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Clarification request: Amendment request: American politics 2 (January 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Interstellarity at 13:22, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
[1]

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 Interstellarity

I have a question regarding the recent decision made by ArbCom. There are editors that are topic banned from post-1932 American politics. I would like the arbitrators' opinion on whether we should convert those topic bans into post-1992 AP due to the recent decision ArbCom made. Interstellarity (talk) 13:22, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Could anyone please close this request? Given that the arbitrators agree on the same thing, I don’t think this should be open any longer. Interstellarity (talk) 13:27, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

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.

American politics 2: Clerk notes

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

American politics 2: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Gut instinct, no - any editors who feel they would like to edit in the newly available 60 year period can appeal for a modification. That said, I'm willing to hear other thoughts WormTT(talk) 13:33, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
  • The fact that we weren't changing existing sanctions was important to me. I agree if someone wants to appeal to change the date range AE should consider that request. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 14:25, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Not automatically – that was explicitly part of the previous motion. But if the normal appeals process decides to modify any particular sanction, that's OK, of course. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 17:44, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with the above. We may have bans that were put in place to deal with pre 1992 problems, those should not be automatically converted. That being said, I think AE should be fairly lenient in granting amendments of that nature. This issue has already eaten up a bunch of community time, no need for it to take more. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 05:46, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Agree with my colleagues here. If an editor feels their sanction should be converted, they can ask for it and it can be reviewed whether it makes sense. The change was explicitly made "from this point on", not retroactively. Regards SoWhy 07:48, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: Liancourt Rocks (January 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by MJL at 19:29, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
Liancourt Rocks arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Liancourt Rocks#Motion: Liancourt Rocks (September 2015) (clause 2)


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
Information about amendment request
  • (1) Clause 2 of the September 2015 motion is rescinded. (2) Nothing in this motion provides grounds for appeal of remedies or restrictions imposed while discretionary sanctions for Liancourt Rocks were in force. Such appeals or requests to lift or modify such sanctions may be made under the same terms as any other appeal. (3) Jurisdiction over this dispute for the future is remitted back to the community.


Statement by MJL

Okay, I have been sitting on this request for at least a year now. My hope is this can get sorted pretty quickly and without any drama.

The Liancourt Rocks (known as Dokdo to South Korea and Takeshima to the Japanese) are a contested set of islets in the Sea of Japan/East Sea. That conflict easily bled into how Wikipedia should cover the topic, and in 2007 Arbcom accepted a case in an effort to resolve tensions among editors regarding the name/sovereignty debate.

Since then, {{Ds/talk notice|lr}} has been included on just about 7-8 talk pages (#collapsed evidence 1). The last logged action that has taken place regarding this d/s was in 2017.

Extended content

In alphabetical order:

{{Ds/talk notice|lr}} is not included on the following pages:

In 2020, when an RFC from Leemsj2075 (talk · contribs) was created, it was closed without much issue. The user in question was also later dealt with by the community.

I could not find any additional controversies that have centered around Liancourt Rocks. It would seem that while at one point these sanctions were necessary; that is no longer the case. I am including Fut.Perf as a party in this amendment in case they have anything additional they want to add as an admin who has a long and admirable history of dealing with disputes in this topic area. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 19:29, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

@L235: I actually spoke to CaptainEek about it before submitting. I won't say anything more than that for confidentiality reasons.
@Newyorkbrad: fake cough pronouns they/them fake cough. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 23:51, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
@L235 and Barkeep49: I would like to formally withdraw this request. My apologies for the time-sink. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 02:25, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Future Perfect at Sunrise

Statement by Thryduulf

Reading the comments so far on this has given me a couple of ideas related to non-urgent Committee business and/or something to consider for the DS review whenever that happens (in brief, scheduled six-monthly bundles of non-urgent business, but I've so far written two long paragraphs). I think this is probably the wrong place to present these ideas so I'd appreciate a pointer to where the Committee would like me to share them. Thryduulf (talk) 22:10, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

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.

Liancourt Rocks: Clerk notes

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

Liancourt Rocks: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • @MJL: This is a tiny topic area but this ARCA is likely to take quite some arb time to handle. Since you've brought it to us formally and we now have to handle this, can you put together a list of any other outstanding DS authorizations that you think should be reviewed? Personally, I would prefer a temporary process page where anyone with comment about a list of, say, ten DS authorizations that should be reconsidered can provide input and we can keep it open for a few months without disturbing the rest of ARCA. That would be a better use of arbitrator and community time than taking a full ARCA (and probably more thought, consideration, and time than you expect) deciding whether half a dozen pages should fall under DS – especially when there is no specific harm identified. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:20, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
    • As a general note, to anyone who wants to suggest non-urgent housekeeping-type changes, informal conversations with arbs to gauge the temperature in the room and find out whether we can make/discuss the changes without expending as much volunteer time and effort are strongly favored. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:24, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
    • It's been brought to my attention that no one can understand what I'm trying to say. I'll clarify: I think this is a conversation that would be better after we do DS reform, and I'm a bit frustrated that we haven't been given time to do that reform (which has the potential to clarify these issues) before we've been hit with several DS authorization ARCAs. But if you want to do it now, we should do it in a way that's more efficient than bringing one DS authorization at a time. We passed a motion several years back when we deauthorized DS in half a dozen topics or more, and I think that's a better way of doing it. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:34, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Personally I would prefer to sit on this amendment request until after (or as part of) the broader work on DS that this committee seems on track to do. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 20:33, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
    @Thryduulf: great question. I mean for DS, hang tight as I expect there to be chance for meaningful community contribution to the discussion, even as ArbCom makes the final decision. If you have non-DS related stuff that's a great question. I mean one idea is to just try this again (it worked for me). Alternatively, maybe pick you favorite 2 or 3 arbs and go say something on their talk page (or come to my talk page - I try to welcome all). Maybe some other arbs will have better suggestions because it is a good question. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:34, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
  • As per Kevin and Barkeep49, I'm okay with deferring this request pending a broader discussion of discretionary sanctions. In fairness, MJL had no way of knowing we've been discussing doing that. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:39, 24 January 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Amendment request: MONGO (February 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Steve M at 22:50, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
MONGO arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO#Links to ED
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
Information about amendment request
  • Links to Encyclopædia Dramatica may be removed wherever found on Wikipedia as may material imported from it.
  • Links to the main page, encyclopediadramatica.wiki and/or dramatica.online, may be permitted solely in the infobox of the article Encyclopedia Dramatica.

Statement by Steve M

While the site should 100% stay blacklisted, in the infobox, per WP:NOTCENSORED, there should be a link to the home page of the site, encyclopediadramatica.wiki and/or dramatica.online, inside the infobox. Other questionable sites, like wikipediocracy, another site with offwiki attacks against users, and goatse, a graphic NSFW shock site, have direct links to the site in the infobox. A whitelist to the homepages should exist solely for that purpose.

Statement by MONGO

No thanks. Just 'cause we have links to other hate sites doesn't mean we should have links to all. I wonder what the motivations would be to even link to it....are we going to gain some earth shattering encyclopedic revelation? I think a careful review of NOT is in order.--MONGO (talk) 23:56, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

"Its not a decision we would make in a modern case." It would be interesting to hear what exactly would be an ethical decision today. Not site ban those harassing others on and off site? Allow links to a site that not only did not have an article here due to no notability at the time as well as was being used to data mine real life information and post it allowing whatever nefarious creature might use it to engage in real life harassment?--MONGO (talk) 07:30, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Sir Joseph

I don't think it's fair to compare ED to Wikipediocracy or Goatse. Further, if someone wants to go there and we don't have a link, I imagine they can type ED into the browser and it will pop up. While Wikipedia isn't censored, that doesn't mean we need to bend over backwards to sites like ED, especially when not doing so isn't that big of an effect on people reading the encyclopedia. Sir Joseph (talk) 01:07, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Statement by OhKayeSierra

The project as we know it today has very little resemblance to what it looked like in 2006. I think today's Wikipedia is much better at handling disruption and objectionable links at the community level than it was back then. With that said, I don't see any reason why this remedy should remain in place. As a content issue, I believe that it should fall to the editing community's consensus on how to handle links to ED. OhKayeSierra (talk) 04:09, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Thryduulf

I agree that this is something the present-day community is capable of handling on its own, and there isn't any need for ArbCom to remain in the picture. I think rather than removing it entirely though, the best thing to do would be to convert it into something modern - perhaps something like: "Links to and/or content sourced from Encyclopædia Dramatica should not be added to Wikipedia without an explicit consensus to do." Thryduulf (talk) 12:39, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

@L235 and Beeblebrox: this is why I suggested "should not be added" rather than "may be removed" - guidance rather than rules. Thinking about it again I'd probably have used the word "included" rather than "added" but that is minor. I'm not sure I would vote for this motion were I an arbitrator. Thryduulf (talk) 12:48, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Johnuniq

This is a make-work request asking Arbcom to do something with no defined benefit but with the potential of enabling harassment. I suggest that arbs turn it around by closing this request with a statement that anyone wanting to add working links to ED should make a new request after obtaining consensus in an RfC that such working links would be desirable. Johnuniq (talk) 01:45, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

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.

MONGO: Clerk notes

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

MONGO: Implementation notes

Clerks and Arbitrators should use this section to clarify their understanding of which motions are passing. These notes were last updated by Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 12:53, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Motion name Support Oppose Abstain Passing Support needed Notes
Motion: MONGO 5 2 2 Currently not passing 1
Motion: MONGO (alt) 8 0 0 Passing ·
Notes


MONGO: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Steve brought this to me to ask if it was worth pursuing, and I do feel it is least worthy of discussion. The case is 14 years old. Things were different. (in fact the drafters seem to have gone out of their way to say that ED is sometimes interesting and compelling, which was not my experience at all the few times I have looked at it) It's a disgusting, horrible site (apparently two sites now, infighting having caused a split) but we allow links to other disgusting, horrible sites, because this is an encyclopedia. If people want to go look at horrible stuff, it is not an encyclopedia's job to make that harder for them. I think that we can uphold the general blacklisting of the site while allowing the normal website link in the infobox. Frankly this is not the kind of thing the committee even involves itself in anymore, deciding what can and cannot be linked to. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:08, 25 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm now feeling like i "buried the lead" in my initial comment. Others have expressed it well below, we should just remove the committee from this issue and let the community decide what is pretty clearly a content issue. Beeblebrox (talk) 11:19, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Looking at the enforcement log, there are three logged enforcement actions. Two were overturned in less than 24 hours, the third was an indef block that remains in place. There has been no further activity in the intervening 13 years. I am about ready to propose removing remedy 1, with the explicit purpose of leaving the matter to the community to resolve as they will. This specific part of the case simply doesn't merit committee attention anymore. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:54, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Reading through that case was interesting, clearly a very different time on-wiki. Its not a decision we would make in a modern case. I think we should remove this from our jurisdiction and let the community decide, as this is a content decision. I'm not sure how to word the relevant motion, perhaps simply revoking Remedy 1 would do the trick. Its already on the blacklist, and its not going to get removed. Revoking Remedy 1 would allow the community to decide when/if it wanted to use the link. I am open to other solutions that allow the community to decide. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 06:01, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
    • @MONGO: I was referring just to the link remedy. Of course we still would ban editors for harassment and the other equally nasty guff that case featured. I just think that our modern processes would have ensured that such a link was already blacklisted. Early ArbCom heard a lot of cases that just would never reach it in more modern times. These days we hear a handful of cases a year. Back in the day there were dozens or more a year, and ArbCom was handing out remedies that would now be given by AN (like blacklisting a link or removing it in troublesome situations). CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 07:41, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
      I like Thryduulf's wording. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:22, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Beeblebrox that it's not Wikipedia's job to pre-filter reader's decisions to visit such sites. By doing so, we inherently violate our own rules to not have a POV which sites are "good" or "bad", so I would grant this amendment request. However, I do see CaptainEek's point that this is in fact a content decision and thus should by ultimately decided by the community. Since the site is already blacklisted in general, we can just repeal remedy #1 of that case and let the community decide whether to place a link in the article. Regards SoWhy 07:54, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
  • From an editorial standpoint, I do not see the need for these links - and given how often they change their domain because they are taken down, it's not really a case of the wikipedia making it harder for editors - but rather do we want to be such a high profile place for an easy link to a site that cannot stand on its own for any length of time. However, this should be an editorial decision - not an Arbcom decision and I would support revoking the remedy and with a statement that content decisions should be made by the community. Due to the nature and level of the past (and I assume present) harassment, I would also support an amendment to say "the community may decide to allow the url on the ED wiki page only".
    From a technical perspective, can administrators add blacklisted links against the blacklist? If so, I would prefer it not whitelisted, to reduce the risk of multiple links being added to the page, even for a short time. WormTT(talk) 08:53, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Dreamy WormTT(talk) 13:11, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I understand that the blacklist means we could repeal remedy #1 without any concrete harm, but apart from the possibility of such informational links on the ED article, I have no desire to do so. I would prefer a clarification on our part that if the community simply wants links in the infobox and external links section, we will not consider that to be a violation. (N.b., the URL is already in the infobox, just not as a live link.) --BDD (talk) 15:17, 26 January 2021 (UTC)
    Thryduulf's suggestion is very reasonable. --BDD (talk) 18:20, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
  • I think, even in my short time as an arb, I've been pretty vocal in the "I trust the community to handle stuff" camp. Something about this request though, strikes me as different. Maybe it's just because I've now had a chance to read the emails about the anguish experienced by several editors over OUTING that I'm reluctant to change a sanction about this site given their glee at targeting enwiki editors. And maybe the best outlet for that discomfort is in any community discussion about changing this rather than here as an arb. But my unease is there and so I am bit conflicted about something that philosophically aligns with my thinking. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:52, 27 January 2021 (UTC)
    Thanks Dreamy Jazz for those notes. I think the community and committee will find this helpful at ARCA. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:29, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Beeblebrox. Maxim(talk) 02:28, 28 January 2021 (UTC)

Motion: MONGO

Remedy 1 of the MONGO case ("Links to ED") is rescinded. The matter is remanded to the community as a content issue. Any sanctions or other restrictions imposed under this remedy remain intact.

For this motion there are 10 active arbitrators. With 2 arbitrators abstaining, 5 support or oppose votes are a majority.
Support
  1. As proposer. The committee shouldn't be regulating content. This should in no way be taken as an endorsement of ED or linking to it, we are simply removing the committee from the equation. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:53, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
  2. Personal opinions aside, this is a content issue. A remedy like that would probably not pass today, so I see no reason to keep one alive just because it passed in the past. Regards SoWhy 09:35, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
  3. I strongly believe that we should be keeping this blacklisted, but it is a content decision. WormTT(talk) 10:21, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
    Agree with the above. Primefac (talk) 11:07, 29 January 2021 (UTC) pulling support for the moment given the comments in the discussion below. Primefac (talk) 02:30, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
  4. Maxim(talk) 13:33, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
  5. This is for the community to decide. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 17:56, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. I disagree with the idea that it's beyond our remit to assist editors who are facing harassment, including OUTING, because of their involvement as editors on Wikipedia. This case wouldn't play out the same way today - I suspect the community would indeed be able to handle it - but that doesn't mean, as this motion states, that it's purely a content decision. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:00, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
  2. Is more about harassment than content. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:31, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Abstain
  1. I understand the principle cited by the majority, but frankly I just don't see this subject as a concern warranting our attention. Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:44, 30 January 2021 (UTC)
  2. Here is a motion I think I can get behind: Remedy 1 of the MONGO case ("Links to ED") is rescinded. Editors who wish to insert a link to Encyclopædia Dramatica are encouraged to seek consensus through established community processes before doing so. The Committee expresses no opinion on any underlying content questions. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 02:18, 1 February 2021 (UTC)
Discussion
  • Mildly copyedited. I would prefer that the last two sentences be replaced with something like "The Committee expresses no opinion on any underlying content questions." Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 07:28, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
  • @Barkeep49: Of course it is within our remit to deal with harassment. And posting links to offsite harassment or malicious doxxing is already against policy. What I do not think we would do today is say "linking to any part of <website> in any way, anywhere on Wikipedia, for any reason, is absolutely forbidden". That, combined with the fact that this remedy has not been invoked in 12 years, leads me to believe arbcom simply does not need to be involved in deciding whether or not a link to their main page is allowed in the article on the website itself. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:40, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
    I think there's a different formulation of this that I could support that follows your line here rather than the wording of the motion. The request was to be able to link the item in the infobox which I agree is a community decision - I started typing my comment under support even. But that's not what this motion says. It says that all ED related links are a community decision and that is not a statement I can support as that site (now sites thanks to an apparent fork) continues to harass and OUT editors, including Mongo. Ultimately I don't think my oppose is going to be a big deal - I think there will be arb support to pass this motion as worded. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:03, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
    I think I could support a motion which just doesn't say anything about the content at all. So basically remove the second sentence. If we want to add Kevin's wording about encouraging proactive consensus that's fine with me too. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:43, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I think I'm about where Barkeep is at the moment. --BDD (talk) 15:31, 1 February 2021 (UTC)

Motion: MONGO (alt)

Remedy 1 of the MONGO case ("Links to ED") is amended to read, "Links to, and/or content from, Encyclopædia Dramatica may be removed wherever found on Wikipedia, absent explicit consensus for their inclusion."

For this motion there are 12 active arbitrators. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 7 support or oppose votes are a majority.

Enacted - Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 08:56, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Support
  1. As proposer. This is my attempt to act on Thryduulf's comments, or at least my understanding of them. --BDD (talk) 22:40, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  2. I think this works nicely and is indeed the right frame for the issue. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:43, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  3. Reluctantly. I don't think it's our role to articulate the level of consensus needed for any particular action when that level is not itself grounded in community policy. But I will vote for this because I think it's probably better than the status quo, and it is the level of consensus that I would expect if I were approaching this as a community member rather than a committee member. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 22:57, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  4. It's not perfect, but it's specific and closer to meeting the concerns expressed in the first motion. Primefac (talk) 23:34, 5 February 2021 (UTC)
  5. The wording is fine by me, it still achieves the goal of preventing disruption but also giving the community the ability to use it if they desire. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:51, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
  6. In essence, in small numbers of people discussing, if one person is upset they can essentially blackball the link...which I have no problem with really anyway Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:32, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
  7. While I'd rather have the other motion, I can live with this version too. Maxim(talk) 19:23, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  8. WormTT(talk) 07:33, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
Abstain
Discussion
  • I'm not going to oppose this, I'd prefer we pass something rather than nothing, but I still feel as though arbcom should not be in the equation as far as the linking aspect. I guess I understand what you're going for here, trying to leave a tool in place to allow speedy removal of harmful links, but as I mentioned above, linking to offsite harassment is already prohibited by policy. I therefore believe that we simply do not need to be (and further should not be) involved at any level in making website-specific rules as to what can and cannot be linked to. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:40, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
This is also my hesitation. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 09:20, 7 February 2021 (UTC)
"should not be included" does sound preferable to "may be removed", but I won't stand in the way here – better to do something now than nothing. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:41, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: American politics 2 (March 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Guy Macon at 17:13, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
American politics 2 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 Guy Macon

Regarding Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics 2#Motion: American politics 2 (1992 cutoff) (January 2021), if a user has received a DS-alert for post-1932 politics of the United States does that imply that they have been alerted regarding post-1992 politics of the United States?

Statement by Nosebagbear

This seems so inherently assumed to me, that it would actually be better for the arbs to note in their motion close that any DS regime that is modified to a subset will automatically carry over its awareness and so on. At worst, the editors are being careful about a slightly larger area than they need be. Obviously they wouldn't (fully) apply had the DS been extended (say, to American and Canadian politics), should an incident occur on the Canadian side, until they had been further made aware. Nosebagbear (talk) 18:47, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

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.

American politics 2: Clerk notes

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

American politics 2: Arbitrator views and discussion

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.

Clarification request: Discretionary sanctions (March 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by El C at 19:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
WP:ARBPIA4, specifically pertaining to: Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Palestine-Israel_articles_4#Clarification_request:_Palestine-Israel_articles_4_(June_2020)

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 El C

Following up on the query from Shrike (see conversation at: User talk:Shrike), I thought perhaps it would be prudent for the Committee to clarify whether logged warnings count as "sanctions being levied." I suspect what the answer to this is, but having it on the record is probably a good thing. As well, any elucidation Committee members can maybe provide on AWARE and topic area regulars, even if only in passing, would be welcome (sorry for the two-questions-in-one!). El_C 19:26, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

As an add-on, I'd like to note that I realize that AWARE says, in part, Warnings issued under earlier procedures are not sanctions, but, even if we were to take that excerpt out of whatever context, the distinction between logged and un-logged warnings isn't specified, anywhere that I've seen (possibly, I just missed it?). El_C 19:39, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
More pointedly about topic area regulars and the 12-month alert updates: say a topic area regular gets sanctioned (sanction sanction), but the sanctioning admin fails to notice that the alert update has lapsed by something like a month (or even two) — is the expectation then for the sanctions to therefore be rescinded? El_C 19:55, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
Okay, some of the things Kevin had said below align with what I thought and some less so, so now I don't really feel too bad for wasting the Committee's time with this. Regardless, there seems to be grey areas that could be tweaked so as to be better expressly defined. Whether this or that gets adjusted via Motion immediately, or is to be left for wider DS reform, that I obviously leave to the Committee's discretion and can offer no serious advise on. It's mostly all the same to me though, anyway. (Sorry, will try to tone down the usual indentyness — let's see if I can live up to that promise!) El_C 15:11, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
Kevin, right, that seems intuitive, as a general principle. But, in this case, the DS alert update was short by 10 days — also tying that to what Newyorkbrad says (i.e. "self-parody"). El_C 05:57, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
Kevin, no doubt — I'm often seen as WP:BURO-ing it up when it comes to being a stickler about the procedures of DS rules (though admittedly, with some lapses, here and there). I'll just note that, in this case, I did do the calculation in my head and was, like, it's about right, not gonna bother them with another DS alert quite yet — but I suppose I'll consult a calendar next time (because math = hard!). Anyway, definitely, sounds good. Looking forward to seeing what y'all come up with by way of DS reform (long overdue). El_C 15:52, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Shrike

  • I want to thank to El_C for bringing this up. In my opinion the logged warning is set of tools given by administrators as part of discretionary sanctions. So a user can receive one only if he aware there are sanctions in the area.
  • If we say that experienced editors may receive such warning/sanction without meeting WP:AWARE requirement so what the point of "In the last twelve months, the editor has given and/or received an alert for the area of conflict; or"? --Shrike (talk) 19:36, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
    @L235: I think it was not the question if the logged warning counts as awareness. As far as I understand the question can a logged warning be given without meeting WP:AWARE criteria? Shrike (talk) 21:27, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Wikieditor19920

Statement by Selfstudier

Not really au fait with the nitty gritty but I don't think anyone needs to see that notice more than once or even at all, especially when you have those in-your-face notices at the articles themselves. Regulars know the score and newcomers are given an easier treatment.Selfstudier (talk) 16:41, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Guerillero

We have IAR for a good reason and overturning a logged warning because someone was out of awareness by 10 days seems to be a good example of where the rules are completely disconnected from reality --Guerillero Parlez Moi 06:04, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

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.

Discretionary sanctions: Clerk notes

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

Discretionary sanctions: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Let me first say this: we know the awareness procedures are broken. They exist to avoid wikilawyering, but now there's almost a body of awareness law. My perspective is that a logged warning should count as awareness (many more things should count as awareness), but they perhaps don't currently. This is because under the procedures, warnings are not considered sanctions. Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Procedures § Dismissing an enforcement request says: When no actual violation occurred, or the consensus of uninvolved administrators is that exceptional circumstances are present, which would make the imposition of a sanction inappropriate, administrators may also close a report with no action; if appropriate, they may also warn or advise the editor being reported, in order to avoid further breaches. Warnings are therefore imposed when "the imposition of a sanction" is found to be "inappropriate" (or when "no actual violation occurred"). This suggests that warnings are not sanctions, and so currently do not count under the second point of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions § Awareness. I think it'd be reasonable to amend it to allow warnings to count as sanctions, but I'd prefer to do a broader DS reform first. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 21:12, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
    • I see. I'd be pretty uncomfortable logging a warning at AE against a user who could not be sanctioned at AE, and I would discourage the practice of doing so. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 21:30, 21 February 2021 (UTC)
    • Count me as a vote for no: it is inappropriate to log at the arbitration enforcement log a warning against a user for edits that they made when they were not technically aware of discretionary sanctions. Nothing precludes an unlogged warning, of course, but nothing should go in the AELOG for an unaware user. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 03:03, 26 February 2021 (UTC)
    • @El C: I hear what you're saying and I agree with it insofar as it's an argument to change the way awareness works (which I want to do too). But it's not a good interpretation of awareness as it exists now. Arbitration enforcement and particularly DS constitutes a delegation of extraordinary powers by this committee to administrators, and IAR does not generally apply (or, if it does, it applies to mitigate the actions that might be taken – ambiguity in our delegation of powers should be resolved in favor of a narrower delegation of powers). It definitely doesn't allow "just 10 days off", or "just a warning", or even "it was just 10 days off and it was just a warning" as a justification to take action outside of the procedure's scope, as ridiculous as the outcome might be. The good news is that a logged warning is functionally identical to an unlogged warning. But absolutely, please save your comments here and bring them up in the DS reform consultations – it will certainly be useful. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 08:30, 28 February 2021 (UTC)
  • I'm pretty reluctant to weigh in on an AWARENESS issue given that will be a major focus of DS reform. Quite simply AWARENESS is broken. I know I keep talking about it but I do think it will happen. I should note that quite truthfully I have no intent of leading this particular effort. However, I know some of my colleagues, including the one who posted here, are quite motivated by this topic and so I expect something will happen this year (and hopefully start to happen, if only internally at first, soon. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 16:24, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
  • DS reform is coming up soon on our docket. Fixing how awareness works will be a major part of it. Awareness was originally meant as a check and balance, so that unsuspecting editors didn't suddenly find themselves blocked under byzantine rules they didn't know. That was a noble goal, and we still need some kind of way to let new users know about the rules. But now awareness is used as a sort of cudgel, a get of jail free card, an excuse to wikilawyer.
This particular issue? Well, again, this will probably get reformed. But at the moment, I am of a mind that a warning is not a sanction. What does a warning really do? Not much. It has no actual effect on your editing. Its meant only as a "knock it off kid or you'll go see the principal". Now, I don't think we should just start handing out warnings in place of awareness. But for egregious cases, I think it can make sense to skip the awareness, especially if they're already aware of other DS or clearly know about the functioning of ArbCom. I think the rules here should be flexible, as the harder our rules, the stronger the Wikilawyers, and the bigger the bureacracy. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 02:23, 24 February 2021 (UTC)
  • About twelve years ago, I made an innocent-seeming comment that we shouldn't sanction editors for violating newly imposed discretionary-sanctions rules if they didn't know that the rules existed. As Kevin observes, this common-sense suggestion has developed into a "body of awareness law" that verges on self-parody, and I oppose adding any further complexity to it. The basic precept remains what it has always been, which is that if an editor might not be aware of the rule they violated, give them the benefit of the doubt and explain the rule, and see if there's another violation before moving ahead with a sanction. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:31, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: A Nobody (March 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Beeblebrox at 22:21, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
A Nobody 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 Beeblebrox

This is basically a procedural thing. This case was accepted, and opened, but not really opened because the user in question indicated they could not participate. They committee took the unusual step of banning them before the case got underway so they could not return to editing without participating in the case. That was nearly 11 years ago. They were banned by the community a short time after that, for socking to avoid the case. They have been confirmed by checkusers to have evaded the two bans. (I'm not sure how it works when someone is banned both by the community and arbcom, but that appears to be what happened here? Perhaps one of the arbs who was on the committee at that time can clarify that?) To get unbanned they would first have to appeal to arbcom, and if the committee found that compelling, it would have to got to a community discussion, rendering this forever-open case somewhat moot. This case therefore need not be held open indefinitely and can simply be closed without further action.

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.

A Nobody: Clerk notes

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

A Nobody: Arbitrator views and discussion

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.

Amendment request: India-Pakistan (April 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Interstellarity at 11:26, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
India-Pakistan arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Clauses to which an amendment is requested
  1. Standard discretionary sanctions
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request
Information about amendment request
  • Standard discretionary sanctions
  • This clause concerns India-Pakistan sanctions. I would like the arbitrators and the community to consider loosening the sanctions to a certain year like we just did for WP:AP2. For example, we could only sanction post-1996 politics which was 25 years ago. On Wikipedia, we try to keep sanctions to a minimum. I hope this move would be positive to Wikipedia so we can maximise editing freedom.

Statement by Interstellarity

 Clerk note: moved from the arbitrators discussion section. This comment is in reply to Primefac's comment in that section. Dreamy Jazz talk to me | my contributions 14:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by SpacemanSpiff

Just chiming in as I saw NYB's comment pop up on my watchlist. I don't think a scope reduction is needed. The scope was increased because the disruption wasn't restricted to just the India-Pakistan dispute, and also general sanctions from the community (e.g. WP:GS/Caste) were added under this for the sake of convenience. To answer NYB's point about sanctions being too broad, please see the log at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log#India-Pakistan 2 for 2020 or 2019 and you're likely to see only very narrow sanctions except for a few cases. I was one of those who complained when the scope was increased from just the dispute to what it is now, but I'm quite happy to say that I was wrong that time and the current scope of ARBIPA is actually beneficial to the 'pedia. I believe that most of us who admin this particular area keep the scope of sanctions to the level necessary and do not just apply a broad brush unless it is absolutely necessary. It would be good if a bot could notify those who admin this area so that you get more opinions on this. —SpacemanSpiff 13:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Guerillero

I urge arbs to look at the DS log instead of the 14 year old case when determining the scope for DS. As for broad topic bans, sometimes it is best to remove an editor from the entire area than to play whack-a-mole across topics --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 14:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Nosebagbear

Normally I'd agree with this, as well as perhaps slightly narrowing the constraints (or enabling either a narrower or the broader one to be used), I do think given we have an ongoing DS consideration, it should be limited to there. Even if it delays it by a month or two, best to handle it cohesively. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by MJL

Just wanted to note for the record that Chess are having an ongoing discussion about this specific DS authorization here. I also wanted to ping Chess to ensure he sees this. –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 07:05, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Uanfala

I only occasionally venture into those topic areas, but my impression has been that the disruption is not at all restricted to events of the last 25 years. The bloodbaths that take place over current events are the same sort of bloodbaths that occur over the Kashmir War since 1947, which are the same as the ones occurring over Mughal history, the same as the ones occurring over the events around the advent of Islam over a millennium ago. It's not the current relevance, it's the cultural significance that works people up. – Uanfala (talk) 13:00, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Chess

I'd like to thank MJL for pinging me here.

The biggest issue with the sanctions as currently written is they apply to ALL articles relating to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to putatively address the India-Pakistan conflict. It's far too overbroad and it's evidence of a double standard. For example, despite the numerous conflicts and issues in the US or primarily based there, there is no authorization of DS for all US related topics broadly construed. Instead there's September 11 and post 1992 US politics because it would be considered overkill to put the US under discretionary sanctions broadly construed. Same for how with the Northern Ireland conflict sanctions are limited to only that conflict and the Arab-Israeli conflict has its sanctions limited to just that conflict.

We need to narrow these sanctions significantly in where they are authorized, although not remove them entirely as they're still necessary for some areas. MJL over at DS review gave a good wording of what the sanctions are meant to apply to (political, geographical, ethnic, religious, sociological, and cultural disputes related to those countries) and that would definitely be a more preferable wording to broad sanctions over all India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan related articles.

While currently there appears to be a norm (according to the discussions I've had at least) of only applying discretionary sanctions to conduct actually relating to the aforementioned disputes (let's call it PCREGS since we need more acronyms), I don't believe that's a good implementation of discretionary sanctions. First of all, we shouldn't have singular admins deciding by fiat what topics discretionary sanctions needs to be applied to. That's the job of ArbCom or alternatively the community (in cases of community authorized discretionary sanctions). Secondly, relying on unwritten norms to decide what topics are "actually" under sanctions is unfair, unjust, and goes against the fundamental principle that editors should be aware of what discretionary sanctions are before they are enforced against them. It can lead to problems when enforcing administrators have different ideas of what the unwritten norms are as well.

If it turns out later that discretionary sanctions need to be broadened or there are areas not covered by the existing wording, there is nothing preventing an amendment request or asking the community for general sanctions on whatever topic needs it.

For what it's worth though, I disagree with adding a fixed cutoff date for Indian and Pakistani politics. Many current conflicts stem from ancient historical disputes, for example the Babri Masjid where one of the primary justifications for its destruction was the belief that an Indian temple existed on that site before the mosque was built. There's still a lot of tension over things that happened thousands of years ago. While in the United States "old" disputes aren't really that controversial in India and Pakistan many still are. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 04:36, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Based on what I've seen at DS review I've noticed that some admins have raised the point that it can be difficult to craft narrower topic bans due to a lack of experience editing in the area. While I wish I was able to say this at DS review, I think it would be a good idea to standardize some sort of phrasing for narrower topic bans so rather than admins being left to individually craft narrow sanctions (done unevenly and sparingly; admins have often demonstrated an unwillingness or inability to do so) they could instead choose some kind of ARBCOM approved wording of the areas in question. Even if arbs are unwilling to reduce the area of the DS authorization admins would likely benefit from being able to apply prescoped tbans. Chess (talk) (please use {{reply to|Chess}} on reply) 19:31, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Shankargb

I would oppose this request and recommend declining it.

Just like all pages related to Eastern Europe and Balkans and all pages related to Horn of Africa are under Arbcom sanctions because their histories date back to thousands of years ago, there is nothing surprising about keeping India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan under the same sanctions. Shankargb (talk) 05:36, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Vanamonde

Widespread, persistent, and exceptionally disruptive behavior of the sort that requires discretionary sanctions occurs on a far greater range of topics than content related to the last 25 years. Within the scope of current ARBIPA DS, these topics include, at a minimum; the Indo-Pakistani conflict (1947-present, arguably beginning earlier); religious violence (spanning many centuries, if not millennia); caste-related matters (likewise, spanning centuries, if not millennia); and content about the origins of humanity in South Asia (a very long time indeed). The scope of the current DS regime is certainly very broad, but unless ARBCOM wants to craft a number of different DS to replace the current regime, the current scope seems entirely appropriate to me. Vanamonde (Talk) 22:41, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek:, the final decision in this case authorizes discretionary sanctions for "all pages related to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan", not just "Indian AND Pakistan". I find your statement quite confusing. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:25, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
@CaptainEek: We're in agreement that messing with these sanctions at the moment would be the wrong thing to do. My point was that day-to-day implementation does not focus on the Indo-Pakistani conflict. It's the most well-known sub-topic, but if you look at the enforcement log, content directly related to that conflict is at issue only in a minority of cases. Caste-related conflict and Indian politics unrelated to Pakistan both require a lot of sanctions, and there's other minor topics, too. I say this not to change your decision here, but because if we're considering revisions, ARBCOM needs to be aware of the entire spectrum of disputes these sanctions cover. For the record, I've already made this point at the consultation page. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:17, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by JzG

Sure. I suggest 1947, since that's when the trouble kicked off. Guy (help! - typo?) 20:43, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

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

  • Interstellarity, is there any particular date range that you want us to look at, or are you just throwing out an idea and seeing if there's interest? (please do not ping on reply) Primefac (talk) 12:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Awaiting statements. As a preliminary observation (which I have made before), it may be that a better change might not be to change the authorized scope of these discretionary sanctions, but how they are applied in particular cases. For example, imagine an editor who consistently has trouble editing neutrally regarding disputes between India and Pakistan. That editor might, if a warning proved unsuccessful, be topic-banned from editing about disputes between India and Pakistan. Instead, these days that editor might find himself or herself topic-banned from "all editing about India, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, broadly construed." That topic-ban might be broader than necessary, as it bars the editor from vast numbers of articles that are about India or Pakistan but do not implicate disputes between them. As a comparison, imagine if editors sanctioned under "American Politics" were typically banned from "all editing about the United States, broadly construed" which might exclude virtually every topic that editor is knowledgeable about or wishes to edit about. Just a thought for the admins who, as I appreciate, take on the not-easy task of implementing these sanctions. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I am certainly open to this idea but think discussion, at least for now, should happen over at the DS community consultation where there has already been discussion about the scope of this sanction. Barkeep49 (talk) 13:30, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I am open to the idea of adjusting the scope of this DS topic area, as it seems to be considerably broader than the actual disruption. Reading through the case, the disruption appears to be limited to religious and cultural nationalism in these two countries – if that's the case it doesn't seem to make sense that topic bans would automatically apply to all aspects of these two countries. Rather than moving this discussion over to the broader DS consultation, I would prefer to gather more input here as to the scope of this particular remedy and whether it remains suitable. – bradv🍁 13:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I echo the call for this to be raised at the DS review or handled afterwards. Even if this specific DS topic is not discussed in depth at the DS review, the outcome of the review could have an impact on (for example) the scope of DS authorizations or other issues that have a bearing on this request. (It also might not, but the timing right now is somewhat poor.) Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:36, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with NYB's thoughts here. The topic area is about dispute between India AND Pakistan, not India OR Pakistan. So I think being careful how the sanctions are applied may be the more useful solution. I don't think limiting the date range would be as helpful as in AP2, given that the issues are fairly recent (and the very existence of the nations is recent). I don't see that there is any part of India-Pakistan relations that is not still highly contentious. Given that, and our re-examination of DS in general, I decline to change it at the moment. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:02, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
    • @Vanamonde93: Afghanistan is part of the case, yes, but I read this clarification as focusing on the India-Pakistan part, and the day-to-day implementation focuses on that part. Regardless, even considering Afghanistan, my conclusion is the same: the date range feels appropriate, the issues are all very contentious, and I see no benefit in trying to create more tailored sanctions over broad sanctions. And DS are up for reform anyway, so I think now is the wrong time to expend energy on trying to change this particular DS. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:43, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: Race and intelligence (May 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Dennis Brown at 00:35, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
Race and intelligence 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 Dennis Brown

Question/request regarding Extended Confirmed Protection WP:ECP and a case at WP:AE where it is being considered for the article Race and Intelligence [2]. I do not see RI listed at the ECP page, so this may be a problem. It seems like a really good idea given the sheer volume of problems the article has had, particularly in the political environment of the last year, so the two are intersecting more than usual. It is likely that I would impose ECP if it is either proper to do so now (clarification) or if not, if the committee would extend ECP to include RI topics. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:35, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

  • Got it. The rules are definitely muddy on that page, and I use my words more than the tools when possible. Assuming I do use ECP, I would want it to be a AE restriction so it can be reviewed formally once it expires, btw. Thanks for the prompt replies. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 20:38, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by MjolnirPants

It's clear that ECP has been used sparingly, and only on specific topics. However, the request at WP:AE which prompted this request for clarification is a prime example of why ECP should be more widely available. Not because it's needed on less contentious topics, but because there are more topics which are just as contentious, which could benefit from certain pages getting ECPed. To be clear, I support Dennis' suggestion at AE that this be applied temporarily with the option to extend it if it helps. I understand that this is a request for clarity, but I also recognize that mere fact that such a request is needed shows that Arbcom is faced with a decision now on exactly how to clarify this. A response (other than to decline this request) requires that Arbcom choose between requiring a formal request to extend ECP outside of the original topics, or if such a decision can be left to the admins at AE. While I'm leery of the notion that any admin can apply ECP to any page at their own judgement, I think a consensus at AE should be sufficient to decide a request for temporary (or indefinite, but conditional) ECP. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

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.

Race and intelligence: Clerk notes

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

Race and intelligence: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Are you asking about the one article Race and intelligence? If so, you can ECP protect it yourself, either as an ordinary admin action or as a discretionary sanction. I see the AE discussion mentions ECPing the talk page as well; DS allows that too, but since there's a discussion at AE I would not unilaterally do so unless the AE discussion is in favor. I don't see anything else for the Committee to do here. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:05, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
    • In the related AE thread, Politrukki makes the technical point that The remedy authorises using standard DS only for editors who fail to adhere to principles outlined in remedy 5.2 (emphasis in original), and that page restrictions are not authorized under that remedy. However, this is a flawed understanding of our decision. The remedy was enacted in 2011, before standard wording for discretionary sanctions was adopted. Under the discretionary sanctions procedure, page restrictions are authorized in all areas where DS is authorized (Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#Page_restrictions). Additionally, the procedure explicitly provides that Where there is a conflict between any individual provision authorising standard discretionary sanctions for an area of conflict and any provision in the standard discretionary sanctions procedure, the provision in the standard procedure will control. (Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#Authorisation). I think it's unambiguous that page restrictions are authorized in the R&I area just like in any other DS authorization area. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:53, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Dennis Brown: I understand your confusion based on what is written at WP:ECP. What is written there are places where entire topics are under 1RR. However, that is not made clear at ECP and should be clarified. I agree with L235 that you may, as either a regular admin action or a DS action, extend ECP to either or both the article and the talk page and further agree that doing so at the talk page could best be achieved, at this point, following discussion at the current AE request. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:22, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  • My reading of the May 2016 motions would suggest that ECP has been used in the past as a discretionary sanction in the past outside of cases that explicitly called for it. For the sake of clarity, I don't see a problem with the proposed course of action here. Maxim(talk) 14:31, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree: no objections from me to applying ECP. --BDD (talk) 15:44, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  • No objection here. Primefac (talk) 15:11, 6 May 2021 (UTC).
  • Agreed, ECP seems a fine and reasonable action here, either as a DS action or an individual action. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:00, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  • I also agree. And I believe we've resolved the question we were asked and this is ready to close. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:01, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification request: Antisemitism in Poland (May 2021)

Original discussion

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.

Initiated by Girth Summit at 15:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Case or decision affected
Antisemitism in Poland arbitration case (t) (ev / t) (w / t) (pd / t)
Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Antisemitism in Poland#Article sourcing expectations

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 Girth Summit

The background to this request is in the lengthy discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#The Volunteer (book), and there is some further discussion at User talk:DGG#Request for help with a request for clarification. I am not asking for the committee to make a decision on the specific source under discussion at those locations; however, the discussions seem to have reached something of an impasse because of people's differing understandings of how we should interpret the remedy's wording. I am therefore asking the committee to consider three questions:

  1. Is it within the scope of the committee to impose restrictions on the use of certain types of sources within a particular topic area, as this remedy does? I have no view on this point, but the question has been raised in the above-mentioned discussions, so I ask that it be considered and, if it is found to be beyond the committee's scope, that the remedy be vacated.
  2. Is the remedy still needed to prevent disruption? Again, I have no view on this, but if the committee feels that the restriction is no longer required, I request that it be vacated.
  3. If the committee finds that the remedy is legitimate and that it remains necessary, I ask for some clarification of how administrators should interpret the phrase 'academically focused books'.

In the above-linked discussions, a number of different possible interpretations of that phrase have been put forward. Some have suggested that its intention is to allow the use of any book which is written about an academic subject (such as history). Others have argued that it allows the use of any book that is written using academic methodologies. I myself have interpreted it more narrowly, believing that the intention was to restrict sources to work intended for an academic audience, which would usually (but not quite always) have been written by an academic and published by an academic press. It seems unlikely to me that the committee would have intended to restrict any periodicals aside from peer-reviewed scholarly journals, but then to allow the use of popular histories and/or heroic biographies which, however well-researched, are not 'academically focused' in my understanding of the phrase.

Please note that I have intentionally not named any other editors as parties to this request, simply to avoid giving anyone any unnecessary alarm. I have no reason to believe that any of the parties to the discussions I've linked to are acting in anything but good faith, we have simply reached an impasse because of our different interpretations of this particular phrase. I will notify all users involved in the discussions about this request. GirthSummit (blether) 15:40, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

I'll respond briefly to Volunteer Marek's point about the Fairweather book: it is a mischaracterisation of the linked discussion to suggest that the book's publisher is the only (or even the main) reason why people have argued that it is not academically focused. Anyone can read through that discussion if they choose to; I suggest that we keep this clarification request focused on the wider issue of the remedy and its wording, and resist any temptation to rehash those disagreements here. GirthSummit (blether) 17:21, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks Barkeep49 for the ping. Thanks also to the many editors who have contributed to this discussion, and to the Arbs for reading through and considering everyone's thoughts patiently, I think this has been a really illuminating discussion. However, I agree with Piotrus's recent comment that the proposed new motions do not really address my question 3, which is really what sparked this request for clarification: it does not help us understand what is meant by 'academically focused books'. Periodical sources are well-defined - 'peer-reviewed scholarly journals' is not open to very much interpretation, but in the discussion that led to this there was essentially an impasse about what books were acceptable within the remedy. If this restriction is to remain in place by any of these proposed motions, I'd be grateful for some form of verbiage to help guide editors and administrators as to how that phrase is intended to be read - is it about the book's subject matter, the author and their methodologies, or the book's intended audience? Or, is the conclusion of this discussion that it is about an undefinable combination of factors, which means that an RfC may be required each time there is disagreement? If this last possibility is the case, it would be worth noting that somewhere to alleviate Piotrus's concern that he may one day be dragged to AE for use of a source that another editor sees as prohibited - admins acting in AE should be made aware that it's open to interpretation, and that case-by-case discussion is required rather than knee-jerk enforcement. GirthSummit (blether) 05:57, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49 Sorry, I wasn't trying to twist your arm into doing something you've already declined to do (well, not trying very hard). If the committee isn't able to offer any further clarification of the intended meaning of that phrase, I can accept that position, and will continue to act with caution as you advise. GirthSummit (blether) 18:34, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by El_C

First of all, kudos to Girth Summit for the no-fault design of this ARCA (and thanks for letting me know about it). I see you! Now, I don't presume to speak for the Committee, about WP:APLRS or whatever (except when I do, often!), but questions 1 + 2 just seem like an obvious yes to me. It is question 3 that is really of interest here, I think. Elucidation from the Committee on this would serve well to better editorial practices, content-wise, and admin ones, enforcement-wise.

Finally, returning to questions 1+2: it is no secret that I strongly believe that the darkest chapter in our species' history demands WP:MEDRS-like sourcing requirements (APLRS' community-passed sourcing requirement counterpart). I think this was well within Committee discretion to mandate, and one of the best and most important Arbitration decisions bar none, in fact. Especially, considering the intensive whitewashing efforts by the Polish state, as can be seen in its Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance. El_C 16:15, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Great post, Guy. 👍 Like. I resisted the usual WP:TLDR impulses and was rewarded with probably the best statement in this ARCA thus far (it'll be hard to top). El_C 15:38, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping, Barkeep49, I sorta forgot about this ARCA and had no idea there was a Motion to repeal. I suppose my response to this Motion is that there's basically a continuum with too possibilities: 1. a not needed source of contention. 2. a source of contention because it's needed. Obviously, I lean 2, but if Committee members lean 1 and/or are just shying from asserting ArbCom's authority (a recent and disturbing trend, I note unrelatedly), then it is what it is. But I will say this: if this repeal happens and this ends up blowing up, I'm unlikely to take it upon myself to help in too significant of a way, for all of these reasons and more. El_C 19:08, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
Piotrus, I think you're sidestepping the point. From an enforcement perspective, I approached the APL sourcing requirement as needing to be invoked by editors in order for it to come into effect. If nobody minds something, nobody minds something (tautology). Anyway, much of the remedy not needed argument seems counter-factual to me, because how do you truly account for its influence, say, in quiet editorial work? In the final analysis, we would be foolish to look at the English Wikipedia in a vacuum, disconnected from the stance and actions of the modern Polish state about this, with all the unique challenges that bring. This isn't a binary one side wants to maximize, other side wants to minimize Polish culpability in the destruction of the European Jews and-let-the-scholarship-decide matter. It just isn't. El_C 09:18, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
About the scope of ArbCom's authority: maybe I'm the one who is out of step with current thinking, but (to simplify) my thinking has always been that the representative democracy of the elected Committee was designed to deal with matters that are too nuanced or too research-intensive or just plainly too contentious for the direct democracy of the community to resolve. I think we all know that APLRS would probably not pass an RfA if it gets desysoped — I know, kind of a dumb analogy, because the community didn't !vote for APLRS, but it did vote (vote-vote) for the Committee (thus, bringing it all back around). El_C 03:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Piotrus, it all adds to up toward culpability or lack thereof, not necessarily directly, but in more nuanced ways. So, a bit of abstract thinking is called for for correctly generalizing major tendencies and trends. On APLRS as anxiety-inducing: I've clarified on multiple occasions that APLRS would not bring about immediate sanctions whenever it is invoked in a page. It is not that kind of sanction, and in that sense, it is closer to Consensus required than 1RR or TBAN violations (at least that's how I've been treating it). From an enforcement view, it is not a blunt instrument. It cannot be that.
Again, I return to the concerted efforts of the modern Polish state, which few here seem to want to touch on. But that's a mistake. The Polish state is very committed. Other countries also espouse WP:FRINGE content, too. But a country, say, like Iran (twice the population of Poland), for example, does so to a far lesser extent, I find. And yet, we have WP:GS/IRANPOL (which I helped create, so I'm familiar with it more than in passing), which just goes to show the seriousness of the problem. Removing the governor is a mistake, then, in my view.
Because also, once APLRS is removed, it may be very challenging to restore, even if it proves sorely needed (which I suspect it will). Once removed, my sense is that the deck will be very much stacked against its restoration. Note that I understand an ArbCom-directed community re-confirmation of APLRS as an effective "removal" (i.e. RfA of someone who got desysoped, as in the analogy above). El_C 16:40, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Volunteer Marek, I wasn't talking about press freedom indicators, because obviously Poland is just a bad dream compared to the nightmare that is Iran. I meant, the concerted efforts of espousing historical revisionism, especially outside of the country's own borders (at least as affecting the English-speaking world and, hence, the English Wikipedia). El_C 17:20, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Paul, I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure how practical it is. And, further, I'd emphasize that APLRS is needed as a more focused remedy for that topic area, for all of the reasons I've outlined above (which I'll spare you the repetition of). El_C 18:06, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
Piotrus, please don't use 'serial killer'-like to describe any editor — even banned ones, even Icewhiz. That is totally inappropriate, and a BLP violation. Anyway, I mentioned before how I felt Icewhiz [et al.?] was more of a symptom (of key changes to Polish law and to the aims of the Polish state), but I don't really wish to expound and expand on that in this forum (if at all).
You say espousing FRINGE/historical revisionism on the part of the Polish state is debatable. Well, I don't think it's debatable, but I'm not inclined to debate it right here right now, either. I'll just link to Amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance again, which I think speaks for itself.
Regardless, please don't draw me into a back and fourth here, Piotrus. I don't really want to do that (content weeds, etc.). Finally, about APLRS violations not being immediately-sanctionable — if it's a problem, that's something which the Committee could easily resolve by amending the remedy to account for that extra softness. El_C 03:34, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
I think the "reliable-source consensus required" Alternate motion is a good compromise. Instead of APLRS serving as a blanket prohibition for all related pages, it can be more surgically applied (upon request and so on). Not to jinx it, but it looks like this motion is likely to pass, which is good. So, I want to strengthen Committee members who have voted for it and ones who may yet do so. This will wrap up this highly contentious issue in a way I find satisfactory. And unexpectedly creative, so kudos. El_C 11:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by François Robere

First of all thanks to GirthSummit for opening this and notifying everyone.

  1. I suggest anyone who is less familiar with the case re/acquaint themselves with the evidence regarding problematic sourcing that led to APLRS being enacted.
  2. Sourcing continues to be an issue in the TA: [3][4][5][6][7][8]. There are also ancillary discussions on contemporary Poland: [9][10].
  3. I recommend that the restriction be kept, and expanded with the following:
  1. Editors removing a source for failing to comply with this restriction must specify the reason it fails to comply. Sources thus removed may not be reinstated without prior discussion.
    • This is meant to encourage discussion and prevent edit warring, but in a way that's flexible enough to keep the process short and make "stonewalling" difficult (thanks to editors who helped hone this).
  2. Repeated removal of compliant sources under a pretense of non-compliance is equivalent to repeated insertion of non-compliant sources.
    • This will not prevent editors from removing compliant sources for legitimate reasons (OR, DUE, BLP...), only from abusing APLRS (thanks to Paul Siebert for proposing this).

François Robere (talk) 16:54, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Added explanation. François Robere (talk) 22:30, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @Barkeep49: I agree regarding representing minority viewpoints, and I don't believe we've done a disservice to such by sticking with these restriction. However, fringe positions tend to be minority positions, and those we are trying to filter out.
    Regarding Glaukopis: "only peer reviewed sources should be used" does not imply that "peers reviewed sources should be used". Glaukopis may present itself as equal to other academic publications, but there's no getting away from its inherent problems and low standing in academia, and ejecting it from this sensitive TA based on those was a clear application of APLRS: only high quality sources, only reputable institution, and not every fringe publication set up by 'renegade historians' with the express intent of promoting like views. François Robere (talk) 22:15, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    • @Barkeep49: Add Guy, Ealdgyth and Sarah to the list of admins who know the TA and have approved of this remedy. François Robere (talk) 22:19, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
      • @L235 and Barkeep49: If you could review my previous suggestions (in block quotes, above) in light of your new drafts. The suggestions are meant to encourage discussion and prevent edit warring, "stonewalling" and GAMING of the rules:
        1. Mandatory consensus prior to reinstatement of sources would be beneficial, but it also opens up avenues for "stonewalling". I opted for a more flexible "discussion needed" to prevent that, though accepting RSN consensus could be similarly useful.
        2. Requiring a specific justification for removing a source is meant to prevent mass removals and GAMING. The level of specificity doesn't need to be high to be useful: for example, instead of an edit summary saying just "APLRS" or "not APLRS compliant", one could simply specify "news source, not APLRS-compliant" or "not peer reviewed (see APLRS)".
        3. Equating the removal of compliant sources with the insertion of non-compliant ones is also meant to prevent mass removals and GAMING. The rationale is that repeated removal of compliant sources creates a similar bias to repeated inserting of non-compliant ones, so it should be treated as similarly disruptive. François Robere (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @Maxim: "Exceptional claims" are already covered by the regular guidelines, and we routinely incorporate the concept into how we read APLRS. I don't think it's a good idea to shift the emphasis from general practice to that, since the definition is ambiguous and could result in abuse, without much improvement in the overall quality of writing. What we could do is exempt non-controversial or uncontested details, but again that's something we already do, though less frequently.
    Overall APLRS is not that difficult to abide by, but it does get difficult if you've something to prove. François Robere (talk) 22:15, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
    • @Maxim: We're at a point where the back of the dispute has been broken Hardly. A short while after WP:APL was concluded three other editors were blocked or T-banned;[11][12][13][14] in June another one was blocked (the imposing admin, who was knee-deep in the TA, has since been desysopped);[15] in August an I-ban was imposed between three editors;[16] in February an editor was blocked T-banned for canvassing;[17] and by March one editor had received so many warnings (including for a dedicated attack page [18]), that an admin had literally asked "how many times do I need to tell you?".[19] This dispute is so far from "broken" it's not even funny. François Robere (talk) 11:21, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
    • @Maxim and CaptainEek:
      1. The "problems" with the remedy only apply to corner cases like The Volunteer, since these are the ones that you see discussed. What you don't see is the long list of blogs, websites, SPS, politicians, and other unqualified sources which would've been fought for under RS, but are summarily removed under APLRS. Consider not only what we argue about, but what we don't.
      2. Consider, for example, the technical specifications of a Polish naval ship from WWII... any reliable source for naval history should do Yes, it should. We've discussed it before, and there's little reason not to see eg. Jane's or Lloyd's as "reputable publishers" under APLRS.
      3. Regarding "uncontroversial facts": How do you define "uncontroversial"? Witold Pilecki being a "volunteer" is pretty uncontroversial in Poland, as are various perceptions of Polish exceptionalism regarding Jews; we can find any number of sources that promote these ideas and would be accepted under RS, but not under APLRS.
      4. I don't think APLRS should be used to "blank" pages, nor do I think it requires it. The fact that a couple of editors have done it isn't reason enough to jettison the entire policy. Instead, just instruct editors to use {{unreliable sources}} for a reasonable length of time (30-60 days?) so the article can be re-sourced. François Robere (talk) 14:24, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by My very best wishes

On #1. I believe that any sourcing/content restrictions should be decided by community, just as WP:MEDRS was developed. The discussion would help to properly decide if such restrictions are actually needed and improve the quality of such restrictions. This sourcing restriction by Arbcom arbitrary changes Wikipedia:Verifiability, one of the "five pillars". Is not it something for community?

On #2: Subject areas are different. Yes, I can understand the rationale behind the WP:MEDRS ("Wikipedia's articles are not meant to provide medical advice. Nevertheless, they are widely used among those seeking health information. For this reason, all biomedical information must be based...".), even though I do not necessarily agree with it. Now, let's imagine not allowing journalistic sources and original peer reviewed articles (as WP:MEDRS does) in the area of history and politics. That would be a disaster. This is because many notable but less significant sub-subjects are covered only (or mostly) in such excluded sources. Sure, if there are scholarly and non-scholarly sources, then the scholarly ones are preferred, but this is already written in the policy.

On #3 (@CaptainEek) and #2. Yes, we must use the best sources. But the best sources depend on the specific narrowly defined subject or question that needs to be described. For example, the best and most detailed biography of person X can be a book written for the general public by someone without a PhD degree (just like the "Volunteer"). Moreover, a specific question or aspect can frequently be described in detail only in a few journalistic publications and mentioned in passing in several books. But with such sourcing restriction, such content simply can not be included to a page, even though it frequently should. Furthermore, it is important to use not only the best sources, but all RS on the subject (we are not talking about questionable sources here). By removing certain types of RS, we betray WP:NPOV and make our pages more biased. I agree with DGG.

  • But as a practical matter, this is just a too complex remedy to be useful on AE. All highly complex editing restrictions are ineffective. They must be very simple and understandable for users to be enforced on AE.
  • @Barkeep49. I am not sure how one can answer "yes" to #2 without clarifying question #3. For example, Beyond My Ken (see below) gives a reasonable interpretation of Arbcom wording on #3. Well, if that is what Arbcom wanted, then fine, let's follow this interpretation when someone will be reported to WP:AE for using self-published sources by academics.
  • With regard to #3, we must know what did you mean by "academically focused" (there are many alternative interpretations, including one by BMK below) and by "reputable institutions". Do such "reputable institutions" include reputable journals, like NYT? If this is not clear even to VM, then how that can be clear to other participants? They need to know exactly what they can not use in order to avoid sanctions on AE.
  • However, if you and other arbitrators find it difficult to answer question #3 and believe this should be determined by discussions in community (as you seem to imply), then it should be framed as an RfC and be supported (or not) by the community in a properly organized discussion.
  • As about diffs, I can only give these two links: [25] and [26] because they involve myself. This is the case when such editing restrictions were improperly claimed to cover another subject area that is not about Poland. The result: (a) I simply stopped editing all affected pages to avoid the trouble; (b) the affected pages were degraded by excluding well-sourced and relevant content [27], [28].
  • @Maxim. While there is a justification for making sourcing restrictions for medical claims (what if people are looking for a medical advice?), there is absolutely nothing special about subjects related to Poland, and therefore there is no justification for treating this subject any differently from other hot political topics (Armenian genocide, ARBPIA, USA politics, etc.). This is an attempt to fix behavior problems by ruling on content. Arbitrary narrowing the types of sources is ruling on content because this excludes a number of reliably sourced claims from WP pages, simply because such claims were not mentioned as less significant in academic books. For example, this edit by Bob not snob removes a lot of non-controversial and relevant information that should be included to the page. But it well may be that such info does not appear in academic books, but only in good RS denoted as "Tier 2" here. As another example, making MEDRS restrictions (instead of WP:Verifiability) for the wider area of biology would not allow covering a number of narrowly defined, but notable subjects (like many Category:Human proteins) because MEDRS disallows using original peer reviewed articles. In all such cases the restrictions on sourcing do not "protect" content. To the contrary, they degrade content. WP:Verifiability is a key policy, and it is very thoughtfully written.
@Maxim. Yes, using "high-quality sources for exceptional claims" is much better, but this is already in WP:RS. So, if you are saying "Let's enforce WP:verifiability in this subject area", then I think it would be an impeccable remedy. That is if admins on AE are ready to enforce it. But as a practical matter, I think only obvious misrepresentation of sources can be easily enforced on AE or ANI.
  • I think the discussion below clarified a couple of points:
  1. As nicely illustrated by VM (last part of his comments) and Nigel Ish, one needs all types of RS to create a good page in this subject area, just as in all other subject areas.
  2. Most part of the extremely long RSNB discussion here was not about if the book qualify as RS (yes, it certainly does), but if it satisfy your sourcing restriction (no, it probably does not). That creates a cognitive dissonance: why we can not use a source that we must use per WP:NPOV, WP:verifiability and of course WP:IAR? My very best wishes (talk) 02:29, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
  • The sourcing restriction by Valereee [29]: For any disputed content, only scholarship from the past 20 years can be used as sourcing, with preference for the past 10 years I think it is much better than the restriction by Arbcom for Poland because: (a) it is only for one specific page and can be lifted by the imposing admin at any time; and (b) it applies only to "disputed content" (this is a huge difference). Nevertheless, as any other sourcing restriction, it is highly arbitrary and open to alternative interpretations, which makes it difficult to use for sanctioning someone on AE. My very best wishes (talk) 15:32, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Replies to comments by others
I agree with Nigel Ish and FOARP that overemphasizing "academic" sources is not a good idea, and especially on history and politics. Some of them, especially in countries with suppressed media, are revisionist sources and must be avoided. And even certain popular science sources (not all of them of course) can be actually better than so called "academic sources" given that we are developing an information resource for the general public rather than for scientists.
@Beyond My Ken. This is an excellent suggestion, but yet another illustration that sourcing restrictions can not be easily formalized to be enforced on AE. Who is an expert or even an "academic"? A revisionist historian like Zhukov or Arch Getty? One can reasonably argue they are not experts. A journalist writing an opinion piece? One can reasonably argue that many journalists are experts on political subjects. And without clear answer to #3 this whole remedy does not make sense.
@Buidhe. This is good example. No one suggests giving equal weight to all sources. However, there is no reason to exclude anything referenced to New York Times. If there are common popular beliefs about something, that is worth mentioning on the page.
@JzG. If the book "Volunteer" represents "a significant viewpoint, at least in respect of Pilecki" and therefore should be included per WP:NPOV (I agree), then how is the remedy "delivers exactly that"? According to the remedy, this book should arguably be excluded.
@Levivich. I think your classification of sources is reasonable. So why we are going to disqualify good sources from your Tier 2?
@Bob not snob advocates making edits as he does. But was his edit really an improvement of WP content? This is a massive removal of mostly non-controversial and correct information, over the objections by other contributors, simply because it was sourced to a page of Institute of National Remembrance and other potentially non-compliant sources such as Der Spiegel. Bob not snob assumes that such organizations (including newspapers) do not qualify as "reputable" (articles published by reputable institutions" in Arbcom remedy). Yes, I can see that the INR was harshly criticized, but so are many other organizations, including even United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. So, this is something debatable. This is not an easily enforceable remedy, and I doubt it improves the content when implemented in such blunt manner.
@Paul Siebert. The citation index or Google hits are irrelevant for estimating the reliability or the scientific rigor of publications. Thousands of solid scientific studies, even in protein crystallography, have citation of zero (up to 25% of publications in certain fields [30]). These never cited articles are scholarly reliable RS. But Russia RT, the Bible and books with popular fairy tales were cited a lot. They are not RS. Your "algorithm" does not make much sense, sorry.

Statement by Volunteer Marek

I'm not opposed to the sourcing restriction in principle but I do have a few comments and observations:

  1. The original problem that this remedy was looking to remedy was the use of self published sources or sources from fringe outlets. Most of those are gone best I can tell (and if there are any left let me know). In fact, most of them were removed even before the remedy was passed. At this point the remedy has hit diminishing returns as sources which otherwise would not be considered in the least bit problematic (the Fairweather book being discussed at RSN is a good example) are being targeted in what look like a bit of WP:WIKILAWYERing. This is similar to the earlier issue that was raised when this remedy was proposed in its original form. Back then the problem was that institutions like Yad Vashem would be excluded by the restriction, so "or reputable publishers" was added to the wording after I raised the point. But there are also other sources out there which are very good but which aren't necessarily "academic" in a strict narrow sense (again Jack Fairweather (writer) - an award winning journalist with many years experience, who worked as bureau chief for The Telegraph and Washington Post and who wrote the book with help and research assistance from numerous scholars and academics... but alas, it wasn't published by a university press, so "non academic!!!")
  2. Most of the content problems in this topic area are now due NOT to use of shoddy sources (though I'm sure you can anecdotally find some instances) but rather straight up misrepresentations of what sources say. The main problem is that to catch this you have to actually read the sources, sometimes carefully. And while editors who are active in this topic area might be willing to do that (though even for us checking someone's work can be exhausting) I don't think most admins who "patrol" it have the time or the inclination to actually go reading through numerous books and articles to make sure that no sourcing shenanigans are afoot. And EVEN IF they do, the offending editor can plead that they misunderstood or miswrote or that it's a judgement call. Which would be fair enough, except when this "not what the source actually says" stuff becomes a pattern (this is acerbated by the fact that most "academic" sources are paywalled and even with university access since this is a somewhat esoteric sub-discipline access may not be easy to obtain)
  3. I would also like to see clarification on what "academically focused" means. Like... published by university press? What about think tanks or research institutes? What if it's an unaffiliated publisher but the work has been reviewed in academic journals? Etc.
  4. I want to state my view again that, on principle, I don't think it's ArbCom's business or within its purview to make decisions on CONTENT disputes. And this is what sourcing is about. El_C brings up MEDRS above, but wasn't that developed as a "content guideline" by the community? It seems like it would be the job of the community, not the committee, to make similar content related decisions here. Volunteer Marek 17:10, 12 March 2021 (UTC)
  5. Honestly, I'm still not clear on what this restriction really accomplishes that isn't already covered by existing WP:RS policy. All obvious examples of "really bad sourcing" I can think of consists of stuff that wouldn't be allowed under WP:RS anyway. Volunteer Marek 17:10, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

With regard to Francois Robere's proposals above - #1 is okay, conditional on the restriction remaining in place, but #2 ("Repeated removal of compliant sources under a pretense of non-compliance is equivalent to the repeated insertion of non-compliant sources.") is a VERY bad idea. There are all kinds of reasons why a text based on a source which meets sourcing requirements should still be removed - WP:UNDUE, WP:COPYVIO, cherry picking, misrepresentation, using a source as a springboard for WP:OR. We don't even have anything like that for regular RS (having a reliable source is a necessary but not sufficient reason for inclusion). This would turn it into an administrative nightmare. Volunteer Marek 21:51, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: - in terms of diffs to support my point #1 above, it's not so much diffs as examples. But let me try (this is going to be a bit of a work in progress, since I'm busy and there's a lot of examples here).

  • So first look at this proposal at RSN here. First, it's kind of nonsense because it 1) assumes all "Polish government media" is homogenous and equally "bad" (according to OP) and 2) the sources it lists as problematic... aren't even government owned!!! (Though in some cases they can be described as "pro-current government"). For our purposes here, the main point is however that these sources are not even used on Wikipedia and if they are they can be removed for straight up WP:RS reasons and don't need this extra special restriction.
    • Take a look at the use of Nasz Dziennik periodical. Now, in the past it's true that this was used on multiple articles related to Polish history. But now all that is pretty much gone. As User:Tayi Arajakate pointed out in this comment from Jan 28 [31] Nasz Dziennik (as well as other sources listed there) is hardly used on Wikipedia. As of Jan 28 2021, there were 24 articles that "used" Nasz Dziennik. That's actually an overstatement. Ignoring talk pages, ND is linked to from 20 articles [32]. All but 2 of these articles are either about ND itself or articles which mention that the subject wrote for ND at some point, per WP:ABOUTSELF. The remaining 2 instances of where this is used as a source are an article on a defunct political party (Libertas Poland) where ND is used to cite a non-controversial fact about who founded the party, and a related article (Libertas.eu) about who the spokesperson for that party was. In both cases it's non controversial info. In both cases this could easily be removed (and I just might shortly). In both cases the articles have nothing to do with "Antisemitism and Poland" or "History of Poland". So we have a source that a lot of people are complaining about and which they are PRETENDING is polluting the topic area of Polish history... but it's not actually used anywhere!!! And IF it was, you could remove it per WP:RS, you don't need this extra special restriction! The same thing is true for other sources listed at that RSN.
This illustrates that, again, at this point the restriction is NOT being used to remove legitimately illegitimate sources like Nasz Dziennik, rather it's being used to try and remove legit reliable sources, like the Fairweather book, just because someone WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. It's basically a form of a strawman fallacy - "oh look, there exist out there in the world (but not on Wikipedia) some unreliable sources about Poland so I get to remove SOME OTHER sources about Poland that I don't like". Volunteer Marek 15:24, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
  • Also take a look at the discussion concerning Glaukopis journal at WP:RS. Ok, this one's kind of funny because it turns the whole WP:ALPRS restriction on its head. The thing is, Glaukopis is an academically focused journal!!! It's published by academics, it's editorial board is academics [33] [34], the authors published there are academics [35], it's peer reviewed by academics and it's read by academics. If we go by WP:APLRS restriction, then this journal should certainly be allowed since it clearly meets the requirement that it's "academically focused"!!!! But... these tend to be, or straight up are, "right wing" academics. That's the slant of the journal. And yup, some of these right wing academics apparently have made some "problematic" statements in other outlets (like their Facebook page or whatever). So the issue that some people have with the journal, is that while it's "academically focused" ... it's not the "right kind of academically focused". Politically. And honestly, I'm somewhat sympathetic (I wouldn't use it myself, though also want to note that the nature of the journal has undergone an evolution over time which is also a consideration). But clearly according to the ArbCom restriction as written it should be acceptable. But according to standard WP:RS policy it may not be (that gets into the deeper question of whether all academic publications are automatically reliable or usable, which is something that User:DGG;s statement touches upon). This again highlights the fact that this restriction is irrelevant here - if we decide not to use this journal it'll be for vanilla WP:RS reasons, not because of the restriction. Volunteer Marek 15:51, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

@Maxim: User:Levivich below asks what content is being excluded on the basis of this restriction which could otherwise be included. Well, if Levivich actually looked at the edits under dispute, the answer to their quary would be easy to find. In this edit, the account "Bob Not Snob" removed 11k+ worth of text from the Witold Pilecki article. In their edit summary they explicitly claimed they were removing this material because of the ALPRS restriction. So what kind of content was removed because, according to Bob Not Snob accout, it "violated APLRS"?

  • That Pilecki "attended a local school" <-- non-controversial
  • That "In 1916, Pilecki was sent by his mother to a school in the Russian city of Oryol, where he attended a gymnasium" <-- non-controversial
  • That "In 1918, following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution and the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Pilecki returned to Wilno" <-- non controversial, no source actually questions this
  • That "The militia disarmed the retreating German troops and took up positions to defend the city from a looming attack by the Soviet Red Army. (...) and Pilecki and his unit resorted to partisan warfare behind Soviet lines." <-- non controversial
  • That "He and his comrades then retreated to Białystok where Pilecki enlisted as a szeregowy (private) in Poland's newly established volunteer army. He took part in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1921, serving under Captain Jerzy Dąbrowski" <--- Again, I have no idea why this had to be removed as no one, no source, has ever questioned this.
  • That Pilecki "briefly served in the ongoing Polish-Lithuanian War as a member of the October 1920 Żeligowski rebellion." <--- again, no one questions this
  • That Pilecki "completed his school examinations while continuing his military service, completing courses required for a non-commissioned officer rank at the Cavalry Reserve Officers' Training School in Grudziądz" <--- very very non controversial, no one questions this
  • That Pilecki "briefly enrolled with the Faculty of Fine Arts at Stefan Batory University but was forced to abandon his studies in 1924 due to both financial issues and the declining health of his father" <--- non controversial, no source contradicts this
  • "his unit took part in heavy fighting against the advancing Germans during the invasion of Poland. The 19th Division was almost completely destroyed following a clash with the German forces on the night of September 5 to 6." <--- Not questioned by any source
  • "He and his men destroyed seven German tanks, shot down one aircraft, and destroyed two more on the ground." <--- I .... guess... this... could be maybe kind of sort of controversial... except no source disputes this.
  • That Pilecki "hid his real identity and instead used the identity documents of Tomasz Serafiński" - ok, maybe this one is controversial? But notice, that 1) the account Bob Not Snob completely changed the meaning of the sentence by making it seem like Pilecki was "accidentally" mistaken for Serafinski whereas the whole point is that he assumed that identity on purpose (!) and 2) this is based on a source which SHOULD meet APLRS. So, like I mentioned above, the problem here is willful MISREPRESENTATION of solid sources, rather than shoddy sources.

And so on. It goes on for awhile. I mean, it's a pretty thorough gutting of the article, removing 11k of text, most of it non-controversial stuff like the fact that he went to a school and what units he served in. It's hard to see this as actually constructive. Rather it seems like someone using APLRS as an excuse to make an article look like crap because they don't like the subject. Like, you can't actually write "bad stuff" about Pilecki, because the guy was in fact a hero, and the sources - even the newer "revisionist" ones like Fleming and Cuber - are pretty clear on that, so instead you gut the article by removing basic, non-controversial, biographical info and try and make it look like shit. Or maybe it's WP:BAIT so that if someone reverts these edits as "non-controversial" you can use it as an excuse to file a spurious WP:AE report (and there's been a ton of those) and try to get someone sanctioned.

So yes, this restriction is VERY MUCH being used and abused to remove non-controversial info from article. Not a hypothetical. Volunteer Marek 02:59, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

@El C: Quote: " Other countries also espouse WP:FRINGE content, too. But a country, say, like Iran (twice the population of Poland), for example, does so to a far lesser extent" - El C, I'm sorry but this claim is completely bonkers. Comparing Poland's government or situation to that of Iran is what's "FRINGE" here. Wayyyy offf the charts. There certainly are serious issue with the current Polish government's actions but it's not even in the same league. Hell, according to Reporters without Borders, in terms of Freedom of Press, Poland ranks significantly above... Israel [36] (Poland # 62, Israel # 88, Iran # 173). I think a good chunk of the problem in this topic area is folks who bring in their preconceptions and prejudices to the editing (and sometimes administratin') without actually checking facts first (I can give more examples of this). Volunteer Marek 17:09, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

User:CaptainEek the rationale for your oppose is that " By limiting the possible remedies we can implement, we weaken ArbCom ". I'm sorry but are you suggesting that ArbCom should have unlimited power? There is a very good reason, as alluded to by User:Risker (former arb com member) why the committee's power - like any other rule making institution's in a functional society - is circumscribed. I think you're also flipping the narrative here. A more accurate way of describing the situation would be "by imposing remedies that have not traditionally been within our remit, we are making ArbCom even more powerful". I find this kind of seemingly power-hungry attitude in an arb deeply worrying. Volunteer Marek 15:06, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

User:CaptainEek - as others have pointed out, ruling on content, which is what this is, has traditionally been outside the scope of the committee's "power". This fundamentally changes that. If you want "more tools" then that's fine but these should be developed in agreement with what the committee's powers are suppose to be, rather than just expending the power.

In regard to Francois Robere's comment here. Unintentionally, this actually is an argument for the opposite view. First, it's not true that Pilecki being a "volunteer" is only uncontroversial in Poland. The book under discussion was written by a British author with help from American and Israeli researchers. The other book used in the article (confusingly, also called "Volunteer" but with a different subtitle) is by an Italian historian. Pilceki as "volunteer" is uncontroversial, period. Not "just in Poland" but among standard historical works. Yes, there's some revisionist "new history" articles which seem to pull back at that view somewhat but it's those articles that are - because they are new that ... maybe not "FRINGE" but non-mainstream. Likewise, FR also claims " What you don't see is the long list of blogs, websites, SPS, politicians, and other unqualified sources which would've been fought for under RS". Nah. This is some version of WP:CRYSTALBALLing. In fact when these sources exist, they are removed on straight forward grounds and nobody objects. The controversy really IS about sources like the Volunteer book. Volunteer Marek 19:19, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Buidhe

I will give an example from another area. In the Raoul Wallenberg article it was previously claimed that Wallenberg saved 100,000 Jews. This claim is made in many popular works that would ordinarily qualify as WP:RS, such as New York Times,[37][38] popular books[39][40], and a resolution that passed US Congress.[41] But peer reviewed scholarship disputes this claim, saying the actual number of people saved was <10,000. If popular sources are given equal weight as academic sources, our article will end up saying something that's factually incorrect. (I think this kind of mythification is especially common when someone is considered a "hero"). In the Hungary topic area, such a requirement isn't formally necessary because no one has been trying to override the academic sources with popular ones; however, if that started to happen I would support a sourcing restriction there as well. Because in the Poland area there are many examples of editors trying to use deficient sources to trump peer-reviewed ones, (see above) it is necessary to restrict to WP:SCHOLARSHIP only for claims about what actually happened in the past. (t · c) buidhe 19:19, 12 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Piotrus

This entire remedy should be revoked as unnecessary. First, regarding issue #2, no, it is not necessary, nor was it ever so. WP:RSN exists, is active, and was never swamped with discussions of works related to this topic area. Nor was there any general RfC on this or such. While the ArbCom finding did say "RSN and talk page RfCs have often failed to settle these questions", unfortunately no data or justification for this conclusion were ever indicated, nor was I able to find even a single party making such a claim at the Evidence and Workshop page, where instead, several RSN/RfC discussions were linked - and described as having successfully resolved the issues raised (generally concluding that several sources were unreliable). The problem was thus solved without the need for any extra remedies. Existing policies (RS, REDFLAG, FRINGE, UNDUE, etc.) work well enough and ArbCom should have simply reminded us of them; there was no need to "reinvent the wheel".

Second, regarding issue #1, I do have serious concerns about whether it is ArbCom's (or consequently's AE's) role to judge what sources are acceptable. I am afraid that ArbCom reached too far and this is causing major problems, many more than it attempted to solve. It is in fact encouraging disruption in the topic area (instead of preventing it), empowering disruptive socks, and scaring away established content creators. Proof below.

What the remedy has caused is that sources perfectly acceptable in every other area of the project are being challenged, with editors increasingly bypassing RSN/RfC and just claiming 'they violate my view of what academically focused' means. Consider the former FA Witold Pilecki, where a new account (registered just when the last ArbCom was ending...) not previously active in this TA suddenly appeared and effectively gutted the article, removing about half of the content with the edit summary "After discussion, WP:APLRS" (and did so again here). First, the removed content was uncontroversial. Second, the removed sources included the recent, award-winning, first-ever, English-language monograph (biography) of the subject, written by a respected journalist (aided by numerous scholars), published by a HarperCollins/CustomHouse which is a "reputable publisher" (wording from APLRS itself!), a book which received many positive reviews (The Economist, WSJ, etc.), including by scholars, and which would be acceptable for any other topic area (my reading of the RSN discussion on this book is 'reliable, but may or may not meet APLRS, depending on what one understands by "academically focused"). Sigh. While this is a specific case, I use it to show that if such sources are not allowed, then we are forcing editors to either use hard to access and verify (and older) Polish-language sources or simply not to include helpful and uncontroversial information in the article (since no, there are better English-language sources). In either case, we are making it extremely difficult to write articles in Polish WWII history, simply because a few editors, most now retired or banned, have used some low-quality sources in the past (sources which are now considered unreliable, after discussions at RSN, and that nobody is restoring).

Further, while the Holocaust topic area is controversial it is no more so than many others (Isreal-Palestine, American politics, Balkans, Scientology, whatever). And most certainly, the remedy's broad scope - the entire Polish WWII area - is way too large, as it affects numerous articles on uncontroversial topics like minor battles, ships, or biographies, where next to no English sources exist, and due to poor digitalization of Polish literary and academic corpus up to date, history-focused newspaper or magazine articles are still very useful (of course, if contradicted by scholarly research, they should be discarded - but we don't need a remedy for this, RS already has this logic covered). Strictly interpreted, we should ban authors of totally uncontroversial articles like Defense of Katowice, Railway sabotage during World War II or SMS M85 and thousands of others, which heavily rely on mass-market books or educational websites or like. A lot of valuable articles about Polish military history can be sourced from books in Polish published by the Bellona Publishing House, which published numerous monographs on particular battles of the '39 invasion of Poland, and which often are the one and only monograph for said battle in existence; but Bellona's books are directed at the mass market of people interested in military history, so are they "academically focused"? A great source I've used over the past few years is Bellona's specialized encyclopedia Boje polskie 1939-1945: przewodnik encyklopedyczny, edited by historian Krzysztof Komorowski, but surely, encyclopedias are not 'academically focused'. My recent milhist A-class article, Battle of Hel, relies on this source heavily (as well as on another monograph from Bellona about the fighting on the Polish coast, Derdej's Westerplatte, Oksywie, Hel 1939) - is it ArbCom's intention to prevent such content from being written, and to punish editors like myself for writing it? Oh, and just in case someone thinks we can limit the damage by narrowing the scope to the Holocaust, you do realize we often use, among others, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum webpages, like its Holocaust Encyclopedia, as a source? For me, it is a much less "academically focused" source than the mentioned book from HarperCollins (for example, the book has endnotes, which USHMM's pages usually do not). The remedy, which was intended to discourage fringe, red-flag claims, threatens to lay waste to the entire topic area. This was already mentioned during previous requests for clarification by MILHIST editors like Nick-D here, Peacemaker67 here, Nigel_Ish here, Nug here, as well as former arbitrator DGG here, just to name a few, and what was feared a year ago is happening right now.

This is all compounded by the threat of being reported to AE for simply adding a book one did not realize came from a non-academic publisher (assuming that they are not allowed since the remedy does clearly allow "reputable publishers"). In other words, this encourages disruptive editors to create throw-away accounts which just need to meet 500/30 and then they can report established editors they have a grudge against to AE for using a source that may or may not meet the fuzzy definition of "academically focused". Doesn't work? Create a new sock, rinse and repeat. The sock wins if it manages to get a single ruling in its favor (which ruins the reputation of the established editors for years, and likely topic bans them too), or if the targeted editors give up and leave the topic arena. Win-win for disruption, lose-lose for the encyclopedia.

The current remedy creates an unfair burden on the editors in this topic area. It does so by creating a chilling effect with the threat of 'if you use a source that is accepted anywhere else you may be reported to AE and topic banned or worse". It discourages experienced editors to write about Polish-Jewish WWII relations or even Polish WWII history in general which is obviously bad for the project (see comments here) and encourages aggressive socking (creation of throw-away accounts to add possibly problematic sources or reporting established editors to AE).

Lastly, re #3. If the remedy is retained, ArbCom needs to clarify what the term 'academically focused' it invented (or adopted from following its invention by a single admin) means (and good luck with that...). The recent RSN discussion has shown that many editors disagree on this, which is compounded by the fact that many participants are not academics and make claims like 'narrative style means the work cannot be academically focused' which is wrong (narrative ethnography is an academically recognized style of writing). In the end, I strongly recommend that discussion of sources should be left to RSN, not to few well-meaning admins who, while experts on Wikipedia, are not always experts on things like 'what is academic' or not. ArbCom and AE are overworked already, those venues don't need broader competencies and increasing workload that comes with them (like this very request for clarification, third in the series about that particular remedy). RSN has been and still is perfectly capable of weeding out FRINGE sources and reminding people about REDFLAG, UNDUE, and relevant policies. We don't need the threat of 'a sock will bring you to AE' hanging over people who want to use an in-depth monograph, the only one in existence for its subject, just published by a non-academic publisher, or edit an uncontroversial article about a German minelayer which sunk off the coast of Poland in '39 referencing Jane's Fighting Ships or a book by Steven Zaloga/Osprey Publishing, for pity's sake. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:42, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Maxim Narrowing the scope to "[requiring] high-quality sources for exceptional claims for articles related to anti-Semitism and Jewish history in Poland, specifically in relation to World War II and The Holocaust" seems like it should solve most of the issues. Although isn't it just repeating WP:REDFLAG? The only ArbCom level issue is " that is enforceable via AE". But we should make it clear that AE should only be invoked if someone is edit warring over this issue, to avoid weaponizing this remedy by socks who want to roll the admin dice over a single edit. First, a talk discussion should be started on whether a problematic source is being used for an exceptional source. IF there is consensus this is the case but someone persists on adding it back to the article, then and only then AE should be alerted. So pretty much what the remedy (if retained, because I still do not believe anyone has demonstrated, with recent diffs, the necessity of it?) should be saying is that repeated violations of REDFLAG in this topic area are subject to DS/AE/etc. Lastly, you asked for more diffs of how the current remedy is being abused. VM already provided the best example. I'll add to it:
1) the edit with summary "After discussion, WP:APLRS" In the WP article VM mentions, the original "gutting" edit by Bob removed 25k bytes - that's over 50% of the article! Removed content included parts that are (per prior clarifications) clearly outside the scope of the article (pre-war, post-war, not to mention the entire "bibliography" section). And I don't believe anyone on the talk mentioned that a single removed fact was actually controversial. Btw, AFAIK the The Volunteer (book) which caused such a big RSN thread was used only to reference... the very fact it existed, in the legacy section...
2) edit summary "not neutral, not APLRS, and factually dubious." - removal of a paragraph that deals with post war event (1960s+), so again simply outside APLRS. No talk page explanation was provided for what's not neutral or factually doubious.
3) edit summary "Update using APLRS sources" - another article gutted; removal of 14k worth of prose. The article might have had some NPOV issues, but there is no reason to remove half of the content again, almost all of it uncontroversial details such as that the subject was born in the Austrian Partition, that "He graduated from high school in Sanok" or that in September '39 the subject fought "near Łowicz with the Polish Prusy Army (Armia Prusy) under Gen. Stefan Dąb-Biernacki".
So the bottom line is that almost all content removed under APLRS is uncontroversial. The editor who removed those details (and who was not active in this topic area before February when he took to APLRS with gusto) seems to misunderstand APLRS (since it does not apply to pre-war or post-war content or sections like 'bibliography'!), and in most cases did not explain on the talk why the content was removed, or what was wrong with the references in text (some do seem low quality, but others seem reliable, at least the first glance). Sure, maybe one or two facts removed in the giant guttings of the article could be seen as such - but that was not even explained on the talk. Low-quality references for uncontroversial content can be removed while retaining the content and substituting a {{citation needed}}. I concur with VM that what is happening now, however, can give an impression of a WP:BATTLEGROUND attempt to tempt some editors into restoring content, hoping that maybe in restoring 15k-25k worth of deleted prose (almost all of it about uncontroversial details) they restore something that'll produce an AE-worth diff. The fact is that uncontroversial content was gutted and it took weeks to restore some of it (not even all of it, yet). This is both the chilling effect I noted and an example of active destruction of articles in this topic area that the current remedy is empowering. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:09, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
Levivich Re "identifying the problem on the ground". First, the diffs presented by me, VM and others showing that, for example, the remedy was used to argue that totally uncontroversial information about early life education (which school they attended) of some individuals should be removed. So here, this is what is happening on the ground right now. Second, it is not feasible to say something like "in theory, this remedy prevents the use of otherwise reliable but not highest-level sources for sourcing uncontroversial information like specs of a Polish military ship, but in practice, since nobody was reported to AE over this yet, it won't happen". This is just asking for someone's stalker or such to create a sock for such a report. And then admins at AE are saddled with what is the letter and what is the spirit of the remedy. Lastly, do tell me: what disruption has this remedy prevented? Can you, or anyone, show a single diff where REDFLAG content was warred over before the remedy was implemented, but such warring stopped afterward, with the last edit that ended the warring citing APLRS? The facts on the ground are simple: this remedy is not preventing any disruption, it is preventing (though a chilling effect) editors from adding - or restoring - uncontroversial content. Like from the Naval Institute Press. Do you want to be the editor who used this source and then is reported by a sock to see what AE admins think (and repeat this for dozens of similar-level publishers, some in foreign languages like Polish, like the Bellona Publishing House, to see which one will fail the test)? I know I don't. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:27, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
François Robere "Overall APLRS is not that difficult to abide by". Such claims would hold more weight if they came from editors who actually create content in this topic area. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:58, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
François Robere That's very nice. And as someone who created, roughly, about 1000x times that much content, yes, I think that the current restrictions are very difficult to abide by. On the subject of your Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study article, I think the one and only new article you started in this TA, I remember you decided to remove some newspaper sources from the article [42] despite, in all honesty, them not being used for anything controversial and the newspaper being generally quite reputable. Pointless make-work. And that article still contains some references that may not pass ALPRS muster (a strange website; a book from 1946 not published by an 'academically focused publisher'; etc.), even though I don't believe they are used improperly; and removal of content sourced to them would not be of interest to the project and the readers. Alas, this is what the remedy may require, according to some. Bottom line is that the article you created was perfectly fine, sourcing-wise, and you should not be forced to remove the newspaper source cited there, nor be penalized for adding them there in the first place. Adding further, academic-level references is of course good, but that you felt compelled to remove a perfectly fine newspaper article, replacing it which harder to verify, offline or paywalled sources, is exactly why this remedy is bad - it creates an unnecessary burden on content creators, makes the article and its sourcing less accessible, and worse, does so under a threat of heavy-handed sanctions. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 13:00, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
François Robere I am not sure what you meant to say, but I don't get paid to "work around here", and I suggest you refactor your post for clarity, as I doubt it was your intention to suggest anyone here has a PAID COI? And I don't see any exception in ALPRS that permits the use of ABOUTSELF. If ALPRS overrides normal RS, why wouldn't it override it subclause ABOUTSELF? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:43, 30 March 2021 (UTC)
François Robere I would like to think you are right, but such clarifications are for ArbCom to make, which is why we are here. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:24, 31 March 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49 and El C: re "a little nervous about just rescinding it". Can you point me to concrete evidence that this remedy is producing some positive effects? What disruption has it stopped that wouldn't be stoppable if this remedy did not exist? All I see is that the remedy is instead used to cause chilling effects (I am the only content creator active in this TA that is also taking part in this clarification requests, authoring DYK to A-class level content in said TA, and this remedy makes me not want to edit this TA anymore due to fear of being reported to AE by some sock) and disruption (for that see VM's comment here signed 11:59 am, 25 March 2021 for a good case study, or my own posts above which mention this and several other incidents). And there is also the "dead letter" problem: 90% of content in this TA is created by editors who are not aware of this remedy, and nobody is telling them about it. As I am the only person who seems to monitor the activity in this TA on a regular basis (using the new article bot feed), here's a list of new articles in it created in the last month or so: Battle of Pułtusk (1939), Kalman_Sultanik, Fortress_Division_Warsaw_(Wehrmacht), Medal_for_Oder,_Neisse_and_Baltic, List_of_claims_for_restitution_for_Nazi-looted_art#Poland, Max_Silberberg, Spring_1941, The_Holocaust_in_Austria, Leo_Bendel. Guess what - they all fail the remedy - plenty of unreferenced content (not sure if this is even covered by the remedy), newspapers, educational websites, non-academically focused books... Anyone wants to warn/sanction their creators and/or delete this mostly uncontroversial content? In summary, there is no problem (disruption) to stop (outside those created by this remedy and its abuse), and nobody is enforcing this anyway. Good intentions... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
El C Forgive me, but I have trouble parsing your last comment addressed to me. Regarding the fragment that I think I understand, "how do you truly account for its influence, say, in quiet editorial work", I can only stress what I said earlier: if "quiet editorial work" means improving and creating generally uncontroversial and quality-assessed articles (which is what I like to think I tend to do around here), the way this remedy affects my "quiet editorial work" is to make me scared of edit anything in this TA, since each time I make a substantial edit I am thinking "will Ice's newest sock report me for it to see if it can make some dirt stick"? An while culpability in the destruction of the European Jews sounds serious, I can't even recall right now the last time we had any serious editorial disagreement about something so serious; I am referring to items like using a newspaper article or a book published by some non-academic author or press for sourcing uncontroversial information on someone's alma mater, burial place, or who was their commanding officer or such. The APLRS remedy was invoked for removal of exactly this type of content - not just references, entire uncontroversial paragraphs were deleted - by an editor who was just indef blocked by ArbCom. So again, we have hard evidence (diffs above) that the remedy was abused. Now, I am still waiting for someone to show what good did the remedy do. And if all we get is "but it sounds like a good idea", versus evidence of clear disruption (gutting of articles etc.), I think the solution is quite clear. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:02, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
El C "I've clarified on multiple occasions that APLRS would not bring about immediate sanctions whenever it is invoked in a page". That's appreciated, but in the end, you are just one administrator. You can burn out, take a wikiholiday, or just be overruled by other admins who don't agree with your interpretation. Sadly, I have seen too often that some admins, at least, prefer to solve all problems quickly with the use of excessive banhammer. As long as the remedy exists in its unclear form, it may be interpreted harshly enough that for me, at least, it will remain "anxiety-inducing".
Re: "the modern Polish state.. espousing FRINGE content". That's debatable (can you actually give a specific example of a FRINGE/revisionist claim, supported by the "Polish state" alone? Bonus points if it has been a subject of an on-wiki dispute) - and when such debate happens, it should be at RSN. Trying to replace RSN as the appropriate forum with AE only results in the "anxiety induction".
There is a perception that the Polish-Jewish TA is one of the 'worst neighborhoods' on Wikipedia, and needs strict policing. This is a simple misconception. It was peaceful for years, then we had one 'serial killer'-like editor who got into a bunch of fights and then got himself indeffed, and while he keeps on socking, that's it. Any other disruption is very low-key and seems pretty normal for other topic areas. It's time to stop making mountains out of molehills and stop framing this area as particularly problematic. It is not. It was a perfectly fine and peaceful topic area until a few years ago and there is no reason it cannot go back to it; we just need to remember WP:AGF (while keeping an eye out for returning socks that are NOTHERE). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
CaptainEek "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". Isn't, something, broken here? The context for those diffs is above. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 16:05, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
François Robere 1) "What you don't see is the long list of blogs, websites, SPS, politicians, and other unqualified sources which would've been fought for under RS, but are summarily removed under APLRS." Seriously? Do show us the diffs. A long list, as you say, shouldn't be hard to produce. Please make sure that each diff is accompanied by an edit summary that makes it clear APLRS was invoked and put an end to the expected, or previously occurring, edit warring about that particular "blog, website, whatever". Please note that you need to show that what is happening is that APLRS is producing something beyond what the usual enforcement of RS and other policies do. Just now, for example, I replaced a newspaper reference with academic sources. But I did so simply because the cited source was low quality, so I upgraded it, following best practices. I would have done it regardless of APLRS' existence, I improved refs like this before APLRS was introduced and will do so after it is gone. In other words, I claim that the existence of APLRS did not change any real practice of any editor (outside making it less likely that they'll add information on uncontroversial fact like someone's burial place that is not mentioned in any academic publication). 2) "We've discussed it before, and there's little reason not to see eg. Jane's or Lloyd's as "reputable publishers" under APLRS" Where did such a discussion take place? Bonus points if you show us where did you endorse the use of such works under ALPRS. 3) "Instead, just instruct editors to use {{unreliable sources}} for a reasonable length of time (30-60 days?) so the article can be re-sourced." Generic templates are too open to abuse; someone can just spam it on dozens of articles and then gut them later. What does make some sense is to mark individual, problematic sources with {{Unreliable source?}} (if in doubt; one can just remove them outright if they are particularly bad). When a tag is added, a detailed explanation should be also added to the talk page (on why the source is potentially problematic). If a source is tagged, and no objection is provided to the well-articulated criticism on tag (that should be more than just a claim "this is not reliable" - a criticism has to explain why, such as "the source is a blog" or " the author is controversial and not an expert", etc. ), then the source can be removed. All that said, there is no need for ArbCom to add any sanctions here - the procedure I described (heck, even the one you described) can be carried out by anyone, right now, and in fact, it does happen every now and then. Low-quality sources are steadily tagged and/or removed, they were long before the original ArbCom case happened. 3) What is "uncontroversial"? Shrug. How about you show what reasonably or even borderline controversial information was referenced to sources that pass RS but not APLRS, and how that was fixed after the remedy was introduced? Because what we have, right now, are diffs showing that plenty of clearly uncontroversial information as removed with edit summaries mentioning APLRS. Me and VM have given plenty of diffs here already (my post just above, for example). So show us the dfiffs or otherwise it's all ilikism/fearmongering ("hear ye all, this remedy is good, woe and despair will befall us if it is gone"). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:33, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
@L235 and Barkeep49: One nitpick re "subsequently challenged by reversion" wording. Can you add "subsequently challenged by reversion accompanied by a clear explanation specifying the disputed source and its alleged problems on talk" or such? Feel free to reword, but we should avoid the situations we had when an editor guts an article, removing dozens of sources, with a vague mention of this remedy (or no rationale at all), and without specifying anywhere which sources were a problem. In other words, the proposing wording doesn't avoid weaponizing / disruption in the scenario someone guts the article, then complains that a problematic reference was restored, and calls for admin-level enforcement in the form of sanctions on the person who restored the content. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:26, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Barkeep49, Actually, there was one incident a year ago where a user was blocked for a week after an AE report, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive258#MyMoloboaccount. User:MyMoloboaccount restored weak sources - and got reported there by Francois and blocked. Crucially, the restored sources weren't even edit warred over (at least I don't see the report suggesting they were) - it appears MMa was blocked solely for a single diff (one-time restoration). While right now I don't recall another incident that ended up with an AE report and block, well, it's a worrying precedent, isn't it? Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:35, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
François Robere, I totally agree with your point 3 ("Requiring a specific justification for removing a source is meant to prevent mass removals and GAMING. The level of specificity doesn't need to be high to be useful: for example, instead of an edit summary saying just "APLRS" or "not APLRS compliant", one could simply specify "news source, not APLRS-compliant" or "not peer reviewed (see APLRS)".") - that's the very minimum of acceptable justification we need to require before any sanction-language can be invoked. However, I don't think we need to penalize removal or compliant sources - this can be totally fine, when UNDUE is concerned, for example. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:40, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49: While I agree with your sentiment, remember where the proverbial devil lies. 2a is an improvement (well, anything is an improvement over what we have) BUT it still has a major flaw: it uses the ill-defined term "academically focused". The discussion about The Volunteer (book) which was held at RSN after all concluded that the book is reliable but may not meet the remedy b/c it is unclear whether the book is "academically focused" or not. How would the 2a remedy help here? Let me remind you that several parties have asked ArbCom to clarify this wording, which has not been done. This problem needs to be solved in whatever fix is adopted - in the form that the remedy, if revised (and not just repealed) must either clarify such ambiguous terms or not use them at all. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 03:12, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
@Barkeep49, L235, David Fuchs, Maxim, BDD, SoWhy, and CaptainEek: I assume the "Alternative motion" Barkeep49 proposed on 1 May 2021 is the one they just asked for feedback about? Thank you for pinging the parties, and I'll start by saying "good progress". It is good that we are moving a step away from allowing people to be directly reported to ANI. However...
First, pretty please with a cherry on top, avoid using imprecise and undefined terms like "academically focused". With all due respect, I consider the wording "an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution" simply sloppy (if I saw it in a paper I am peer-reviewing I'd request it to be changed or the paper rejected due to failing to define key concepts and hence introducing confusion to the relevant discourse). Please stop for a moment and read this phrase again (bonus points if you find the irksome grammatical error in it too). According to it, an article doesn't need to be "academically focused" (this is just required of books), an article is fine as long as the publisher is "reputable" - which also means that the entire part about "an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals" (sic!) is redundant, because it is just a subset of "article published by a reputable institution". As the Volunteer discussion demonstrated, we had a lengthy and not a very productive discussion on whether a book written by a journalist (reviewed by academics, co-written by hired historian researchers, with plenty of footnotes, and prize-winning) is acceptable, but a newspaper article written by the same journalist and published in any reasonable newspaper (aka a "reputable institution") would apparently be fine. The current wording allows most articles, even from newspapers, but sets a very high standard for books allowed. If the wording of the remedy remains ambiguous, it may likely result in more time being wasted on pointless and borderline disruptive discussions about what is "academically focused" (effectively solving nothing - someone challenges things on talk, no consensus, takes this to RSN where the discussion will run into the unsolvable problem of "what is academically focused", eventually necessitating the community needing to ask ArbCom to clarify this term yet again). How about simplifying the definition of "a high quality source" in parenthesis to just "books and articles published by a reputable institution"? Although I can still imagine discussions about what "reputable" means and why aren't we simply asking the editors to use reliable sources? I'll also note that the title of the proposed sanction is "reliable-source consensus required". So you invoke the term "reliable" (and not "super-reliable" or whatever) but then in the text require adhering to a poorly defined "better-than-reliable" concept. Bottom line is that the problem of poorly defined higher standards (the "a high quality source") remains unsolved. The Committee is effectively telling the community to use "higher-quality" sources without clearly defining what they are. Please note that this request for clarification started with a request to clarify this wording, which hasn't been done. If you cannot define a concept well, please don't introduce it into the "body of wiki-law", and when given the opportunity, if unable to define or clarify it, please remove it.
Second, please see my comment to François above. The part about "subsequently challenged" needs to be clarified that said challenge has to meet some minimum standards (i.e. be better than IDONTLIKEIT) to avoid abuse by drive-by socks or battleground-minded editors who can just say IDONTLIKEIT, stone-wall (ISTILLDONTLIKEIT) and then go to AE. Fortunately, this issue can be solved by adding a qualification like "subsequently challenged with a reasonable justification better that WP:IDONTLIKEIT" or such.
Thirdly, a technicality but I don't think "is added" is necessary. It would make the remedy technically toothless for purposes of challenging sources that have been added years ago. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 05:59, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Peacemaker67

Responding to Piotrus' ping. I am on the record in the original discussion (linked in Piotrus' contribution alongside my username) as opposing, as a matter of principle, the incursion of ArbCom into content issues which this remedy represents. It IS a content issue, and we have processes for dealing with them that don't involve ArbCom. The remedy should be vacated until and unless ArbCom's scope is widened to include content as well as conduct issues. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:38, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Paul Siebert

I think sourcing restriction is a very good idea, but this tool sometimes may be harmful. The core problem here is an indiscriminate approach. According to WP:APLRS, the whole WWII period is covered, be it a history of some small Polish town, or a technical article about Polish tanks. Is it needed? Of course, it is totally redundant. And "Polish" users quite legitimately object to that. However, there is one aspect that really requires our attention: Polish-Jewish relations during WWII. Social processes in modern Poland lead to resurrection of nationalist myths, and many Polish sources describe the WWII events at somewhat different angle that Western sources do. That is especially true for newspapers, blogs, popular web sites and other sources that are seen as marginally acceptable per our content policy. Normally, we allow that type sources, but in this situation, the abundance of that type sources and high activity of "Polish" editors (I use quotation marks, because I speak about their POV, not nationality) creates a situation when the description of Polish-Jewish relations during WWII in English Wikipedia differs considerably from what majority of scholarly sources write. During the discussion of the Antisemitism in Poland case, I made a post that drawn attention of professional US historians and journalists. They contacted me, and they expressed a concern about English Wikipedia bias. In connection to that, I think it is absolutely correct to keep the restrictions, because they deprive POV pushers of the main tool: their sources.

Moreover, I propose to think about sourcing restrictions as a universal tool for extinguishing edit wars. Usually, high quality sources use more cautious wording and factually correct statement, so if only top quality sources are used by both parties, that decrease the tension. According to my experience, the better sources some user uses, the more they are prone to arguments, and the reasier to reach a consensus.

There is one problem with this approach: these sourcing restrictions may be used for gaming the system (reporting a user who made an innocent edit using questionable source). I propose to think how to amend these restrictions to minimize a possibility of gaming. One possibility is to remove restrictions from any content that is not related to Polish-Jewish relationships.

With regard to the arguments about "content disputes", I have a question: what criteria discriminate cautious, experienced and polite POV-pusher from a user who is involved in a long but sincere content dispute? I think it is totally impossible to draw such a line without a careful analysis of arguments and sources. According to my experience, experienced POV-pushers are totally invisible for AE admins, and that fundamental reason is that AE admins have no necessary knowledge and time to carefully analyse the evidences, each or which, taken separately, look totally innocent.

With regard to User:Girth Summit's questions #1 - 3, my opinion is as follows:

1. Sourcing restrictions may be a better idea than topic bans. First, all sanctions are supposed to be more preventive than punitive, and most disruption is associated with usage of poor sources (it is hard to edit disruptively using only academically focused sources). Second, if a disruptive user has to use only good sources, that will requite more efforts to obtain them and read. In addition, it increase one's educational level, and may lead to correction of their POV. I am telling that based on my own experience.

2. The remedy may perfectly prevent disruption in many cases. And I see no harm in that remedy for high importance history topics. I would say more: I de facto am writing Wikipedia articles using only academically focused sources (exceptions are very rare), and I don't think that self-imposed restriction negatively impacts my work.

3. To answer how these rules should be applied, let me first explain how I select "academically focused sources". I use the following procedure: (i) no googling (only the sources available at google scholar, jstor and few other specialised databases are acceptable); (ii) if a book or article is more than 2-3 years old and there is no citations, it should be avoided; (iii) journal impact factor must be taken into account; (iv) for books, check reviews at jstor and gscholars: no reviews or negative reviews are an indication of possible problems. As I already wrote elsewhere, this my approach described as quite adequate by Brendan Luyt, the scholar who is studying the mechanisms of improving Wikipedia credibility. How all of that can be applied to the Polish-Jewish area? I think, if some user expresses a concern about some source that does not meet the above criteria, it is better to remove it. If another party resists to that, they are supposed to prove the criteria i-iv are met. If they failed to do that and continue using the disputed source, a topic ban must follow.

Below, there is an example of how it works.
Example 1. User:Volunteer Marek asked if the books by Jack Fairweather (writer) are considered "academically focused". A brief check demonstrates that Fairweather's "The Good War: Why We Couldn’t Win the War or the Peace in Afghanistan" was cited 46 times, mostly by the sources that obviously are "academically focused publications". The first source in that list available to me online uses his book as a source of information, and does not question the facts provided by Fairweather.
Conclusion: the criteria i-iv are met, and if VM is accused of usage of that book, he can always present these search results as a proof that sourcing expectations are met.
Example 2: Now let's check if The Volunteer passes the same test (Disclaimer. I was not participating in the RSN discussion, although RSN is in my watchlist. Therefore, I can be considered neutral.)
  • Since The Volunteer is not found in gscholar and Jstor using a direct search, it automatically means there are nearly zero citations The criterion ii failed.
  • Since The Volunteer is not a journal article, the "iii" criterion is not applicable.
  • When I look for the sources about the book, I see the same sources as the one presented at RSN. The review is published in Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs by Taylor & Francis, its impact factor is not impressive, but acceptable for that topic. Therefore, the review passes reliability criteria, but the review contains serious criticism of factual accuracy of The Volunteer. The criterion iv failed
Conclusion: The Volunteer does not meet the criteria, and it should not be used (at least for now, because it is a new book, and some fresh positive reviews may be published in future).
Example 3: User:CaptainEek's "Lincoln".
  • (i) Google scholar says it was cited 816 times (first and second steps are successful; the third criterion is not applicable, because it is a book);
  • (iv) There are several reviews on that book in Jstor. I looked only through the first one, (by William Hanchett, Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jun., 1996), pp. 216-218). This review is mixed: the reviewer noted several weaknesses and several strengths of that book. I am not going to go into details, for the lack of unambiguous criticism is an indication that the criterion "iv" is met.
Conclusion: "Lincoln" meets the sourcing expectation criteria and can be used.
I propose everybody to try that approach using obviously good and obviously bad sources, and I am sure it will allow efficient discrimination of the former from the latter. This approach is transparent, which exclude a possibility of a bias or gaming.
Example 4: This discussion is an example of what may happen if the proposed procedure will be used. User:Piotrus pointed at some problems with interpretation of the review on The Volunteers, and that criticism may be partially justified. However, that does not change the fact that The Volunteer is not found in the google scholar search list, and is was not cited in any peer-reviewed publication. Therefore, the criteria "i & ii" are still not met, and the book is not acceptable (at least, for now; a situation may change in future if other authors will start to cite the book. That possibility cannot be ruled out).

The enforcement of these rules is straightforward. Before I describe the procedure, let me give the example when some user was accused of violating sourcing restriction in an incorrect way (and that is why the request was declined). Instead, a correct procedure should be as follows. The accusing user was supposed to:

  • Point at concrete sources that do not meet the sourcing restriction criteria.
  • Explain why they do not meet the rules (criteria "i - iv", see above).
  • Give the accused party some time to make sure these sources really fail the criteria "i - iv".
  • If the accused party rejects the arguments, or provides insufficient arguments AND continues to re-add these sources, the AE report is justified.

In my opinion, this procedure can be easily implemented, and it will not require too much work from enforcing admins.

Last, but not least. The attempts to remove the sources that clearly meet the criteria "i - iv" should be considered equally serious violation, and it may be reported at AE too.

This argument is totally frivolous, because scientific publications in protein crystallography are usually being published in journals with an average impact-factor above 3 (which statistically means each article is unlikely to be non-cited). In addition, any published X-ray structure (and even those which has not been published yet) is deposited to the Protein Data Bank, which also implies some fact checking. Anyway, this analogy is so remote that it seems like an argument for a sake of argument. I propose to ignore this argument, as well as KC argument, and focus at the main topic.
Frankly, I do not understand the point My Very Best Wishes is trying to make. Does he really think that fairy tales are used as a source in scholarly articles? With regard to the Nature article cited by him, there is a direct misinterpretation of what it says. It says:
"Web of Science records suggest that fewer than 10% of scientific articles are likely to remain uncited. But the true figure is probably even lower, because large numbers of papers that the database records as uncited have actually been cited somewhere by someone."
It also says that the number of uncited articles steadily decreases. Finally, that article was written based mostly on Web of Science data, which are focused on natural and exact sciences, and humanities and similar disciplines are poorly represented there. I think the Nature article is totally irrelevant to the current discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:33, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

@Maxim:@BDD: We already have a policy saying that highly controversial topics require multiple high quality sources. If ArbCom answers "Yes" to the questions 1 and 2, that just confirms the obvious fact that the Holocaust in Poland is a highly controversial topic, and many claims about Polish-Jewish relations that challenge mainstream views (an that is exactly what happening now, when many Polish sources seem to contradict to what Western scholarly literature says) need to be supported by multiple high-quality sources. Therefore, the only value of the ArbCom's sourcing restrictions would be a clarification of criteria outlined in WP:REDFLAG. In connection to that, Maxim's explanation seems a really valuable response.

Maxim's interpretation seems very close to what I describe above, and to K.e.coffman's deinition. However, I still have some questions/comments:

  • Excludes coffee-table-style books or other books where the intended audience is the general public instead of academics I anticipate serious debates over the books that are authored by respectable journalists, because many of them, by their quality are comparable to monographs.
  • Excludes non-peer-reviewed literature See below
  • Includes peer-reviewed monographs written by an academic and published by an academic press Usually, monographs are not peer-reviewed. Instead, reviews may be published after publication of the book (but that is not necessary). Therefore, I would propose "monographs ... that have generally positive reviews".
  • Includes the type of book that has an academic as an editor and has chapters contributed by other academics, is peer-reviewed, is published by an academic press, and is generally a secondary source (review) versus something that's more of a primary research report (but consider that the primary research report might have a section with a good review and summary of the existing literature) Again, the editor usually does not peer-review the chapters authored by individual contributors, he invites the authors whom he trusts.
  • Includes academic textbooks, preferably aimed at the senior undergraduate to graduate levels, but we can live with a first-year textbook depending on what claims are being cited No comments
  • Depending on the claims, would favor most recent scholarship. The most recent scholarship may contain some controversial claims that may be challenged by peers in close future. I would say "reasonably recent scholarship that has been widely cited by other authors".

To that, I would add the following. Many journals exist that have all traits of peer-reviewed journals, but that publish the works authored by a narrow local group of authors, who perform "peer-reviewing" of each other's works. Formally, they fit a definition of "peer-reviewed publication", but they may be totally marginal. As a rule, these journals have no impact factor (of an impact factor below 1), and the articles published there are not cited by the authors who do not belong to that group. Obviously, the quality of content of those journals can be very low, significantly lower than the quality of publications in mainstream newspapers. Meanwhile, your rule allows the former and forbids the latter. In my opinion, "peer-reviewed" articles published in low level journals (the journals with low or absent impact factor) should be allowed only if they have been cited by some other scholarly publication, and that reference contained no obvious criticism. With regard to the User:Nigel Ish's argument, I think all of that can be easily resolved by specifying that the above source restrictions are applicable only to potentially controversial claims (the claims that have been challenged by at least one user, who substantiated them with appropriate sources). We all are reasonable people, and we do not expect that a user who added a marginally acceptable source telling about technical details or combat history of some Polish warship may be reported to AE. I think, a procedure of source removal should be as follows: "I (user name) find the claim supported by the source X controversial, and it contradicts to commonly accepted views expressed in mainstream scholarly literature. I am removing the source X and request other users not to restore that information unless it is supported by multiple high quality sources (as defined by WP:REDFLAG and ArbCom's decision)". Obviously, a user who is removing non-controversial or purely technical information from the articles about Poland under a pretext that the sources are marginally acceptable can be accused of gaming a system. Therefore, I find Nigel Ish's argument somewhat artificial.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:21, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@Nigel Ish:, I understand your concern, and it seems the ideas expressed by @Maxim: in his last post can resolve the problem. I also would like to point out at the @Tataqp:'s opinion: it seems this good faith user is not fully familiar with our content policy yet, because the main idea of his post is that ArbCom's source restrictions pose a strong barrier extensive usage of "firsthand accounts, memoirs, documents, government reports or hearings" and other primary sources, usage of SPS, which, as we all know, violated our policy. That is a proof that the restrictions are a very valuable tool.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:24, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

@Maxim: What you say about REDFLAG is correct, however, can you please explain me something? The Holocaust in Poland, as well as the EE topic in general is under standard DS. Among other restrictions it means that all users who are active in those topics must meet expectations, including "to comply with all applicable policies and guidelines". WP:REDFLAG IS a part of our policy, and that means REDFLAG violations committed in ANY topic covered by DS can be reported at AE and, ideally, they must be treated as seriously as personal attacks or topic ban violations. REDFLAG is quite concrete, and in some aspects it is more rigorous than the restrictions that we are discussing here. It says exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources, whereas the restrictions we are discussing do not contain the word "multiple". Had REDFLAG worked properly, this discussion as whole would not be needed, because ALL content that is a focus of hot debates is usually found in some single source (or a couple of sources) AND most sources are of borderline quality, which means they all could be eliminated per REDFLAG. But that usually does not happen, or it is achieved at a very high cost. Moreoever, I know no examples when some user was subjected to sanctions for the REDFLAG violation. Of course, I may be wrong (I am not reading all AE requests), but I am not familiar with such cases. I have a feeling that admins prefer to treat such type cases as "content disputes". That means the problem is probably not in DS themselves (it seems general DS are quite sufficient to prevent lion's share of disruption), but in their implementation. Maybe, instead of imposing new and new restrictions, it probably makes sense to think what can be done for proper implementation of existing restrictions? What if ArbCom issues an explanation that REDFLAG violations can and should be reported at AE, and admins should not treat such violations as "content disputes"?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:21, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

El_C, consider the following situation. A user A reports a user B at AE for adding some information that was supported by an article published in some local newspaper or by some foreign government web site, and the user A claims that this information visibly contradicts to what majority scholarly sources say. The user A also says that the claim added by the user B is extraordinary, and, therefore, it falls under WP:REDFLAG. Since REDFLAG is our policy, and because DS requires that all users acting in the DS covered topics must strictly observe it, the user A concluded that the user B does not meet some important expectations, which makes their activity at the pages covered by DS disruptive.
You are very active at the AE page, and you must agree that usually that type requests are just ignored by admins as just a "content dispute". Meanwhile, if we make REDFLAG violations sanctionable, any addition restrictions, including the one we are discussing here, will become redundant.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:52, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by GizzyCatBella

I am very concerned about using newspaper sources and similar for factual claims. Still, at the same time, there is nothing wrong with using them to source uncontroversial matters about events that happened after the war, correct? At Witold Pilecki's article, for example, a new editor, invoking this remedy, eliminated nearly the whole of the section about his legacy [43], which initially concerned things like monuments erected or posthumous awards received after 1989. This is just one of many examples I can think of where this remedy is being severely abused. Instead of preventing the addition of fringe theories that are generally restrained by WP:RS anyway, it is used to justify removing relevant and uncontroversial content someone doesn't like. The very existence of WP:RSN tells that many years after WP:RS was adopted, we are still debating what "reliable" is. To invent a new term, "academically focused" is an absurdity. The community has difficulty handling "reliable" without burdening it with clarifying a new notion. And such an endeavor is impossible anyway. We could just call for the use of "very reliable" or "best quality" sources - all meaningless qualifications that invite subjective opinions like "this award is good enough" - "no, it is not" or "one review in a peer-reviewed source is enough"-"no, we need seven" or "the author needs to have a Ph.D."-"no, Ph.D. is not enough". He needs a Nobel Prize". And worst, the remedy means that the question of what is reliable is no longer discussed at RSN, where at least most editors are reasonably experienced with the concept of "reliability". Now we ask administrators at AE, many of whom are not content creators, nor academics, to make such a call. At first, I assumed this remedy might help, but now I realize it was a prescription for failure. It's a typical "good intention" that, in reality, is only useful for paving the proverbial hell. We need to bite this in the back. In the end, whether the remedy is helpful or not can be judged by looking at its impact. What sources did it exclude that otherwise would be allowed? Right now, I can only think of the recent case concerning the Volunteer (book). The book has been written in consultation with many professional historians, was published by a major publishing house, gained a notable award, and got a significant and overwhelmingly positive reception. Is this indeed a source the remedy was supposed to rule out? If the answer is no, then the remedy is broken. Last thought - I am pretty unsure whether that source (Volunteer book) is allowed or not - the RSN discussion reads like no consensus, so what's the default ruling here? Use it, get reported to AE, and see how the dice roll? And since the source is used to reference content, and if removed, said content could be too, per WP:V (which clearly states "Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed"), how is this remedy, or any imaginable AE ruling based on it, not a verdict on content? - GizzyCatBella🍁 07:24, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

  • @user Bob not snob - I'm sorry that 12 minutes after registering your account on November 5th[44], you inmediatelly had to step into such a problematic area by reverting [45] Volunteer Marek. - GizzyCatBella🍁 08:56, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
  • @Paul Siebert - You write that "the [Flemming] review contains serious criticism of factual accuracy", but as Piotrus pointed out, Flemming doesn't find any "factual errors" in the book; he just criticizes the usage of the word volunteer and concludes that "Despite the problems outlined above, the book has several merits. It is written in accessible prose and includes numerous pictures and informative maps. It has many references (though some are imprecise and unclear) and provides some additional insight into courier operations and Pilecki’s peacetime life." This merely sounds like a negative review but more like a balanced one. Not that I think this is the place to address this or your (interesting) method for assessing source reliability. - GizzyCatBella🍁 07:55, 14 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by DGG

There are two separate topics here: one is the role of arb com with respect to issues involving content. The other is how to determine what sources to use, with respect to either our general preference for academic content, or a community or other mandate to use only or preferentially academic content in a particular situation.

Content can be affected directly or indirectly, by interpreting policy in such a way that it does indirectly affect content. An example is this very case. WP policies almost always involve terms of art, words used in special ways in Wikipedia, and whose exact meaning is endlessly disputable: A particularly ambiguous phrase is Reliable Sources, and it's a particularly important phrase, because serious content arguments are usually argued in terms of which sources to use--if you can use the right sources, anything can be supported. This sort of interpretation should in theory be outside the scope of arb com, but it sometimes must be, because of the need to deal with editors who insist disruptively on using sources inappropriately--whatever we may say in theory, or write in a decision, in practice we treat editors who edit in an aggressive or repetitive manner in different ways, depending upon what we think of their arguments or their sources. Despite the wording of guidelines, there is in actuality no such thing as a reliable source, or an unreliable sources. Sources are reliable to different degrees for different purposes. In some fields academic sources of a particular type are universally regarded as preferable, as with MEDRS; in others, such as some areas of technology or business or current affairs, such sources may be very incomplete as compared with other possibilities. My career was as an academic librarian; it may not be realized by those not familiar, but the parts of the academic world dealing with the humanities and social sciences live not by consensus, but by controversy. There have been many books published on all major topics in history, and the only way to get a new book published is either to find new primary material, or to reinterpret existing ones. For a reinterpretation, or the use of new primary material, the book will be most widely reviewed, most widely read, most likely to lead to tenure, and most profitable for the publisher, the more sensational or at least controversial it is. For those topics in history which have implication to current politics , or the memory of people still living --or their descendants--reinterpretations that affect national stories are always controversial, and in these fields books by those with lesser academic qualifications can be just as influential, even to the academic world, as those by the highest level historian--some fields will even be mostly researched by those with a legend to defend or oppose.
It's obvious that the present field is like that, or we would not be here. It's clear to everyone with even remote interest that publications in this field are often affected by ideology, which can affect both academics and nonacademics. Governments or political parties have views to support, as do their constituents, and they will read whatever supports them. Accurate discussion of such issue is only possible if all sides are open to evaluation. Some of the most interesting work on controversial movements is done by their supporters, some by their equally extreme opponents. The material will be of a varying degree of sophistication, and can only be judged by informed comparison. A polemic work will use those sources which support its position. An encyclopedia cannot do that, or it is worthless. We are not of value to anyone but ourselves if we discuss only positions which most or even all of us support. Any sensibly skeptical person will realize that anyone or anything that presents only one side of the argument cannot be trusted. Regretfully, WP does not always act as if it realizes this--we are subject , as groups tend to be, towards adherence to popular orthodoxy, where some positions in various areas --not just history--arise such strong emotions that they cannot be discussed, for people will not look further at the argument because anyone presenting it will be assumed to be a supporter. To put this in the plaines words possible, I find this really stupid, because how can we defeat our enemies if we do not know what they are doing and saying?
Therefore, if we are to discuss what could be considered as Nazi remnants or past or present Nazi behavior, we must use Nazi sources as well as others. The skill of an honest historian or honest encyclopedia consists of using them in context--using them in such a way that the reader will come to their own conclusion about their nature. If we cannot trust the reader to judge fairly without our laying our hands on the balance, any outside objective viewer would conclude we are probably suppressing the truth. The Soviets, for example, opposed the tendencies of such as Trotsky, and printed long denunciations of their views, without ever letting people see what they were actually saying. The Catholic Church in past centuries had its Index, even though they must have know it suggested that the works on it might be telling the truth, and apparently argued, as did the Soviets, that the truth was too dangerous to their system.
I do not know how WP can ensure that propaganda is presented as propaganda; but the first step is surely to at least include all positions, even if we must resort to labelling them as wrong. (I don't really support this either, of course, but doing anything better might require a subtlety that our usual editors may not be capable of handling, and would actually require true experts). My colleague Piotrus is a sociologist and historian, and knows the sources much better than I, and can do more accurate evaluation of sources than I am capable of. We have different backgrounds, but the reason I can trust him is that he wants others to speak also. I see no reason to discuss the details here, because the entire principle behind the arb com remedy is in total error. DGG ( talk ) 07:50, 13 March 2021 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 08:42, 13 March 2021 (UTC)


I consider JzG's conclusion below a misnterpretation. He says "Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopaedia - by design, we're going to represent the mainstream scholarly consensus." This is quite different from our ideala and our written policy, though it does seem to represent some people's editing. Actually, the encyclopedia privileges the current scholarly consensus, but presents all significant viewpoints. A remedy that satisfies those who believe in the unchanging nature of what sometimes passes for temporary consensus of a vocal academic minority , is probably not a NPOV. Even arb com, in the original pseudoscience case, admitted the need to distinguish when consensus changes. And I would personally add that the attempt to find consensus among English speaking editors on the enWP is not necessarily representative of the world-wide situation on nationalist issues. DGG ( talk ) 08:11, 14 March 2021 (UTC) DGG ( talk ) 08:13, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
It was mentioned by Barkeep that I and others were being reluctant to give diffs. This is deliberate on my part for if we did, they would extend to essentially all .the diffs in the previous arb com cases mentioned. There are certainly some I would very much like tor have reopened, but this is not the place for them. If they are really wanted, they can be supplied in a collapsed section. I am particularly reluctant to do this because . besides the cases mentioned, it would also reopen American Politics, and many other recent cases. They would also include the instance where the use of DS was merely threatened, which can have as much of an effect of keeping material out of Wikipedia as actually using it.
It was similarly mentioned that I had not discussed the difference between minority, and fringe. There is no sharp difference between the two, and how one classes a viewpoint cannot be clearly defined; the practice seems to be, that if you don't want to include something, you call it fringe; if you do, you call it minority. I understand why the original arb cases made this distinction, but trying to make it generally applicable opens the possibility to do anything. In some of the AP discussions, the views supportive of the Republican Party were called fringe by some editors; at least one editor commented that the view was so far fringe that anyone supporting it was unqualified to edit WP at all. Much more fundamental, the concept we should totally exclude fringe is in my opinion also a negation of nPOV; as an encyclopedia , people should be able to find at least some information about the more absurd side of things also, and, in line with the general principles of inclusion, what does not warrant an article, may still be appropriate for at least a mention, and key references so those interested can go further.
I think it would be important to know the opinions of some other members of the committee. not just the two who have so far commented. DGG ( talk ) 18:17, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
Seeing the opinions, I have some doubts about the suggestion of a MEDRS -style requirement in this area. Medicine is at present an experimental science, with generally accepted rules about evidence and the relative significance of sources. How to interpret medical publications is well-established, and there is not really significant dissent. There's excellent outside evidence for the rules and expectations. History is not a science. History depends upon the evaluation and then the interpretation of source material. The are rules for determining whether a source is authentic, but there are an essentially infinite number of possible interpretations, many of which are plausible. There is inherently by the nature of the subject nothing that can resemble a controlled study. One can indeed sometimes -- but only sometimes-- prove that something factual did or did not happen, but one cannot prove what were the true motivations of the people involved, or the causes or effects of the events, or what this might ultimately mean in the context, of human affairs. One can talk about these things, and many people find such discussions fascinating, but there is no clear basis for definitively choosing between approaches. There is certainly a field, historiography, that studies the changes in interpretation as a social phenomenon, but it doesn't lead to conclusions about which views are correct--if anything, it show the impossibility of every reaching such a conclusion. One can say that today most academci favor one approach, and some another, but this is a statement about politics and intellectual fashion, not validity. DGG ( talk ) 05:05, 27 March 2021 (UTC)
Minority vs. Fringe. The examples usually given to support the non-coverage of fringe are absolute absurdities, like the flat earth theory.-- but even here, readers should know that there are still people and publications that support it. This isall the more important when the numbers are significant, as for the equally absurd homeopathy. A disagreement in an ethnic aspects of history abou the relative responsibilities of the various sides is another matter entirely, because people's views are not necessarily rational, and they will always regard their opponent as fringe. I may have mentioned that I have a very strong conviction about the utter wrongness of the position of the current Polish government and the historians it sponsors, based on the experiences that have been told me and my own attitudes; it would take very strong evidence indeed to make me think otherwise. But I want others to hear what can be said for them, as long as it is in context; the more I am sure of my view, the more I would want the other side to display their ignorance and bias. I don't want to be in the position where someone from another background might ask, as in fact I have been asked, did this really happen, or is it the evidence that would show otherwise being suppressed? It's a perfectly reasonable presumption for someone who really does not know , that if WP, claiming to be a NPOV encyclopedia should show only one side, the people who run it are the ones who are biased. DGG ( talk ) 06:39, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by nihil novi

The present situation enables disruptive or frivolous editors and sock-puppets to report established editors, thereby potentially discouraging established editors from adding otherwise valid sources that could be questioned on flimsy or bogus grounds – grounds whose inadequacy may easily escape the body being appealed to.

The remedy posits the vague criterion of an "academically-focused" source, which has been described as showing "a superior research quality in the tradition of the best academics". Who determines what is "superior", "tradition", or "best"?

There are already satisfactory long-standing mechanisms in place to guide discussions about the appropriateness of sources, without our having to employ impracticable mechanisms.

Respectfully, Nihil novi (talk) 07:59, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Bob not snob

Blocked
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Thank you Girth Summit of notifying me of this request that appears to be coming after Piotrus requested it.

I am mostly uninvolved in this topic, and have become involved after a few discussions at RSN on dubious sources and APLRS. From my recent experience this topic is highly toxic, unwelcoming, and full of editors who are pushing the cult of the "doomed soldiers". These "doomed soldiers" were mostly bandits, common thieves, murderers, and in some cases mass murderers of minorities. The nationalist right pushes them because they were also anti-communist.

The problem isn't limited to hate against Jewish minorities, Romuald Rajs is known as a mass murderer of Belarusian people, yet the article prior to cleanup presented a picture of him almost being innocent. I cleaned it using academic sources, yet some of this questionable content was returned afterwards. To give context to the present, Rajs is used as a symbol by haters in the east of Poland, his name is sprayed on the houses of Belarusian people living in Poland today to intimidate them.

My experience has been that subpar sourcing isn't the only problem here, the greater problem is that specific editors are willing to argue that these subpar sources are acceptable. I don't think User:Paul Siebert calling them "Polish" is correct, as it isn't Polish in my eyes to do this, and some of them are not Polish. My Very Best Wishes made this recent edit in which he restored information sourced to Publicystyka Antysocjalistycznego Mazowsza. This is an "anti-socialist" webpage or blog, that is right-wing extremist, and is not a reliable source for anything. He then posted on my talk page saying "I do not know Polish".


Pattern of problems:

  1. At AN discussion on Piotrus using an alternate account to call Polish Wikipedia ediotrs to vote on Axis powers, a specific group of editors showed up saying this was no big deal and not really wrong.
  1. At RSN discussion on Glaukopis journal, more or less the same specific group of editors showed up to argue that this is an academic journal. However this is academic in the same sense Mankind Quarterly is. It has an awful reputation, and so do the people involved with it. Dr. Wojciech Muszyński, theeditor/publisher of this magazine suggested that left-wing Polish politicians (Left Together) should be dealt with in a manner similar to the Pinochet regime with death flights [46].
  1. At RSN again the same sepcific group of editors shows up arguing that the The Volunteer (book) is reliable, and when pointed out by admins that it is not APLRS, then arguing it is academic. However the book is a mass market thriller, in no way academic. Furthermore, it can't be considered reliable at all as it is "partially fictionalized", containing entire episodes that are made up "literary fiction" (see Cyra's pretty glowing review aside from the fiction point). The sole academic review by Michael Fleming (historian) states that this book presents the myth of Pilecki (a Davy Crockett like figure) to English speakers. This isn't history, it is a narrative of an heroic myth.

This specific group of editors shows up and make facetious arguements, on the level that black is white, regarding any source they consider furthers their cause. Using heroic myths as sources for "doomed soldiers" is flat out unacceptable. Maybe the committee should authorize sanctions against this group that is making repeated false arguments?


During this discussion, specific editors (GizzyCatBella, Piotrus), make false claims on what Fleming wrote (source), saying Fleming "just criticizes the usage of the word volunteer". This is more saying that black is white, see actual quotes from review:
  1. Beginning: "In The Volunteer, journalist Jack Fairweather presents some, but not all, of the features of the Pilecki myth to English-speaking readers."
  2. "Fairweather’s problematic title signals the main weakness of the book, as does its first sentence, which endorses the dominant narrative of the Pilecki myth: “Witold Pilecki volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz.” This assertion cannot be sustained."
  3. "The second feature of the Pilecki myth that drives Fairweather’s narrative is that Pilecki was especially preoccupied with reporting on the fate of Jews in Auschwitz. In reality, Pilecki’s “mission” in the camp was to sustain morale, provide extra food and clothing to members of his organization, prepare to take over the camp... These activities were collective ... Gathering information about what was happening to Jews at the camp was part of his general intelligence work."
  4. "The third feature of the myth relating to Pilecki—that his story was exclusively suppressed by the Communist authorities—is placed under some pressure in Fairweather’s account..."
  5. "There is no doubt that Pilecki was courageous and patriotic, but by obfuscating the structures of the Underground State of which Pilecki was a part, and by failing to adequately explain the responsibilities and division of labor between its military and civilian wings, the author excludes much relevant material. Fairweather reduces the “cast of characters,” oversimplifying in order to advance the narrative in a manner sufficiently compelling for a mass-market book"
  6. Conclusion (after praising "accessible prose and includes numerous pictures and informative maps"): "It is unfortunate that in addition to having an inaccurate, sensationalist title, the book is framed as a “new chapter in the history of the mass murder of the Jews and an account of why someone might risk everything to help his fellow man.” This has resulted in a hagiographic narrative in an Anglo–American idiom."


Astounding, these new accounts self-identifying as non-academic publishers on Poland in WWII show up (Tataqp AK_at_Aquila_Polonica_Publishing) here to promote the use of these vanity presses to counteract the "devastating long-term impact of postwar communist disinformation warfare". How did they show up here? These kind of publishers are precisely the problem with non-academic sources in this topic, academic sources differ from heroic fairytales.--Bob not snob (talk) 12:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
(Personal attack removed). As for the substance of his claims, the article Romuald Rajs before cleanup was "astonishingly whitewashed" according to User:Buidhe on talk, and I would say even worse, it cast into doubt that this figure of hate was a mass murderer. Reliable academic sources (not Aquila Polonica Publishing) are unanimous in describing Rajs as a murderer. After cleanup it was made neutral, and there was a discussion at Talk:Romuald Rajs, where I am still waiting for an answer for the removal of Kozik in Journal of the Belarusian State University as a not good enough source.--Bob not snob (talk) 12:20, 25 March 2021 (UTC)
@Dreamy Jazz:, can you look at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/AK at Aquila Polonica Publishing and their posts here? The two publisher accounts posting here have been  Confirmed to be the same. Both posted here in short succession (AK at Aquila Polonica Publishing, Tataqp) as supposedly different people in different sections. This a person with a conflict of interest, associated with a tiny publisher named after the Polish Eagle (a national Polish symbol, often sported like this) using https://www.polandww2.com/ domain as their home. There are posting here saying they should be used as a source because of " devastating long-term impact of postwar communist disinformation", which they say is present "on this topic on Wikipedia" too. They also think their work is valuable because "academia has become more of a closed system tolerant of only certain viewpoints". Could you also look into how these very inactive accounts (12 and 2 edits total, a large portion of these conflict-of-interest edits) were informed of this discussion and were motivated to post here multiple times with these different, but  Confirmed, accounts?--Bob not snob (talk) 05:44, 26 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by JBchrch

I am somewhat inexperienced in these matters, so I will remain in my place and keep it short. I think that the WP:RSN discussion shows that the language of the WP:APLRS rule is not detailled enough for a meaningful consensus to emerge. This is not surprising: people can’t even agree on the meaning of basic words,[1] let alone unusual terminology like this one, let alone when tensions run high. So I support Girth Summit’s 3rd proposition.--JBchrch (talk) 11:36, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ Tobia, Kevin P. (2020). "Testing Ordinary Meaning" (PDF). Harvard Law Review. 134: 726. Retrieved 12 March 2021.

Statement by JzG

Questions 1 and 2 seem like an obvious "yes". There is no sense in which the vexed issue of antisemitism in Poland is anywhere near calmed down yet. The remedy's sourcing requirement has materially improved the quality of these articles, but not the inflammatory nature of the constant disputes between the warring parties. Let's remember to separate the two. The continuing battle between the two factions does not mean that the remedies are unnecessary or ineffective.

Question 3 comes down to a subject-specific interpretation of WP:RS, and can normally be resolved by looking at the remedy in its entirety: Only high quality sources may be used, specifically peer-reviewed scholarly journals, academically focused books by reputable publishers, and/or articles published by reputable institutions. That normally includes any legitimate mainstream scholarship, and will exclude the kinds of books published by imprints owned by the author or some group of axe-grinders. In the case of the specific book at issue, it doesn't meet those criteria. Arguing about the interpretation of individual subclauses in isolation is akin to the Supreme Court's Solomonic opinions on the significance of the Oxford comma. That's not how Wikipedia works. Importantly, this should be the standard for any section of the encyclopaedia that aspires to be a record of fact. Articles on wrestling are a dead loss and RS long since left the building there, but this is an area where we can and should aspire to academic levels of rigour, and all this remedy does is codify what that means: a good Wikipedian would interpret RS as mandating exactly this level of sourcing in this area, and the remedy's principal effect is to rapidly close down pointless argument on marginal sources.

This is a common problem at WP:RSN. "Is X reliable" usually makes sense only in the context of "reliable for what?". The source under discussion does not to meet the remedy's requirement for statement as fact, but that does not prejudge whether it can be discussed as a significant opinion. You may view it as an edge case, but, from the article on the book, Cyra argues that the book "should be considered as non-fiction literature"; that it is "only partly fictionalized", and Michael Fleming [...] writes that the book is a hagiographic narrative that reinforces the myth about Pilecki volunteering to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, whereas he posits the more correct and neutral description of what happened was that "Pilecki was pressured to allow himself to be arrested in the hope of being sent to a camp". That's a textbook WP:UNDUE/WP:ATT question, even without the specific remedy at issue. The book's thesis should clearly not be taken as fact in Wikipedia's voice per the remedy, but the remedy and normal Wikipedia practice do not preclude inclusion as a significant opinion or debate, subject to consensus on framing. Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources. This seems like a significant viewpoint, at least in respect of Pilecki.

The best solution in my view would be a standard Wikipedia fudge: a paragraph wordsmithed collaboratively between the various editors which references the book and its status as a popular history with some acceptance and some dissent, with an RfC to determine any disputed wording. In the alternative, we should apply the rule of sticks, if necessary using narrowly targeted remedies such as page bans or reply limits to help people towards a more thoughtful and measured form of engagement, rather than the characteristic rapid-fire and rapidly-escalating rhetoric that is all too common in this area.

Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopaedia - by design, we're going to represent the mainstream scholarly consensus. The sourcing expectation remedy delivers exactly that. Some editors don't like it, but that is very much the point: a remedy that everyone loves, is probably not a necessary remedy. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:49, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm astonished to hear DGG, an editor I hold in the highest regard, saying that "Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopaedia" is incorrect. It is. That's exactly what we mean by "representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". That is what mainstream means.
Mainstream is not the opposite of conservative. Mainstream is the opposite of fringe. We do not represent counterfactual nationalist propaganda as equivalent to independent scholarly views. Guy (help! - typo?) 22:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by FOARP

I have not been involved in the present discussion, but in recent months I have observed RFCs over whether or not Poland should be listed as one of the Axis powers, whether or not Poland should be listed as a successor state of Nazi Germany, and a number of other such discussions. It is clear from the direction of these discussions that, on English Wiki, at present, Poland's role in WW2 is the subject of dispute typically involving people expressing views typical of those expressed in a range of different Central/Eastern European countries, and not Poland alone. Polish nationalism is not the only nationalism that needs to be guarded against here.

Academics are not the only people concerned here, either, nor should their interests be artificially elevated over those of others beyond what their expertise and institution requires. They may be experts (or in many cases may not actually be experts on this specific topic per se) but they are not the only experts, and the assumption that they are automatically free of biases or more reliable than non-academic sources is not one that historically has always proved true. Academia includes many institutions that are highly susceptible to the influence of various governments, not least because they are often government-funded and depend on goodwill with governments for access. Any one following Chinese issues in recent years will be familiar with the growing problem of self-censorship in return for access amongst academics. Academics are also human beings and given to the same rivalries and conflicts that ordinary people are (to take one example from this particular space, it is apparent from a reading of their negative reviews of each other's work that Anita Prazmowska and Anna Cienciala had a rivalry of sorts).

It would be highly anomalous that in this particular area of discussion, in respect of one particular Eastern European country, sources that we would typically consider reliable sources on the subject (e.g., newspaper articles written by non-academic experts in reliable outlets, books written by reputable non-academic journalists/historians and published by reputable publishing houses) should be artificially subordinated to academic ones (which may not be from particularly reputable institutions). This remedy, if it is interpreted as requiring this, was clearly excessive, disproportionate, and wrong even on its own merits, and should be set aside. However, I don't believe it requires this. Either the decision should be rescinded or it should be amended to clarify that sources with an academic nexus are not automatically more reliable than independent non-academic sources, that editors still need to exercise judgement.
Therefore:

1. Yes.
2. I could go either way, but this has not prevented disruption nor calmed things down really, as a simple review of the above shows.
3. "Academically focused" need to be clarified to specify that this is not simply elevating ANY academic source (however dubious/informal) over ANY non-academic source (however reliable). Really what we are talking about here is blogs and the like, which are anyway dealt with by WP:RS. FOARP (talk) 12:15, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Coretheapple

I don't edit very much in this topic area, but was pleased to read that there was a well-drafted Arbcom decision pertaining to sourcing on the subject. It is a good decision, it still is amply warranted, and was written with great specificity so that it does not mandate further clarification. Arbcom is not required to interpret clearly worded decisions for editors who don't like their wording. This discussion was warranted by use of the book The Volunteer, which is a readable journalistic account that does not in any way, shape or form meet the criteria you set. Your decision is not broke and there is nothing to fix.Coretheapple (talk) 15:29, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

  • I agree with Beyond My Ken that expertise of the author of any text is paramount. I would suggest, based upon my limited experience in this area, that when problems arise in this subject area it seems to be a result of editor behavior issues, POV pushing in particular, and not lack of clarity of arbitration decisions. The arbcom criteria at issue here are fine. Can they be wikilawyered? Sure. So can anything. That is the fault of the wikilawyers, no one else. Coretheapple (talk) 16:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
  • This is by way of confessing that until it was mentioned by User:SlimVirgin below I had not read User:El_C's comment, in which I heartily concur. This was indeed "one of the best and most important Arbitration decisions bar none." In my defense, I point to the tl;dr blocks of text and repetitious arguments above dulling my senses. Coretheapple (talk) 22:11, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I agree with Levivich in his supplementary comment below. He's adding to it, so I hope I don't edit-conflict with his very good thoughts on the subject. Let's focus on what has actually happened, please, not on what could happen as a result of this dastardly decision, which seems to be the primary focus of the tl;dr walls of text on this subject. What horrors have been perpetrated by this arbcom decision? The only takeaway from all the impassioned, very very lengthy comments here is that people are passionate on the subject. Which to my mind is a good reason to keep these strictures in place.Coretheapple (talk) 19:07, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Levivich

I agree the answers to 1 and 2 are yes for the reasons others explained above. As for #3, the most important part of the source expectation is, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, separating out academic from non-academic (e.g. mainstream books and popular press). I've been working on User:Levivich/Tiers of reliability, ranking different classes of sources, which might be the start of an essay or info page that editors can refer to when discussing levels of reliability among different types of sources. If anyone is interested in expanding it or otherwise working on it, they're most welcome to edit the page. Levivich harass/hound 17:35, 13 March 2021 (UTC)

@Barkeep49: I think arbcom should, and perhaps must, answer #3 by clarifying what is meant by "academically focused". To the extent admins are having trouble enforcing an arbcom restriction because they think the words used in the restriction are vague, only arbcom can help with that by clarifying the language used in its own restriction.
"Academically focused" might mean: (a) authored by academics, (b) published by academics, (c) academics are the intended audience, (d) some combination of a, b, and c, (e) "academically focused according to criteria to be determined by the community" is one possible way to go, or (f) something else altogether. I think, reading your comments, you mean (e), which I think would be a clarification and thus an answer to Q3. Levivich harass/hound 18:07, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Before we consider loosening this source expectation, we should answer two questions:

  1. What sources do editors want to use that they cannot use because of this source expectation?
  2. What article content should be included but cannot be sourced to an academic source?

And I don't mean hypothetically, I mean in reality, in past experience. There's a lot of people talking hypotheticals, but I see no actual examples of, for example, a source that was removed from an article under this source expectation that should not have been removed. Even in the case of The Volunteer, I ask, what facts do we need to source from that book, that we cannot source from other, academic books? (Ships, for example, have nothing to do with it. AFAIK, no one has ever used this source expectation to argue that we can't use something like Naval Institute Press to source an article about a ship.)

I believe that once we identify the "facts outside academic sources", that is, facts that cannot be sourced to academic sources and can only be sourced to non-academic sources, it'll become apparent that these non-academic sources are totally unnecessary, if not counterproductive ... or they're so minor/uncontroversial (like ship specs) that no one is using this source expectation to argue against them anyway.

I believe in this topic area, the only time people go to non-academic sources is when those sources conflict with academic sources, and they want to use the non-academic sources to make the conflict seem like there is no academic consensus, when in fact there is academic consensus, it's just that some non-academic sources don't agree with that consensus. In those cases, we should be presenting only the academic consensus; significant minority views are only significant if they're significant in academia. We all know that academic publications will identify both mainstream and significant minority views explicitly. To say, "Ah! But there's a book that says something different! It's a significant minority view!" is to mislead our readers, IMO. It's a type of OR, IMO.

The reason this expectation was put in place in the first place is because people were using non-academic sources to argue against academic sources, and to make academic consensus appear to be just one of a number of competing viewpoints. This is misleading to our readers. This rather widespread practice had to be proven at the arbcom case before this expectation was put in place. Please, let's not undo that based on editor's hypotheticals and speculation, let's look at how this has been used, on the ground, in practice, before we decide whether it needs to be changed.

Whenever people say, "well, sometimes you need to include a fact but it's not in the sources," I think to myself, "so how do you know we need to include the fact, if it's not in the sources?" It seems like that's "backwards editing": first figure out what you want to say, then find sources to back it up. We should be doing the opposite: first find the sources, then summarize them. If a fact is not in the sources, it shouldn't be in our article, either. And while there are always exceptions for minor details here and there, I don't believe this source expectation has ever been used to exclude minor or uncontroversial factual details. There's a big difference between using a non-academic source to fill in some minor gap, and using it to argue against academic sources.

For example, the question "was 'the volunteer' really a volunteer or was he assigned?" is not a minor uncontroversial detail; we should only be writing what academic sources say on that point; we shouldn't use non-academic sources, such as the book, The Volunteer.

If the problem on the ground is limited to the use of non-academic sources for non-controversial details (I do not believe this is actually what the problem on the ground is), then it might make sense to clarify the expectation to say that it's OK to use high-quality but not-strictly-academic sources (like Naval Institute Press) for non-controversial details (like the technical specs of a battleship). But before we change anything, please identify the problem on the ground, in practice; don't change this based on hypotheticals.

And before anyone says anything, yeah, I know arbcom can't decide content disputes. But it can decide if any content disputes have arisen (is the current source expectation actually getting in the way of anything?), and what they were about (mainstream v. significant minority viewpoints, or minor/uncontroversial details like ship specs?). Levivich harass/hound 18:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The relevant topic area here is Holocaust in Poland. That's a topic for which only academic-focused sources should be used. To the extent the source expectation is too broad, including all of WWII and thus things like ship specifications, the scope should be narrowed, rather than just ditching the whole thing. Levivich harass/hound 14:47, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for pinging all the participants! +1 to the #Alternative motion; seems like a best-of-both-worlds resolution. (Not to be confused with a The Best of Both Worlds resolution.) Levivich harass/hound 20:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Atsme

I align with the views expressed by DGG. But I will add Houston, we have a problem, and it is threatening NPOV. I totally agree that we must use high quality sources, and scholarly sources are unambiguously high on the list. But we must not forget that there are scholarly sources and books that reflect opposing views; therefore, we must exercise caution about eliminating other significant views that may not align with the most prevalent. Throughout history, scholarly views have been rejected because of strongly held views by some of our prominent leaders in science and medicine. See Bohr–Einstein debates. Keep in mind that our job is to provide all significant views, and allow our readers to explore the possibilities, conduct their own research, and form their own conclusions based on the material we've added per NPOV, and the cited sources we've provided. We should not limit them to a single POV if other views are also significant, regardless of our own personal opinions. Atsme 💬 📧 13:24, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Beyond My Ken

Far too many words already, so I'll be brief: 1.Yes, 2.Yes, 3.Anything written on the subject by academic or other subject experts, in whatever format (academic book, popular book, journal article, magazine article, newspaper op-ed, interview, tweet, verified Facebook comment, etc.) should be considered to be an "academically-focused source". It's the expertise behind the words that's important, not the format in which the words appear. Beyond My Ken (talk) 05:30, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Nosebagbear

I can't say as to whether a restriction in this vein should continue, but I do concur that it is not within ARBCOM's remit to be deciding such - they are making content decisions, just by the back door. Should they think the sanction should continue, then they should request the Community endorse it, in lieu of a formal rule change. Nuances within that, and expansion on clarification are well covered by the others, so I won't duplicate words Nosebagbear (talk) 20:30, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

@CaptainEek: - this may be a bit of an ideological dispute that I suspect was argued all the way when BLP DS was made, but our disputes are either conduct or content oriented. Conduct goes to the conduct route, content the content route. I struggle to see how a change to required sourcing level is a conduct issue, so it must be a content route, and therefore outside ARBCOM's remit. At best, ARBCOM could authorise sanctions that would enforce a higher sourcing requirement but that the actual sourcing level would have to be determined by the Community. Play around with the sourcing levels and you could (if you wrote long-enough/tailored enough rules) functionally control content while still claiming it was under ARBCOM's remit - that isn't what's happening here, but it does to me seem to be in the same bucket. Nosebagbear (talk) 16:07, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

[I realised I made a partially duplicative, though thankfully not contradictory, statement. I have merged the two] Nosebagbear (talk)

Statement by SarahSV

I agree with El C that this was "one of the best and most important Arbitration decisions bar none"; with JzG that "this is an area where we can and should aspire to academic levels of rigour, and all this remedy does is codify what that means: a good Wikipedian would interpret RS as mandating exactly this level of sourcing in this area"; and with Coretheapple that the decision is "not broke and there is nothing to fix". SarahSV (talk) 20:47, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Biruitorul

I object to the remedy because it’s a clear example of the creeping bureaucratization that we should be avoiding. While we all recognize the sensitivity of the topic area, the fact remains that there are already policies in place regarding sources, venues for discussing the reliability of sources, sanctions for deliberate misrepresentation of sources, etc. Moreover, the proposal gives bad-faith editors an additional tool with which to threaten their productive counterparts. ArbCom has generally stayed aloof from content disputes and should, in my view, continue to do so. — Biruitorul Talk 07:12, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Nigel Ish

I've said this before, but the problem is that the committee is trying to solve behaviour problems with a sourcing requirement, and a very vague one at that - we wouldn't be having this discussion if everyone was clear what "academically focused books" actually meant as can be seen by the discussion at RS/N that provoked this. While it is appropriate to expect high quality sources to be used for the nexus of the problem (i.e. the Holocaust in Poland, anti-Semitism in Poland and collaboration with the Germans), it is equally important (and perhaps even more so) that sources are used appropriately (i.e. is the best source for the fact being cited being used and has the source been used appropriately. It is also important to note that even peer-reviewed articles and other academically focussed works will have biases, or have been written to argue a point and even the best sources can make mistakes.Nigel Ish (talk) 22:41, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

:@Maxim: - The strengthening of sourcing restrictions which you are demanding along with the colossal scope of the restriction "all articles on the topic of Polish history during World War II (1933-45), including the Holocaust in Poland" will effectively mean that if this is actually enforced then we will not have any articles covering large parts of the Second World War - for example strict enforcement on ORP Piorun (G65) a warship operated by the Polish Navy operated during the Second World War - means that all sources must be removed - they are of the highest quality but not "academic" "peer reviewed" sources that are solely aimed at academia - they are written by experts in the field and published by reputable specialist publishers - but it appears that that doesn't count - therefore by your reasoning the article must be deleted. How does that improve the encyclopedia? We should be using the best sources, not just the ones that happen to be "academic".Nigel Ish (talk) 15:26, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
@Paul Siebert: - The problem is that is not what the requirement actually says. It doesn't say it only applies to controversial points, it says that it applies to all articles on the topic. Editors can only assume that it will be applied as written - otherwise the requirement is meaningless and should be removed as such. It is also noted that any change may be controversial to someone - when the community as a whole is quite happy to allow editors to wikilawyer and game to drive others away and promote their viewpoint, then editors have to assume that requirements like this will be used against them. (And the fact is that the community HAS failed to stop the disruptive behaviour, which is why the buck has been passed to ARBCOM_The changes will also drive the editors to use poorer sources - the assumption that only purely academic sources are of any use and other sources - no matter what world class expert has produced them are somehow suspect is wrong and damaging to the encyclopedia. It should also be noted that this restriction as written would prevent any article affected from being considered for any sort of GA or FA as it prohibits the use of the vast proportion of high quality reliable sources.Nigel Ish (talk) 17:30, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
The 'Alternative Motion' should, hopefully, by making the restriction a DS-type affair, limit the potentially overlarge scope of the existing requirement, while still giving appropriate tools to stop disruptive use of inappropriate sourcing, while the appeal to RS:N will help to minimise the potential for inappropriate application of the academic sourcing requirements. One question - would the restriction be applicable if needed to any article "broadly construed", and if so, does the motion need to state this?Nigel Ish (talk) 21:12, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Pundit

I entirely understand the sentiment and the need for protecting our content by focusing on academic sources. However, my concern is that specifically in Poland there are very few purely academically-focused presses. Some of those which, in theory, should be a paragon of scholarly effort, may be biased. Some others, even though they are commercial publishers, stay up to high scholarly standards. Books are tricky, but I'd say that books published by renown academics and peer-reviewed should be generally acceptable, irrespective of the publisher. We wouldn't want to exclude "The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest" by Yochai Benkler just because it was published by Penguin, right? Pundit|utter 08:55, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Tataqp

I hope you will bear with me as I have never commented on Wikipedia before. But the question before the arbitrators of what sources should be admissible, which has only recently come to my attention, is a very important one on which I would like to provide my thoughts-—which perhaps come from a perspective different than that of some of the other commentators.

The genius of Wikipedia comes from recognizing that crowd-sourcing is a highly effective (perhaps the most effective) way of reaching truth. But in order for this approach to work, the “crowd” must be wide. Limiting all sources on Wikipedia to “academically focused” or “peer reviewed” would be a grave mistake. It would be an even worse transgression, and a gross abandonment of Wikipedia’s purpose, to prejudicially impose such limit only in one topic area.

As a publisher of books in the subject area of Poland in World War II, I am acutely aware of the devastating long-term impact of postwar communist disinformation warfare, which even today colors international perception of Poland in the media and elsewhere—and indeed, including some of the discussion I see on this topic on Wikipedia.

Many of the problems with allowing only academically focused sources have been mentioned by others here. One of the most important to my mind is the fact that academic sources are by no means immune from personal bias or outside influence, including trends in research topics which are often dictated by available funding (which sometimes comes directly or indirectly from state actors with agendas). These dangers are more obvious in recent years, as academia has become more of a closed system tolerant of only certain viewpoints.

In addition, academic sources tend to be second-, third- or fourth-hand knowledge. They are highly dependent on the methodology by which the academic chose his/her sources and the scope of sources to which the academic had access—especially if, in a topic such as Poland in WWII, the academic is not multilingual. By the way, getting at the truth is one of the reasons why I like to publish firsthand contemporaneous accounts of events.

Peer review suffers from these same problems. Its unreliability was starkly illustrated by the recent retractions of Covid-related articles from the highly respected peer-reviewed journals Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. The value of peer review in the academic social sciences is even more questionable, where one’s peers are likely to be subject to the same biases and influences, and where there is no replicable scientific data involved.

There are many, many useful and important non-academic sources, such as firsthand accounts, memoirs, documents, government reports or hearings, newspaper articles, ephemera, encyclopedias, museums, etc.—including trade books (in publishing, the term “mass market” refers to the small format paperbacks most commonly used for genre fiction).

Trade books can certainly constitute useful sources and should not be banned merely because of who published them or who buys them—for example, The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather, who is a highly respected researcher and journalist; or X, Y & Z: The Real Story of How Enigma Was Broken by Sir John Dermot Turing, nephew of famous Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, whose well-researched book focuses on the Polish mathematicians who first broke Enigma in 1932; or The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery by Captain Witold Pilecki, his most comprehensive report about his undercover mission at Auschwitz; or the 2018 edition of Fighting Auschwitz by Jozef Garlinski with an introduction by Prof. Antony Polonsky (Chief Historian of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University), who says “It remains the definitive study of the topic and has not been superseded by more recent scholarship.” Other examples are the Osprey series of books on military history, the Jane’s guides, and there are literally thousands of others that can serve as useful sources.

I truly value the efforts and intent of the arbitrators and editors to provide to the maximum extent possible "truth" on all the various topics covered in Wikipedia. But I believe that if there are questions or doubts, the remedy is not to ban the information, but to provide a reference to a competing source and let the reader decide for him/herself. --Tataqp (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Evrik

The remedy is way too broad and unnecessary, and it prevents usage of perfectly reliable sources for uncontroversial topics which form majority of this case. --evrik (talk) 05:08, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by AK at Aquila Polonica Publishing

I am a prolific Wikipedia reader but not a Wikipedia contributor. I enjoy learning about Polish history and manage a social media account that shares Polish history tidbits. There is very little online about niche subjects of Polish history in English, and most of it is on Wikipedia. Articles on individual ships, skirmishes, and Polish people who lived during WW2 are appreciated reading material that may simply not be on the radar of English language academics. Facts like a ship being sunk on a certain date, or a person being born in a certain town, should be fine using sources that aren’t up to the standards of hardcore academia. If more authoritative sources prove these wrong, all more power to the editors. The current strict standard applied to over a decade of history seems very harsh. I hope this arbitration leads to more interesting reading and higher quality curation, while avoiding collateral damage. AK at Aquila Polonica Publishing (talk) 20:30, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Risker

I'm a bit flabbergasted by the original remedy - it really does venture far too deeply into content control, and isn't even appropriate for the nature of the topic area. Irrespective of my thoughts about the original motion, though, Maxim's motion is entirely correct. When a remedy is no longer materially relevant, it should be removed. Risker (talk) 23:23, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

  • In response to CaptainEek, I think there may be some misunderstanding about the purpose of the Arbitration Committee, which is to address user behavioural issues, not to solve every "big" problem of English Wikipedia. Yes, the committee's authority is limited. It should not be treading into content management; the last time it tried to do that, there was an open and public rebellion on the part of the community. Frankly, the committee as a whole doesn't have the knowledge to do that, and by approving remedies that are specific to content (e.g., the nature of reference sources that are appropriate for a particular topic), it essentially declares itself the final authority on the content of articles within that topic area. Now, I trust CasLiber to be the final authority on banksias, and I suppose NYB is probably better at assessing the quality of reference sources particular to the United States Supreme Court, but nobody would consider the committee as a whole to have that level of knowledge or experience to assume authority on the quality of sources in those topic areas.

    It is reasonable to pass a remedy that sanctions a specific editor for inappropriate use of reference sources, or for otherwise editing inappropriately in a topic area; that is already considered to be disruptive behaviour, and it is the behaviour you are sanctioning. It is reasonable to pass a remedy that permits independent administrators to assess the level of disruption caused by the editing practices of a particular editor; we call that discretionary sanctions. Both of them require evidence as to the disruption, specific to the sanction. But MEDRS is a creature of the community, as is the assessment of reliability of sources and the appropriateness of the sources used. The committee does not have authority over these areas of the project. At most, it can recommend or encourage the community to consider developing certain guidelines or policies related to sourcing of content. An editor using a non-academic reference as a source of information for non-controversial matters or for matters that are not normally included in the scope of academic references is not being disruptive. The result can be (and in a few cases, has been) gutting articles because there are no academic references that discuss non-controversial or even comparatively trivial statements in the article. Please keep the intentionally limited scope of Arbcom in mind; one might consider it the "Human Resources Department" of the project when it comes to discipline. Risker (talk) 05:02, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

In response to Barkeep, I think the best remedy is found in the original motion by Maxim; however, the first alternative by L235 would be my second choice. I think it still takes the management of article content out of the hands of knowledgeable topic editors; it is, however an improvement over its being in the hands of Arbcom. Risker (talk) 06:33, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Statement by RandomCanadian

I don't have much if any involvement in this (blame the AE thread), but WP:BESTSOURCES already seems to deal with the issue of controversial information - and that is also entirely common sense and honest academic practice (no serious academic would cite a newspaper article as a factual source for serious academic writing). Agree with CaptainEek that holding parts of the encyclopedia to stricter standards is not unprecedented (MEDRS is the obvious example), and should be an option in any areas which have shown to be prone to disruption (and history, as we all know, is prone to nationalist propaganda of all kinds, including revisionism and manipulation; so we should absolutely encourage more respectable sources); and further note that challenging high quality sources with poorer ones (and the popular press is okay for non-controversial facts, but journalists are not exactly subject matter experts with all the credentials and experience to provide an accurate picture of more difficult historiographical issues) is indeed a disruptive, conduct issue and not just a mere content issue. If the restrictions are doing good and preventing disruption and POV pushing (in what appears to be an extremely tense area), they should stay. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:43, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Thryduulf

I've only tangentially followed this dispute, but the crux of the matter seems to be that "academic" does not work as a useful way to distinguish between good and bad sources (at least in this topic area). MEDRS works (when correctly applied) because it reliably separates good sources from bad ones (and is treated as a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule). This, or any similar restriction, that excludes many good sources and/or allows many bad ones is going to cause more problems than it solves, especially if it says "X is good Y is bad" rather than "good sources generally do X, sources that do Y are bad more often than not". Thryduulf (talk) 14:29, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Statement by Sunrise

Assuming that the alternative motion passes: since the sanction describes itself as an expansion of a page-level DS at Collaboration in German-occupied Poland, it may be worthwhile to clarify the status of that specific page - whether the original page-level sanction will remain in effect, whether it is being replaced by the "reliable-source consensus required" sanction, whether it is being vacated with the others, or something else. I think it's implied that the original sanction will remain, but I don't know if others will think the same way.

Actually, it might also make sense to consider whether the pages at the nexus of the original dispute should be presumed to retain it as a page-level restriction, which could then be appealed at WP:AE as necessary. The idea would be to prevent the issues that led to the sanction from reoccurring, unless the Committee's opinion is that a renewal of the disruption on those pages is unlikely. Sunrise (talk) 18:46, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

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.

Antisemitism in Poland: Clerk notes

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

Antisemitism in Poland: Arbitrator views and discussion

  • Re GS's questions: 1: Yes. We regularly hold certain areas of the encyclopedia to higher standards, and I see no issue with requiring higher standards of sourcing. That to me is not a content issue. 2: Probably. 3: Aye, there's the rub. I was not on the committee when it was written, but my interpretation follows. It absolutely precludes the use of blogs, self published sources, and other non-RS material. But it should also been seen as discouraging anything but the highest quality sources (which the community can decide what that looks like). For historical research, that should be academic journal articles, and well researched books. Books can be tricky, and I'm not going to weigh in on this one in particular (that would be a content decision), but I think the community can handle what a high quality book is. For example, I'm writing on the American Civil War and Lincoln at the moment. My sources include several books that are the best I could possibly find, including a Pulitzer winning book and several others by Pulitzer winners and a Lincoln Prize winner (David Herbert Donald's "Linclon", James M. McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom", among others). Not inherently academic, but of a superior research quality in the tradition of the best academics. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 03:04, 13 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Volunteer Marek: I think "power" is the wrong measure here. ArbCom is tasked by the community to solve our most intractable problems. We understand that we serve at the community's behest, but must make unilateral decisions at times. This requires the Committee to have an appropriate toolset. I am a fan of creative remedies that don't rely so heavily on banning, because our job is to Arbitrate and solve problems, not Ajudicate and act as an executioner. The less tools we have, the fewer problems we can fix. If you only have a banhammer, every problem is a nail. AdmiralEek (talk) 17:01, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
    While I am opposed to outright removing this remedy, I am open to reforming/clarifying it. I agree that the committee should not have a hand in content, and while I think this remedy does not meddle in content, I also think it reasonable to give the community greater say in how to craft the specifics of the source restriction. I would welcome input that builds a motion to that, or similar, effect. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 05:16, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I have now read the initial request here and the links it offers (namely to DGG's talk page and more significantly the RSN discussion). I have no interest in answering question #3. I think the discussion at RSN is appropriate and is a consensus forming exercise about content. Any further clarification from us would subvert that process, possibly decide content rather than form which is beyond our remit, and I am not seeing that this is necessary to prevent disruption in the topic area. I will over the next few days, as time permits, read what others have to offer here before offering any thinking about questions 1 & 2. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:24, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
    Alright I've now read through the comments here. I will note that those suggesting we get rid of this sanction are much lighter on diffs, on the whole, than those saying we should keep them. The comments of Volunteer Marek really made me think and if there were diffs to back up those assertions I would be willing to give more thought as to whether this sanction is still appropriate/needed.
    I said in my initial remarks that I wasn't interested in answering question 3 and that largely is true. However, I will note something spurred on by DGG's comment: this sanction should not be taken as a reason to exclude minority viewpoints. Minority viewpoints and fringe viewpoints are two different things; fringe viewpoints may be excluded (and will likely only be noted when we're covering them as a topic as in Modern flat Earth beliefs). So minority viewpoints, under our general content policies/guidelines (most notably WP:NPOV, can and should be covered while being noted as such even under this restriction.
    The reason I said I was uninterested in answering question 3 is because I view further clarification as a content ruling and that is outside our remit. The discussion at RSN is not disruptive. It is thoughtful and challenging, yes. But not disruptive. And since it's not disruptive it is not in our remit to short circuit it by getting 14 people to decide rather than our normal community process. I respect those who say the restriction itself is beyond our remit. On the whole I disagree - I think diffs have been presented here and in originally enacting the motion showing that disruption has been lessened by this restriction. In its place is a chance to have the kind of conversations like what has happened at RS.
    So absent community consensus telling us otherwise (and the DS review I keep mentioning when DS is brought up is moving forward and will be a chance for that consensus to be expressed) my answer to question 1 is that such sanctions are in our remit. For now my answer to q2 is yes, but as noted above I remain at least a little open to rethinking this. Barkeep49 (talk) 16:52, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
    @My very best wishes: As I tried to explain above I don't see a discussion here that needs an ArbCom nudge (or outright decision). The right questions are being asked, the decorum is appropriate. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:23, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
    @DGG: none of my comments should be taken as a criticism of what you wrote. You were writing in general and that spurred my own thinking. My ask of diffs was from those who were focused on this topic area in their own thinking. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:40, 16 March 2021 (UTC)
    I have sent a friendly nudge about this but that the committee has a few other issues that have been occupying arb attention which, combined with the complexity of this area, is probably why comments have been slower to come in despite the clear community interest in this topic. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:21, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
    @Volunteer Marek: thanks for the diffs. I read the RSN about Polish media a little differently than you but the information and analysis about Nasz Dziennik and Glaukopis are helpful indeed. I will think more about this and look forwarding to hearing from other editors about this as well as what other arbs might say. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:39, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
    @François Robere: well I presume every editor commenting here, admin or otherwise, is familiar with the topic and I value the feedback everyone has given us. In general I don't favor someone's opinion just because they are an admin. However, admin who are actively enforcing DS do, I think, deserve special consideration in a venue like this from ArbCom. To determine who such people were I used the enforcement log for 2020 and 2021. Out of those only El C had participated here which is why I named him. Barkeep49 (talk) 23:52, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
    @François Robere and Piotrus: you have both suggested some reasonable changes to prevent GAMING. With sanctions if we legislate too much it actually, I think, promotes GAMING (see our AWARENESS rules). The one incident I'm aware of in this area where the concerns you presented played out ended with a warning to a user not to do that again, which given the circumstances seemed like a reasonable outcome. I am a little more in favor of preventing stonewalling in discussions - people being unreasonable about good sources is disruptive - but think that the RSN escape hatch (which lest we forget is how we got here in the first place) might be enough to prevent that. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:39, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
    @Piotrus: to be honest a single example from November 2019 of potentially overzealous enforcement doesn't strike me as a worrying precedent. If it was we'd have more recent examples from the intervening time. However, I do want to create space for high quality content creators to write, something I know is top of mind for you. I would hope that a three pronged approach of, a) having the restriction have to be manually placed rather than be topic wide b) having the ability for a talk page consensus to form that a source is appropriate to use and c)having the ability for a wider consensus and among a larger group of editors at RSN that a source is appropriate would create that. This would mean, I would expect, in most places you wouldn't have to think about the sourcing requirement at all. In some places you would but you'd have a quick and easy way to get consensus and a slower place to turn, but which could more definitively vet a source. And if someone repeatedly objected to/removed sources that eventually were deemed appropriate that this would be evidence itself of disruption that AE could handle. Truth be told in typing out this reply I've actually become more enthused about this as an appropriate change to everything that has been discussed here. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:04, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
    @Piotrus: the idea behind 2a, which I will be amending what I formally based on your feedback so thanks!, is to provide a default presumption that sources are OK. If it is an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution then it's going to stay OK. If it's not that and it's challenged a talk page consensus OR a RSN consensus can decide it's a reliable source and should be included. So in this case, and it's been a while since I read the Volunteer RSN discussion so I'm going off memory, the book could be included because the RSN consensus was that it was reliable even if whether or not it was academic is/was debatable. The goal of 2a is to rebalance the WP:ONUS in a way that is more typical in other subject areas rather than having it be so slanted towards those that want to exclude information. It should, I believe, address the kind of situation you outlined in your initial statement (i.e. Witold Pilecki). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:11, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
    Pinging all people who've participated in this ARCA: you may be interested in providing feedback on the proposed motions below. Thank you to those who have already given their thoughts. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Barkeep49 (talk) 19:17, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
    @Girth Summit and Piotrus: we've already been accused (not entirely unfairly) of making up policy in this case. I think this push to answer question 3 is asking us to make up more and, as I have stated from the start, is a question I don't think ArbCom needs to answer. So I am going to continue to decline to answer it no matter how nicely and thoughtfully and insistently we're asked to answer it. If this motion had been in effect would we have reached consensus about this source? Yes. Could there be a future case/AE report that hinges on whether a removal is or isn't appropriate based on whether or not the source is in the safe-harbor of academically focused et al? Sure. My message to that would be for editors to act cautiously unless they know they have consensus and to trust in future committee or admins at AE to respond in thoughtful appropriate ways. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:04, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
    @François Robere: that would be my expectation. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:15, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  • To answer the questions from the initial request: 1. Yes. That's not to say it's something we should resort to often—it isn't—but I see it as a valid tool available to us, and don't see it as worth second-guessing. 2. I defer to participants here in saying yes. I'll try to give some more thought to #3. I have been giving all of this thought despite my lack of response thus far, for which I apologize. I really want to say "not within our scope" to #3, but can appreciate how frustrating it probably sounds to get an answer of "yes, this is still needed, but we won't tell you what it means." Ultimately, I would prefer that be settled by the community rather than ArbCom if that's at all possible. --BDD (talk) 18:35, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I have given very considerable thought to question 3, and will try to summarize my views as follows. I think the spirit of the remedy is to impose a MEDRS-style sourcing restriction on articles in the topic of Polish history over WWII. For the MEDRS (or the natural and physical sciences) spheres, the definition of an "academically focused book" would be something that, in general,...
    • Excludes coffee-table-style books or other books where the intended audience is the general public instead of academics
    • Excludes non-peer-reviewed literature
    • Includes peer-reviewed monographs written by an academic, and published by an academic press, and have generally positive reviews
    • Includes the type of book that has an a prominent established academic as an editor and has chapters contributed by other academics, is peer-reviewed, is published by an academic press, and is generally a secondary source (review) versus something that's more of a primary research report (but consider that the primary research report might have a section with a good review and summary of the existing literature)
    • Includes academic textbooks, preferably aimed at the senior undergraduate to graduate levels, but we can live with a first-year textbook depending on what claims are being cited
    • Depending on the claims, would favor mostmore recent scholarship that is widely cited.
  • The next question is whether such a framework translates to a very contested history topic—my feeling from this discussion is that it may be an overly blunt tool not quite akin to using a sledgehammer to kill a fly but more like using a sledgehammer on carpentry nails. Would loosening the current remedy to permit other reliable sources for information that is unlikely to be controversial (e.g. basic uncontroversial biographical information??) and is not found in the three types of sources permitted by the remedy be a workable solution or would that cause undue difficulties to enforcing administrators? Maxim(talk) 14:11, 22 March 2021 (UTC)
  • I have made edits to my list above per Paul Siebert's excellent feedback. What I want to emphasize again—and it's something I wish I was perhaps more blunt about—is that I don't intend for this list to be seen as a prescription for the topic area at hand as it was written with medical or physical/natural science topics in mind. On the other hand, it may have established that such an approach does not translate as well to history and that the range of articles covered within the remedy may be too broad.

    I wonder if a more usable remedy would be along the lines of "[requiring] high-quality sources for exceptional claims for articles related to anti-Semitism and Jewish history in Poland, specifically in relation to World War II and The Holocaust, as well as on biographies of scholars studying these topics" that is enforceable via AE. This would: (1) narrow the scope as to not sweep up everything to do with Polish history in WWII; (b) not require specific types of sources within the topic area for material that is unlikely to be controversial; and (c) a reinforcement of the WP:V policy within the given topic area. Maxim(talk) 14:59, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

  • Just popping a note here to apologise for my tardiness on this - since I was one of the arbs who implemented it, I took a break at an ill opportune moment and since returning, haven't had the time to get through it all. I have now done so, and will put some thoughts on all the motions below. WormTT(talk) 09:15, 6 May 2021 (UTC)

Motion: Antisemitism in Poland

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is repealed.

For this motion there are 13 active arbitrators, not counting 1 recused. With 0 arbitrators abstaining, 7 support or oppose votes are a majority.
Support
  1. Per my comments above: while well-intentioned, it's an overly blunt tool which readily creates edge cases, e.g. non-controversial biographical information of subjects related to WWII and Poland, or details of ships in the Polish Navy during WWII. We have WP:REDFLAG for a reason. We could craft a remedy that could make failure to use exceptional sources for exceptional claims an issue for AE, but I don't see using AE as necessary.
    Also important to note is that as far as the original case goes, there were three parties: one was removed from the case per Remedy 1; one was topic-banned from the topic but has since successfully appealed; and one has been banned by the WMF. We're at a point where the back of the dispute has been broken, and this remedy, now the last remaining that requires enforcement, seems to cause more trouble than it's worth. Maxim(talk) 21:50, 17 April 2021 (UTC)
  2. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:58, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
  3. I was not an arb at that time and did not follow this case, but I have a hard time imagining myself ever supporting such a remedy, as the lone oppose by Joe Roe said "Excellent advice that should be applied to a lot of topic areas, but I think this goes beyond the committee's remit. I'd instead encourage the community to develop sourcing guidelines along the lines of WP:MEDRS or WP:SCIRS for controversial historical topics." And also the points above by Maxim, if this was needed, it probably isn't now. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:04, 18 April 2021 (UTC)
  4. While I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is still helping, I come back to the idea after reading the above that it's a remedy that exceeded our remit from the get-go. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:02, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. ArbCom definitely had the authority to implement this remedy. We are tasked with coming up with solutions to our most intractable problems, and that sometimes requires us to be creative. By limiting the possible remedies we can implement, we weaken ArbCom and do a grand disservice to the encyclopedia. Saying "this area has been extra-problematic and needs extra-good sources" is not a content decision. Now, I think the interpretation of the remedy has been uncertain, and ArbCom could probably clarify the interpretation. But I think we have just done that in our comments here. The restriction is not meant to be draconian, and not meant to enforce the sole use of university publishers. It is meant to ensure that sources are, as I said earlier, of a superior research quality in the tradition of the best academics. That means lay authors are acceptable, as long as their work is well researched in an academic fashion. From there, it is up to the community to decide what sources are acceptable. This remedy ensures that the community errs on the side of more reliable over less reliable. Just as WP:MEDRS requires more stringent sourcing, so too does this dark and difficult topic which multiple governments and many political actors have a vested interest in manipulating. I can see amending the precise wording, or some sort of explanatory supplement to the remedy. But to repeal this remedy would be a definite failure on our part. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 05:01, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  2. I strongly prefer either of the two motions being voted on below. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:44, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  3. I roughly agree with CaptainEek here. Regards SoWhy 18:25, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  4. I think the alternative motion is better and am opposing here in attempt to make vote counting easier for our clerks. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:04, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
  5. There weren't many of us around at the time and we had a huge dispute that needed breaking. This was a solution, one that I noted would come back to bite us. I'm happy to accept there are better solutions out there, and will comment on the ones below, but all out repeal does not seem like the right solution to me. WormTT(talk) 09:28, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  6. Per Barkeep, to keep things moving along. I can't see myself coming to this point, not this time around. --BDD (talk) 20:14, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Abstain
  1. Primefac (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  2. I'd be open to reconsidering this down the trail if the alternative that is being adopted proves unsuccessful. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:00, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Discussion

I take seriously the reasons that have been submitted for why this restriction needs to go, including it being hard to interpret, it being outside our scope of authority, and that it is hindering the creation of high quality in this topic area, but I don't know that this motion is the correct response. I am nervous about supporting this and not doing anything else given that, El C, the only uninvolved admin who we have that is currently working this area who has weighed in here (per the DS log) has stated that the restriction remains needed. I'm not sure I like the other options I can come up with better - doing a full case (we're not at at Palestinian/Israel levels of need from what I've seen) or coming up with some other motion (what would it be? I have no idea) - but I am a little nervous about just rescinding it. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:32, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

  • I agree with Barkeep. I'd be more interested in something that loosens the remedy rather than jettisoning it altogether. That should give us all useful data, either "oh, this isn't so bad" or "yikes, we really made a mistake". --BDD (talk) 15:20, 19 April 2021 (UTC)
  • I have considered this carefully and have come to the conclusion that this remedy must be vacated. First, I want to make this point: the original source restriction imposed by NeilN was in my view not permitted by the DS procedure. When placing DS page restrictions, administrators may only impose 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 (emphasis added). The authority to prohibit the addition of content is expressly denied to administrators when consensus for the edit exists, and for good reason: to declare otherwise would place the administrator's decision above community consensus on a matter affecting content. Because the original sourcing restriction did not allow editors to add non-academic sources, even with consensus, it was ultra vires.
    Now, ArbCom is not limited by the DS procedures when it adopts page restrictions directly. But after reading this discussion, it is my view that the sourcing restriction falls outside prudent limits that ArbCom should place on its own powers. This remedy categorically excludes many sources that the community deems generally reliable (WP:IRS, WP:RS/P). Therefore, the remedy in its current form cannot stay.
    However, as many community members point out, the topic area is still the subject of significant ongoing disruption, so I would like to see this remedy replaced by something instead of simply vacated. I would be curious to hear how editors would view a "(strong) consensus required for addition of non-academic references" requirement. Further ideas are also welcome. I'll hold off on this motion, but if there are no good alternatives I think I will eventually have to vote for it. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:11, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
    • I would also perhaps support holding a community RfC on stricter sourcing requirements in this topic area (like MEDRS), and keeping the current remedy as a temporary restriction until the conclusion of the RfC. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:17, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
      • I find such RfCs a good idea in theory but not in practice. The last such remedy for a community RfC was passed for Portals, and before that, for one of the infobox cases. Neither RfC actually happened. The post-Fram RfC happened, but anything Fram-related is a poor comparison to everything else. That RfC was also launched by Arbcom, albeit with considerable delay, arguably as a result of general burnout and malaise that followed the aforementioned case. The community looks to us to resolve disputes, and remanding an issue back via RfC doesn't quite accomplish the "resolution" thing. Maxim(talk) 14:40, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
    @BDD, @L235 (and others obviously) thoughts about a motion along the lines of "Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is repealed. However, administrators remain empowered to issue sanctions, including topic bans, to editors who disruptively edit by using biased, POV pushing and/or low quality sources"? The last part is taken from the FoF for the case. I'm kind of spitballing here but hopefully this would signal our support for administrators in this topic area to stop disruption while removing the blanket restriction across the topic area. I'm also not opposed to Kevin's consensus required for non-academic references piece though that doesn't address the "ArbCom is not empowered to pass this kind of remedy" concern. Barkeep49 (talk) 14:54, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
    Probably, yes. That's maybe a little further than I'd go, but I think it meets the spirit of my recommendation to loosen rather than abandon altogether. --BDD (talk) 20:26, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
    The second sentence of your motion is already status quo, and I wouldn't oppose including it but I don't think it's enough. On the remit question, our previous decisions (WP:AC/DS) establish that we are empowered to impose "prohibitions on the addition or removal of certain content (except when consensus for the edit exists)", and indeed we have through DS delegated this authority to administrators; I see no reason why we are not able to do so in this case. The difference is that a blanket source restriction essentially supersedes policy (by rendering some otherwise reliable sources unreliable without recourse), while the consensus-required-for-nonacademic-sources remedy only serves to create a mechanism to enforce the RS policy. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:50, 20 April 2021 (UTC)
  • @CaptainEek:, the remedy as stated does make something broken. The sanction covers a history topic, which is fundamentally different from topics like medicine or the natural or physical sciences. The remedy as written would appear to be inspired by those other topics, which doesn't quite directly translate for a history topic. In practice, this remedy requires a certain type of source for (relatively) uncontroversial material, which may be trivial to mention in a "required" source. Consider, for example, the technical specifications of a Polish naval ship from WWII; absent competing or otherwise extraordinary claims, any reliable source for naval history should do, and it doesn't have to be reminiscent of MEDRS. In the same vein, the remedy also leaves the door open for someone to gut an article, even if the material could not be reasonably construed as controversial. If anything, the clarification suggests that defining an acceptable source is open to considerable debate, and thus having arbitration enforcement swinging over one's head in this matter doesn't seem to be a healthy option. Note that the topic area is already under a discretionary sanctions regime—misuse of sources is something that is generally sanctionable at AE. Maxim(talk) 14:40, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Alternative motion

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is amended to read as follows: The Arbitration Committee advises that administrators may impose "reliable-source consensus required" as a discretionary sanction on articles all articles on the topic of Polish history during World War II (1933-45), including the Holocaust in Poland. On articles where "reliable-source consensus required" is in effect, when a source that is not a high quality source (an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution) is added and subsequently challenged by reversion, no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question or consensus about the reliability of the source in a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

Enacted - KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 18:42, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Support
  1. This motion would scale back the scope of this remedy from the entire topic area to articles designated by an admin (and which designation could be appealed at AE as with other article based sanctions). It also would continue to give preference to sources peer-reviewed in scholarly journals (and the like) but would also formalize two options for obtaining consensus for using other reliable sources (at the talk page or at RSN). This second piece is important in terms of our committee jurisdiction and scope of authority, it would have, in my opinion, provided clarity about the source which spurred this discussion, and I think creates room for high quality content creation in this area without a sword of damocles hanging over their head. However, it hopefully preserves enough of what was identified as working under the previous remedy. Barkeep49 (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
  2. Second choice. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:10, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
    Noted he was fine with amendment via email to ArbCom listserv Barkeep49 (talk) 19:46, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
    First choice (to speed this along). KevinL (alt of L235 · t · c) 20:50, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  3. Second choice. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 16:20, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
  4. Second choice to above. I can live with this motion because I don't think the outcome would be substantially different from a straight repeal, in that under the existing DS regime, administrators imposing a "reliable-source consensus required" discretionary sanction is likely already permissible (see note about FoF2 of the Kurds and Kurdistan in the discussion further below). My preference for my motion is that it's more to point and avoids instruction creep, but it's not a strong preference. Maxim(talk) 14:39, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  5. BDD (talk) 15:41, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  6. SoWhy 18:22, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  7. Changing the scope from "all articles" to "articles that need it" seems like a very sensible step. I'd support this. Noting, per Barkeep49's comment below, this should include the potential scope of the current remedy. I'd argue it's already implicit that we're not changing it, and we should simply add that to the motion. If we want to change it, it would need reconfirmation from arbs who have already voted, or a fresh motion - and given the amount of motions there already are... WormTT(talk) 09:28, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  8. Editors in this topic area seem to feel they need something, and this is something. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:52, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  9. I am glad to see that we could brainstorm an alternative, props to folks for drafting a variety of options. I think this should narrow and specify the remedy's application, without altogether removing it -- a course of action I feel would be deletorious. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  10. I'm open to trying this. I'm also open to reevaluating in a few months if need be. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:00, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
Abstain
  1. Primefac (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
Discussion

Motion (structured repeal)

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is repealed, effective 30 days after the date of this motion. However, if a request for comment on sourcing requirements for articles related to Polish history during World War II (1933-45) is opened in that 30-day period, Remedy 5 will continue in effect until the request for comment is closed. If the request for comment reaches a consensus to restrict the use of certain sources, clear breaches of the restriction may be treated by administrators as disruptive editing and subject to discretionary sanctions enforcement.

Support
  1. Proposed; first choice. This motion does not mandate or invite an RfC; rather, it only provides for a delay, and that if an RfC closes with consensus for a source restriction, violations of that consensus can be subject to DS enforcement. It wouldn't be an "ArbCom RfC" in any sense. Personally, I think an RfC makes sense given that many community members seem to favor continuing the sourcing restriction (though of course others disagree), but if people disagree and no RfC is held, the restriction will automatically be repealed in one month. (Considering how long this ARCA has been open, that doesn't seem like very long.) Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 19:10, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
    Second choice (to speed this process along). KevinL (alt of L235 · t · c) 20:50, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Oppose
  1. I'm not a fan of asking the community to hold an RfC, on the grounds that such remedies have not been effective in the past. Maxim(talk) 14:33, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  2. I agree with Maxim. I respect that this has a " if no RfC" is held caveat but I would rather we pass one of the motions above. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:13, 3 May 2021 (UTC)
  3. I'm not happy with ordering the community to do an RfC, though if an RfC is held, come back here and I would ratify its outcome in a heartbeat. WormTT(talk) 09:28, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  4. I appreciate the thought behind this, but replacing one arbcom overreach with another one doesn't strike me as the best solution. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:48, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  5. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 00:06, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  6. Asking the community to hold an RfC usually does not work well. Now, if the community holds an RfC on its own prerogative, we can act on it. But forced RfCs are rarely as effective as grassroots RfCs. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:10, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
  7. This is overly complex and invites ambiguity. If we want an RfC, we should be direct about it. --BDD (talk) 18:31, 7 May 2021 (UTC)
Abstain
  1. Primefac (talk) 15:14, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
  2. I'm open to reconsidering this in a few months if the motion we're adopting proves unsuccessful. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:00, 9 May 2021 (UTC)
Discussion

Alternative motions discussion

Draft motion 1: repeal original expectations, consensus required for disputed nonacademic sources (for discussion, not voting)

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is amended to read as follows: When a source that is not a high quality source (an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution) is added and subsequently challenged by reversion, no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question."

Is there any interest in a motion like this among other arbs? These will all need some copy-editing and maybe changes to definitions of "high quality source". Imposing consensus-required is unambiguously within our authority, so this solves the "authority" problem. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
I could also see this being "without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question or on a content noticeboard" like RS/N, and if a source is approved at a content noticeboard, it doesn't have to be relitigated at each individual talk page. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:25, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
I especially like that second refinement and think that these two motions are in scope for ArbCom, being more similar to remedies we've done elsewhere, allow for a LOCAL consensus, as appropriate. I particularly like the second motion so that this remedy can't weaponized and instead would be in response to disruption. Barkeep49 (talk) 21:11, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
I'll preface my comments by saying that I do prefer a straight repeal. That said, how would bad-faith removal of sources be handled under this remedy? This remedy bakes in a very strong second-mover advantage where someone can revert an addition, that for the sake of argument, is uncontroversial. Maxim(talk) 13:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
I assume they'd be handled the way we handle any sort of bad-faith action. There will probably be some degree of first- or second-mover advantage for any remedy along these lines. --BDD (talk) 15:22, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
@Maxim: I ended up discussing this in my response to Piotr above but essentially I see the idea of RSN as a way to provide third party confirmation about sources and would expect someone who was digging their heels in and going to RSN for sources that regularly (or semi-regularly) were then found to be fine would be eligible for sanction at AE. Barkeep49 (talk) 15:26, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
Draft motion 2
repeal original expectations, allow admins to impose consensus required for disputed nonacademic sources

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is amended to read as follows: The Arbitration Committee advises that administrators may impose "reliable-source consensus required" as a discretionary sanction. On articles where "reliable-source consensus required" is in effect, when a source that is not a high quality source (an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution) is added and subsequently challenged by reversion, no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question.

Sourcing restrictions are arguably already permissible under DS regimes—consider FoF2 of the Kurds and Kurdistan case. I can live with targeted and proportionate restrictions like these, but I find that blanket requirement over an entire topic area is excessive. My other comment would be along the lines of remedy 1; how would you deal with a bad-faith second mover? Arguably one could ask for a topic ban based on the EE discretionary sanctions on the grounds of sustained tendentious editing, but would it be cleaner to just allow administrators to impose sourcing restrictions targeted to the specific dispute without us piling on more instructions? Maxim(talk) 13:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
Draft motion 2a

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is amended to read as follows: The Arbitration Committee advises that administrators may impose "reliable-source consensus required" as a discretionary sanction. On articles where "reliable-source consensus required" is in effect, when a source that is not a high quality source (an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution) is added and subsequently challenged by reversion, no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question or through a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

  • This is the motion that I've had in mind in my replies today on this topic. Putting it out here for comment/refinement but would like to move towards formally proposing this as an alternative to revoking above. Barkeep49 (talk) 19:07, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
    As above, this is a little further than I might want to go, but I would support. Thanks for helping move things along. --BDD (talk) 00:24, 29 April 2021 (UTC)
Draft motion 2b

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is amended to read as follows: The Arbitration Committee advises that administrators may impose "reliable-source consensus required" as a discretionary sanction.

Draft motion 3: community RfC invited

The Arbitration Committee invites the community to hold a request for comment on sourcing requirements for articles related to Polish history during World War II (1933-45), including the Holocaust in Poland. If the request for comment reaches a consensus to restrict the use of certain sources, clear breaches of the restriction may be treated by administrators as disruptive editing and subject to discretionary sanctions enforcement. When the request for comment is closed, or if no request for comment is opened within 30 days of this motion, Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") will cease to have effect.

This allows the community to set its own sourcing standards, but keeps the ArbCom sourcing expectations in place until the community has a chance to formulate its own, in order to prevent a fait accompli situation where everyone rushes to add disallowed sources in the interim before the community has time to reach consensus on its own rules, if any. Clearly, there is at least some support for continuing the restrictions as a community action. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:12, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
Draft motion 3.1: structured repeal, allow community to hold RfC if desired

Remedy 5 of the Antisemitism in Poland case ("Article sourcing expectations") is repealed, effective 30 days after the date of this motion. However, if a request for comment on sourcing requirements for articles related to Polish history during World War II (1933-45) is opened in that period, Remedy 5 will continue in effect until the request for comment is closed. If the request for comment reaches a consensus to restrict the use of certain sources, clear breaches of the restriction may be treated by administrators as disruptive editing and subject to discretionary sanctions enforcement.

This motion is the same as motion 3, except it doesn't explicitly "invite" an RfC; it only provides a process if the community wants to have one. We can also think of this as a "structured repeal". Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:33, 26 April 2021 (UTC)
I find Arbcom-ordered RfC a good idea in theory but not in practice. The Portals and both Infobox cases had such recommendations which I don't think were acted on, and the RfC following the Fram case took forever to set up and then close. Maxim(talk) 13:40, 27 April 2021 (UTC)
@Maxim: I'm hoping you can support motion 3.1 over motion 3, then. I'm perfectly happy if no RfC takes place – under this motion, if there is no RfC, then the sourcing expectations expire in 30 days. If an RfC is held, it wouldn't be an "ArbCom RfC", either; it'd be a community RfC held on the community's terms, and the motion simply states that disruptively going against consensus established there is sanctionable – just like going against any other consensus. This just allows the community to have a discussion if it chooses to do so without a free-for-all period between us rescinding the remedy and the community creating its own. Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 06:05, 28 April 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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