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Use this section to request clarification or amendment of a closed Arbitration Committee case or decision.

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Clarification request: Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles

Initiated by Doug Weller at 11:32, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Statement by Doug Weller

My clarification request concerns the article for Ilhan Omar, a member of the United States House of Representatives. She's a controversial person in part simply because she is a Muslim and in part because of some comments on Israel. I added the usual ARBPIA template at the top of the page and have told some non-ECP editors about the ruling applying to them if they edit related content in the article. I've been asked at Talk:Ilhan Omar#ARBPIA if 1RR applies to the content relating to the dispute. I've always assumed that it doesn't automatically apply and only applies if the {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} is added to the talk page and the edit notice {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli editnotice}} added to the article.

I'd like to confirm that:

1. The plain talk page template without {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} means that the only restriction on the article applies to non-ECP editors editing within the area of the dispute. 1RR does not apply and cannot apply to only part of an article.

2. If edits to the article not relating to the dispute suggest that the subject is being targeted because of her positions on the dispute (or her Muslim identity) it's permissible to apply ECP to the article without the other restrictions or simply to apply the AE restrictions template even though the article as a whole doesn't fall within the area of the dispute. It's increasingly my opinion that this should be done. Interestingly the article on her fellow Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also has a section on the dispute but Talk:Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez show it covered only by American Politics but with a 1RR and enforced WP:BRD (Template:American politics AE).

@AGK: You've said that "The PIA General 1RR restriction applies to all content related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This includes parts of an otherwise-unrelated page" and others seem to agree. But that isn't what the text we voted on said or what I understood it to mean at the time. The motion we voted on says "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict." No mention of "all content". Suggesting that it applies to all content (which would mean even in pages where there's no talk page notice about ARBPIA) seems an overreach to me. What might be a reasonable argument is that by putting the sanctions notice on the talk page, even though I didn't add the specific restrictions, puts the entire article under 1RR. Is that the argument you are making? But that raises the question why have the two notices? We should only have the one notice, the one that spells out the sanctions. As for the edit notice, this was my interpretation of this clarification request. We discussed edit notices and awareness there extensively and the motion we passed says
Editors who ignore or breach page restrictions may be sanctioned by any uninvolved administrator provided that, at the time the editor ignored or breached a page restriction:
The editor was aware of discretionary sanctions in the area of conflict, and
here was an editnotice ({{ds/editnotice}}) on the restricted page which specified the page restriction.
That's what WP:ACDS says now. It seems unreasonable to say that if the page is mainly about another area that it doesn't need an edit notice related to the ARBPIA 1RR restriction. Doug Weller talk 21:55, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@RickinBaltimore: there's a whole section at Ilhan Omar#Israeli–Palestinian conflict. I don't see how ARBPIA could not be relevant to that or that non-ECP editors or IPs should be allowed to edit it. Could you explain your reasoning? Rob, I agree with your assessment. Having said what I said to Rick about this specific article, I also have seen articles where there has been editwarring about whether a location is in Palestine or Israel, often just about that single word. I've always seen ARBPIA as meant to also cover this sort of detail as it's clearly, to me at least, within the conflict area. So I'd agree that an article such as Omar's should have a 1RR edit notice (and it does now under AP), I'm not sure that an article where the main ARBPIA issue is the location should have one unless we can craft it so that it's clear exactly what in the article is relevant. Doug Weller talk 09:38, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Opabinia regalis, BU Rob13, KrakatoaKatie, and RickinBaltimore: I agree that AP2 and BLP deal with most of my concerns and I've set AP restrictions. That still leaves the problem of the section in Omar's article on the Ilhan Omar#Israeli–Palestinian conflict. It's my strong opinion that this is covered by by the 500/30 restriction but not all share my opinion. In particular Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Sangdeboeuf was about an edit by Sangdeboeuf[1] where they reverted an edit relating to the confllict by a non-ECP confirmed editor on the basis of my statement that non-confirmed editors could not edit any content relating to the conflict.[2] User:TonyBallioni, whose views I generally agree with, disagreed that ARBPIA applied to this section. I hadn't thought that this was even a grey area but to my disappointment I can't find anything to back my assumption. So I and I think others need to know if non-ECP editors and IPs can edit material relating to the conflict if the article isn't basically about the conflict. Doug Weller talk 10:09, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@RickinBaltimore: I agree, the page itself is not essentially about the dispute, but the section is, and I think that what WP:TBAN says applies here. Using "weather" as an example, it says that a tban from the topic "weather-related parts of other pages, even if the pages as a whole have little or nothing to do with weather: the section entitled "Climate" in the article California, for example, is covered by the topic ban, but the rest of the article is not." If we wish to prevent edit-warring in an area covered by sanctions, those sanctions should cover not just articles devoted to the area but sections of articles that focus on the area. Doug Weller talk 13:45, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@ZScarpia: I think I've been wrong in my assumptions, wishful thinking perhaps as I think ECP needs to apply to all related content in this area. The problem (and the reason I've been wrong) is that 1RR and the general 500/30 rule are not actually discretionary sanctions. I think they should be part of DS as I see a lot of drive-by editors and IP addresses (and the cynical side of me says some of these are editors logged out) changing content that's only a minor part of an article - often the names Israel or Palestine or the location of sites or towns, and 1RR and 500/30 would be a big help here, as well as in cases such as the section of Omar's article that is specifically about the conflict. Topic bans cover all content of course, is that the sort of AE action you are thinking of or is some related to the ECP issue? Doug Weller talk 13:08, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Calthinus

Doug Weller if you don't mind, I'd like to clarify the question(s) here a bit, as your original request is actually touching on multiple different issues that could be relevant for whether a page is ARBPIA... and I'd like to make clear the options among which we unsure which matches global (as opposed to local i.e. page-respective) en-wiki policy.

1) The simplest of all, that some of Omar's comments that drew controversy were about Israel. She is an American politician though and the controversy is in America. Does this mean it is (a) not ARBPIA at all, (b) ARBPIA for specifically those comments and the ensuing controversy or (c) ARBPIA in total.

2) Probably the comment Ilhan Omar that made the most controversy (aside from mostly religious Christian right-wingers flipping out about her hijab, which I don't personally think is relevant to ARBPIA) is her view that pro-Israel lobbyists have "hypnotized" people. To many Jews, including many progressive Jews, this is an offensive anti-Semitic canard that is all the worse because Omar herself is hypocritically the victim of religious bigotry, while for others, again including people who are Jewish, it is media (especially conservative media) taking what she said out of context. Without commenting on which side is "right", there are actually two questions here:

  • 2a) Are pro-Israel lobbyists or lobbying groups covered by ARBPIA, and are comments about them by others. Does this make (a) nothing ARBPIA, (b) just the material related to pro-Israel lobbying/ists, (c) the whole article for subjects involved ARBPIA.
  • 2b) Again without commenting on the "correctness" of either side, Omar is accused of antisemitism. Full disclosure my personal view is that she is more chronically inconsiderate and communalist than she is anything akin to David Duke, which is not going to be popular with either side. While obviously most non-Israeli Jews are non-Israeli and indeed a significant minority are critical of the structure of the Israeli state, issues of global antisemitism are central to Israeli identity. Do figures (wide range: Omar to Sebastian Gorka to David Duke, no I do not believe they belong in the same category but these are an easy and relevant examples that are not --yet-- covered by ARBPIA) who have commentary on their nation's foreign policy via Israel and also antisemitism become covered by ARBPIA in the capacity of (a) not at all, (b) Israel and antisemitism related material, (c) just Israel material or (d) in totality?

3) As it stands currently, Doug Weller's writeup mentions Omar's very visible Muslim faith. Islam is not definitively "Israeli/Palestinian domain", however just like antisemitism there is a lot of interaction, as there is a sense of pan-Islamic solidarity regardless of the reality of this solidarity, on both sides. Furthermore, although this fact may be regrettable, by wearing the hijab and by spearheading the effort to allow head coverings in federal government processes, Omar became an iconized living symbol of religious Muslims in the US (again, personally I find this incredibly problematic on many different grounds but it is hard to deny it has become the case) and has been punished for it time and time again by unabashed Islamophobes on social media elsewhere. At first glance this may not seem relevant, but since Doug brought it up, it is worth mentioning that issues of Muslim immigrant assimilation do play a role in debates about how Muslim Americans can relate to American foreign policy (I am not implying all Muslim Americans are anti-Israel/pro-Palestine/or anything whatever, but one cannot deny that this is relevant). Should this also be a consideration? Personally I think, no, but it has already been brought up and is worth asking because I can see another side here as well

Hope I've made the issues here more, not less clear?--Calthinus (talk) 14:11, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Shrike

@AGK: But per PIA General 1RR restriction it applies to "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict" and not to the content. I btw agree with you AGK and think it should apply to the content but then the wording should be changed --Shrike (talk) 20:23, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Huldra

Agree with AGK and Shrike: when ARBPIA notice is place, then it is 1RR for the whole article.

As for changing the rules (so that ARBPIA is only for a part of the article)...Please don't. The usefulness of that does not make up for the added level of complication (The rules are more than complicated enough as it is!) Huldra (talk) 21:22, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Icewhiz

I'd like to introduce this AE case into evidence. The AE case involved, in part, edit warring in Acid throwing - which is mostly not ARBPIA - however Acid throwing#Israel, West Bank and Gaza Strip is very much ARBPIA related. Such ARBPIA sections are common in longer pages - and applying this on the section would make sense. Ilhan Omar is in the border-zone between reasonably and broadly (as much of the coverage of her, through the years, is focused on antisemitism/Israel/etc.) overall, and specific sections of the page are very much ARBPIA related. Icewhiz (talk) 07:30, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: - the motion at present is unclear on who may place the notice. All users (as with the current ARBPIA banners)? Just admins? If just admins (which I think is a bad idea in this case) - where can one request that notices be placed?Icewhiz (talk) 12:52, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BU Rob13: - AFAIK the ARBPIA banners were mainly placed by non-admin users (@Shrike: and @Huldra: were both prolific) - however their coverage is spotty (I would guess less than 30%-40% coverage - lots of pages clearly in scope do not have an ARBPIA banner), and sometimes wrong (e.g. Iran/Israel which was ruled out of scope by ARCA still has some banners). The current 1RR regime covers thousands of pages at the very least, and in some situations (e.g. during the 2014 Gaza war) new pages can pile up at rather high rates. At present the topic area lacks "resident admins" (@Zero0000: does edit in the topic area, but is not always around. @Number 57: mainly edits in election related contexts, and I am not sure anyone else is active). The really "hot" edit wars tend to occur not in established long running pages such as the Six Day War but more down in the weeds - current events, terror attacks, and individual settlements and bios. If there is no mechanism here for quick rollout (either normal user, or a queue with good response times) - things will get ugly, and possibly even less clear (e.g, users 3RRing up until the edit notice going in) than today. Unlike AP2 which has fairly active "resident admins" and topics edited by regulars, ARBPIA lacks the residents and has many "flash crowds" that show up when a current event is occuring (and editing lots and lots of pages - bio/places/units/etc related to the event).Icewhiz (talk) 18:41, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It is beyond growing pains. Rfpp often takes 12 hours and if the edit notice is not streamlined there (and obvious to admins there who are often at ARBPIA what? When they respond) - it will be overlooked. ECP protection is at present very spotty and some admins at RfPP will reject an ARBPIA ECP request if there was not enough recent disruption (counter to my reading at least of ARBPIA3). I want to stress again how fast and how ugly it gets during terror waves / wars / events - and in those cases it is on several new articles and often obscure existing articles. Icewhiz (talk) 19:22, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Zero0000

I can't actually tell what everyone is proposing in this discussion. The question is whether to apply ARBPIA only to entire articles or selectively to parts of articles. The former would be a simpler rule, but it can also lead to absurdity. A year or so ago there was a huge edit war on List of state leaders in 2016 (or some other year) over the 3 lines that applied to Palestine. It would ridiculous to apply ARBPIA to the other 250 or so items in that list just because of those 3 lines. I think that what we need is something like this: if an article is largely related to the I-P conflict, it is covered in toto; otherwise the parts of an article related to the I-P conflict are covered. Zerotalk 08:22, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To editor TonyBallioni: Your proposal to remove from ARBPIA articles about debate within other countries will impact articles like American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Christians United for Israel, both of them about American organizations that now carry ARBPIA tags. In my view, removing ARBPIA protection from such articles would immediately open them to edit-warring of the kind that ARBPIA is intended to subdue, involving the same editors who edit-war on other ARBPIA articles. I cannot see this as a step forward. Zerotalk 05:00, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SMcCandlish

There's a lot of verbiage up there (says the long-winded guy), but the key thing to me is that unusual restrictions like 1RR should never be held to be applicable at a page without the admin-placed editnotices and other templates that explicitly make them so and which are hard to miss. Drama-frought topics are among the most likely to attract new editors, so there's a serious WP:BITE problem here. If I'd ended up blocked my first week of editing, for violating an obscure and excessive rule I didn't know about and which applied only to a particular page, I probably never would have come back. Consider also that new editors can't tell who's an admin, and which concerns to take seriously (lots of noobs get lots of grousing and templates from lots of people; a DS notice from an admin isn't likely to be interpreted as special by someone who doesn't know the ropes yet, but a big warning every time they edit a particular article is harder to ignore).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:07, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TonyBallioni

As one of the admins who is more active in ARBPIA from an AE perspective, I'll copy what I just posted at AE here where the ARBPIA and AP2 issues colidied:

I think that a lot of the focus on this article as a part ARBPIA is because the subject is visibly Muslim, and that plays a part in the news coverage, because it is a region where the ethno-religious tensions are high. This hasn't been brought up here, but I do think its something that needs to be addressed as a sort of elephant in the room.

That being said, I don't think being a Muslim American politician with views on the conflict makes that politician part of it under our rules anymore than an Evangelical Christian congressman who wants all of Israel and the Palestinian territories to be part of the State of Israel because it will speed up the end of the world. The question is whether or not she can reasonably be considered part of the conflict. I do not think she or any other current member of the United States Congress can.

@KrakatoaKatie and RickinBaltimore: something I do think the committee could possibly amend or clarify here is that the ARBPIA general prohibition does not apply to the internal politics of countries that aren't Israel or its neighbors. Namely, if I wanted to, I could make a fairly strong wikilawyerly argument that Harry Truman is reasonably construed to be under the sanctions. Those of us who aren't active participants in the Wikidrama in the area think its crazy, but AE for ARBPIA is generally the same faces reporting each other on technical violations repeatedly or reporting newer users to the area who are on the other "side" that we eventually end up indefing. One country having an internal debate as to its policy on the State of Israel and its relationship with its Arab neighbors is not what these sanctions were usually intended to address. The committee clarifying "Hey, this area is clearly not part of the sanctions." Would be helpful. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:08, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Zero0000, well, Christians United For Israel is not under ARBPIA ECP currently and the banner on the talk page proclaiming it as being part of it was ironically added by an IP 6 months ago. American Israel Public Affairs Committee currently is, but I would much rather see it under AP2: Israel has long been a third-rail in American politics (in part because of the desire of some evangelicals to bring about the end of the world by supporting it...) and its role in US politics probably should be addressed in its own right. There are also likely articles in British politics that should not be under ARBPIA that are because of the anti-semitism controversies with the Labour Party. A foreign political organization or politician being accused of being anti-semetic or of being a Zionist because of positions on Israel does not suddenly make an internal political dispute part of this conflict.
    I could see an argument for ArbCom creating new discretionary sanctions for topics surrounding Antisemitism, Zionism, and related topics, but that would need a new case, and I don’t like the direction where it seems that we’re trying to fit things related to those topics into ARBPIA, which I think is a very bad thing. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:34, 24 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GoldenRing

Speaking with my AE-admin hat on, I would not consider Ilhan Omar to be under 1RR or the General Prohibition.

Bans are generally constructed as either "pages related to...." or "pages and edits related to....". In this case, both the ARBPIA 1RR restriction and the General Prohibition are constructed as "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict" - ie. the "and edits" is not there. Therefore, when assessing whether these restrictions are being violated, the question is not "Are the edits related to the conflict?" but "Is the page reasonably construed as being related to the conflict?"

I have always seen a difference between "broadly construed" and "reasonably construed" and my understanding is that the "reasonably construed" language was deliberately chosen to be narrower than "broadly construed." My understanding of this language is that "broadly construed" includes any page that has some connection to the conflict, while "reasonably construed" includes only pages on subjects that are mainly about the conflict (or subjects that are mainly notable because of a connection to the conflict). Ilhan Omar is notable as a member of the United States Congress and has made some controversial remarks about the Arab-Israeli conflict; she is related to the conflict, but her principle notability does not come from the conflict. Therefore, the page is not "reasonably construed to be related" and so is not subject to 1RR and the General Prohibition. However, the page is broadly construed to be related, and so is subject to discretionary sanctions.

Clear as mud? GoldenRing (talk) 12:47, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by ZScarpia

The way things have worked in the ARBPIA area is quite sensible, although that and the wording of the rulings are probably out of kilter, which, I think, is the reason for the current request. The rulings have been applied to ARBPIA-related content in any page, no matter whether the topic can be construed as being in the ARBPIA part of the project or not. In the former case, the rulings have been applied only to the ARBPIA-related content; editors could edit non-related content on those pages freely. As the usage notes that go along with the template for the ARBPIA notice indicate, the notice does not have to be placed on a page in order for the rulings to apply there. In the page which is the cause of the current request, the Ilhan Omar one, that means that under the practice followed in the past at least, ARBPIA rulings would be enforceable on any ARBPIA-related material there without the notice having been placed. The problem that placing the notice has caused is that editors are questioning whether any of the majority, non-related material there is under editing restrictions or not. We possibly have two problems with the current rulings: one that the wording of the rulings may indicate that those rulings apply only on pages where the subject matter falls wholely within the ARBPIA area when in fact the practice has been to apply them to content anywhere; a second whereby we either don't have a second notice which indicates that only ARBPIA-related content on the relevant page or the notice that we do have does that. The practice that has been followed is sensible and I don't think that it should be altered to conform with what the wording of the rulings actually say. Altering the wording of the rulings and the notice would involve a lot of pain which would still not necessarily end up with a sensible form of wording. Given the wording of the notice which we do have, it would be better if it was only placed on pages whose subject matter, broadly constued, fell wholly within the ARBPIA area, those being ones where it would be sensible to apply the ARBPIA restrictions to most of the material. Following current practice, the absence of the notice would not prevent the restrictions being applied to relevant content in other pages.     ←   ZScarpia   13:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller:: "I hadn't thought that this was even a grey area but to my disappointment I can't find anything to back my assumption." From following AE requests for years, I'm sure that the ARBPIA restrictions were applied to isolated sections of ARBPIA-related material in articles which weren't otherwise wholly within the subject area.     ←   ZScarpia   12:51, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller:: "The problem (and the reason I've been wrong) is that 1RR and the general 500/30 rule are not actually discretionary sanctions. I think they should be part of DS as I see a lot of drive-by editors and IP addresses (and the cynical side of me says some of these are editors logged out) changing content that's only a minor part of an article." I'm having a little bit of difficulty construing the meaning and significance of the rules being part of discretionary sanctions, which makes me wonder whether I've mistaken what the case is about and whether I've been writing at cross purposes with others here.
My view is that 1RR, which was imposed to slow down edit warring, and 500/30, which was imposed to help combat the use of sockpuppetry to evade sanctions, are restrictions applied to to the editing of all ARBPIA-related material. Discretionary sanctions[3] in the form of, for example, topic bans may be applied by administrators in order to ensure, inter alia, that restrictions such as those are adhered to ("Discretionary sanctions – administrators may impose sanctions on disruptive editors and apply general restrictions on specific pages in the conflict area in accordance with the discretionary sanctions procedure."[4]). Viewed that way, the rules are restrictions that automatically apply to ARBPIA-related material which discretionary sanctions enforce, not restrictions which can be applied as sanctions at the discretion of administrators.
It looks to me as though, at route, the problem here is the ambiguity in the phrase "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict". How may a page be "related" to the conflict? One interpretation is that the a page's subject matter as expressed in the page title itself should have an obvious connection to the IP conflict. Another interpretation is that the whole of the subject matter should have an obvious connection to the IP conflict. Yet another interpretation is that a relationship may be established if just part of the content is connect. The latter is the one which I'm maintaining is the one which is sensible in terms of reducing strife in Wikipedia and also the one which was traditionally followed on the AE and AI noticeboards. Other editors here such as Icewhiz and AGK seem to be supporting that interpretaion.
Taking the third interpretation, there then follows the problem of determining, in the case of pages where only part of the content is related to the conflict, whether the restrictions such as 1RR and 500/30 apply to the whole content or only the conflict-related parts. Unfortunately, WP:ARBPIA can be interpreted as requiring the restrictions to apply to the whole content, though that is neither necessary or sensible as far as the editing of the non-conflict-related material is concerned. A reason that it is not sensible is on display here: in articles such as the one on Ilhan Omar, editors with no interest in the IP conflict will resist the imposition of the ARBPIA restrictions being imposed if those restrictions are applied to the whole page; yet if they're not applied to the parts of those pages whose content is related to the IP conflict, the end result will be the appearance on those pages of the editing problems which the restrictions were designed to cure. Roger Waters is most significant for his music career in Pink Floyd. Because he is outspoken on Palestinian rights, though, on Wikipedia there is a struggle to insert conflict-related material condemning or defending him which threatens to swamp the whole article. Ernest Bevin was British Foreign Secretary at the time when the Cold War was developing and also when the various parts of British India gained independence, yet because he was Foreign Secretary in the couple of years surrounding the creation of Israel, there are similar problems on the article devoted to him. Jeremy Corbyn has had a long political career and is currently the Leader of the Opposition in the UK parliament, het because he is a strong supporter of Palestinian rights, issues surrounding that again affect that article. The United States is vital to Israeli interests: as a member of the UN Security Council it uses its veto frequently to protect Israel; Israel is the main beneficiary of US overseas aid; US military muscle is used to the benefit of Israel against opponents which Israel itself does not have the resource to fight; US financial muscle can be used to fend of the threat posed by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement; US courts can be used to wage lawfare on Israeli opponents. Therefore there exists in the US a very strong lobby which protects those interests. The knock-on effect for Wikipedia is that a lot of pages have a partial connection to the IP conflict.
Perhaps a way of resolving the current interpretation problem would be to refer to administrators who were involved in the wording of the ARBPIA rulings and asking what their intentions were and also to administrators who have been involved long-term in enforcing them and asking what their interpretation was.
    ←   ZScarpia   16:58, 1 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Doug Weller:: Doug, looking at the Ilhan Omar talkpage, if I've read your comments correctly, you're stating that, in ARBPIA, 1RR and 500/30 are remedies, not discretionary sanctions, which sounds equivalent to what I was trying to say above. The article is interesting in that it contains material falling under two Arbitration Requests, i.e. American Politics and ARBPIA. I think the talkpage demonstrates why the ARBPIA remedies need to be applied to the IP-conflict-related material contained in the article.     ←   ZScarpia   01:29, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Volunteer Marek

The idea that a a notice and template should be a requirement for the 1RR restriction to apply to an article is a no brainer. I mean, the very fact that lots of people have no idea - including apparently some of the Arbs judging by User:Doug Weller's opening statement (not criticizing him, I had no idea either) - that it doesn't work that way, evidences that the way we have it now is just goofy. And sort of... mean. On all other areas under ACDS no notice means no restrictions. Editors who make edits go by the instructions that are visible to them. Yes, yes, I know that you get informed about the 1RR applying to anything "broadly construed" ... once a year. But seriously, unless you're very active in a particular topic area, who the hell can remember some notice they got EIGHT+ months ago on their talk page??? *Especially* since the rules are so different from how it works everywhere else.

The problem of course is that this whole "we'll make up a rule but keep it secret" approach was done by admins who didn't bother to even think of how it works from a regular editors' perspective. The flawed design is a result of "what will make it easier for me to block people" thinking by cowboy admins, rather than "what will make for a more collaborative editing environment". Come to think of it, most of the whole discretionary sanctions apparatus is set up on the basis of that (witness the lack of success that DS has had in most controversial areas) thinking, this is just the most egregious example of that dysfunctional approach.Volunteer Marek (talk) 10:36, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • First: for rules this complex, we shall need to ensure the guidance (like editnotices) is unambiguous. ARBPIA stacks general remedies on top of one another, necessitating requests for clarification like this one. Let's also make sure we try hard to simplify 'spaghetti junction' templates like {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}}, which needs to use about three times fewer words.
    The PIA General 1RR restriction applies to all content related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This includes parts of an otherwise-unrelated page. The page need not have the standard 1RR template before the restriction applies, though clearly administrators should not mindlessly sanction for reverts by unaware users even if a strict reading of the procedures would permit enforcement. Whether another remedy shares jurisdiction on a particular page does not change this position. AGK ■ 20:18, 16 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The 1RR restriction applies to "any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict". It does not apply to "any edit", just "any page". As such, a page that couldn't be "reasonably construed" to be within the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area is not subject to 1RR, even if a small amount of content related to that topic area would place it within the topic area if "broadly construed". The use of "reasonably construed" instead of "broadly construed" was quite intentionally done. I would say a page like this is "broadly construed" to be in the topic area, but not "reasonably construed" to be there. Discretionary sanctions are active, but 1RR is not (by default). ~ Rob13Talk 03:00, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • As a side note, enforcing administrators could choose to apply 1RR to any page "broadly construed" to be within the topic area as a discretionary sanction, if desirable. It's just not automatic. I see this as optimal, since it allows administrators to tailor the sanctions on pages at the fringe of this topic area to the level of disruption they're experiencing. Does this change your opinion on whether we should be expanding the general 1RR sanction, Shrike? ~ Rob13Talk 03:03, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • To correct a point of confusion: {{ArbCom Arab-Israeli enforcement}} has no effect other than to notify editors of the sanctions in place on the topic area. It does not need to be on the talk page to "activate" discretionary sanctions on the article, though its presence is desirable to increase awareness of the sanctions. I find that template somewhat problematic, even, because it seems to imply that the set of articles with 1RR and the set of articles with discretionary sanctions are identical. This is false, since 1RR is "reasonably construed" and discretionary sanctions are "broadly construed". All articles with 1RR have discretionary sanctions active, but not all articles with discretionary sanctions active fall under the general 1RR. ~ Rob13Talk 03:07, 17 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @KrakatoaKatie: Including the ECP, actually. ECP can be applied as a discretionary sanction if needed to control actual disruption. ~ Rob13Talk 05:02, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Doug Weller: All of that awareness/notices stuff is related to discretionary sanctions. The 1RR in this topic area is not a discretionary sanction, and therefore there are no such requirements. Personally, I see that as the one thing we might want to address in this request. Requiring page notices before first-offense, no-warning sanctions for the violation of 1RR in a broad topic area seems the minimum we can do to promote awareness of the remedy. ~ Rob13Talk 02:02, 23 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • i have a problem saying that the ARBPIA 1RR restriction applies to all content when the page AGK linked to himself clearly says otherwise. There will be a couple thousand more pages covered under that restriction if we move from 'pages' to 'content'. As for this particular page, I think it's a real stretch to include it under ARBPIA, but it's obviously covered under AP2, which can do what Doug wants except for the ECP. Katietalk 01:59, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think linking this to ARBPIA is really a stretch, and would set a precedent that other pages would be added to ARBPIA that necessarily wouldn't need to be. As Katie stated above AP2 would cover this. RickinBaltimore (talk) 18:16, 19 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • As a practical matter, it seems obvious that both BLP and AP2 apply, so what's the advantage of using ARBPIA in this context? Opabinia regalis (talk) 07:23, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's the way I see it as well, since BLP and AP2 apply, the Congressperson making comments about Israel/Palestine doesn't make the page itself about Israel/Palestine. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:54, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am inactive on this discussion, including any motion that may result. SilkTork (talk) 11:14, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Motion: Palestine-Israel articles

The General 1RR prohibition of the Palestine-Israel articles arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t) is amended to read:

Each editor is limited to one revert per page per 24 hours on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Reverts made to enforce the General Prohibition are exempt from the provisions of this motion. Also, the normal exemptions apply. Editors who violate this restriction may be blocked by any uninvolved administrator, even on a first offense. This remedy may only be enforced on pages with the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} edit notice.

The community is encouraged to place the {{ARBPIA 1RR editnotice}} on any page that could be reasonably construed as being related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Enacted - Bradv🍁 02:20, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For this motion there are 9 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 5 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Support
  1. Last year, we altered our discretionary sanctions awareness requirements to reflect the fact that we really shouldn't sanction editors who are unaware of active page restrictions. To do this, we required the use of edit notices before sanctioning. The change did not affect this remedy, as the general 1RR prohibition is unrelated to discretionary sanctions. The same rationale for requiring edit notices applies here, though, so let's ensure we aren't sanctioning editors who either don't know that 1RR is in effect in this topic area at all or don't know that a specific page could be "reasonably construed" to be within the topic area. If this is passed, ideally, a bot would add the edit notice to all pages that currently transclude {{ARBPIA}} on their talk page as a starting point. Edit notices could then be added/removed as needed. ~ Rob13Talk 16:53, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Katietalk 15:11, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  3. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:44, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  4. – Joe (talk) 19:16, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  5. OK, let's try this. This set of sanctions has required "clarification and amendment" so many times it has to have set some kind of Wikipedia record by now, and it gives me a headache every time, but I sure haven't had any better ideas. Opabinia regalis (talk) 08:04, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  6. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:03, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Sure. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:27, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Abstain
Comments by arbitrators
@Icewhiz: Nothing in the motion restricts who may place an edit notice, and we explicitly encourage the community to place them wherever applicable. Technically-speaking, though, only admins or template editors have the rights to place an edit notice. Presumably, requests by editors to place them could be made to any admin. As a starting point, as I noted above, a bot could easily place them on every page that's tagged with the 1RR talk page notice. ~ Rob13Talk 18:16, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Icewhiz: There may be temporary growing pains as the edit notices are rolled out, which was the same case when we required them for enforcing page restrictions active under discretionary sanctions. As a practical matter, whenever ECP is requested at RfPP, you can simply ask for the edit notice to be placed as well. The coverage is the same for the general prohibition and the general 1RR restriction. ~ Rob13Talk 19:12, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Icewhiz: If such a request is declined and removed despite an IP/new editor having recently edited the page, feel free to bring it to my user talk. I'm happy to both protect the page and have a word with any administrator who is not only declining to enforce an arbitration remedy personally (completely fine) but actually removing a request to have it enforced such that no other admin will see it either (not fine). Obstructing an arbitration remedy is not a good look. ~ Rob13Talk 02:39, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification request: Gun control

Initiated by GoldenRing at 15:38, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Gun control arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)

List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Statement by GoldenRing

In the course of a request at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard, I deleted User:Dlthewave/Whitewashing of firearms articles as an arbitration enforcement action. My reason for doing so is that WP:UP states that "Users should generally not maintain in public view negative information related to others without very good reason. Negative evidence, laundry lists of wrongs, perceived flaws, collations of diffs and criticisms related to problems, etc., should be removed, blanked, or kept privately (i.e., not on the wiki) if they will not be imminently used, and the same once no longer needed. The compilation of factual evidence (diffs) in user subpages, for purposes such as preparing for a dispute resolution process, is permitted provided it will be used in a timely manner. In my view, this page is obviously the sort of "collation of diffs and criticisms related to problems" that the policy forbids. Dlthewave has repeatedly stated (eg diff) that the purpose of the page is as background to an opinion piece in The Signpost; since I have repeatedly asked and they have given no other explanation, I have taken this as an admission that the material is not intended for dispute resolution. My justification for doing the deletion as an arbitration enforcement action is the "other reasonable measures that the enforcing administrator believes are necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project" provision of WP:AC/DS#sanctions.user. I'm aware that deletion is unusual as an enforcement action, but didn't expect it to be as controversial as it has proved.

Dlthewave appealed this at AE and in the course of the appeal, Bishonen advised them to start a request at WP:DRV, which they did. Bishonen undeleted the page so that those participating in the DRV request could see the content. I have objected to the undeletion as a unilateral overturning of an enforcement action but Bishonen has declined to self-revert this. I have no interest in wheel-warring over it.

A number of editors at DRV have objected to the deletion, for two main reasons: Firstly, that the content doesn't violate policy, and secondly that deletion is not a valid enforcement action (ie is not authorised under discretionary sanctions). Additionally, I and a couple of other editors have pointed out that DRV can't review enforcement actions, but a number of editors have objected this, too. These objections include some very experienced editors who I respect and I'm not so sure of myself as I was 24 hours ago. So I would like the committee please to answer these questions:

  1. Is deletion of a page an enforcement action that is authorised under discretionary sanctions?
  2. If the answer to 1 is "yes", was Bishonen's undeletion a violation of WP:AC/DS#sanctions.modify?
  3. If the answer to 1 is "yes", is DRV a valid venue to review deletions carried out under discretionary sanctions?
  4. If the answer to 1 is "yes", while we're here, we may as well consider the substance as well: Was deleting this page in line with policy and a reasonable exercise of administrator discretion in an area subject to DS?

I would like to be very clear that I am asking these questions for clarification and am not looking for action against anyone; in particular, I am not requesting any action against Dlthewave for starting the DRV (they were, after all, advised to do so) nor against Bishoen for giving that advice or for undeleting the page (Bishonen is an admin I hold in high regard and while we disagree on this point of DS procedures, any action against her would be a great loss to the project; I would much rather concede the point and let the undeletion stand than see action here).

  • @SilkTork: I don't know how much clearer I can make my rationale, but I will try: The policy says, "Negative evidence, laundry lists of wrongs, perceived flaws, collations of diffs and criticisms related to problems, etc., should be removed." The deleted page is a long list of quotes of edits made by other editors which Dlthewave himself thinks is "important to highlight the long-term pattern" of which their AE complaint is "a continuation" (diff). This is plainly a collection of negative evidence, and the attempt to lawyer around the language by not giving diffs by quoting the content of the diff and giving a link to where it can be found is, in my view, entirely specious. Dlthewave themselves said in the diff I have just quoted, "It is understandable that this may be viewed as polemical, howeveri feel that it is important to highlight the long-term pattern" - or, in about as many words, they know it violates policy but think their cause is more important. GoldenRing (talk) 22:59, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SilkTork: I see what you're getting at. As far as I know, this page was not the subject of any substantive discussion prior to the deletion. Dlthewave brought an action at AE and another editor pointed out this page; I asked Dlthewave to explain how it was not a violation of POLEMIC (diff). Two and a half days later I had received no response (diff), despite Dlthewave having edited the AE complaint in that time (diff), so I went ahead and deleted it. I do not claim any of the speedy deletion criteria as justification for the deletion, but rather the authorisation of discretionary sanctions.
  • Regarding your question about blanking v deletion, I took the word "remove" in WP:UP to include deletion and it is routinely interpreted this way at MfD, where POLEMIC is generally accepted as grounds for deletion, not blanking. Although there is some controversy about where the line between keep and delete outcomes is, no-one argues that POLEMIC is not grounds for deletion. Pages with similar content are deleted at MfD, see eg 1 2 3, especially the last one which likewise claims to document whitewashing of an article; there are many others in the archives of MfD.
  • My reasoning for doing this as an arbitration enforcement action rather than through community processes was (and is) that maintaining such a page is not conducive to collaborative editing in the topic of gun control; that gun control is an area where discretionary sanctions have been authorised; and that administrators are expected to use DS "to create an acceptable collaborative editing environment for even our most contentious articles" (WP:AC/DS#admin.expect). If administrators working AE are suddenly expected to use community processes to resolve disputes, then what was the point of authorising DS?
  • To answer a couple of procedural queries I missed in my last reply, Dlthewave met the awareness requirements at the time of the enforcement action because they had started a request at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard (the deletion happened in the context of this request) and I don't see how an editnotice is relevant to this particular action as it doesn't involve a page-level editing restriction. GoldenRing (talk) 10:18, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SilkTork: I am seriously considering other ways out of this and have been for some time. Nonetheless, I think the committee needs to clarify whether deletion is a valid enforcement action; it is clear (most particularly from the comments at DRV and also those here) that a significant portion of the community think it is not, while I can't see how deletion is different to any other administrative action done under DS and authorised by the "other reasonable measures" provision of DS. In the meantime, I am a little unsure what you mean when you say, "such a deletion should meet with policy." There are a great many administrative actions taken routinely that are not authorised by policy but are authorised by discretionary sanctions: administrators cannot normally place topic bans, interaction bans, 1RR restrictions on users or pages, consensus-required restrictions, civility restrictions or BRD restrictions and yet these have all been applied unilaterally by administrators since the beginning of this year. Ordinarily, any of these would require a community consensus process (eg a discussion at AN for a topic ban) but are valid as unilateral actions because they are authorised by discretionary sanctions. How is deletion any different? Ordinarily it requires a community consensus process at XfD (ignoring for the moment speedy deletion criteria) but here it is a valid unilateral action because discretionary sanctions are authorised. And, in the end, what is more serious? Deleting a user page? Or banning a user? If you trust admins with the latter, you should trust them with the former. GoldenRing (talk) 16:22, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SilkTork: I appreciate your point about arbcom needing the consent of the community to function and to be a positive force in the community. At the same time (and I know this is itself somewhat controversial in the community) my understanding is that all of the powers granted to administrators in discretionary sanctions are available because the community has ratified the arbitration policy which makes arbcom the final, binding decision-maker in disputes, not because of explicit policy changes. As GMG points out, the usual forms of DS are subject to a "boiling frog" effect; and this action is likely to be controversial not because it is invalid but because it is unusual. Posting it at DRV has involved a lot of users who are not accustomed to dealing with DS.
    If I had deleted a featured article on the main page without a very good reason, I would expect the action to be overturned at AN sharpish. That is the outlet the community has for controlling unilateral enforcement action with consensus.
    The committee still need to decide whether "other reasonable measures" means what it plainly says or rather "other reasonable measures except deletion," which some here are advocating. The committee still need to decide whether "All enforcement actions are presumed valid and proper, so the provisions relating to modifying or overturning sanctions apply, until an appeal is successful" means what it plainly says or rather "All enforcement actions are presumed valid and proper unless another admin unilaterally decides the action was obviously outside the scope of DS," which some here are advocating. GoldenRing (talk) 11:45, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BU Rob13: That is a good point and I will strike my fourth question. GoldenRing (talk) 17:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @RexxS: I would like to correct a few things you have said:
  • It is absolutely prohibited to unilaterally modify arbitration enforcement actions; seee WP:AC/DS#sanctions.modify. BLP and COPYVIO are not the only absolute prohibitions.
  • All enforcement actions have what you describe as "the usual immunity to reversion", whether they are valid or not because all enforcement actions are presumed valid and proper until an appeal in one of AE, AN or ARCA succeeds; see point 4 of WP:AC/DS#appeals.notes.
  • We do not prohibit collections of negative information about other editors "for reasons of BLP" (if that were so, they would never be allowed) but because it's not a civil, collegial thing to do, though sometimes necessary for use in legitimate dispute resolution processes.
  • And lastly, the elephant in the room: no careful reading is necessary, the whole page consists almost entirely of quotes of other editors statements at talk page. By what sophistry is this material not related to the editors who made those statements??? GoldenRing (talk) 23:24, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @RexxS: I hope no admins follow your interpretation of policy; it is a recipe for desysopping. The simple reality is that the community has accepted the arbitration committee as the final, binding decision-maker in conduct disputes and, short of changing the arbitration policy, the community cannot override its decisions. Some of its decisions are to authorise discretionary sanctions; to make administrator actions under DS appealable only to AE, AN and ARCA; and to give such actions a presumption of validity until they are overturned in a proper appeal. If you doubt this, you might find the level 2 desysop of Yngvadottir for a single instance of overturning a controversial AE action instructive (in fact an AE action which was only confirmed by the committee in a 6-5 vote). GoldenRing (talk) 11:36, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @BU Rob13: I struggle to articulate what such a motion would even mean in practice. Essentially, I guess it means admins can delete pages as an enforcement measure so long as the page meets one of the criteria for speedy deletion or a consensus to delete exists at the relevant XfD venue. The only difference making deletion available under DS would make is that review would be reserved to AE, AN and ARCA rather than the usual deletion review process - yet PMC has argued for option B with review carried out at DRV! If "deletion done under DS" is going to be "deletion in line with deletion policy and reviewed at DRV" then it's indistinguishable from ordinary deletion and there's no point including it in DS - just propose a motion to exclude it.
    I do still feel strongly is that the existing DS wording allows deletion as it allows any other measure, and reserves review of such deletions to the arbitration appeal venues. The only argument I can see being made to the contrary is AGK's, which essentially says that a sanction placed on a page reading "This page is subject to 1RR" is not a sanction placed on a page. I don't understand it. Unless someone can propose another construction of the DS wording that excludes deletion, the now-closed DRV was out of process.
    Whether deletion should be allowed under DS is another question and not one I feel strongly about either way. As an enforcing administrator, I would probably prefer that the committee exclude deletion altogether from DS than to add further complexity to the scope and review processes for DS. GoldenRing (talk) 11:54, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Dlthewave

Statement by Bishonen

@SilkTork: You have perhaps forgotten part of the process, then. Unless pages at DRV are temporarily undeleted, only admins will be able to read them, i. e. only admins will be able to discuss them in a meaningful way. It's not supposed to work like that. I followed these instructions for how to do it. Bishonen | talk 18:27, 25 February 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Statement by Simonm223

Is deletion of a page an enforcement action that is authorised under discretionary sanctions? Based on the argument by Ivanvector at DRV I would say no. It is not. Furthermore I think the argument that it constituted WP:POLEMIC in the first place is flawed. Simonm223 (talk) 16:21, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ivanvector

This response is directed to GoldenRing's bullet point #1 only, as the subsequent bullets assume a view with which I disagree.

As I stated at DRV, my view is that page deletion is not authorized by discretionary sanctions, certainly not explicitly, and neither in spirit. While the standard provisions authorize administrators to act in arbitration enforcement through the use of editing sanctions and page restrictions, and we grant significant latitude to administrators to create restrictions within the bounds of these categories and to block users who violate those restrictions in the name of arbitration enforcement, these powers do not extend to editorial and/or political control, nor wholesale removal of content. Furthermore, nothing in the gun control case appears to specifically enact these powers. And generally, it is common practice that the Arbitration Committee does not weigh in on matters of encyclopedia or userspace content, and as such it is an improper assumption that the Committee would wish to empower admins with unilateral deletion powers. But noting the disagreement at DRV, I would also like this to be explicitly clarified.

As for Bishonen's action and DRV itself in this incident: if Arbcom has explicitly declared that deleting a page is a sanction available for arbitration enforcement, then I would agree that AE would be the correct venue to review an Arbitration-enforcement deletion. However, the community's venue for deletions out-of-process is DRV, thus DRV is a logical venue for this incident. It is standard and widely-accepted practice to undelete content while its deletion is under review, and Bishonen's restoration ought to be viewed in that light unless and until someone can point to already-established Arbitration procedure in which the Committee has explicitly authorized userpage deletion as a discretionary sanction, and if and only if that process is already established, then owing to the present disagreement Bishonen should be given an acting in good faith pass on this one, or a "to satisfy the pedants" admonishment at the most severe.

Stating for the record that I believe that everyone carrying a mop has acted in good faith with respect to this incident. I also hold both GoldenRing and Bishonen in very high regard, and I appreciate GoldenRing seeking clarification on this point. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:35, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I would think that the situation described by Black Kite, in which an editor subject to an AE restriction creates a page in violation of that restriction, would be dealt with under WP:G5, and as a result the deletion itself would not be AE enforcement and the venue to review deletion would remain DRV. But maybe we are over-generalizing. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:35, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Again, as others have tried to point out but are apparently falling on deaf Committee members' ears, the policy which directs the deletion of English Wikipedia content is the deletion policy; to the best of my knowledge it is the only policy which does now or has ever had community consensus for deletion of an entire page (as opposed to revision deletion, suppression/oversight, or other actions which maintain a visible history). Observant editors will note that deletions directed by the Arbitration Committee are not mentioned in that document.
Quoting from the deletion policy's companion guideline, Wikipedia:Deletion process: "The speedy deletion process applies to pages which meet at least one of the criteria for speedy deletion, which specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus support to, at their discretion, bypass deletion discussion and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media." (bold in original, underline added) It's been said by several others here and elsewhere already: arbitration enforcement is not one of the criteria for speedy deletion. The deletion process document also specifies in no uncertain terms that deletions may only be performed outside the scope of the policy when ordered by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Now quoting from the arbitration policy, which under the heading "policy and precedent", reads: "The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated." (emphasis added)
The Committee members now arguing that content deletion is in fact within the scope of arbitration enforcement are engaging in modifying the deletion policy by fiat. While GoldenRing and the members of the Committee may have very good reasons for wanting to allow content deletion as an arbitration power, the deletion policy does not currently permit this and the arbitration policy explicitly forbids it. If the Committee wishes to reserve these powers for itself, a community discussion is required to modify both policies. Unless and until those discussions happen, the Arbitration Committee is not authorized to delete pages, and likewise has no power to authorize administrators to unilaterally delete pages in the name of Arbitration enforcement.
Following on that argument, GoldenRing's deletion must be considered to have been performed under the auspices of speedy deletion, since arbitration enforcement cannot authorize that action, and there was no discussion. It is very clearly stated in the community's policies that the venue to dispute a deletion, speedy or otherwise, is WP:DRV. The Committee insisting that this deletion can only be appealed to the Committee is, again, modifying policy by fiat. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 18:16, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Premeditated Chaos: you're inventing policy again with your latest comment. As it stands, deletion under discretionary sanctions is forbidden because it is not expressly permitted, not the other way around, because the deletion policy (the only policy directing deletions) sets out when deletion is allowed, and expressly forbids all other deletions.
@All the arbitrators: your straw poll is invalid. If you want to modify the community's deletion policy to permit deletions as arbitration enforcement, then do the work to modify that policy. That means putting it to the community in an RfC, not pretending that you can decide that that's how things are without any community input. The way this discussion is going is an alarming endorsement of admins doing any damn thing they please under a veil of arbitration enforcement, and of the Committee retroactively altering its own procedures to suit any such action. In this case, the Committee retroactively endorsed an out-of-process deletion, retroactively forbade discussion of the out-of-process deletion in the usual community forum for discussing improper deletions, retroactively endorsed (by omission) threatening with desysopping the administrator who restored the deleted page per the normal community expectation for discussing deletion challenges, and is attempting to retroactively modify the scope of standard discretionary sanctions to justify the entire affair. This entire discussion is an embarassment. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 21:57, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Doug Weller

I agree with Ivanvector. Such a deletion is not within the scope of discretionary sanctions. Perhaps an Arbitrator with a longer memory than I have may find such a procedure but I'd be surprised. Certainly it was not authorised by us during the four years I was on the committee. I think everyone has acted in good faith with this but I believe that GoldenRing was wrong and that the page should not have been deleted. I've looked at the page and agree with those who say that the content does not violate policy. I'll also note that no editors have been named although obviously they can be identified via the links. I'll add that even if it hasn't been used it is information that has the potential to be useful. Doug Weller talk 17:10, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Black Kite

I can think of situations whereby deletion would be in the purview of an AE action (for example, if a topic-banned editor was violating their TBan on a userspace page) but I agree with the two editors above that I can't see that this falls into this category. It is probably something that ArbCom could do with clarifying for future reference. Black Kite (talk) 17:28, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • @SilkTork: It is SOP to undelete pages whilst they are at DRV so that non-admins can assess whether the close was correct - for example, whether a CSD deletion actually met the CSD criteria, or in the case of AfD whether the discussion comments were actually valid. In this case, with no AFD or standard CSD, then assuming the DRV is valid the page would have to be visible as otherwise no non-admins could make any judgement about the deletion. Black Kite (talk) 18:24, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Levivich

If no harm would arise from having this page discussed at MfD, then it should be discussed at MfD, rather than deleted by any one person's unilateral action. Obviously both admin acted in good faith in a situation that is unclear and possibly unprecedented; any suggestion of sanctions would be over the top. Leviv ich 18:01, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RexxS

If an administrator erroneously deletes a page as an Arbitration Enforcement, when the page is not eligible for deletion under that criterion, they cannot claim the usual immunity to reversion of the action that we reserve for justified AE actions. From GoldenRing's own statement, the relevant criterion upon which they are relying is:

Users should generally not maintain in public view negative information related to others without very good reason. Negative evidence, laundry lists of wrongs, perceived flaws, collations of diffs and criticisms related to problems, etc., should be removed, blanked, or kept privately ... (my emphasis)

But nobody reading Special:Permalink/881981663 carefully would conclude that information on that page is "related to others". All of the information therein is related to articles, and there is no Arbitration Enforcement available to prevent editors from gathering quotes or diffs from articles or from article talk. We prevent users from gathering negative information about others, for reasons of BLP, but that is not licence to extend the prevention to collating article text. 'Shonen's restoration of the deleted page to allow scrutiny does not breach WP:BLP or WP:COPYVIO (the only absolute prohibitions on restoration), and meets the test of COMMONSENSE.--RexxS (talk) 19:28, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Response to GoldenRing. Contrary to what you think, BLP and COPVIO are the only absolute prohibitions to undeletion of content for obvious reason, see Wikipedia:Deletion review #Temporary undeletion where this is documented. Any other prohibition is subject to IAR and 'sanctions.modify' is no exception. It is merely a procedure of the Arbitration Committee and has no status greater than WP:policies and guidelines (which actually don't even recognise 'procedure of the Arbitration Committee' as policy or guideline). ArbCom must not confer on itself greater powers than the community is pleased to grant. It is free to create its own procedures, but does not have authority to create policy: that is the prerogative of the community. In the case of a conflict between a guideline like Wikipedia:Deletion process and an ArbCom procedure, then I suggest common sense needs to be the tie-breaker. The damage done to the encyclopedia by denying undeletion of a page when requested at DRV need to be balanced against the damage done to the encyclopedia by a temporary undeletion. In this case, the balance is obviously in favour of allowing undeletion.
"All enforcement actions have what you describe as "the usual immunity to reversion", whether they are valid or not." I refute that. To misquote Jimbo, the presumption of validity is not a suicide pact. If a claimed AE action is obviously invalid , as yours was, then a reversion of that action in order to comply with a conflicting policy or guideline is perfectly reasonable. Even you recognise that 'Shonen's actions were reasonable.
I concede your point that BLP concerns are not the only reasons to disallow collections of negative information about other users; although that would be the rationale behind collections of negative information about living persons who were not editors.
I completely deny your last point. All content in the encyclopedia is provided by editors: that is undeniably not what was intended by Users should generally not maintain in public view negative information related to others, otherwise no quotes would ever be allowed. The sophistry is in trying to stretch those words to justify deleting a page that quotes hundreds of different editors, and cannot sensibly be construed to contain negative information about those editors. Any such connotation is purely in the mind of the observer, and you've made the mistake of construing talk page comments critical of an article or of statements in that article as "negative information" about the editors who made the comments.
The elephant in the room is actually your error in attempting to convert a possibly justifiable deletion of a page (by normal process) into an AE action. AE actions were granted the privilege of immunity from reversion for a particular reason (the problems of second-mover advantage), in order to solve intractable problems of civility enforcement. Admins must be careful not to abuse that privilege by claiming AE action in borderline or invalid cases, otherwise the community may lose faith in the necessity for having such an exemption to normal admin procedures (WP:WHEEL). --RexxS (talk) 00:18, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by S Marshall

  • I think this matter raises novel issues about procedure. Wikipedian culture takes deleting pages very seriously, and deleting a page out of someone's userspace feels quite violative to me. I was appalled to learn that a page that purports to describe the rules says that AE deletions can be reviewed at the AN but not at DRV. I feel that in the (probably relatively rare) situation where it's appropriate to review an AE deletion without direct scrutiny from Arbcom, then the most correct venue would be DRV. But I also feel that deleting a page as an AE action is the kind of thing that Arbcom should normally supervise directly, because an AE action should normally be about an editor's behaviour rather than a matter of content. Therefore the scrutiny should normally happen here.—S Marshall T/C 21:01, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SilkTork: --- The deleter's position is that this could not be justified as an in-process speedy deletion and was done purely as AE (diff). I also don't fully agree with my friends RoySmith, Hobit, SmokeyJoe et. al. when they say DRV is mainly about content. I feel that what DRV is mainly about is the analysis and critique of sysop judgement calls and use of discretion. Interestingly, in the decade or so since I became heavily involved in DRV, we've never reached a consensus to ask Arbcom to desysop anyone -- which is why there's never really been any overlap between the two venues. We've found wrong calls, because sysops are only human, but we've never found serious misuse of the mop.—S Marshall T/C 12:17, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:SmokeyJoe

This clarification is not about Gun control, but is about whether, in general, page deletion is a reasonable measure of arbitration enforcement
Page deletion is not a reasonable measure of arbitration enforcement. Certainly not if the page is not directly subject to an ArbCom ruling. Exceptions would be considered extraordinary.
If page deletions were subject to AE admin arbitrary unilateral deletion, this would amount to a secret punishment. The user involved can't read the page deleted. The wider community can't read what was deleted.
What is going on here is a turf war over the powers and scope of ArbCom. Not by ArbCom directly, but by their delegates, which is worse.
ArbCom is supposed to stay out of content decisions. Deleting a page containing content is most definitely a content action. This page in question, while not content per se, is a page directed at content decisions. That's pretty close to content.
This issue is the same as the deletion of Universa Blockchain Protocol, discussed at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2018 July 9. That one was overtly a content page issue. I think this is resolved with agreement that deletions like this should additionally cite WP:CSD#G11, which was agreed in hindsight to have applied.
WP:Deletion policy is written in clear cut language. WP:CSD is even clearer: "The criteria for speedy deletion (CSD) specify the only cases in which administrators have broad consensus to bypass deletion discussion, at their discretion, and immediately delete Wikipedia pages or media. They cover only the cases specified in the rules here." If ArbCom AE admins also have deletion discretion, add it to CSD, for the record, and to ensure that the community is on the page. ArbCom should not be responsible for undermining the validity or respect afforded to WP:Deletion policy.
WP:DRV is a long standing very successful forum and process. It is not an enforcement process, but a continuing education exercise. A measure of its success is that lack of repeat culprits being dragged through it. DRV is the highest court for content decisions. There is no cause for carving out deletions that are not reviewable by DRV. {{Temporarily undeleted}} is an essential part of DRV if you consider nonadmins to important in the management of the project. There is already a sufficiently conservative culture at DRV for being responsible with copyright, attacks, and BLP issues.
--SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:03, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
AE action to blank the page, protect the page, and block every user associated with the page, would not have been offensive to WP:Deletion policy. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:33, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
"Such deletions do not need to meet our deletion policy". AE deletions do not need to meet policy? Policy does not need to read at face value? What is the policy on AE deletions? ArbCom has broad monarchical reserve powers, but to use them to authorize delegated policy-exempt CSD? That's a characteristic of a police state. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:56, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Cryptic and RoySmith that policy clarity would be a good thing. Documentation at WP:CSD#G9 pointing to WP:AC/DS would be a good thing. It would mean that Twinkle could easily link to it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:00, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Hobit

The basis for deletion comes from WP:UP. That same page says "In general other users' user pages are managed by that user. Except for blatant or serious matters, it is preferable to try contacting the user before deletion (see above). However, unambiguous copyright violations, attack pages, promotional text, and privacy or BLP violations can be speedy deleted using a suitable template, such as {{db-attack}}, {{db-copyvio}} or {{db-spamuser}}; other pages likely to require deletion (or where remedial action is not taken) may be submitted to deletion discussion. Justifying a deletion by citing policy and then not following the policy for how to go about deletion seems problematic at best.

The reason for deletion is not a speedy criteria. And standard DS do not allow for deletion of a page as near as I can tell. I only see one other deletion in WP:AEL and that was justified on A7/BLP grounds. As S Marshall has indicated, AE enforcing admins very much deserve our support and I'm personally grateful to those that take on such a demanding and stressful job. But here there is overreach outside of the scope of either a single admin or AE. There was no rush and no reason WP:MfD couldn't have been used (where I suspect it would have been kept).

In any case, I agree with Roy (below)--this is about content not behavior. The discussion belongs at DRV. edited Hobit (talk) 04:45, 26 February 2019 (UTC) Hobit (talk) 01:55, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RoySmith

I don't often get involved in ArbCom business, so forgive me if I'm not up on the nuances of policy and procedure here. But, reading what User:SmokeyJoe said above: ArbCom is supposed to stay out of content decisions, I find myself very much in agreement. The converse is certainly true; DRV deals with content, and stays out of behavioral issues. It's common in DRV debates for somebody to write, We're only here to talk about the page deletion; if you want to pursue a user's conduct, there's other fora for that. This seems like a natural and useful division of responsibilities, and why it seems odd to be talking about ArbCom getting involved in reviewing a page deletion.

I don't think it was appropriate to delete the user page. I also think it was perfectly reasonable (and SOP at DRV) to temp-undelete the page for review. I also want to echo what others have said; while there's clearly a disagreement about what the proper course of action should have been, it's also clear that everybody has acted in good faith here. There should be no thought of sanctions for anybody. -- RoySmith (talk) 03:03, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a lot more reading of the full history of this. My earlier comments notwithstanding, I agree with User:SilkTork that having two parallel discussions in different forums is a bad idea. At this point, I suggest that DRV defer to ArbCom on this one. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:29, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
User:Cryptic is exactly right. If the end result of this is to confirm that AE can include speedy deletion, then WP:CSD needs to add a category for it. My big fear (as somebody who also does a lot of temp-undeleting at DRV) is that given the current discussion, I could very easily see myself having undeleted this and then finding that I'd accidentally run afoul of a policy I didn't really understand, and put my mop at risk. If this fell under WP:G9, or a new G-whatever specifically for AE, it would have been clear that this was out of bounds. Clarity is a good thing. -- RoySmith (talk) 02:48, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sandstein

While I disagree with GoldenRing on the merits of the deletion, I agree with their submission of 16:22, 26 February 2019 in that the Committee should clarify whether deletions (other than those already allowed by ordinary deletion policy) are in principle allowed as discretionary sanctions, and whether any review of deletions labeled as discretionary sanctions must take place by way of the procedures for the appeal of AE actions. In my reading of applicable policy, the answer to both questions is clearly yes, but the opinions to the contrary that have been voiced at DRV show that this question needs clarification. Sandstein 16:36, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Cryptic

I've performed I'd guess around a quarter of the temporary undeletions at DRV over the past few years. Contra what's been stated both above and below, it's neither an absolute right (even barring copyvio and blp - there's been a number of cases where no admin's been willing to tempundelete in the cases of egregious spam, for example; I can dig out some example DRVs if it'd be helpful) nor, in particular, automatic: in practice we almost always wait until an uninvolved user requests it. I don't recall ever seeing the author of a page requesting temp undeletion for the purposes of DRV before; even had this deletion not been labeled an AE action, I'd certainly have declined, though I might have offered to email it. —Cryptic 20:57, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Dialing my wonk-o-meter up to 11, I'm not seeing anywhere in WP:Protection policy that authorizes arbcom to authorize admins to protect pages, either. (It does mention arbcom with respect to unprotections, and very indirectly for extended-confirmed protections.) So the idea that arbcom can't authorize deletions just because it's not explicitly stated in WP:Deletion policy or WP:Criteria for speedy deletion doesn't get a whole lot of sympathy from me. That said, if the committee ends up deciding this deletion was correct, I'll go through the hassle at WT:CSD to try to get this properly documented, probably as a variant of WP:G9. —Cryptic 22:07, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GMG

If we're going to allow that ACDS is legitimate grounds for out-of-process deletion, then we're probably approaching the point where we've abandoned the pretense that ArbCom does not make policy. GMGtalk 01:18, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, I've been saying for a while now that ACDS is also wholesale rewriting of our blocking and banning policy, but I think most people have just gotten used to it. So I don't expect most people will take this comment seriously, and if they do, it's just because the water got a little hotter than they're accustomed to yet. But them's the breaks when you allow ArbCom to rewrite policy while claiming they don't write policy. GMGtalk 01:50, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DGG

  • I too frequently make undeletions for review at Del Rev. I approach it a little differently,so I would not suggest that either their approach or mine is authoritative, nor do I presume to say what other admins do. . I have never refused to undelete for DR, except for copyvio, or if the request is disruptive or unnecessary. I interpret the rule as not requiring it, as merely making the necessary provision to not do so as a special situation. (And if it would apparently help the discussion, I do not wait for a request-sometimes the person bringing it to DR does not know its possible--and the person bringing it often is the author of the content) Since Arb Com authority does not extend to content, neither does AE. Though community consensus cannot override AE, neither can AE override the basic principles of community editing. If I rewrote an article summary to conform to my idea of what the true meaning of an arb com decision required, I could not call it AE to prevent others from reverting my change. Just as I cannot rewrite under AE, I cannot remove it under AE. AE is dangerously inflexible even if used in the ordinary way--giving individual admins sticky discretion over content in such a direct way as to permit them to delete by AE, is not within a reasonable scope. AE is not a free pass to anarchy; because of the stickiness, it requires even more careful judgement than other admin actions. If anything, we need how to restrict the scope rather than add to it. If the scope of AE is to increase, it can only do so by a change in arbitration policy by the community. DGG ( talk ) 06:04, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Drmies

If the standard operating procedure of undeletion for DRV can be called a violation of an enforcement action authorised under discretionary sanctions, I think we've reached sort of an end point grammatically and in terms of Arb Power. Sorry, but I think this is silly and pushing the point of authoritay too far. Drmies (talk) 15:19, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Xymmax

I came upon this when I went to close the DRV. The committee's discussion thus far, in my opinion, has yet to fully grapple with the core concern that I see from those critical of permitting DS deletion, and one that I share: permitting out of process deletion under the authority of enforcement of DS is taking DS enforcement away from being a tool to enable administrators to deal with disruptive conduct, and instead making admins arbiters of disfavored content. The dichotomy is real, as several committee members appear to feel that under appropriate circumstances an administrator acting under DS enforcement authority could delete a page (or I suppose an article) and be subject to review only at ARCA. The tools ordinarily used - topic bans, blocks, and page protections - are designed to reduce disruption by modifying user conduct. Deletion, uniquely, hides the information from ordinary readers, and that is why the comprehensive deletion process governs when there is consensus that such removal is acceptable. The committee should recognize that just as the AN community has special expertise in dealing with user conduct issues, Afd/Mfd/DRV and their ilk are where editors have particular insight these content issues. It would be concerning if the community's expertise were to be deprecated in favor of an enforcement mechanism made for user conduct issues. My personal preference here would be to see the committee take deletion off the table of DS enforcement options. Functionally equivalent would be to say the deletion process must be followed - a speedy deletion criterion cited, with review at DRV. Less satisfactory would be to limit such reviews to ARCA. Xymmax So let it be written So let it be done 04:52, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Wnt

I happened to see mention of this discussion and am alarmed by the way it is going. Reading this user page, it is clearly a complaint about the bias of articles, which is to say, it is directly applicable to Wikipedia editing. It is not addressed at any editor (indeed, has timidly omitted usernames). It does, of course, favor a certain point of view, but editors should be allowed to favor a point of view they agree with when it is being excluded from articles. I say this even though I am pro-gun rights and suspect many of the individual edits were correct.

The consequence of (literally) arbitrarily excluding such content is to propagate the idea that Wikipedia is biased and to encourage editors to share information like this off-site. The consequence of that is that Wikipedia loses any ability to suppress deliberate cyberbullying, while the editors lured to partisan sanctuaries are more likely to fall under the influence of actual lobbyist money. In every way, the quality of discourse is degraded by deletions like this. And unless the arbitration decision specifically prohibited making any new pages about a topic, such deletions cannot possibly be valid arbitration enforcement. Wnt (talk) 20:47, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Spartaz

I just closed the DRV as overturn as the clear consensus of the discussion. Once you have completed your august deliberations could someone let me know if I can enact the clear consensus of the discussion or whether super Mario has won. Incidentally my autocorrect hates arbcom it keeps changing it to random or wrecked. Spartaz Humbug! 19:03, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Fish and karate

The arbitration process exists to impose binding solutions to Wikipedia conduct disputes (i.e., not content disputes requiring mediation) that neither community discussion nor administrators have successfully resolved. The arbitration process is not a vehicle for creating new policy by fiat. The Committee's decisions may interpret existing policy and guidelines, recognise and call attention to standards of user conduct, or create procedures through which policy and guidelines may be enforced. The Committee does not rule on content, but may propose means by which community resolution of a content dispute can be facilitated. (My bolding). Fish+Karate 11:16, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]


Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.

Gun control: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
  • Recuse obviously. GoldenRing (talk) 15:43, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @SportingFlyer: I've removed your comment in the survey section as that falls under the Gun control: Arbitrator views and discussion section. That section is reserved for members of the Arbitration Committee. --Cameron11598 (Talk) 21:29, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Gun control: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • I'm still looking into the aspects of this, but as a general principle AE does give admins the discretion to " impose on any page or set of pages relating to the area of conflict page protection, revert restrictions, prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists), or any other reasonable measure that the enforcing administrator believes is necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project", and if the admin considers that the "other reasonable measure" is deletion of a page, that would for me fall within the admin's discretion, so my response to point 1 is yes. That does not mean I think this current deletion is appropriate or reasonable, but that the principle of page deletion is within an AE admin's discretion. And it is important that the community adheres to ArbCom processes such that any ArbCom sanction can only be reversed by following appropriate procedures. So a) undoing an ArbCom enforcement without authority for doing so is a violation of the process, and b) appealing the enforcement in a venue other than the appropriate one is a violation of the process. As such for point 2 my response is yes in principle, and for point 3, it is no in principle. It is sometimes that an AE admin makes a mistake, and the process do allow for other users to question page restrictions, but they should follow process. As for this particular incident - were all the due processes followed? Was Dlthewave given an appropriate warning that DS applied to the page under question? And was the template Template:Ds/editnotice applied to the page in question? I am still looking at the page in question, and would like some more rationale behind why the page was considered to fall foul of "believes is necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project". What was the particular harm you saw in the page GoldenRing? My thinking at this stage, even with a convincing rationale for the page deletion, is that the unusual nature of the page restriction (deletion) and lack of clarity in this matter is such that I am not seeing any sanctionable behaviour for Bishonen's advice to take the matter to DRV. As regards undeleting the page. It's been a while since I got involved in DRV, but I don't recall it being a part of the process that pages were undeleted. And while we do give admins discretion to userfy pages on request, I don't think it should be considered that undoing an AE enforcement without first getting clear consensus at an appropriate venue is something ArbCom would be willing to overlook. That may have been a step too far, even with the confusions about the process. Bishonen, could you give us some of your thinking behind why you undeleted the page? SilkTork (talk) 18:16, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Black Kite:, thanks for that - it's been a while since I had anything to do with DRV. Are all articles automatically undeleted for DRV, or is it just a selected few? And if it is a selected few what is the criteria for undeleting, and on average what percentage of articles are undeleted? SilkTork (talk) 19:00, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Bishonen:, thanks for that - very useful. So articles on DRV which are requested to be undeleted are done so, and in this case you were requested. I strike my questions to Black Kite, as your response has given me the appropriate information. SilkTork (talk) 19:05, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because of the unique nature of this AE action I'm not seeing that Bishonen has done anything sanctionable, though for the avoidance of future doubt, if my colleagues agree with me, I think we need to make it clear that nobody should undo an AE action without first getting clear consensus to do so at an appropriate venue. SilkTork (talk) 19:08, 25 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks GoldenRing. I phrased my question awkwardly. I can see why you had concerns about the page, what I'm asking really is why you felt the need to delete the page rather than raise your concerns with Dlthewave, or blank it, or amend it in some other manner. Your deletion, albeit done under AE, was a speedy deletion. The closest justification under speedy is G10. Did you (do you still) feel that G10 was the rationale for deletion? Or was it purely based on the user page policy, which says that negative material should be removed or blanked, but doesn't say deleted. It is the decision to delete rather than use other options that I'd like to hear your thinking on. While I support in principle the notion that an AE admin have within their discretion the option to delete a page, my thinking is this should be done within policy, so I'm looking for the policy that allows deletion in this instance. At the moment I'm seeing a page that can be considered to be of concern, but it appears to me that the appropriate solution would be discussion about the page rather than deletion of the page. I've not looked closely - is there discussion about the page that you can direct us to? SilkTork (talk) 08:42, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks GoldenRing, that makes things a lot clearer. My thinking is that everyone here has acted in good faith and with a view that what they were doing was within policy and procedure. While I feel that in principle an AE admin can delete a page as part of DS, that such a deletion should meet with policy, and if the deletion is not to go through a community discussion process (ie, is a Speedy deletion), then such a deletion should meet Speedy criteria. So, as in this case the deletion was not done under Speedy, the page should instead have been blanked. As this deletion was done under AE, albeit - in my opinion - inappropriately, it should be discussed at WP:AE rather than DRV. At the moment we have discussion at both DRV and AE. Rather than create a constitutional crisis, one venue or other should give up the right to discuss it; or perhaps, GoldenRing, you could reflect on if an AE enforced blanking serves the purpose as well as a deletion, and agree on the DRV that it can be undeleted, so we can resolve that discussion there, and you can then blank the page under AE and Dlthewave can appeal the blanking at AE. SilkTork (talk) 12:10, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • GoldenRing "I am a little unsure what you mean when you say, "such a deletion should meet with policy."" What I mean is that ArbCom is a part of the community and runs with the consent of the community. All the things that we do we do with the consent of the community, and any of the things that we are allowed to do, such as topic bans, etc, have evolved out of consensus. The one big thing that ArbCom has is that any legitimate ArbCom action is binding, and can not be undone by a community discussion at, say DRV, but only be undone by an appropriate ArbCom process. But even that big thing is done by the consent of the community, and if the community don't like what ArbCom are doing they can at any point say, "Fuck this for a game of soldiers", and decide to close ArbCom. Yes, an AE admin can do what they reasonably feel is needed, but only within the consent that the community have already given us, and the community have not given us explicit consent to delete out of process. This particular deletion is actually a minor issue, and everyone here is discussing this as an interesting point of process, but if you'd deleted a featured article on the main page or Jimbo's talkpage, we'd have a serious issue on our hands. There are necessary limits to what ArbCom can do, and we must be aware of them and abide by them, and if in doubt seek consensus. SilkTork (talk) 07:07, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • My view is that deletion of a page is permitted as an enforcement action under discretionary sanctions. Indeed, there are intentionally very few limits on what sanctions an administrator can impose under discretionary sanctions. As such, I see Bishonen's undeletion as a violation of WP:AC/DS#sanctions.modify, albeit one that was carried out in good faith with the best of intentions while uncertain of whether the arbitration enforcement action was permissible. I will note that WP:AC/DS#appeals.notes (bullet point 4) indicates that any action taken under discretionary sanctions are presumed valid and proper until a successful appeal, so if there were a question over whether deletion is a permissible discretionary sanction, that should have come to ARCA initially. All AE actions can only be appealed at WP:AE or WP:AN, so this cannot be appealed at WP:DRV. Leaving a note at WP:DRV directing interested editors toward such an appeal would be appropriate in this situation. I decline to answer GoldenRing's fourth question for two reasons. Ideally, ArbCom should not be the first point of appeal of a discretionary sanction. Separately, the admin who placed a discretionary sanction may not appeal their own sanction. This is especially important for an appeal that potentially skips AE/AN, since that would deprive other editors of the ability to appeal at those venues under our procedures. ~ Rob13Talk 16:40, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Such deletions do not need to meet our deletion policy, as a side note. Discretionary sanctions are intended to allow administrators the discretion to handle cases not covered by our typical policies and guidelines in particularly contentious areas. Administrators should be cautioned that overzealous deletions as AE actions are likely to be overturned. In the case of repeated occurrences, this could result in a restriction from carrying out deletions as AE actions or from carrying out AE actions as a whole. ~ Rob13Talk 16:44, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The purpose of discretionary sanctions is to minimize disruption in contentious areas in order to allow Wikipedia's usual processes to proceed smoothly - they are not a replacement for them. Admin.expect backs that up by stating that admins should "allow responsible contributors maximum editing freedom with the need to keep edit-warring, battleground conduct, and disruptive behaviour to a minimum." In other words, enact the minimal necessary sanction to allow editing to proceed as usual, through typical community processes.
    Sanctions.page permits admins to enact a number of suggested measures, including "other reasonable measures that the enforcing administrator believes are necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project." There is nothing explicitly prohibiting deletion as an AE action. However, any AE enforcement must be reasonable, necessary, and proportionate, and I think it would be very rare for deletion to meet that standard. By its very nature, deletion does more to limit the editing freedom of responsible contributors than any other page-level sanction. Even fully-protected pages can be edited via edit request. For that reason, I would argue that use of deletion as an AE action should have a much higher threshold to pass before it can be considered reasonable, necessary, and proportionate.
    In my opinion, deletion as an AE action should not be used unless it can be demonstrated that there is significant disruption coming as a direct result of the page in question, and that there is no other reasonable way to mitigate or prevent that disruption. I understand that this is a fairly high standard, but that's the point - generally speaking, there are other tools available than an AE deletion, including regular community deletion processes. By analogy, you could cut your steak with a chainsaw, but it's much more sensible to go find a steak knife.
    With regards to this particular action, I don't think the high threshold I would expect to justify an AE deletion was met. There was nothing in the page that was so egregious that it necessitated immediate removal. There was no edit-warring on or about the page. There was no indication that taking the page to MfD would have caused more disruption than any other controversial XfD. In other words, I'm not convinced this use of deletion was reasonable, necessary, and proportionate. I don't think GoldenRing should be sanctioned for it, but I do think it was unnecessary, and in general, should not set a precedent for wider use of deletion as an AE action.
    In the same vein, I don't think Bishonen's temporary undeletion for DRV is a violation of sanctions.modify. It is customary to undelete pages at DRV so they can be viewed and judged by non-administrators; her intention there was clearly to allow the DRV process to proceed as normally as possible, not to simply reverse GoldenRing and walk away. I don't see that as sanctionable.
    I think we should heavily discourage the use of deletion as an AE action, but if we are not going to prohibit it, I don't think it's unreasonable to allow DRV to review AE deletions. The crowd there is going to be familiar with the deletion policy and evaluating administrators' application of it, which I think is relevant. However, the question of where to appeal these actions is not a hill I'll die on compared to the rest of my thoughts on the matter. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:17, 27 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Feeling obliged to be less brief, but I find this a simple answer. I disagree with my colleagues. Deleting is not a valid action under discretionary sanctions, GoldenRing's action did not enjoy protection under WP:AC/DS, and we can consequently dispose of the other procedural questions.
    In the procedure for Discretionary Sanctions, placing sanctions is authorised for contentious areas. The nature of a sanction is left to the judgment and discretion of administrators, though it is loosely defined as "any sanction, restriction, or other remedy". However, I find it axiomatic that sanctions are actions that apply to a person. Discretionary Sanctions are a method of regulating conduct, not content. Blocking, warning, or topic-banning Dlthewave for conduct that disrupts the area of conflict would have been a discretionary sanction. Deleting the page on which Dlthewave performed that disruptive conduct was not a discretionary sanction. Even broad, page-level actions taken by administrators (eg "all these pages are subject to 1RR") apply to users, not pages. The Discretionary Sanctions system started out of a recognition that an area of conflict can be improved if the dramatis personae can be made to behave. Deleting pages is not within that scope. AGK ■ 11:43, 2 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

To see if we need to take this discussion further, it may be helpful to take a quick survey:

Can AE admins delete pages under "other reasonable measures" as part of the enforcement process?
A) No
B) Yes
C) Yes, but only per deletion policy
  • C SilkTork (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • B, with a strong note that deletions well outside the deletion policy will almost certainly be overturned at AE (or ARCA). ~ Rob13Talk 19:37, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • B, as per Rob. RickinBaltimore (talk) 19:43, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • B, in the sense that it's not explicitly prohibited. However as I've stated above it should be avoided unless there is absolutely no other way to mitigate some kind of serious disruption. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • A. AGK ■ 23:08, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • C Katietalk 15:13, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • A/sorta C. The fundamental principle of arbitration is that it deals with conduct, not content. Deletion falls firmly in the "content" category. So even if the DS could be read as including deletion, ArbCom doesn't have the remit to authorise it. Of course as an admin GR is free to delete pages within the deletion policy as he wishes, but calling it an AE action doesn't make a difference, except to muddy the waters as to whether the community can overturn it (they can). – Joe (talk) 16:30, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Post-survey discussion

  • Assuming that everyone who supports B would support C if B would not pass, the rough consensus here appears to be for C. Should we propose a motion to that effect? ~ Rob13Talk 14:55, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I think that would be useful. Would you be able to do that Rob? SilkTork (talk) 11:41, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My choice of "B" was based on the wording of DS as it is currently written - ie, deletion is currently permitted because it is not explicitly forbidden - not because I think it is a good idea to include. I would oppose any motion which codified deletion as an acceptable use of DS (even option C, which is a meaningless distinction in my opinion) and would much rather we explicitly forbid DS deletion. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have to say, I'm having trouble understanding other's views on this, because like AGK I think the answer is very obviously A. Could someone please explain how a motion along the lines of B or C would be compatible with WP:ARBPOL, "the Committee does not rule on content"? – Joe (talk) 22:35, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Joe Roe: I view acceptable DS deletions as falling into the category of "removal of content that is the product of a user conduct issue". For instance, if an editor in the American politics topic area kept a user page in their userspace that compiled "coverage" of conspiracy theories surrounding some modern politicians (e.g. Murder of Seth Rich, Pizzagate conspiracy theory) from fringe sources that could never be integrated into an article, I would consider a deletion of that userpage under DS to be proper. Such a user page would serve no encyclopedic purpose and would clearly represent the product of a user conduct issue (WP:NOTHERE) while not falling within the traditional CSD criteria. (U5 could apply, but not if the editor also had substantial edits in the mainspace.) Taking such a page to MfD would clearly result in deletion, but would be undesirable because it would bring attention to the fringe sources and potentially attract a disruptive brigade from off-wiki, as such discussions often do in that topic area. I think that type of behavior is exactly what DS is intended to solve: user conduct issues in particularly contentious topic areas. Sometimes, those conduct issues permeate entire pages, in which case deletion would be appropriate. I would be highly skeptical of a DS deletion in the mainspace, to be clear. ~ Rob13Talk 01:09, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment request: India-Pakistan

Initiated by SheriffIsInTown at 18:37, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
India-Pakistan arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASheriffIsInTown&type=revision&diff=841345083&oldid=841015004
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request
Information about amendment request
  • Requesting the ban issued in this clause to be lifted

Statement by SheriffIsInTown

I was issued a topic ban from India-Pakistan conflict pages almost ten months ago on 15 May 2018. I am requesting this ban to be lifted now as a lot of time has passed since this ban and I have contributed in other topic areas since then. I have made a determination to change my behavior to avoid conflict when editing India-Pakistan conflict pages by engaging in discussions more and avoid the language or behavior which can make the editing more toxic which was the primary concern when the ban was issued that the participation of many editors in this topic area was making the environment toxic and the conflicts were spilling out to other areas/noticeboards.

Personally, This ban has affected me deeply as it was the first ever ban or block issued to me and I blame only myself for getting this stain on my editing. This ban has also affected my editing deeply as well, as it being a broadly construed, i could not improve those articles as well which were not conflict related, for example I was looking into splitting Nawaz Sharif into multiple articles but I could not do so as the foreign policy section contained content regarding relations with India. Similarly, I started First 100 days of Imran Khan's prime ministership and Prime Ministership of Imran Khan after Imran Khan assumed power but I could not improve those articles especially when it came to content regarding relations with India and a lot has happened regarding these relations since Khan took helms of affair in Islamabad.

Thus citing these hardships and time which has passed since the ban was issued, I will like to request the committee to repeal this ban. I promise to be more careful when editing this topic area as iterated by me above. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 18:37, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: No, as there was an amendment request in June 2018 already and I was under the impression that once there was already an appeal at ARCA, then we can only file subsequent appeals at ARCA and not any other forum as we lose the right to appeal at lower forums such as AE or AN. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 19:57, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13: Thank you for the clarification, I will like to continue with my appeal if it is not too big a hassle for the committee since there is no requirement that we must appeal on other forums before appealing to the committee. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 00:54, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This is in reply to the statement by 1990'sguy. I accept that I forgot about my first topic ban at the time I was writing this appeal. It was not a purposeful omission. That was a one month ban and by the time I was done reviewing all the relative material and policies before I could appeal the ban, the ban was already over. So, when I said that this ban has affected me deeply, I meant that.

I did not think it was necessary to mention the Judaism topic ban and interaction ban while appealing this ban. I do not think it was in the context of this appeal as these bans were already repealed.

The first topic ban violation was a misunderstanding as not just me but some other editors had this misunderstanding as well. The block which was issued was reverted after a couple of hours due to a successful appeal. The second topic ban violation was accidental in which I fixed a bare reference, the matter was brought in front of the committee and the committee opined on it with a lot of members concurring with the way the matter was handled. These violations and the AN report which they mentioned are 5 to 9 months old.

The statement by 1990'sguy seems to be giving a perception that I have been only editing using the reFill tool and that I should be editing 6 months to an year more the other topic areas without using the reFill tool. If that perception is correct then I will like to clarify that during my topic ban I have created hundreds of articles and I have also done extensive editing on the topic of Pakistani general election in 2018 in addition to fixing bare references. In fact, my editing is so diverse that I was recognized as one of the top ~ 250 medical contributors for year 2018.

They also stated that I pretend that there are no problems with my editing but rather that impression is incorrect as well, as I clearly stated in my appeal that I only blame myself for this ban.

Finally, I would like to state that I have done many wrongs and I was reprimanded for those wrongs. I have also promised in my statement above that I am determined to change my editing approach to the effect that it involves more discussion and less conflict. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 01:01, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I will like to answer some of the points raised by Uanfala. First, another editor tried to convey the message that I have been only editing using the reFill tool when I countered that with replying that this impression is not correct and that I have created hundreds of articles since this ban was enacted. Now, Uanfala is making a point that we accept that you created the articles but those were all stub so I would like to counter with the argument that most of the politicians become notable the day they get elected as their election makes them notable. I create the articles the day they get elected or in near future after that. The only content for which the reliable sources are present at the time are the sources which discuss their election so only a stub can be created at that time but that is not all at all, all the articles which I have created were not stubs and Tahira Safdar (first women chief justice of any court in Pakistan), First 100 days of Imran Khan's prime ministership, and Humaira Bachal (an internationally renowned Pakistani philanthropist and female education activist) are just a few of those articles which were not stubs and that is simply because there was more content available which would suffice a full fledge i.e a non-stub article so here they are wrong in giving an impression that I only created stub articles. I did whatever I could do best while remaining in my interest area. I kept the candle burning even in hardships of multiple topic bans and an interaction ban. I kept contributing to and improving the encyclopedia wherever I could. I would also like to state that contributions and improvements no matter how minor they look on the surface should not be discredited but I have been seeing over and over that my attempts on fixing the bare URLs has been a source of criticism on the basis of my use of reFill tool to do that. My answer to those critics is that you can take a few minutes to fix a reference or you can use the tool and fix it in few seconds but nonetheless it's a contribution which do require someone's personal time and I have been putting a lot of it into Wikipedia whether I was using reFill or creating articles on politicians and judges or adding the 2018 election results on Pakistani constituency pages. Now, I recognize that India-Pakistan requires more scrutiny, thoroughness, and research and I think I have five years of editing experience behind me to put my efforts into that. This topic ban or the behavior which lead to this ban does not define my editing. I have edited that topic area in the past and it was not all bad if it would have been all bad then I would not have gone banless in that topic area for over four years. Yes, there were problems, yes, thing got out of control and I said or did things at times which were not worthy of my editing personality and I regret that. Those episodes of less than perfect behavior earned me the wrath of community and I did not remain unscathed. But again, that does not define me as an editor and I have done good in that topic area previously and I am willing to and offering to bring that goodness back into the topic area while changing approach which lead me to this ban. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 00:30, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Floq

No opinion on this request, but for those (like me) who vaguely remember SIIT's request for a topic ban removal a week or so ago, it was for a different subject, and is found here: [5]. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:50, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GoldenRing

I am the banning administrator. I have not kept a check on the contributions of SheriffIsInTown and, for various reasons, don't have the capacity to go digging. But, absent any evidence of poor behaviour in other areas, I support lifting this restriction. I think the recent lifting of an unrelated restriction by the community speaks well to this appeal also. GoldenRing (talk) 10:12, 6 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by 1990'sguy

I would recommend declining this appeal for the following reasons:

SheriffIsInTown's claim that "This ban has affected me deeply as it was the first ever ban or block issued to me" is false, as SIIT was earlier topic banned from "Muhammad" in 2016.[6]

Similarly, he has failed to mention his multiple topic ban violations and topic ban from Judaism and one-way interaction ban.

It was barely 8 days after the decline of a previous WP:ARCA appeal,[7] that SIIT was subject to a report on WP:AN for his disruptive editing: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive300#Vandalism.

The first topic ban violation occurred when SheriffIsInTown was misrepresenting sock puppetry by one of the sanctioned user in this area who was getting site banned for his socking.[8] Once SIIT saw he is not getting his way, then he went ahead to derail a sensible site-ban proposal against that editor by disrupting WP:AN and seeking sanction against others.[9] SIIT was blocked and later unblocked for this topic ban violation.

The second topic ban violation was obvious since SheriffIsInTown edited Siachen Glacier.[10] Soon this issue was brought to WP:ARCA for clarification.[11] Per SIIT's statement on that ARCA, we can see that SIIT assumed bad-faith towards other editor instead of being thankful that the editor didn't reported SIIT, and SIIT asked for leeway towards topic banned editors like himself instead of promising to be more careful.

I am also surprised that SIIT confirms right above that he still doesn't understand the very basic procedure that he could appeal on WP:AN or WP:AE before appealing here.

In light of these incidents, I find it very unfair of SIIT to pretend that no problems with his editing existed before or after this topic ban.

The very fact that SIIT has continued to engage in same WP:BATTLE and WP:DE that originally resulted in sanctions and caused more problems, it seems that encyclopedia won't benefit from removing topic ban from this editor. I would instead recommend SheriffIsInTown to edit (which is more than just using the refill tool) for another 6 months -- 1 year without violating a topic ban or being subjected to more sanctions before appealing this topic ban again. --1990'sguy (talk) 13:27, 7 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ivanvector (SIIT)

Note that of the incidents described above by 1990'sguy, the most recent occurred five months ago. Though 1990'sguy misrepresents that it was an "obvious" violation, see the full discussion where there was not a consensus that the specific edit nor the page in its entirety were off-limits under the restriction. Furthermore most participants agreed that SIIT's edit to that page (which I had taken flak for restoring) was constructive. The arbs mostly declined to comment as SIIT had already self-reverted. It should also be noted that the dispute between SIIT and the editor who advised them of the violation was already resolved by the time I stuck my ignorant nose into it and escalated it here.

Everyone here I'm sure knows that ARBIPA is a very contentious topic where no editor can expect to operate free of thorough scrutiny of their edits. If this handful of minor incidents is all that SIIT's opponents can come up with, then Sheriff has done a very good job of generally abiding by the restrictions. In addition, SheriffIsInTown's response to various unrelated minor incidents over the past year have shown a willingness to accept criticism and to improve as an editor. I'm confident there will be no further problems and I support unconditionally lifting the restriction. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 14:33, 8 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BU Rob13 and AGK: echoing SilkTork's comment: if not now then when? How long is long enough? Shall we wait until India and Pakistan have fully resolved their border dispute, and give it even more time as a buffer so that the topic on Wikipedia is less contentious? I don't think that date is coming any time soon, to be honest. Is it fair to continue restricting an editor based entirely on external geopolitical events when they've made an honest effort to demonstrate improvement? Sure there have been some bumps in the road, but in the fallout from those incidents there is only evidence that SheriffIsInTown has learned from their mistakes (note for example that the Judaism topic ban imposed in November 2018 was successfully appealed only three months later, in the one other topic that is as contentious as this one). As of this edit you've got the banning administrator and four other editors who frequent the topic endorsing lifting the restriction, against one mostly neutral comment and one obviously ideological oppose.
If recognition of the problem, demonstrated effort to improve, and broad endorsement by exposed parties are not good enough for the Committee, perhaps the objecting members can come up with a satisfactory rehabilitation plan for SheriffIsInTown to follow, so that if we have to revisit this in six months at least he can have some idea of what to expect. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:11, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BU Rob13: the restrictions not being removed from the log is obviously an oversight which I have now corrected. It's hard to argue with your view about the "asterisk" implied in the appeal conditions; for what it's worth I'll offer my opinion again that time-restricted appeals are inherently punitive. Regarding loosening the restriction: I've typed something out a few times now but I can't get my head around how to carve out an exemption from India-Pakistan conflicts that will suit an editor wanting to contribute to articles on Pakistani public figures - there's going to be a lot of grey area, and it's difficult to enforce restrictions in this topic area already due to gaming and brigading and "pragmatic interpretations" on both sides without the restrictions themselves being unclear. The only way to fairly loosen this restriction is to remove it completely, and if the Committee is not comfortable going all the way there then imposing a period of probation seems fair. But if that's the way this goes, I strongly suggest the Committee direct that any further incidents should be brought to WP:AE for review; if it's left to the community it won't be long before we have another AN trainwreck like the NadirAli site ban from not really that long ago, which individual admins are ill-equipped to handle. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 13:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@BU Rob13: we should chat about time-based appeal restrictions some other time, probably. Your proposal seems workable to me. Maybe SheriffIsInTown can suggest a few articles they intend to work on. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:56, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Uanfala

I really didn't want to comment here as I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I don't feel like enough of substance has been said so far. On the one hand, it's great to see that after the massive ANI thread that resulted in the topic ban from Judaism, SIIT has managed to stay out of trouble whilst continuing to edit at a good pace. He's created a large number of stubs about politicians, both from the US and Pakistan, and he certainly deserves praise for this work. But on the other hand, there is huge gap between creating articles consisting entirely in content like "So-and-so is a politician from such-and-such party who won that many votes in the election of year N", and navigating the enormous body of literature and the cacophony of contradictory sources about one of the world's most intractable conflicts.

I don't think there's anything in his recent experience that is comparable to what he might face in the India–Pakistan area. His very strong views on these matters, and the severity of the past problems (some distant echoes of which can be seen in two more recently raised issues [12] [13], minor though they are), make it seem to me that starting to edit there again might be risky. And I really don't see a way to tell whether SIIT has indeed fundamentally changed his ways, or he simply recognises that being contrite is the only way he can get rid of an editing restriction which he sees as a stain on his honour.

And one minor point: being recognised as one of the top medical contributors is based on an automatic process that counts edits to medicine-related articles; I should be corrected if I'm wrong, but all, or almost all, medicine-related edits that SIIT has made consist in expanding bare urls using the semiatomated tool reFill().

In case the topic ban stays in place, I think it will be perfectly alright to add an exception covering the Imran Khan articles if SIIT is interested in working on them. – Uanfala (talk) 04:06, 9 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Vanamonde93

There has been an interesting variety of responses to last year's mass topic ban. Some editors, from both "sides", have drastically reduced their participation on Wikipedia; others have focused almost exclusively on anti-vandalism patrol and AfD; still others have continued to contribute content, including in contentious areas. SIIT is one of those; he has also engaged in considerable self-reflection. If the appeal is granted, he will also obviously be on a tight leash, because there's a very large number of people watching him. Uanfala makes a good point, but I think it's a little too much to ask that an editor dive into a different but equally contentious area before an appeal; work in Pakistani politics is good enough. Vanamonde (Talk) 01:09, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@RickinBaltimore: You mean ARBIPA, surely? Vanamonde (Talk) 19:51, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by WBG

I concur with Vanamonde and will urge the committee to grant the appeal. He knows that his editorial activities will be immensely scrutinized and shall he return to his previous ways; the ban would be re-instated in a jiffy.∯WBGconverse 09:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by RegentsPark

I concur with Vanamonde above. One of the purposes of a topic ban is to allow an editor to demonstrate that they aren't narrowly focused on one area and that they do have the broader interests of Wikipedia at heart. Sheriff has more than adequately shown that and we should grant this appeal. It would be wrong, given their history of aggressive editing, to say I'm not concerned, but I'm sure that they know they're on a tight leash, so let's see if something positive can come out of a topic ban. --regentspark (comment) 01:23, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

India-Pakistan: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).

India-Pakistan: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Have you appealed at WP:AE? ~ Rob13Talk 19:38, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @SheriffIsInTown: Sorry for any confusion. Once a sanction is appealed at ARCA, you lose the ability for further appeal on the substance of the block (e.g. its validity) at other venues. Per WP:AC/DS#appeals.notes, such an editor "may still request an easing or removal of the sanction on the grounds that said sanction is no longer needed" at AE/AN. ~ Rob13Talk 03:19, 5 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm very hesitant to lift topic bans in this area right now, given the real-world events currently surrounding India and Pakistan. The conflict is heating up, and this area is today more contentious than it was when the appealing editor was topic banned. This seems like a profoundly bad time for an experiment in whether editors have sufficiently changed their editing habits to edit productively in this area. It's almost setting them up for failure. At the same time, I recognize it may not be fair to hit the pause button on all sanctions in a topic area based on real-world events. I do think SheriffIsInTown's editing in Pakistani politics shows growth. I'm decidedly conflicted and will await thoughts from other arbitrators. ~ Rob13Talk 02:34, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Decline from me. I'm pushed over the line to decline by the topic ban from Judaism imposed in November 2018. As the community felt strongly that SIIT was editing disruptively in another contentious topic area fairly recently, I don't feel now is the right time to lift restrictions. ~ Rob13Talk 14:47, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Ivanvector: Those restrictions are still logged at WP:RESTRICT, which led me to think they were active at the moment. I'll need to rethink a bit if they aren't. My general thoughts are that "appeal in six months" has a big asterisk next to it implying "appeal after six months without disruptive activity". There was disruptive activity here warranting a topic ban and interaction ban. Add that to the original conduct and the extremely heated nature of this topic area at the moment and I'm not at the point of accepting. I wonder if there isn't some alternative loosening of restrictions here. For instance, perhaps we should specifically allow SIIT to edit the articles related to Imran Khan as an exception to the TBAN and see how that goes. ~ Rob13Talk 16:37, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • @Ivanvector: I was thinking carve out a narrow exception to 2-3 articles about Imran Khan, set a very small (one month, probably) timer for the next appeal, mostly just to ensure there's enough time for the community to scrutinize the edits as needed, and see how that goes. I don't see time-restricted appeals as punitive, but rather as time-saving. If we know that we want at least X months of good conduct before we would seriously entertain the idea of lifting a sanction, it saves both the sanctioned editor and us the time of submitting and declining an appeal that is too soon for us to feel there has been sufficient time for growth to occur. ~ Rob13Talk 14:22, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've read over the comments here, and SIIT's most importantly, and feel that lifting the TBAN may be fruitful. I would support lifting the ban, with a time period of "probation", that is extra scrutiny on SIIT's edits, to ensure they will not violation the terms of ARBIPA. If they are able to do that for say a 90 day period, then I'm confident no further scrutiny would be needed. RickinBaltimore (talk) 22:26, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Sigh. I think I NEED an IPA now, thanks for that. RickinBaltimore (talk) 22:27, 10 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would decline the request. Coming hot off another appeal, I would prefer to see more time productively contributing and dealing with points of contention before restoring appellant's access. I am also sensitive to the real-life dimension raised by Rob. AGK ■ 23:00, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The timing of the appeal given the heightened tension in the topic area is unfortunate, but the reality is that there has been tension since Partition, so there is unlikely to be a right time in the near future. Given SheriffIsInTown's good works on Wikipedia since the TB was imposed (not just using reFill, but creating articles such as Humaira Bachal), and an appeal which shows reflection, I feel the TB should be lifted. Indeed, if we're not going to lift it now, when and for what other reason would we lift it? The TB has served its purpose, and SheriffIsInTown is now less likely to indulge in the behaviour that led to the TB in the first place. SilkTork (talk) 01:02, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment request: Conduct of Mister Wiki editors

Initiated by Salvidrim! at 19:06, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Case or decision affected
Conduct of Mister Wiki editors arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Conduct of Mister Wiki editors#Salvidrim! prohibited (II)


List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request



Information about amendment request
  • Restriction lifting


Statement by Salvidrim!

In late 2017 I colluded with a friend and fellow WPVG editor, Soetermans, to pass an AfC draft, for which he had declared being paid by MisterWiki, without thoroughly assessing or reviewing the draft itself, and shortly after I myself entered into a paid editing relationship with MisterWiki. For this corruption of the purpose of AfC, I was restricted from approving AfC drafts indefinitely, appealable after 12 months. I only occasionally reviewed AfC Drafts before and will probably continue occasionally, at best, helping with the backlog (if the restriction is lifted). As there were no problems otherwise with any other AfC Draft I've approved (or article I've created myself) I'm not sure what "other work" I could present to support this request, and similarly more months/years are unlikely (IMHO) to change much, I think I can safely say "lesson learned" (moreso thanks to the desysop obviously); the problems weren't so much with my ability to properly review AfC drafts and moreso with the collusion overall. If you'd like examples of small articles I've created in the past year, you can check out Terreur 404, Dark Seal or Hwages. I'm happy to accept any trial period or rate-limit or review log, etc. if the Committee would like to be able to review the quality of my near-future AfC approvals before lifting the restriction entirely. Thanks in advance and apologies for once again taking up valuable Arbtime with this mess. :) Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 19:06, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • re BU Rob: If the Committee would rather leave the restriction in force until/unless there is a community discussion supporting its removal (such as at AN or RfA, not that I'm even considering the latter yet) I think that would be a reasonable stance considering "community trust" was really the whole reason the restriction was even put in place. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 21:56, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • re AGK and anyone else: if it helps I'm happy to reiterate that of course I will not engage in paid editing again on Wikipedia. I'm not sure if that hadn't been made clear for some after the desysop case but I've displayed as much on my own userpage, in bold and twice-large letters. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 23:18, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • re SilkTork: I've mentioned not even considering RfA2 for 2019 at this point, if ever. I just happened upon a Draft I would've liked to mainspace last week, mulled it over for a few days, and thought to myself maybe it might be helpful if I wasn't limited from mainspacing drafts anymore and perhaps the Committee would be amenable to lifting the restriction to allow me to chip in with the eternal AfC backlog. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 01:47, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • About the signature, it seems to be more of a rendering/display issue than a policy disagreement (it looks reasonable to me and Ivan but way too big to Iri and Floq, etc.), we'll dig into that, discussion is happening here for now User talk:Floquenbeam#re: Signature; sorry to highjack your TP for that Floq, feel free to move the thread to mine altogether:) Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 15:52, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Uninvolved MJL

As a newbie who has never heard of this user before until just now, my views should not be weighed very heavily in this matter. However, the current topic ban is rather narrow in my opinion. I would possibly recomenned subbing it for a more broad ban on paid editing and a permanent restriction from moving AfCs to the mainspace. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:10, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Also, the note about paid editing should stay up on the userpage. Transparency always helps with this sort of thing. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 22:13, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Salvidrim!: I am rather partial to that note in bold letters if I do say so myself. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 01:01, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by TonyBallioni (MW)

I see no issue with lifting these restrictions. Salv self-reported the only violations (search AE somewhere for it), and he follows the radical transparency lifestyle, so I find it highly unlikely he's lying here about doing paid-editing again. To SilkTork's point: I'm not sure I'd support a new RfA (also not sure I'd oppose), but I don't really see that as particularly relevant here. The odds of Salv being disruptive in this area if the sanctions are lifted are about zero, in my view, so there doesn't seem to be a reason to keep this particular sanction. TonyBallioni (talk) 03:53, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by DannyS712

After reading TonyBallioni's note above about self-reporting, I got curious. The only AE log of a violation I could find was Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive231#Salvidrim!. Reading through it was amusing (My face has been notified by my palm.), and after having reviewed that and reading through the case, I believe that this restriction should be lifted. I saw that ArbCom noted in the case that In contrast with some of the above conduct, Salvidrim! acted with commendable transparency during the case including providing supporting evidence and detail even where it may not have suited their interests to do so. They appear to have continued to act transparently, and I would like to believe that they would continue to do so. In short, I support lifting this restriction. --DannyS712 (talk) 04:08, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Thryduulf (re MisterWiki editors)

Given Salvidrim!'s comments here, his conduct during the case and afterwards I think the best way to move forwards here is to lift the restriction with the rationale "lesson learned". Thryduulf (talk) 14:31, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Floquenbeam: That's not something that is really within arbcom's remit. If you have a problem with a user's signature you should discuss it with them on their talk page. If you cannot reach a satisfactory conclusion and there has been no previous discussion that led to a consensus (I have not looked) then you should engage in dispute resolution. It's unclear to me whether WT:SIG or WP:AN is the more appropriate venue for such discussions though. Thryduulf (talk) 15:07, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
After looking through some archives of WT:SIG it seems that WP:AN would be the appropriate venue. Thryduulf (talk) 15:12, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Floq (re:Salv)

While I wasn't kidding, I also didn't intend it to be a whole thing. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:51, 12 March 2019 (UTC) Also, with hindsight, I should have known it would become a whole thing, and apologize for the diversion. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:28, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Perhaps ArbCom could make this transactional; accept the request if Salvadrim agrees to reduce the font size in his signature to be less obnoxious, otherwise leave it in place. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:43, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. I'm not kidding.

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.

So, back on topic, I actually do think we can safely remove this restriction. I'm not sure how I will feel if/when RFA#2 comes along, but I'm at least comfortable that Salvadrim is not going to come within 100 yards of anything improper at AFC. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:28, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Iridescent

I second Floquenbeam above. Salvidrim, if you want to be taken seriously a garish giant signature like that is really not helping. ‑ Iridescent 15:14, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ivanvector (MisterWiki)

Support lifting the restriction. Salvidrim! has been nothing if not honest, transparent, and self-reflective throughout this entire ordeal, which a year and a bit in retrospect I continue to believe was an overconfident (?) lapse in judgement. This restriction was weakly supported by the Committee in the first place, and only on a third draft of proposals for article creation restrictions. I see no preventive reason to keep this in place.

Regarding the comments about Ben's signature, there's a discussion on Floq's talk page about it if anyone really wants to chime in. It's pretty far off-topic for this thread. (comment modified by request) Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 16:16, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {other-editor}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the amendment request or provide additional information.

Conduct of Mister Wiki editors: Clerk notes

This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
  • Please constrain discussion here to the scope of the appeal. The clerks may remove unrelated material. GoldenRing (talk) 16:03, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Conduct of Mister Wiki editors: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Awaiting community comment. The most unfortunate aspect of the original conduct was the breach of community trust. In my view, the pertinent question here is whether that community trust has been rebuilt such that the community will tolerate Salvidrim!'s participation at AfC. ~ Rob13Talk 21:47, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Floquenbeam and Iridescent: While I am sympathetic to the substance of your complaints, Salvidrim!'s signature is not relevant to this appeal. It is well outside our jurisdiction, given the original scope of this case. If you disagree with it, please take Thryduulf's suggestions on how to proceed. ~ Rob13Talk 15:27, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Accept. (I know we'll need a motion for this, just noting my position.) ~ Rob13Talk 12:59, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • Fully agree with Joe that any motion should explicitly say something to the effect of "Nothing in this motion overrides community processes for granting or removing access to the AFC Helper Script or related user rights." (where the related user rights refers mostly to new page reviewer). ~ Rob13Talk 17:02, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I should like to know whether appellant continues to engage in paid editing of any form. An answer may be submitted privately. AGK ■ 22:54, 11 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    • I assume the answer to be no, but just as a note, an answer to this question can't really be private if the answer is "yes". ~ Rob13Talk 01:12, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • That seems like an unhelpful amendment. You should avoid giving the impression that we will not handle private emails in an appropriate spirit, particularly as there may have been points of nuance or detail (eg UPE happened after the case, but has stopped). Nobody suggested we would seek to subvert the disclosure requirements of UPE, so why give the impression that in this case an answer can't be private? As a phrase it sounds slightly sinister, it doesn’t seem helpful, and it certainly doesn't speak for my mind. AGK ■ 08:05, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
        • The disclosure requirements for paid editing is that every instance of paid editing must be accompanied by a disclosure that identifies the employer, client, and affiliation permanently in an edit summary, a talk page, or the user page. If an editor were to privately tell us that they were violating these requirements, we wouldn't violate that confidentiality, of course, but presumably we would block the account quietly for failing to abide by the Terms of Use and disclosure policy. The requirement to disclose does not end when the paid editing ends. ~ Rob13Talk 15:27, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • While technically this appeal is allowable - you've served just over the 12 months minimum of the ban - I'm wondering why you want to request the ban lifted, especially as it wasn't an area in which you were that active, don't intend to be that active in going forward, and it's stirring a settled pot. Are you looking to clear your account of restrictions so you can ask for the admin tools back? SilkTork (talk) 01:26, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks User:Salvidrim!, that makes sense. I became an admin because I wanted to do the occasional page move that required the deletion tool, and didn't like asking others to do it for me, but I was not intending to focus on doing page moves, so I understand your motivation. You were open and honest during the case, even when it wasn't in your best interest, and such behaviour encourages trust. It appears to me you made some errors of judgement, for which you have paid. I'm comfortable with allowing this. SilkTork (talk) 10:02, 12 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • A possible complicating factor is that AfC reviewing is currently a quasi-permission enforced by restricting access to the AfC helper script (with more or less the same requirements as the NPP right). Across several discussions, there has been a strong consensus that paid editors should not have access to AfC/NPP, because these are the two areas that are most subject to abuse by UPEs. But I don't believe the question of whether a "paid editor" is just someone who currently engages in paid editing, or has ever done it, has ever really come up. If we agree to lift Salvidrim's topic ban, I don't think that should be construed as an ArbCom motion that he then must be allowed to review AfC drafts. His being added to the list of participants should be subject to the consensus of the AfC project. – Joe (talk) 13:18, 13 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would be fine lifting the restriction for Salvidrim! to pursue approving and moving drafts in consideration for a ban on paid editing and that any drafts where Salvidrim! has a COI would be avoided entirely. Mkdw talk 01:15, 14 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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