Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kww and The Rambling Man/Workshop

Main case page (Talk) — Evidence (Talk) — Workshop (Talk) — Proposed decision (Talk)

Case clerk: Liz (Talk) Drafting arbitrators: Courcelles (Talk) & DeltaQuad (Talk) & Thryduulf (Talk)

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General comments

Comments from Kww that seem relevant.

• Kww from 2008 I'm pretty a much a "take no hostages" kind of guy on that topic. No exceptions. I would happily treat people creating such articles as vandals, as opposed to editors, and honestly believe that to be the case.
• Kww from 2012 One man's "problem with retaining editors" is another man's "success at weeding out problematic editors".

Emphasis mine. Cogitating (talk) 22:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Closure of the Workshop phase delayed

The closure of the workshop phase has been delayed by 24 hours by the arbitrators so it will close tomorrow, July 21, 2015. This delay will not impact the date of the posting of the Proposed Decision. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:31, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

And I had just rushed to add some short comments. Oh, the humanity. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 21:33, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry Geroge! The delay is to allow Guy Macon to complete the timeline as indicated and to allow others time to respond if they wish. As for the PD date, I'm going to have to be slightly more equivocal than Liz's post and say it should not affect the PD date (sorry Liz, that was my not being 100% clear on the email) - we're still aiming to meet the advertised date but 7 months on Arbcom has told me to be just a tiny bit cautious about promises on dates! Thryduulf (talk) 22:23, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

In seriousness, I approve of Guy Macon getting a bit more timeline work time, and with Arbcom being flexible (at least, a bit). Thanks. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 22:31, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't think my own proposals are all that important but I hope I can finish them anyway (I wasn't able to edit earlier this week due to RL commitments). I have to go to bed soon and won't have much editing time tomorrow, unfortunately. 173.228.123.193 (talk) 06:19, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Looks like they closed anyways, but I did comment a bit. I would like to thank you 173... for some constructive comments and proposals here. Georgewilliamherbert (talk) 00:10, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Apologies all, added a couple of comments to the workshop after the close. Have self-reverted. -- Euryalus (talk) 08:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

GWH, thanks. Unfortunately I didn't have the time or energy to make a better presentation, partly because I thought the case was straightforward. Regarding your comments, I do think we are dealing with battleground editing in the sense that Kww has been pursuing several (good faith but IMHO misguided) agendas in these conflicts, regarding things like reverting obviously-verifiable info etc. He also seems to regard individual disagreements as dominance contests which I think fits the WP:BATTLE description of "[m]aking personal battles out of Wikipedia discussions" even though it's less against specific individuals than a matter of "win every contest at any cost". Again see his discussion with SchroCat about BKFIP, and his decision to revdel BKFIP's edits to prevent editors in good standing from having the option of using them (my "wikilawyering" principle was intended to lead to some analysis of those revdels). As I see it, the protection incident with Philippe a couple years back, and the TRM dispute that set off this case, are further examples of the same thing. And I could see something similar in his tenacious defense in this very case of actions everyone else sees as bogus, and that I hope he'd see as bogus himself if he weren't so deeply involved. (Otherwise, I'd say we're in CIR territory, which is bad too.)

In retrospect I'd like to have written a disruptive editing principle since we're dealing with a long pattern of edits that are individually mostly ok under policy, but that taken collectively disrupt progress towards improving an article or building the encyclopedia (that last wording is from WP:DE).

Arbcom: I think it's best for the PD to focus on the DE issues above (or civility, per GWH's take), rather than getting into detailed findings about the specific disputed edits vs. content policy. We have a bunch of stringently written policy documents that emerged from bad situations that have occasionally arisen, but most people have the sense to not invoke them when it's not warranted, since doing so damages articles and the project. It's unnecessary and undesirable to attempt to codify the difference, since the project has gotten along ok without that most of the time up til now, and more instruction creep means more future wikilawyering. As "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" we can't expect all editors to have good sense, but we can and should expect the subset selected as admins to usually have it, and I don't think we got that here.

Note: I'll shortly be away for several days again, probably til after the PD is up. I probably won't have time to comment much on it once it's up either. 173.228.123.193 (talk) 20:01, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

@173.228.123.193: the protection incident with Philippe a couple years back do you have a link to this? It doesn't appear to have been brought up in this case prior to now that I can find, and I can't immediately spot it in either user's protection log. Thanks, Thryduulf (talk) 20:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Here you go. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 20:33, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Salvio. The proposed decision is mostly ready, but still needs a few tweaks before being posted here. I hope to be able to get them sorted today. Thryduulf (talk) 09:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Is anyone but me left wondering who 173.228.123.193 is? I find the unquestioned participation by such an obviously experienced editor who is apparently intentionally failing to log in somewhat disturbing.—Kww(talk) 10:48, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree it's odd to see an IP adding so much useful and interesting commentary. I suggest if there's genuine concern over the legitimacy of the comments, or their intent, then a WP:SPI can be initiated. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:32, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

"Useful and interesting" would depend on the eye of the beholder, and really isn't the thrust of WP:ILLEGIT. He could be a saint, but the attempt to evade scrutiny is a problem. Perhaps a checkuser needed would help bring the eye of someone capable of investigating an IP that seems familiar with the last several years of my history and is potentially attempting to evade scrutiny while participating in a community discussion. WP:SPI is both unlikely terminate prior to the case closure and quite likely to bring the standard public answer of "can't reveal the results of an IP check".—Kww(talk) 18:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Well there seemed to be plenty of time for you raise this objection, so I guess the bed is made. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:07, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree that it is quite odd for a seemingly brand-new IP to know so much about this case, but I'm going to AGF here and say that it is possible that this IP editor has been editing for quite a while under various dynamic IPs. Unfortunately, I tend to come to the same conclusion as Kww and TRM that this is someone attempting to avoid scrutiny, and it probably is. Sportsguy17 (T • C) 21:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi, yes, I'm on dynamic IP's and I commented earlier (in the ANI thread and at /Evidence) from the address 50.0.136.194. I mentioned the address change at the top of my workshop section[1] but that might not have been obvious here. I'm sorry if that caused any confusion. As mentioned I'd have preferred to stay away from the detailed factfinding aspects of this case and present mostly principles and analysis. I'd also modify some of the stuff I posted earlier if I could (further thought makes me want to have written some things differently), but the workshop phase is closed and I suppose it's moot anyway. 173.228.123.193 (talk) 00:15, 31 July 2015 (UTC)