Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough/Evidence

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Evidence presented by Rich Farmbrough

Current word length: 353; diff count: 4.

Suspected sockpuppets categories are harmless.

Although:

• User:Fram "reported"[1] me to AN for creating these catories.
• User:Elen of the Roads blocked me on the basis [2] that these categories related expired IPs to suspected sockmasters, and this was very serious.
• User:Hersfold thought that was not enough, and decided an Arbitration case was needed as this created "crawlable pages".

(all without discussing the matter on my talk page - so urgent it was)

Once the deed was done:

• None of these editors, deleted any of the "Suspected sock-puppet categories" nor indeed did any of the many other editors and admins who must have seen the discussion (with the exception of one clear test category).
• The only person who deleted any of these "monstrous" categories was me. I also removed the incorrect tag that had been allowed to sit unmolested for years.
• No further discussion took place to resolve these apparently enormous problems that had been created.
• The Suspected sock-puppet categories are, explicitly "noindex" and so are treated exactly the same as redlinked categories by search engines, since July 2008.[3]

So these edits were not a cause of any serious problem.

Had there been any real problems, I would have dealt with them, as I have in other cases.[4]

Mistakes made by me

There is no doubt that I have made errors, both technical and in the handling of other editors. Firstly I would like it to be clear that I have always accepted both possibilities, more so, I venture to say, when approached in a friendly manner notably absent in some cases. Nonetheless I don't believe that these are egregious faults.

Request for non-interaction with Fram

I have repeatedly requested Fram not to interact with me, and he has repeatedly refused. The exception is when he wants to put a complaint on a noticeboard, then he justifies doing so without talking to me first. Consider his last three complaints:

1. ISBN hyphenation - reports to AN, gets told it's all good.
2. Minor technical fixes on my talk page,
3. Sock categories go on AN, and I get blocked and arb-commed.

I provide no diffs because I don't think these are in dispute.

Rebuttals

Will appear on the workshop page in due course.

Evidence presented by Fram

Current word length: 489; diff count: 4.

Links to evidence

Most of the necessary evidence is contained in the links at the top of the the case, and in what I wrote in the case which was narrowly rejected at 17 November 2011.

Wanting to mass create articles despite known and unresolved problems

His lack of good judgment wrt mass creations can also be seen at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Rich Farmbrough (mass article creation), which came soon after his one week block during Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive227#Rich Farmbrough violating editing restriction, and where it became clear that even while blatant errors pointed out in that previous discussion weren't yet corrected, he wanted to mass create more of the same.

Error in his evidence statement

Above he claimed that only one cat had been deleted, but also this one had been tagged and deleted by others.

Expects other people to find his errors for him

The evidence statement by Rich Farmbrough is a telling example of what to me is the root of the problem: he expects other people to clean up his problems. Editors are encouraged to be bold, but this brings a few responsabilities with it, certainly when you are a bot operator or are otherwise making mass edits: check your own edits, correct the errors, and when other people indicate errors, double check all similar edits you made, not just the few people have found for you. This is not his MO though: he expects other people to do his dirty work.

Three of the "user-likes" categories he created were nominated for deletion: 1, 2 and 3. He then deleted those as G7, but not very similar ones like this one or this one. Because no one had noticed them yet? This is the same pattern you could see with his ill-thought-out category creations from January 2011, e.g. this one was only deleted hours after the discussion about these categories started after another editor nominated it, not because of Rich Farmbrough checking whether he had made other errors than those already mentioned.

During the discussion that lead to this current block and case, instead of checking these edits or joining the discussion, he edits a fully protected template, and then fails to properly check the result of this. Only after I pointed this out at the WP:AN discussion[5] does he revert himself, of course blaming the problems not on his own edit but on a wrong CFD decision...[6].

No one expects error-free editing, such a thing isn't possible. But when it becomes obvious that an editor doesn't make the necessary efforts to check his edits, and combines this with mass edits, means must be found to reduce the problems. The editing restrictions have seriously reduced these, but it needs to be made clear once and for all that these restrictions have community consensus and are not one editor's whim. Desysopping to prevent further careless template edits, and if necessary to be able to remove AWB access, may be useful as well (it would also prevent deletions contrary to AfD decisions like the one of Statesman, or his restoration of things like Economy of Xiguan).

Evidence presented by Hersfold

Current word length: 479; diff count: 22.

Rich has repeatedly violated his cosmetic changes restriction

The examples provided show particularly egregious violations; I noted that violations were fairly widespread and it would be impossible to include all of them here.

• Most commonly, whitespace changes at the ends of lines: [7] [8] [9] [10] [11]
• Changing template redirects to the template itself is also common. AWB does some itself, listed here, but Rich apparently does of his own: [12]

List of blocks

Note that many of the discussions contain links to further violations, in addition to those pointed out above.

• November 17, 2010: 24 hours from User:Rd232. Explanation and discussion here (section "Blocked 24 hours")
• December 17, 2010: 48 hours from User:Rd232. Explanation and discussion here (section "Blocking")
• January 19, 2011: 72 hours from User:Rd232. Explanation and discussion here (section "January 2011")
• September 9, 2011: 1 week from User:LessHeard vanU. Explanation and discussion here (section "Your editing privileges have been suspended for 1 week" as well as the next two) and here (section "Rich Farmbrough violating editing restriction")
• November 14, 2011: 2 weeks from User:Xeno. Explanation and discussion here (section "Violation of editing restrictions") Note that this block was lifted after 58 hours by User:Fences and windows for "If Xeno had to recuse as arb, he should recuse as blocker", in reference to [13].
• March 30, 2012: 1 month by User:Elen of the Roads. This block is ongoing, with Rich currently restricted to editing these pages and his talk page.

Rich has violated the Bot Policy repeatedly

• On several occasions, he has run bot scripts from his main account without an approved bot task:
  • 208 edits in 30 minutes is an average edit rate of almost 7 edits/min; less than 10 seconds spent reviewing each edit, and the variation in edit summaries while running at such a high rate indicates a bot or script is running rather than AWB alone.
  • 301 in 30 minutes is an average edit rate of 10 edits/min
• When SmackBot was blocked once, he transferred its operation to his main account while the block was still in effect: section ("Log of references runs") (relevant diff, the one cited in the discussion has since been broken)
• SmackBot has an extensive block log with many blocks for reasons similar to "violation of bot policy" or "edits that go beyond bot authorization", etc: [14]. These blocks continued into Helpful Pixie Bot: [15]. Note also that Rich has repeatedly unblocked his bots in violation of policy.

Rich responds to concerns and criticism with derision

• My statement requesting this case was "character assassination" and characterized him "as spawn of the devil"
• Responds to concerns with sarcasm or derision: [16] [17] [18] [19] (responses of simply "<sigh>" are apparently common)
• Dismisses concerns as nonsense: [20] [21]
• Turns focus of conversation towards user expressing concerns: [22] [23]
• Others get completely ignored: [24]

WP:POINT-y conduct during this case

• Sarcastic comments directed at other parties: [25]
• Frivolous clerking requests: [26] [27] [28]

As stated in the last diff, Rich is making these requests to ensure strict adherence to what he observes as ArbCom's "rules", since he is accused of ignoring actual rules and restrictions elsewhere on Wikipedia.

Rich's restrictions have community support

(section "Review of Rich Farmbrough's cosmetic changes restriction")

Evidence presented by CBM

Current word length: 369; diff count: 9.

Edit restriction supported by community

• The first edit restriction was placed by Rd232 [29] after discussion [30] in 2010.
• The second was placed in January 2011 [31] as part of [32].
• Xeno opened a discussion in December 2011 [33] to verify consensus for the restrictions.
• Each restriction has remained at WP:RESTRICT continuously since its posting.
• Three admins have blocked R.F. for violating the restriction.

Strangely, R.F. has often denied he is under a restriction. In the evidence to this case he described the restriction as "putative" [34].

R.F. violated restriction on cosmetic changes

In these posts I describe numerous violations of this restriction: Dec 8, 2011 - Dec 12, 2011 - Dec 20, 2011.

R.F. violated restriction on mass creation

In 2012, R.F. has created 2,145 category pages with the same edit summary "create wanted category", including 328 sockpuppet categories, and 1,345 categories such as Category:Immediate children/Campylognathoidinae, and other categories. The plain appearance of the editing pattern and edit summary is that R.F. was endeavoring to create practically every red-linked category on the wiki.

One example is the joke category Category:Wikipedians in red-linked categories. R.F. created it anyway, and it went to CFD, where R.F. said that by creating it he was actually fixing a problem [35]. He said that someone else needs to actually address the underlying problem, which supports the claim that R.F. sometimes expects others to clean up after he makes a series of blind edits.

Multiple users have attempted to counsel R.F.

Among them are three standing arbitrators: Xeno, Hersfold, and Elen of the Roads, along with many editors at numerous noticeboard discussions. However the same issues being discussed now were present already in 2009 and 2010, such as unapproved bot or bot-like tasks [36] [37] and cosmetic changes [38]. The earliest report I have found for mass page creation was from 2006 [39].

Best practices for bots

• The bot policy admonishes against making cosmetic changes alone (WP:COSMETICBOT), as do the AWB rules. Examples of such edits include [40] [41]

• Bot policy requires preapproval for mass article or article category creation (WP:MASSCREATION).

Infeasible to 'cross the street'

An editor cannot simply 'cross the street' to avoid R.F., because R.F. and his bots edit so profusely. R.F. has edited 54,000 distinct pages in the last 6 months, and HPB has edited 220,000 distinct pages. There is no common type of article edited. Any editor with a large watchlist will frequently see edits by R.F. or HPB with no way to avoid them.

Evidence presented by Flatscan

Current word length: 139; diff count: 1.

Rich Farmbrough's G6 deletion of Statesman and later response were suboptimal

1. Despite the merge outcome of WP:Articles for deletion/Statesman, RF deletes Statesman, citing CSD G6, "G6: Deleted to make way for move". He then moves Statesman (disambiguation) over the deleted article.
2. User:R'n'B contacts RF about the deletion (discussion). RF replies that "There was ... no content both relevant to and worthy of merging to politician" and copies the deleted page's text to Talk:Statesman in direct violation of WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Reusing deleted material.
3. User:Fram asks RF to restore the page history, but RF does nothing (discussion). Fram makes a request at WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive233#Restoration of page history requested.
4. User:Nyttend fulfills the request by restoring the deleted revisions. This histmerges the parallel versions of the two pages together. When the error is pointed out, Nyttend spends 14 log actions fixing the problem and implementing WP:Merge and delete#Move to subpage of talk page (Talk:Statesman/old).

Evidence presented by Charles Matthews

Current word length: 439; diff count: 5.

Criticism made by Fram may contain valid points, but is problematic in other ways

I know about the underlying dispute from discussion that went on at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography: possibly a microcosm. There I do understand the technical issues, as well as anyone else around. I felt as a result that it is not so easy to engage with User:Fram in a problem-solving way. There were several issues (not all involving Rich); and I thought the tone in places inappropriate to our project.

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography/Archive 2#Cite DNB runs to over 5,000 words, with more in the two following sections. The threading now makes it hard to reconstruct the chronology. Some of the issues raised were dealt with, but the particular templating issue which initiated the thread hasn't an obvious solution, as posed. Diffs and comment:

• [42] Technical issue raised by Fram.
• [43] Philip Baird Shearer explains this in context. Rich was responsive to PBS on the issue; the {{DNB}} template is something he deprecates for reasons that come down to software engineering.
• [44] Fram changes tack. A single instance of a proof-reading error on Wikisource is used to condemn Rich for even making a bot request.
• [45] Rich does contribute to the discussion, some time later.

The page is confusing: Rich has been interested in using AI techniques to automate conversion of old encyclopedia text, such as exists on Wikisource, into articles here. A pilot run recently has not worked so well; but BOLD, and the DNB WikiProject is a forum in which DNB cleanup can be handled. This worked out: despite this spat[46] prompted by Fram saying we didn't care, PBS helped Fram with the solvable problem. What stands out to me is the effort to blacken Rich's reputation, as we went along.

The initial problem was not solvable as posed. There was no mystery at any point which the "pilot project" articles were, so it began to look like a personal attack wrapped in technical issues. Purism on Rich's part meant he didn't apply {{DNB}} to his pilot articles as WP:PLAGIARISM would suggest. But he gave the sourcing: Fram's point was about tracking. That's it, for policy.

The ArbCom has sensible remedies here. I see Rich at meetups, and I know his views. Rich should be asked to slow down a bit with projects; but not to drop innovation entirely, which would be negative overall. Rich should be asked not to be flip: this is not about temper, where we all need some tolerance on occasion. We seem to have a position where Rich and his critics find it hard to meet halfway. I hope Arbitrators will emphasise that doing exactly that is central to our community.

Charles Matthews (talk) 15:44, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Evidence presented by Dpmuk

Current word length: 192; diff count: 1.

Rich acts first then discusses

Rich made what appears to be a couple of hundred edits like this without any discussion first. As before this date the {{cv-unsure}} template was undated the scale can be seen by the size of Category:Suspected copyright infringements without a source from July 2011 which was populated very quickly by Rich with a string of similar edits. Rich decided to add a heading to the cv-unsure tag and move the user out of the box without discussing this with anyone involved in copyvio work and as far as I'm aware never having worked in that area himself. This led to a long discussion which led to the template largely going back to being used in the previous manner but with a date category added. Changes to as many articles as this in this manner should not be made without first gaining consensus for the change due to possible disruption caused if there is not consensus for the change, as here. Further I note that Rich has not corrected his changes in line with the following discussion leading to this template now being used incorrectly in the case of most articles in this category.

Evidence presented by {your user name}

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Place argument and diffs which support your assertion; for example, your first assertion might be "So-and-so engages in edit warring", which should be the title of this section. Here you would show specific edits to specific articles which show So-and-so engaging in edit warring.

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