinking of other people, and caring about other people, enough to listen to their concerns and try to make their lives easier in small ways. Jehochman Talk 23:59, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ec; reply to Matisse)Nah, let's just dispense with the whole notion of arbitration being done by humans. We'll get some coders to build us some ArbBots, emotionless automatons who will certainly never disrupt the purity of the Holy Arbitration Process of the Universally All-Important Wikipedia with discussions about things that would only interest a mere human. Cheeze and rice. :::facepalm:::GJC 00:47, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Honestly the more I read the AC/N and related talk pages the more I understand why business gets done in secret. Some people just tend to lower the signal to noise ratio drastically on each and every issue by insisting that everything is "ZOMG Admin abuse" or "CABAL issues" or "HYPOCRISY!". I suspect that engaging in some deliberations privately is a low energy way to escape a lot of that nonsense. Some of the ostensible reasons offered may not be concordant with that (e.g. private information), but I have a strong suspicion that it is a motivating factor. We obviously can't publicly acknowledge that a subset of editors are routinely ignored on the basis that their commentary is fatuous, but private channels of communication certainly cut them out. Protonk (talk) 00:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One great way of avoiding being called a "hypocrite": avoid hypocrisy. The best way to react to being called a hypocrite: 1. If you're not one, explain. 2. If you've been one, reform. Complaining about being called a hypocrite when you've been engaging in hypocrisy: Hmmmmm, sounds hypocritical. Noroton (talk) 00:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Actually in practice that's not a very good guide. Because your expectations for consistency in my actions may be totally unreasonable (and are certainly not explained to me beforehand). One person's hypocrisy may be another person's mitigating circumstances. Protonk (talk) 00:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Expectation of privacy

One of the reasons why there is an ArbCom is that there needs to be a place where there is an expectation of privacy within a project that is committed to open editing and transparency. In truth, there are several places within Wikipedia that more transparency would be beneficial - but the day to day mechanisms of the ArbCom mailing lists and the in/outboxes of the individual members are not among them. One of the reasons for the annual bunfight that is the ArbCom elections is that we are placing our trust in strangers to keep secrets from us where necessary and to betray confidences if only absolutely required. This is also why ArbCom members, who are otherwise fine people, have to resign when they realise they have failed those standards; there needs to be a body that provides that reassurance that private communications and the contents thereof will be dealt with in as much confidence as there can be. The other side of this coin is, while we bewail the souls who admit to have failed to always maintain those lofty ideals, the amount of good that comes from speaking and acting outside of public view can and never will be known. We simply must trust that this is the case, and those whom we have given this responsibility. LessHeard vanU (talk) 21:38, 2 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration Committee mailing list (missing e-mails)

Apologies for the length of this, but I think the details are important here. In a section elsewhere on this page, Hordaland raised the question of 'lost and ignored e-mails'. My response there was this, stating that I would lay out in more detail what I think has happened here (Risker has already stated that the problem was likely to do with the spam filter - I'm going into more detail here and correcting a few mis-statements). The intention had been to prepare a formal notice, but this will have to do.

I first got an inkling that there might be a problem with e-mails to the Arbitration Committee mailing list (arb-l) going astray when, towards the end of the Abd-WMC case, TenOfAllTrades said he had asked Hersfold, one of the arbitration committee clerks, to forward an e-mail from him to arb-l. This was on or around 9 or 10 September 2009. I looked through my records and the archive of arb-l, and could not find this e-mail. So I confirmed with Hersfold that he had indeed forwarded this e-mail but it had never arrived at our (ArbCom's) end, so I asked him to try again. After a bit of testing and back-and-forth, we failed to replicate the problem sufficiently to identify what was causing it. I remained concerned, and said as much to my colleagues on the committee, before moving on to other matters. I did, however, make a mental note to try and sort this out if it happened again.

The next chapter in this story started when an amendment request was filed in September regarding the ADHD case. During that request (which is still open) the issue of mentorship for one of the parties to that request came up. That party (Scuro) said he had e-mailed the arbitration committee on 8 August 2009, saying he had failed to find a mentor. He has since confirmed that he also e-mailed several times earlier, during the actual ADHD case. As far as I can tell, none of these e-mails arrived at the arbitration committee mailing list. While trying to track down the e-mails, I asked Scuro to e-mail the Arbitration Committee again, and to copy me in individually. The e-mail to me arrived, but the copy to the arbitration mailing list did not arrive.

Convinced now that there was a real problem, I went back and looked more closely at the set up of the Arbitration Committee mailing list (I am one of several arbitrators with list admin access). Risker (another list admin) said she thought Scuro might have accidentally been placed on the auto-discard list (a list of e-mail addresses where e-mail from those addresses is automatically discarded), and cleared that list, and added Scuro to the auto-accept list (a list where e-mail from those addresses is, funnily enough, automatically accepted). This didn't, however, fix the problem (yet another e-mail I asked Scuro to send didn't arrive - apologies by the way for asking Scuro and others to send test e-mails, instead of setting up a test account myself, and thanks to Scuro, Hersfold and TenOfAllTrades for being so patient during the testing).

Eventually, I thought to look at the spam filter settings, and was surprised (horrified, actually) to discover that a list of 19 e-mail domain names of varying sizes and popularity (mostly yahoo ones) were in the spam filter, with the setting set to "discard". I suggested to my colleagues that this was the cause of the problem (both Scuro's e-mail address and TenOfAllTrade's e-mail address were from one or other of the domain names there, and seem to have triggered the spam filters). Following my suggestion, the spam filter 'action' setting was switched from "discard" to "hold" (for a moderator to review), and this seems to have immediately fixed the problem.

To confirm this, I asked both Scuro and Hersfold to e-mail again (with Hersfold copying in TenOfAllTrades) and the e-mails both got through this time, with scuro confirming that the e-mail he sent had triggered a moderation message saying his e-mail had triggered a "rule" (i.e. triggered the spam filter). The difference is that the messages were now being held for moderation, not silently discarded (previously, neither Scuro and Hersfold, or the list admins/moderators, had received any notification at all that theses e-mails had not arrived and had been discarded). One of the reasons this may not have been picked up earlier is a presumption that "discard" generated an "auto-discard" notice to the list moderators. It seems that this is not the case for discarding that is done directly by the spam filter (as opposed to discarding done by the auto-discard list).

This all happened around about 8 days ago. Because I was still not 100% sure of this (I don't really know on a deep level how such things work), I suggested doing some more testing to be sure, and asked some of my colleagues with more experience in dealing with such things to comment. Several have since commented, but as some may be aware, the committee has been very busy recently dealing with a series of incidents and large cases. This is partly why I am bringing this here now, as I don't think the follow-up to this should be delayed much longer (I would normally clear a posting of this length and of this nature with my colleagues, but have not done so here, as I think this needs addressing now, with no further delay).

To be clear, the problem seems to have been fixed now (i.e. it is unlikely that e-mails will be lost or discarded in the future for this reason), though to be absolutely sure, I would be happier if someone who understands this more than I do did some proper testing. However, it is not clear how large the now-fixed problem was and what the effect was. The big problem here, as Risker mentioned earlier, is that we have no clear idea how long the spam filter was set to reject e-mail from this range of 19 e-mail address domains, or even when each domain was added to the list (the list can be published - as I said, they are mostly yahoo ones). What I think should be done at this point is the following:

  • (1) Try and find out when the settings were put in place and how long this has been a problem for. Currently there are two known examples of people whose e-mails were caught by the spam filters, the two described above, from August and September 2009. As there is no way to reliably tell from the mailman software (to my knowledge) when these spam filter settings were put in place, I think the presumption should be that those settings have been in place all through this year, and possibly further back into previous years as well.
  • (2) The list admins (there are about 4 or 5 of them) could be asked if they changed the settings, but this hasn't been done yet (it is also possible that list admins doing something in one part of mailman affected another part without realising what they were doing). For the record, my actions as list admin have been largely limited to moderating mail through to the list, and I never touched the spam filter settings.
  • (3) Examine various archives. My initial searches through my records from this year (looking for e-mail from these domains) indicate this has probably been a problem all through this year. There are various ways to search further back (into 2008 and 2007) to find the last time an e-mail from each domain name arrived at the Arbitration Committee mailing list (this sort of search has been suggested but not done yet).
  • (4) Try to identify which e-mails and from whom, failed to arrive. This might involve technical investigations, such as looking at Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) logs to compare what arrived at the WMF servers, with what the settings of mailman (the WMF mailing list software) let through to the list members. As I only learnt a few days ago what an MTA log is, I have no idea whether this would work or not (I suspect such server logs are discarded at some point).
  • (5) Appeal for people with e-mail addresses from the domain names in question, who know they e-mailed ArbCom over the past 2 or 3 years and never received a reply, and who still have copies of those e-mails, to resend those e-mails, including full headers. These e-mails can then be compared to the archives to see whether the e-mails ever arrived. That would provide clear evidence of how far back this problem went.
  • (6) Set up a manual log of changes made to the mailman software settings. This has now been done (whether the list admins remember to record the changes they make is another matter). Ideally, a system would be used that kept a record of what changes were made to it, by whom, and when.

One point I do want to make here is that one of my aims this year has been to to help improve the communications of ArbCom, and I am angry that some of the impression of poor communications from last year and this year may have been due to poorly configured spam filters, possibly ones that were configured last year or even further back than that, and just never looked at or properly discussed by the list admins. One of the things I speculated about, when reporting on this to my colleagues, was whether this explains some of the feeling over the years that people were not getting replies from ArbCom? It wouldn't explain all such feelings obviously, but maybe some. If it is confirmed that some failure in the configuration of the spam filters has caused more than just the two failure points I described above - and I should note that not all my colleagues agree that this is the problem I am making it out to be - then I hope that this report helps explain what has happened here, and show that once discovered, steps were taken to identify and correct the problem. I will wait for comments here, and then move forward with further responses and an appropriate formal notice (including posting a list of the e-mail domain names that were affected) as needed. Carcharoth (talk) 00:04, 3 October 2009 (UTC) [reply]

Short version for readers who are not FT2 or Newyorkbrad

  1. Arbcom-L has a spam filter.
  2. The spam filter was set to discard messages from some significant email domains without notifying anyone.
  3. It is not known who set the filter this way or for how long this was happening.
  4. It's fixed now.

-- Thatcher 00:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Could we please set up a ticket tracking system (aka help desk software) to log requests to ArbCom? You need a system that protects against people deleting, filtering, or ignoring correspondence without a log of the action. Jehochman Talk 00:29, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The point is that a tracking system was put in place this Spring by the new arbcom but the spam filter was discarding messages before they even hit the tracking system. Thatcher 00:31, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Does the user interface say "You will receive a receipt for your submission. If you do not receive a receipt, then your message was not received." What happened here should not have happened in a properly designed system. Email transmission failures are commonplace, even if the spam filter is set up correctly. Jehochman Talk 00:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The mailman interface has these options for messages matching the "spam" regexp: Defer, Hold, Reject, Discard, Accept. I assume, based on Carcharoth's text, that "reject" would send a reject message and "discard" dumps it without a message, while "hold" puts it in the queue and notifies the list mods. I have not tested this behavior myself (I am a mod on the audit subcom mailing list and am just now poking around the interface). Thatcher 00:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. You need more testers. Jehochman Talk 00:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As long as all the filters are turned off, no testing is needed. If the filters ever are turned on again, for certain words or domains, then definitely testing is in order. Thatcher 00:58, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
If the filters are turned on, then it would be helpful to maintain a public page where people can validate their suspicions i.e. if you are using this.domain.com, your mails are liekly being discarded. Filtering based on word content (presumably for things like "Viagra4free" in the subject line) is a little more problematic, but it's not likely that Arbcom or functionaries are primary targets of spammers selling porn or male-enhancement products. Surely the best solution is to publish the filter rules on a public wiki-page so that we can all check if we suspect that our emails aren't getting through. Franamax (talk) 02:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You are sadly mistaken. We are also apparently prime targets for diploma mills, hotel rooms in Ulan Bator, and Russian mail order brides. In any case, the spam filter has been completely wiped for now. Risker (talk) 03:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The simplest solution, if the spam filter is needed again, is to set it to reject instead of discard. Then the sender gets a rejection letter. If the sender is a wikipedia user, he or she can use other means to contact the committee (ideally, advised by the rejection notice). Thatcher 04:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I bought one of those brides! Sadly, the ocean shipping was too much for her glistening cardboard cheeks. ;) My point was that there would be no particular harm in making public the filtering rules, i.e. spam is spam, it comes from one of many generic maillists that spammers buy and sell. Once any given email address gets on a spamlist, it never comes off - however, I rather doubt that any spammer would target a filter list published on Wikipedia to develop strategies meant only to target such a small set of addresses. Thus, I see no great problem in making public the filtering rules, which any legitimate wiki-editor could check to see if their own important email may or may not be getting through. If I understand the recent concern correctly, the sender would have been able to check against the filter rules and realize "hey, I use that mail domain, maybe my mail was blocked".
Thatcher's proposed solution works too, but in my corporate (or any) life, I've always discouraged sending out "rejected" messages, since they are a direct indication to the spammer that the mail address is "live" and thus could prompt resale and/or better techniques for getting spam through. For a large-scale and public site such as this though, "reject" may indeed be the best strategy. Franamax (talk) 04:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like the institutional memory here for the arb mailing list probably resides in David Gerard's head - might be worth asking him about this particular subject. Nathan T 01:31, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If I thought he could remember who the list admins were in 2007 and 2008, and what the many different mailman settings were at the time he stopped being an administrator of the mailing list, I would have indeed asked him. I think publishing a list of the e-mail domains in question would better allow people to check their records, send us details, and allow us (well, me actually, it seems) to check the archives, is a better option. Carcharoth (talk) 11:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This feels like a witchhunt

I've been off-wiki all day and don't even know where to begin reading if I wanted to catch up (... maybe I don't?). So sue me if this is the wrong place. But what I have read so far is dismaying. I count at least three arbitrators being raked over the coals to one degree or another. Lots of "what did you know and when did you know it". Lots of "how dare you!". Lots of gnashing of teeth.

Is the ArbCom rotten to the core? Nope, I don't think so. Just human. So what is going on here Targets of opportunity? Witchhunt? That's starting to look a bit possible to me. What is the point of dragging one arbitrator after another through as much mud as can be stirred up? If we want to, we can bring the whole arbcom crashing down. Is that what we want? I don't think so. I have my beefs with some individual arbs but this ArbCom has done a lot of good, and this wiki is too big to function without one, or with a crippled, lame duck one. Those of you stirring, or aiding and abetting the stirrers, why are you doing it? Maybe you're helping someone or another settle old scores. Think about that. ++Lar: t/c 01:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Seems like there is a wide spectrum of responses. Some people are bemused about this particular instance of our ban/block policy intersecting with human beings in a strange way. Other people are genuinely (and I think rightfully) pissed that a few admins and an arb decided that one set of rules was ok for their friends and another set for everyone else. Sifting through the bulk to venting on this page to thread those concerns out is a heroic task, but I wouldn't call this a witch hunt. Protonk (talk) 01:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • No Lar, think about this. A handful of trusted and powerful officials appear to have been applying one standard to their friends yet holding the rest of us to the letter of the Wikilaw. For those of us in the cheap seats it's hard to know just who is a knight and who is a knave these days. It's not just the latest clusterfuck with Law/The_Undertow but consider the recent unmasking of Pastor Theo/Ecoleetage and even the nefarious doings of Steve Crossin/Zhang last year. All these incidents confuzzle us in the grunt-class. The position you've taken here is pretty rotten when viewed in that light. Predictable but rotten nonetheless. Crafty (talk) 01:56, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • I for one, see a great deal of legitimate disagreement about who was obligated to do what - and a dearth of information about who knew what and who did what. At this point, I see no way where speculating on the motivations of others is useful. I have not done my part to encourage calm in this situation, and for that I am sorry. I am now, however asking everyone to take a breath, and step back. Whatever has been done, whatever was not done, will slowly but inexorably become clear. I understand the suspicion and the anger, but I know at least in my life, it isn't worth it. I have friends and family who deserve better than to deal with a bad mood brought on by Wikipedia. --Tznkai (talk) 02:14, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lar, I don't see it as an overall witch-hunt (oh, those convenient wikiphrases that elide the issues) although certainly some participants are throwing eggs. Nor do I see all this as being specifically directed at Arbs, though they are rightly being questioned as to their prior knowledge. The big problem I see is that two, then three, then latterly minus a kind-of-half-an-apology, admins have insisted that the end justifies the means, fuck the rules, they'll do whatever. I think it's this profound lack of insight into why the community would have any concerns at all with actions (or non-actions) in the admin role that has so roused the community. Casliber is a profoundly unfortunate casualty of this, but at least he stepped up and acted honourably and in a proactive way. Read past the agendas, there is a lot of deep concern being expressed here. Franamax (talk) 03:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually I agree with Lar on the surface of it here. Now, I don't think that is the intent of any individual; at least I hope not. I get the impression though that there are some deep-rooted grudges and possibly resentment that are sub-consciously raising to the top of this mix. I think one of the polarizing issues here may be the desire of some to place "friendship" and "web-site loyalty" into some sort of competition and asking which comes first. I think a lot of folks are struggling with their own definitions here, and looking for answers. Eventually we will all have to come to terms with that individually. Perhaps the wording of having one's back could have been more delicately phrased - as I don't believe that any one here would seriously allow harm to come to Wikipedia; but the situation now is what it is, and we must all work together to find the solutions. I think the order of the day should be as Lar mentions, putting personal feelings aside for a bit, and approaching things in a calm and rational manner from this point forward. — Ched :  ?  03:41, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • The issue here is that Wikipedia's embrace of anonymity permits this sort of abuse. We have rules which presume that humans will behave in an honourable way when in fact we know that they do not. Perhaps we need to reflect on that.Crafty (talk) 03:48, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's actually pseudonymity, but regardless: pretty much all of human society is built around the expectation that humans will behave honourably. But we also recognize that not all do, which is why we also have sanctions for particularly bad behaviour. If you're getting at requiring registration of identity, no problem, I can download a dozen of them for myself right now. It's what gets eighteen-year-olds into bars. Personally modelling proper behaviour is the only way to go IMO. And in this particular case, it's not anonymity which is the problem at all. It's collusion and a failure in the idea of what constitutes "friendship" as opposed to enabling. The honourable course was always evident here. Franamax (talk) 04:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, Lar, I agree with you. Pardon my French, but its pretty clear that people fucked up. We dropped the ball. Now the curtain has been lifted, and we have a choice: keep obsessing over punishing everyone that was involved, or move on with the business of building an encyclopedia. Personally, i'll opt for the latter. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 04:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • With mistakes this large, it's important to not simply acknowledge them, but also to try and learn from them. Or in other words: How could we improve procedures, to prevent situations like this from happening in the future? The first idea that comes to my mind, is that perhaps it's time to require all administrators to provide their real-life identities and contact info to the Wikimedia Foundation. For example, require each candidate with a successful RfA to send an email with their real name, city of residence, and a phone number, before we toggle their admin bit. --Elonka 05:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Not worth it. WMF isn't responsible to Wikipedia-en for one thing, and most admins shouldn't be forced to fork over that sort of information just to be an admin on a website. Additionally, there are some parity issues here: I willingly identified myself because I deal with private information - things that matter. I, and everyone else who has access to private data, will find out real names, addresses, and the other pieces of identity that give you a little lever with which you can terrorize someone. Ninety nine times out of a hundred that is way more important then anything on Wikipedia proper.--Tznkai (talk) 05:36, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And what would the WMF do with this data that would help such a situation? If someone is willing to deceive the community at RFA, I imagine they would be willing to deceive the foundation as well. Mr.Z-man 05:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That solution isn;t going to accomplish anything. The WMF has more important things to do, and admins shouldn't need to have their personal information on file. One thing I would support, though, is mandatory Checkuser of admin candidates. Checkusers are trusted with private data, and if there are no serious abuse issues the CU wouldn't have to disclose them. I brought this issue up after Sam Blacketer, and people resisted it due to privacy concerns. I brought it up again after Geogre, and people again raised privacy concerns. Is it maybe time to take a serious look at this idea? The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 05:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Can you name one single instance of subsequent admin abuse that would have been prevented by such a measure? Franamax (talk) 06:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how Checkuser-ing RFA candidates would have prevented this situation. Among other things, months passed between the use of the two accounts. Further, if admin candidates know they'll face checkuser, and are intent on deception, then they can figure out how to circumvent it.   Will Beback  talk  06:16, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(ecx2)Several admins, such as Geogre and Law, would not have been able to deceive users about their ban evasion. What Sam Blacketer did was unambiguously abuse of his position, and that would have been prevented if his alt account had been known. Pastor Theo double voted and closed discussions that his non-admin account(s) had voted in, which is also clear admin abuse that was discovered by an SPI. The Pastor Theo one was still ongoing, as the accounts had been used concurrently as recently as a week before his desysopping. Running a checkuser on him before opening his RFA would have caught this, and he would have been prevented from abusing the position. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 06:24, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For that matter, if I were a desysoped and banned user who wished to return and become an admin again then I could borrow a friend's ID and submit it in place of my own. If I had never been a sysop, and had merely been banned, then giving my ID to the WMF wouldn't raise any red flags because they wouldn't know that I was a banned user. If folks want to engage in deception then there will always be a way, especially if there are trusted users who aid in the deception.   Will Beback  talk  06:23, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Of course all Admins should have their details recorded with the Foundation. If people want their privacy respected they're free to remain ordinary editors. For those who feel the need to be trusted by the Community, why shouldn't their identities be recorded in some place? Normally now I would ask, "what have they to hide?" but I think the antics over last couple of months have given us the answer and that answer is "plenty". Crafty (talk) 06:28, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As I've already said, Wikipedia community and privacy matters are two completely different leagues.--Tznkai (talk) 06:33, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

←So what? You've already said it, so that's the end of the matter? I'm not suggesting Admins details be published on the Main Page, rather that they identify themselves to the Foundation. Just like Stewards, Oversighters, Checkusers and all the other numerous functionaries the Project is burdened with. Crafty (talk) 06:37, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Functionaries for -en number well less than a hundred, admins number around a thousand. Stewards by the way, operate at the Foundation level, not just on -en. Admins have radically different responsibilities (a marked lack of them in fact) than functionaries do. When I handed over my personal information I signed up for a significant fiduciary duty: to maintain, respect, and protect privacy, something serious with real life, legal implications. Responsibility to the "Wikipedia Community" isn't even in the same ballpark.--Tznkai (talk) 06:43, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
While I've said above that neither checkuser nor RL ID would necessarily catch every attempt at deception, I think they would be reasonable and helpful steps to take. I don't want my contact information known to every vandal, but I have no objection to sharing it with the WMF if I volunteer to serve in a position of trust.   Will Beback  talk  06:40, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No it wouldn't. But it would give people like Law/The Undertow, Ecoleetage and their kind pause for thought before socking to get/retrieve admin status. Gross violations would be curtailed and I think that's what we're dealing with here. Crafty (talk) 06:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Ecoleetage called an editor's employer and by multiple reports is rather unrepentant. Law/The undertow evaded a ban and by all reports feels terrible. They are not the same "kind"--Tznkai (talk) 06:46, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
For the purposes of this debate they are they same kind. Mendacious sorts, given to deception. Granted Ecoleetage had that whole creepy stalker thing going on, but that's just an extra special add on. It's time we got serious and really made Adminstrators accountable. Since there's no easy way to make them account to the community, we can at least make them accountable to the Foundation. Frankly, you're all under a cloud right now. Crafty (talk) 06:57, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That extra special add-on is a substantive difference. How does giving someone (for the sake of argument) your name, number, and address make you accountable? In the real world, it means its easier to sue you, damage your credit rating, screw up your employment history, and steal your identity. Now, I'm not going to do anything along those lines to anyone over what they do to the Wikipedia community - and I doubt you'll find anyone at WMF willing to do the same.--Tznkai (talk) 07:05, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
So this idea (identification to WMF) is basically contingent on people who are willing to deceive the community for months all of a sudden listening to their conscience and deciding to follow the rules when faced with the prospect of emailing a copy of their driver's license to the office? Because if they just continue their deception there, it won't solve anything. Mr.Z-man 07:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We're not looking for a magic solution to catch all instances of this. However, catching some is better than catching none. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 06:49, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Whats the cost though? Privacy is a big deal - it should be a big deal. You have any idea what kind of damage you can do with an IP address and a google search or two? Give me a name and address, and we're in business, specifically mine in yours. How many good admins are going to step down or never run, for how many bad admins not making it in return? Besides, the assumption of bad faith just doesn't work all that well in general.--Tznkai (talk) 06:59, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't what I and others are suggesting and I think you know it. The idea is that Administrators on any wikimedia project (especially this one) should provide their RL ID to to the Foundation not to me, not to the Community. There is no earthly reason that an enwiki sysop should not be held to the same standard as a Foundation Steward. Crafty (talk) 07:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Edited to add that if you value your privacy so much, you can get it back when you surrender your bit. Crafty (talk) 07:04, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And I'm saying you shouldn't trust anyone with that information cavalierly, nor ask anyone else to, even the vaunted WMF.--Tznkai (talk) 07:05, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And, by the way, I think I've shown adequately how a sysop and a steward are substantially different.--Tznkai (talk) 07:07, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Well whatever. I see no reason to prolong this exchange. We have each made our various points. It's really not about what we think, but those who read what we write. I thank you for the civil and what I hope has been a constructive exchange. :) Regards, Crafty (talk) 07:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
(e/c)A steward has access to all the private data on every Wikimedia wiki - checkuser data, oversighted edits, etc. There are real-world legal responsibilities and foundation-level policies involved. The most an enwiki admin has access to are deleted revisions. They are not on the same level. As for "if you value your privacy so much, you can get it back when you surrender your bit" - how does that work. Are we now also requiring the office to perma-delete the emails and burn any paper copies after desysopping (which would also make detecting cases like undertow/Law somewhat more impossible using this method, since The undertow was desysopped long before Law was at RFA). Mr.Z-man 07:10, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't work Zed. Obviously I was indulging in a rhetorical flourish for the benefit of the peanut gallery. Yeesh! Crafty (talk) 07:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Worth pointing out that if someone is deceptive enough to go to all that trouble to feed their addiction, giving false details to WMF would not actually be beyond the question, so making all admins disclose may not only not solve the problem but drive a certain class of former editors to criminal activity all for the sake of fooling a website and getting their "cred" back. I'm not saying that any of the present parties being considered would do that, but I could think of at least one banned, regularly socking editor who no doubt would be able to. Orderinchaos 09:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think we're forgetting that Checkusers are people specifically elected because the community trusts them with private information. Its not like mandatory CU at RFA would mean giving your name and address to the community as a whole. The most the community should know about the CU results is that either everything is fine, or there is a problem with sock abuse. The Wordsmith(formerly known as Firestorm)Communicate 07:25, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, doing checks occasionally when there is reason for suspicion will find more problems than doing routine checks. If people are aware that they are going to be checked, then they are more likely to edit in ways that will keep alternative accounts from being detected. Plus, there is often a misunderstanding about the way that a check helps determine if an account is an abusive alternative account. The check only plays a part in determining if an account is link to another account. The other methods that are available to everyone can be used first, and then if problems are suspected a check can be requested. FloNight♥♥♥ 09:39, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • We certainly see the usual witchhunt for Geogre here. Several admins, such as Geogre and Law, would not have been able to deceive users about their ban evasion, writes The Wordsmith above.[20] Is it because Geogre isn't here to defend himself that such random fairy-tales are increasingly posted about him? And have they now reached to it being OK to talk about his — non-existent — ban— what ban? — let alone his supposed ban evasion? And to suggest that his actions were pretty much like Law's? Gee, what will Geogre have done next year, run a dope ring? Wordsmith, please check your facts next time you sling mud at the absent. Bishonen | talk 11:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC).[reply]

Confused

For those of us who are trying to find out who did what and to whom and why, so that we might be able to determine whether we are looking for witches or man-eating tigers, some information would be appreciated. I went looking to see what fallout had occured from the adminship of User:Law. That name re-directs now to User talk:The undertow, but there is nothing at TU of Law's contribution history that I could see. Could someone provide links please? Surely the separate contributions should be visible, either at one page or on individual pages. // BL \\ (talk) 02:50, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Try here: Law (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log). As near as I can tell, the flashpoint was on September 20, when he unblocked ChildofMidnight (talk · contribs), thereby overturning an arbitration enforcement block which had been placed by Sandstein (talk · contribs). It is expressly forbidden to overturn ArbCom enforcement actions in that way. When challenged, Law was unapologetic. Somewhere around then (I'm fuzzy on the exact timeline), it was discovered that Administrator Law was a reincarnation of banned user (and ex-admin) The undertow (talk · contribs). At least three administrators knew that Law == Undertow, but still either actively helped Law to become an administrator again, or, such as in arbitrator Casliber's case, held their tongue and just didn't say anything even though they had misgivings. For more info:
Caveat: I have not been following the entire situation in sordid detail, so it is possible that I may have left out some key elements. --Elonka 04:03, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
As far as I'm aware, the disclosure of Law's past had nothing to do with me, but was revealed after a dispute on IRC. ChildofMidnight (talk) 04:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Elonka's summary actually seems to be comprehensive. AGK 12:02, 3 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]