Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Archive 16

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Banned means banned, right?

not a matter for the committee. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:13, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

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.

Why is a certain banned user re-fighting old battles with ~~Malleus~~Eric Corbett on WP:AN with a new account? 174.241.112.39 (talk) 21:55, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I just got an e-mail notification about this, I have no idea why you mention me, but I have had no idea who Eric is until this week. Now I'm off to bed, and I think this IP address is a sock puppet. --Pretty les♀, Dark Mistress, talk, 22:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

If you are concerned a user might be a sock puppet of a banned user, the appropriate place to raise that concern is WP:SPI. AGK [•] 22:40, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I thought ~~Malleus~~Eric Corbett was banned. Shows how much I'm paying attention to this nonsense. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:04, 30 October 2013 (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.

Electoral Commission RfC

The RfC to select the three-member Electoral Commission for the WP:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013 was opened. We need volunteers for the commission, and comments on their suitability from all editors. Details are found at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Electoral Commission. Regards, Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 12:37, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Requesting a move?

Hi, so, over four years ago the ArbCom said that certain conventions were to be in place for article titles including the word "Macedonia"... for the time being (relevant case here). It has been over four years.

I think the Republic of Macedonia is probably the thing most of our readers want when they search for Macedonia, and I think it's what most of our editors expect when they link to Macedonia; therefore, I think it's a primary topic and should be moved there. (You might disagree with my analysis, and that's fine! But such a debate should only really take place within a requested move discussion.) My question is--can I go ahead and propose a move? It's been four years and the reasoning for the ArbCom case in the first place has died down some, I think. Your thoughts are appreciated. (Again, please do not debate whether it is indeed the primary topic here--just whether or not you think I am permitted to propose the request.) Red Slash 03:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello Red Slash. I suggest that you make a request for an amendment of the previous case, asking if the community can return to contemplating the move decision or otherwise revisiting the provisions of the case. Risker (talk) 04:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are open

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are officially open. The nomination period runs from Sunday, 10 November at 00:01 (UTC) until Tuesday, 19 November at 23:59 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Candidates then create a candidate page following the instructions there. 64.40.54.211 (talk) 06:55, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Only 9 Candidates

There is just over 1 day left for candidates in the December 2013 Arbcom election to Nominate themselves. There are currently only 9 candidates running for 9 open seats, and while there are often last minute nominations, I wanted to remind everyone that time is running out to nominate yourself. Nominations close at 23:59 (UTC) on Tuesday the 19th. Monty ₈₄₅ 18:53, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Disturbing, yes. Maybe Arbcom elections are going the same way as RfA, or perhaps for the same reasons, users are not enclined to run, or that the community is simply loosing confidence in Arbcom as a system. Whatever, maybe this is a sign that a fundamental reform of Arbcom or its election system is required. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:46, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Excuse me. Just a few hours later, we are now at 16 candidates. I would not be surprised to see even more in the coming 18 or so hours before nominations close. Now, different people will have different evaluations of those candidates, but I urge everyone to carefully consider each one, with an eye to building an effective Arbitration Committee, not one that mirrors one's own personal perspective. Will they do the heavy slogging of reviewing unblock/unban requests? Will they work hard to develop consensus on procedures, and try to find a middle ground that most can live with? Do they give the impression they're "me-first" or single-issue candidates? How do they feel about community participation in cases, Checkuser/Oversighter/AUSC candidacies, policy/procedure development? What's their history, and have they shown growth and improvement over the course of years? Everyone has a few weeks to think about these things. There's a good, effective Arbcom out there: we as a community just have to pick it out. Risker (talk) 06:31, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Snipers. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:37, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank goodness, things were so bad that I was afraid I was going to have to run again :) SirFozzie (talk) 23:28, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I wish you had ;) Roger Davies ^talk 23:33, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

You really hate me that much, don't you :P :). In all seriousness, I'm glad we have a very large amount of candidates and I'll try to ask at least one question to each candidate... SirFozzie (talk) 23:50, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

We have too many candidates. I've been asking a question of each of them, and there are too many. Just kidding!!!! --Tryptofish (talk) 23:52, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

While I have no comment on the number of candidates, I will say that there are far too many questions, and I wish that questions from individual community members was held at no more than 2, as had been the case in a past election or two. Nobody except election junkies will read the responses now (Floquenbeam is absolutely correct about that), and only election junkies will make the voter guides that trash the candidates who think it is irresponsible to expect the community to read so many responses. Does not bode well. I may have to write my own election guide to counteract. :D Risker (talk) 23:55, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I actually think in a lot of cases, it's good to get detailed answers. In some cases, I do agree that it seems to be "gotcha" questioning (back and forth arguing or debating). And Risker, if you write a counteracting guide, I'll be forced to write a counter-counteracting guide... :D (and yes, I'm sure someone will then write a counter-counter-counteracting guide.. this is Wikipedia. Recursion isn't one of the five pillars, but sometimes you could've fooled me) SirFozzie (talk) 23:58, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:RECURSION ought to be a policy, but see my post at 00:03, 20 November 2013 (UTC) for why it's not. alanyst 00:03, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

As someone who has written a candidate guide in years past while asking an absurd number of questions, I have to say that it is much easier to write a guide this year when I can just focus on past personal interactions and my own digging. NW (Talk) 06:48, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the whole candidate guide system should be scrapped, and and that user questions should be severly limited in number. Otherwise, what's the point in having a secret ballot? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 18:15, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what the thrust of your comment is. If you mean "we obviously know W is going to vote X on candidate Y based on guide Z", knowing the opinions of a dozen editors doesn't really seem to matter much in the context of hundreds of editors voting. If we were concerned about truly being secretive we might as well anonymize all questions to the candidates as well, as (especially this go-around) there are a lot more of the kinds of questions which are essentially boiling down to "I don't like this decision, are you on my side or theirs." Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 19:09, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Seeing how candidates respond to this many questions gives us some idea, at least, of how they will respond to the workload they will face if elected. If you want a committee which tackles difficult cases with reasonable timelyness, observe how they undertake these questions. Jonathunder (talk) 19:03, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I answered almost all of them, but refused to answer any questions from one specific user who posed a question that I find to be entirely inappropriate. It is annoying to put the effort into crafting coherent answers to so many questions when you know that almost nobody is even going to bother reading it. Then again, I think there is validity to the point that that is a lot like actually being an arb. You spend weeks or even months going over a topic, having conversations with the involved parties, consulting with the other arbs, and in the end all most people ever see is the two or three paragraph announcement of the decision. And then the yelling starts.

I also think the voter guide system is a bit out of control. Some of them seem well thought out and based on a serious, objective evaluation of the candidates, but at least as many are just rants against certain candidates the writer personally does not like. I suppose it wouldn't be nice to name names, but one of them explained nearly all of their opposes with informative remarks like "who would want to vote for this person?" That isn't a voter guide, it's just cheap shots and trash talking. However, I don't see how anything could be done about that short of just abolishing the entire concept, or at least not making it an "official" thing that is displayed on election pages. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:54, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

In my view, a carefully considered explanation of why you didn't answer a particular question counts as an answer. Thank you for your work. Jonathunder (talk) 22:53, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

The 'thrust' of my comment was to precipitate comment from others - in which it was successful.The huge number of questions make a lot of reading for anyone seriously interested in casting an objective vote after having reviewed all of the candidates; meaning that at the end of the day, some voters will vote from the hip, choosing among well known or less known candidates based on what they already know, for better or for worse - all elections for various offices are inevitably partly un/popularity contests. On the candidate guides, I share share the concerns expressed by Beeblebrox. That said, I belive the Arbcom election system to be otherwise one of the best solutions we have.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:04, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Courtesy deletion?

I know that occasionally ArbCom pages (and others) are subject to courtesy blanking. Today, however, while looking at some ancient Wikipedia history (2006 Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Robert I, which itself is not blanked), I found that it's talkpae and all subpages (proposed decisions, workshop, evidence) have been subject to something called "courtesy deletion" by User:SlimVirgin (as of August 11, 2007). Nothing on the page explains why such a bizarre courtesy action (not supported by our policies, as far as I can tell) has taken place. As such, I'd like to ask ArbCom (and SlimVirgin) for clarification: is there any reason those pages should be deleted (again, the main RfArb/Robert I is not even blanked...)? If not, I'd like to ask that those pages are undeleted (no objection to regular courtesy blanking, if any good reason for it can be presented.). IFF there are reason for those pages to be deleted, they should be stated on the RfArb/Robert I, and the policy on courtesy blanking and revision deletion (present at Wikipedia:Deletion policy) should be modified to include this concept. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:10, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Just a bit of background, when I talked to SV, the action was taken to try to give the subject a chance to make a clean break from Wikipedia. Unfortunately, the main page had to be restored because as it turned out, the subject had comeback to Wikipedia using sockpuppet accounts, so the main arb page had to be undeleted to provide background. Speaking only as an administrator, I have no problem with having the rest of the pages undeleted. SirFozzie (talk) 16:05, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems likely that if the same circumstances happened today the pages would have been courtesy-blanked rather than outright deleted. I'm hesitant to suggest the pages be undeleted outright, however, if there isn't evidence it's necessary for some reason. 2007 arb activities were before I believe every current arb, including Brad, and I can't speak to the merits of the action with any authority. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:31, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Just another note. Back in 2007, arbitration pages were indexed by search engines, and it would be reasonable to assume that these pages would have made up the top google hits for the editor. Deletion was, at the time, the only way to mitigate that. Today, no-index is attached to all arbcom pages and is generally respected by most search engine bots, so the harm is mitigated. I agree with David Fuchs that unless there is a current issue involving the editor behind the account, no purpose is served by undeleting and then courtesy blanking. Risker (talk) 17:36, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I don't have much to add to this. As SirFozzie says, it was a case of someone wanting a clean break. I'll leave it for others to decide whether to undelete, but I agree that it makes sense to leave it unless something relevant has changed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 04:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. As there is no reason not to follow our own policies and undelete (followed by courtesy blanking), I still believe this page should be undeleted, as 1) to not set a wrong precedent (deletion creep...), and 2) to avoid suggestion of censorship through deletion, when such an action is not necessary. Wikipedia prides itself on its transparency. When needed, we keep some things hidden (deleted revisions, and so on), but if this is not required here, we should follow regular procedures. There is also the 3) consideration that such an exception to the rules can lead to a Streisand effect, which certainly would be contrary to our intention here. Since nobody actually argues that the page needs to stay deleted for any particular reason (all cited reasons are, as noted above, obsolete), will a clerk undelete and blank it, or should I file a request at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:55, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Let me just step in to clarify noindexing actually works. There are sites that mirror Wikipedia which strip out the noindex tags. Do not rely on noindex to hide content from search engines. Our license allows our content to be copied. If content needs to be hidden, blank the pages or delete them. Jehochman ^Talk 13:14, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
- Back in 2006, this was also the case, yes? As in - blanking the page was satisfactory to avoid the page coming up in off-wiki searchers, yes? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:54, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Motion proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools

A motion has been proposed regarding activity levels for holders of both CU and OS tools. If you wish to comment, please join the discussion at the motion on the motions page. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 01:43, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Request an account process needs CheckUsers

There are currently 145 requests waiting for checkuser attention on the request and account process. Any and all help would be very much appreciated! Thank you, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 12:08, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

NOINDEXed-ness

Why is the ArbCom page NOINDEXed? I get why the various case and request pages are, but it seems unusual to hide a page of direct importance to many. It's easy to imagine situations where someone unfamiliar with Wikipedia could have information of importance to the Committee, so hiding the page from the Google rankings strikes me as doing more harm than good. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 13:44, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Everything related to the committee seems to be on MediaWiki:Robots.txt. I think this page is there so as to noindex any subpages it might have, but, well, that's one MediaWiki page I don't fully understand how to operate. Courcelles 19:12, 21 December 2013 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure that the slash there means that only subpages get NOINDEXed by robots.txt. (Though, like you, I'm no expert on the workings of that page.) What is definitely true is that this page is NOINDEXed through its transclusion of {{ArbCom navigation}}. If it's further removed from search engine results by robots.txt, well, something can be done about that too, I imagine. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:00, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I have trouble imagining a scenario where someone with information pertinent to the Committee would be at a loss due to the NOINDEXing of the main ArbCom page. Making the page appear in search engines may or may not be benign, but I don't see any practical advantage to doing so. PinkAmpersand, is your concern based on a real situation of someone having trouble finding the ArbCom page, or is it a hypothetical obstacle? alanyst 21:12, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Just a hypothetical. I was looking at the page and happened to notice the hidden category at the bottom, got curious about it. As for such an example... I acknowledge it's not the most likely scenario ever, but if an admin were trying to sell their account, or otherwise using their status to work against the project, I could picture a good Samaritan becoming aware of it, doing some quick Googling to try to figure out who to notify, but losing interest when no answers come up.
Perhaps the more important point here is that this seems like needless secrecy that could serve to reïnforce the notion of a shadowy mysterious cabal governing the Internet's top reference source. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:50, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Needless secrecy? Is there no end to the conspiracy theories? Seriously, the internal search engine pops out anything one needs. Why in heaven's name should every case and every user who's been subject to it have to have it pop up as one of their top Google hits? Google is actually the reason that no-indexing is required, because they highly rank every indexed Wikipedia page, not just the articles. They're part of the problem, not part of the solution. Risker (talk) 21:57, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Wasn't trying to conspiracy theorize, Risker, though in retrospect I see how my comment could come off that way. I'm in the silent majority who think that 80-90% of the criticism that ArbCom gets is utter nonsense, and that most of the remainder is vastly overblown. Anyways, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we un-NOINDEX the case pages and such. Just Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee specifically, as the Committee's public landing page. — PinkAmpers &^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 22:20, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)There will be no end to conspiracy theories (but I suspect that was a rhetorical question).

The google search bots / algorithms are pretty soulless machines ; unless there's evidence google is ignoring directives it's really our problem to set the pages correctly. NE Ent 22:26, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

We have an article Arbitration Committee (English Wikipedia) which appears in Google results, and a hatnote which directs pretty clearly to the insider stuff. NE Ent 22:31, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

restore note

[1] should be restored as the committee has issued v2 of AC/DSR. NE Ent 12:47, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Done. AGK [•] 01:03, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

RFC: Should the committee have at least the proportion of females as the readership?

RFC closed by requester per WP:SNOW. My request to MastCell to open a new one based on polling by median and asking primarily about statistician arbitrators below stands. EllenCT (talk) 11:52, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Should the Arbitration Committee have at least as many female members as would meet or exceed the proportion of females in the project readership? What other requirements, if any, should the Committee meet? And if so, how should the committee meet such requirements? EllenCT (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Survey

Yes, because "males are somewhat less likely to reach agreements than females"[2] and the Committee's process of group decision making requires reaching agreements over the internet. Also the Committee should have at least 20% statisticians because the Committee's decision making process would benefit from greater utilitarian focus on traditional decision support methods. Jimmy Wales should appoint females and statisticians to the committee from the highest ranked such vote-winners in the most recent Arbcom election, or from administrators or other functionaries in good standing, at his discretion. EllenCT (talk) 01:53, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
- Women are probably more likely than men to reach agreement on a population-wide basis. But the Arbitration Committee is not made up of a random sample of the population (its members are rationally selected, in part, for their reasonableness). Thus the statistical finding you cite doesn't have any bearing on the question at hand.
  Ironically, though, this misapplication of statistics supports your second point. I agree the Committee would benefit greatly from members (or consultants) with statistical expertise, as statistical claims of highly dubious quality and suspect methodology are routinely made, and taken at face value, during cases. I nominate Woonpton (talk · contribs) for immediate appointment by fiat to the Committee. She's a woman and a statistician, and an extraordinarily insightful and clueful editor to boot. The only problem is that we've managed to chase her away, as we have so many clueful real-world experts, but maybe she could be convinced to return. MastCell ^Talk 17:02, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Please close this RFC as WP:SNOW no, and open one about both statisticians of any gender and women, asking as a percentage quota. I propose you close that RFC with the median values. EllenCT (talk) 04:06, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

No, for all the reasons already discussed at length on Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013, where these proposals have been discussed at length and have drawn virtually no support at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:58, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you have a link, please? Search is unhelpful. EllenCT (talk) 02:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Link added. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:09, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Did you just ask for a link to a conversation you started? Legoktm (talk) 02:19, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

No, Brad originally wrote "this page" so I was asking if I had missed anything. I hope it is not the custom of Committee members to edit the semantic content of their comments after they have received a response. EllenCT (talk) 02:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

We edit-conflicted as I was inserting the link. Sorry for any confusion. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:31, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

No inherently sexist and intrinsically in violation of WMF privacy policy -- readers are not required to identify their gender (and shouldn't be). NE Ent 02:21, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

It is pretty easy to estimate the proportion of female readers by anonymous survey, and I remember reading about more than one such survey. EllenCT (talk) 02:24, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

NoAlthough it would be good to have more diversity in the committee, they can only appoint to the committee what apply. So if limited numbers of women apply, or none, then those are the potential candidates. Second, we have no way of knowing who the women are unless they tell us and many do not, that is their right. Additionally, we want qualified people on the committee and finding those is already a problem. If we add the requirement of a % of women then we will need to make a % of various other things. We shouldn't be appointing by demographic, we need to appoint by qualification. Kumioko (talk) 02:25, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Arbitrators are required to identify to the Foundation. EllenCT (talk) 02:28, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Your right, but they are not required to identify to us, so we have no idea if they are female unless they choose to tell us and ay editors do not. I understand what your trying to accomplish and its commendable but I'm sorry I just don't think this is a realistic requirement. I would prefer a requirement that the arbs show some kind of proof that they have the qualifications of an Arbitrator. Kumioko (talk) 02:42, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Strong oppose Offensively sexist. This does nothing to address the problem that qualified potential female candidates are unwilling to run, which is the root cause of the imbalance, before we even get to the issue of whether the imbalance is an issue. wctaiwan (talk) 02:30, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
No, there is no cause for affirmative action, and nothing insurmountable to compensate for. Encourage enough of our best female editors to put nominations forward and we might achieve a majority of female members. That would not be a problem either. For quite a long time, I wrongfully assumed Flq was female; bettering myself through her—throughly proud of her fine example. Upon learning I was mistaken, only the pronouns have changed. The seat is still held by the editor I thought best suited, and I still have a very fine example to emulate. Let's always give assent to our best and most qualified; I am confident females will emerge victorious by their own merits. Can anyone imagine a scenario where Moonriddengirl was a candidate, yet somehow unable to command a victory? I can't!—John Cline (talk) 02:38, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think that would be compatible with her community liason role as Mdennis (WMF). But there are others who'd be viable candidates; the trick is into getting them to run for a crappy job with long hours and lousy pay. As it is, we're lucky to get a decent field of candidates every year. NE Ent 02:51, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Comment - All this is just playing gender politics again, just in the same way as some people just can't leave off tinkering with LBGT issues. It's tantamount to asking if we should also have a representative number of gays on Arbcom. While people of all genders are heartily welcome and encouraged to participate in Wikipedia, if most editors happen to males, that's the fault of the ladies and not ours. That said, it would be nice if we had a lot more lady admins, 'crats, and Arbs, but nobody is obliged to reveal their gender.

I'm not so sure we get a decent field of candidates every year, but we have to fill the seats from what we get. That's the major flaw in the electoral system.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:15, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Wu or mu, depending on your East Asian language preferences. Unbounded, undefined inquiry that begs many questions.--Tznkai (talk) 04:05, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, yes, The Arbitration Committee should have at least as many female members as would meet or exceed the proportion of females in the project readership. That'd be great. I don't see any way to implement that, though, short of a quota, which would probably not be a good idea and wouldn't fly anyway. If there's some way to get that to happen without a quota, fine. But I can't think of one. Herostratus (talk) 04:19, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
No What's next? Racial profiling on top of gender profiling? The good AND bad thing about the internet is that nobody knows you're a dog. Someone who's self-identifying as a female in order to be guaranteed an ArbComm/Admin spot is what you'd end up with. I'm always shocked how the solution to gender and racial equality is to enact dangerous and offensive gender and race policies/guidelines. Would it be good if we had appropriate representation? Yes. Should it happen naturally? Yes. How you get more females appointed to ArbCom is this: appropriately qualified female editors run for it. No true human being I know of is going to vote against a female (or Asian, or Black) candidate simply because of their gender (or race) - they are going to vote against them due to lack of qualifications - and on this project, qualifications must be earned, no matter what race or gender you are ES &L 13:36, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
No, for a number of reasons. This is, first off, unimplementable without violating users' privacy by forcing them to declare their gender. That's a no-go; we are a project that allows users to keep details about themselves private. Besides, it's not that the community isn't electing women to arbcom, it's that women aren't putting themselves forth as candidates, for a myriad of what I expect are very understandable reasons ranging from "it doesn't interest me" to "I don't have the time/patience" to "I will not subject myself to that treatment". Unless your plan is to force female editors to run - which is also a no-go - then setting quotas wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. And in addition to all that, it's incredibly reductionist to say that all female-identified editors will be more able to do X than all male-identified editors; in my time in the community it's become clear to me that both genders - as well as those who identify as more than one or neither - are populated with people who will both meet and not meet any supposedly-gender-based quality/talent/stereotype. Should we elect arbitrators who are good at reaching agreements and mediating disputes? Absolutely. Will ticking a certain "gender" box on the candidates' nominations ensure that we are electing people who are good at reaching agreements and mediating disputes? Not so much, especially compared to just judging the candidates on the merits of their own personalities. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 16:55, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Comment, which if you want to count as a No, I suppose you could. I haven't read the comments so I don't know if anyone has pointed this out, but I looked up the ArbCom history and in the first half of 2011, ArbCom had at least three women (Risker, Elen of the Roads and Shell Kinney until she resigned), and then for the next year and a half there were two. I believe that during the time that there were three, ArbCom had 18 members, so that was 16.66...%. Today it would be 20%. Personally I don't think that's enough. I would like to see the number of editors, candidates for ArbCom and other trusted roles, and elected Arbitrators all be roughly 50-50, as in the general population. But I think that needs to be achieved on its own, not by some fiat. The point is, the voters can handle it. Neutron (talk) 02:08, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. I'll keep it simple and link to this quote from Risker (a female arbitrator), who wrote "speaking as a woman who is just finishing 5 years on the committee and knows the nature and volume of work involved, I can say honestly that I see absolutely no value in "pre-allocation" of seats to individuals who can't otherwise get themselves elected. If they've got the skill set and they're willing to stand, women candidates generally do quite well, and are actually considerably more likely to be elected than male candidates." [3] Hot Stop 04:44, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose. This is infeasible to implement, due to the many reasons listed by the others above. Additionally, positive discrimination is still discrimination, and as a movement we shouldn't discriminate at all. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 12:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose Primarily due to the "lumpiness" of having less than, say, one hundred spaces in which to fill such potential quotas, I find no realistic objection to asking nominees their gender if the matter were practicable, but with a small number of places, and a large number of potential groups seeking representation, we might end up over-regulating any electoral process. I would also note that if every subgroup gets "at least" their proportionate representation, then we would have to have some members fill multiple quota categories - which is very silly, I fear. Collect (talk) 13:32, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose per Risker Agathoclea (talk) 14:30, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
Oppose, as much as I'd be very happy to see more women become candidates. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:36, 24 December 2013 (UTC)
No, it's not the readership, but the editorship that matters. Mastcell is theoretically correct about the operativity of the reasonable principle in a democratic election, as there are few pro wrestler candidtates on Wikipedia (haha). On the other hand (the point of my comment), what should be first of concern foremost is that everyone on Arbcom abides by the Arbitration policy which, admittedly, appears to need some work.--Ubikwit^連絡_{見学/迷惑} 15:47, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Threaded discussion 1

Comment - Sing with me: "Deck the halls with silly folly, troll-lo-lo-lo-lo, lo-lo-lo-lo /// Makes the season extra jolly, troll-lo-lo-lo-lo, lo-lo-lo-lo..." Carrite (talk) 18:09, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your joyful implication that I was not sincere. I was and am sincere. I admit I made a mistake. I should have cited http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/06/why-boards-need-more-women/ but this is a wiki and I will continue to ask trusted and valued administrators to open a superior RFC so that it can proceed without question. I believe this has been a valuable learning experience. Do you know how to put the shaded RFC closure template on these things? EllenCT (talk) 00:15, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

What specifically about the above responses to this "survey" leads you to believe that a "superior RFC" will end any differently? Need to make a splashier splash? Carrite (talk) 02:26, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I was referring to the evidence at the linked source, not the responses. EllenCT (talk) 05:39, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Citing an editorial which in turn cites evidence about corporate boards of directors is unlikely to sway any of the above opinions. First, from reading the abstract I question whether the reseach says what the editorial claims it says. Second, an arbitration committee is not a board of directors. You could, of course, turn your attention to the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. Oh, wait. Five females and five males on the board and a female CEO. No AIs or cetaceans, though, so you have that going for you. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:39, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying the underlying research is inaccurate? It is cited favorably in subsequent independent work listed on Google Scholar. EllenCT (talk) 06:39, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

You cannot compare workplaces to volunteer organizations where gender specification is not a formal requirement. So stop trying. ES &L 11:06, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Why do you say such comparison is impossible? Why aren't such comparisons potentially fruitful? Is there only one way to find out or not? EllenCT (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

EllenCT, your conclusions are wrong because the research paper Status of Higgs boson searches at the beginning of the LHC era (A Sopczak 2012 J. Phys. G: Nucl. Part. Phys. 39 113001 doi:10.1088/0954-3899/39/11/1130010)[4] says so. I sincerely hope that you are not going to claim that that that research is unreliable. It is not only cited favorably in subsequent independent work, but the authors were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for writing it.

What's that you say? The paper I cite has to actually contain what I say it contains? I am just following your lead, noting that you cited a paper that showed an effect on return on equity (ratio of after-tax net profit to stockholders’ equity, return on sales (pre-tax net profit divided by revenue) and return on invested capital (ratio of after-tax net operating profit to invested capital), then pretended that it drew a conclusion about how well the arbitration committee of a non-profit website resolves conduct disputes. If you can do that, I can certainly pretend that a paper about the origin of mass of subatomic particles is about how well the arbitration committee resolves disputes. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:26, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

What skill demands of the two populations (boards of for-profit directors, volunteer behavior dispute arbitrators) are shared, and what are the differences in skill sets? Is there any reason to believe that the former outnumber the latter? EllenCT (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Is there any reason to believe that the skill set needed to determine the mass of subatomic particles is not the same as the skill set needed to play blues guitar? Res ipsa loquitur -- the thing speaks for itself. It is self evident that affecting the ratio of after-tax net profit to stockholders’ equity and dealing with behavioral issues on Wikipedia are completely different skills. The claim that they are somehow similar is an exceptional claim that require extraordinary proof, yet you have provided zero evidence for your claim. The fact that you posted a survey and the result was pretty much unanimous against you should have given you a clue. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:13, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

This talk of skill sets... What skill set is required? Who knows, in this so non-standard forum of so called dispute resolution and arbitration? Where else, successfully or otherwise, do people do dispute resolution and arbitration in public, publicly accepting all evidence and opinion, make a public show of tentative deliberation, arbiters discuss in secret, and then lay down judgments with the force of law? It sounds like a show trial in the town square.

I have seen arbitration work well. It is done in private. Grievance, and evidence, is taken privately. Outside opinions are taken privately. Involved parties, with optional support persons hear each other out. Uninvolved outside opinion may be introduced by the moderator. Involved parties propose their own remedies, under the guidance of the moderator. Often, all agree, the remedies recorded privately, to be forgotten in time if all goes well. If involved parties do not agree, then it becomes moderator versus involved party in front of a powerful arbitrator who may impose harsh edicts, or threaten to and send party’s back for more discussion. If agreed remedies are not followed, the moderator takes the recalcitrant party to the powerful arbitrator.

To begin the process, the complainants must (privately) detail a desired outcome.

The required skill set of the moderator is surprisingly thin. Calm patience.

The powerful arbitrator? Decisive, no nonsense, completely backs the moderator. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:42, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Calm patience, lack of nonsense, and decisiveness are also skills involved in maximizing the ratio of after-tax net profit to stockholders’ equity. EllenCT (talk) 03:55, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think one person and exude calm patience at the same time as no nonsense decisiveness. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:29, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree that patience and no nonsense decisiveness are different skills, likely but not certainly drawing from different secondary personality attributes. EllenCT (talk) 07:13, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I find the implication that males lack calm patience, lack of nonsense, and decisiveness to be sexist and deeply insulting. The fact that the study that EllenCT is using as a stalking horse doesn't say what she says it does, combined with her utter refusal to accept and follow consensus, just makes it more insulting. I refer EllenCT to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:42, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think I implied that? Both males and females have varying extents of those attributes, and the individual variance is likely larger than the difference between the male and female means for all of the attributes by any reasonable measure. However, I think it quite likely that, due to the dynamics of groups of at least five members with at least three members of any particular gender, the corresponding group extents are probably greater for at least two of the three attributes. If you think that is unlikely, I would like to know why. EllenCT (talk) 07:12, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Threaded discussion 2

I took a quick look at the paper which the OP asserts supports the proposition that "males are somewhat less likely to reach agreements than females", [5]. On page 11 the investigators say "Both the three logistic linear regression methods (LLR) and three tree and rule induction (TRI) models provide similar results that are summarized in Table 1." The table shows that the property "males are somewhat less likely to reach agreements than females" is true of the LLR, but not the TRI models. Then on page 12 they say "We notice that the method providing the highest average accuracy is the tree and rule induction method followed by logistic linear regression." In other words, the data was best explained by a model which did not include gender as a factor.

ArbCom's decisions directly affect the people who edit, not those who only read. Since anonymity of both readers and editors is prized, we don't know who reads, or edits, Wikipedia. Many Web sites require registration, but is it enough? The OP's questions about gender, which is not purely a social construct but is partly biological, suggest the possibility that there is a biological basis to good governance. To properly explore this possibility, we may:

define what good governance is (being able to come to agreement may be a valid criterion)
find people who have provided it
through genetic testing or other methods, identify the pertinent biological characteristics
ensure that only biologically suited people are placed in positions of authority
if necessary, encourage the birth and proper nurturing of biologically superior rulers, while discouraging others
the resulting good governance will no doubt result in a successful Web site
spread the good news beyond Wikipedia —rybec 07:03, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Rybec, I've opposed EllenCT's suggestions, but your comments are really obnoxious and outrageous. Newyorkbrad (talk) 10:52, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I was trying for ridiculous outrageousness, not irritating outrageousness. —rybec 22:45, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

I fear that you overshot a bit. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:07, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Somewhere, Mike Godwin's ears perked up at number 3, his eyebrows raised at number 4 and he had to take the rest of the afternoon off at number 5. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neutron (talk • contribs)

Concur with obnoxious and outrageous, but not necessarily inappropriate, as the original post is obnoxious and outrageous. Taking reasoning to its logical conclusion(s) is an effective rhetorical technique. NE Ent 12:15, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

A more fruitful exploration may be found in this work which states, "the gender of the sender or ... receiver, alone are not helpful.... But when both of them are present ... a non-trivial model [has] good predictive performance...." A professional statistician might point out that adjusting regressions for degrees of freedom helps account for increased predictive performance which is merely an artifact of model complexity. EllenCT (talk) 04:34, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately much of what passes for science publishing nowadays, especially in behavior research is unreliable.^[1]^[2]NE Ent 12:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

References

^ Check Hayden, Erika (26 Aug 2013). "US behavioural research studies skew positive". Nature News. Retrieved 24 Dec 2013.
^ "Trouble at the Lab". The Economist. 19 Oct 2013. Retrieved 24 Dec 2013.

In the Nastase-Shirabad paper, they looked at a site called Inspire (the same site the other investigators studied) where participants could optionally disclose their genders. They write,

An analysis of the model which has generated the highest accuracy, revealed that when the gender of both negotiators is known, the outcome of the negotiation is predicted as successful. When only the gender of one of the negotiators is known the outcome is predicted as failed. Finally, when the gender of both negotiators is unknown the predicted outcome is successful. In this particular experimental set-up there is no difference in predicted outcome when negotiator genders are known (and they are either the same or different).

They go on to speculate about how negotiators who disclosed a gender might be more motivated than those who didn't, and how that might affect the outcomes of the negotiations. The last sentence seems to be saying that, for negotiations between people who were willing to disclose their genders, it didn't matter whether they happened to be two females, a male and a female, or two males. —rybec 17:11, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

If @MastCell: would please open a new RFC, I promise I have better reasons than my first attempt: "When Fortune-500 companies were ranked by the number of women directors on their boards, those in the highest quartile in 2009 reported a 42% greater return on sales and a 53% higher return on equity.... Companies with women directors deal more effectively with risk. Not only do they better address the concerns of customers, employees, shareholders, and the local community, but also, they tend to focus on long-term priorities. Women directors are likely to be more in tune with women’s needs than men...." EllenCT (talk) 02:53, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

That being the case, I am sure you will be pleased to learn that the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation (which, unlike the Arbitration Committee, functions as a corporate board of directors and is therefore comparable to the boards that you mention) Is currently composed of five men and five women. That's 50% for us non-mathematicians. Pretty good, right? Neutron (talk) 04:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Now if we could only get the community responsible for content disputes to be similarly constituted. How much would it cost to get Oprah, my namesake in L.A., Justin Timberlake and Matt Damon to urge their fans to edit? EllenCT (talk) 08:45, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps this is the core problem, EllenCT. Your comment above indicates you believe that Arbcom handles content disputes. It explicitly does not. And I can guarantee you that fans of Oprah, Ellen, JT, and Matt Damon edit Wikipedia right now. They just don't want to handle its problem users. Risker (talk) 02:51, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I understand that the community is responsible for content because otherwise the administration would lose safe harbor provisions. I also believe there is value in the proposal I made, and I would not regret making it even if 100 people who edit this page, which I do not believe for an instant would be representative of the editing community or readership to begin with, all opposed the idea. The fact remains that I believe recruiting more women to edit is even more worth the effort, and my question about how much celebrities would charge to urge their fans to participate in editing is sincere and stands. EllenCT (talk) 05:37, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, Stephen Colbert periodically encourages his fans to edit Wikipedia, but it normally ends badly, with lots of blocks and page protections. I have no issue with the idea of recruiting new editors, and more women, to edit Wikipedia. There's a world of difference, though, between editing Wikipedia and the Arbitration Committee. Risker (talk) 05:50, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm all in favor of eliminating WP:Systemic bias, but if you figure on 8% of editors being female, then there is already some kind of rough representation going on. I would be more inclined to support an additional 3 seats on the Arbcom reserved for non-admins, which would also be subject to the minimum vote threshold. Just to make things interesting, perhaps only non-admins would be eligible to vote for them. To make things even more interesting, why not elect some non-admins to AE. —Neotarf (talk) 08:28, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

It would be interesting to run a RfC on the above and, at the end, break down the count into admins, non-admins, and total. Of course only the total would count under the current rules, but nothing says that we can't count and publish the admin and non-admin results as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 04:48, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions Affected areas

The section "Affected areas" refers to "Pages relating to" a particular subject. For example, "Contraception" is related to "Abortion", and hence is obviously covered by the sanctions. Bear in mind that in the introduction, point #4 states, "Warnings should be clear and unambiguous", do discretionary sanctions "unambiguously" extend to:

Non-related pages, but that include related facts. eg. a page on a particular person, who during their life falls over and aborts. Does this page become related by virtue of mentioning a discretionary subject?
Non-related pages nor facts. eg. the article on Coal balls, which mentions Marie Stopes who had views on abortion. --Iantresman (talk) 18:47, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Topic bans are intended to keep a user away from an area where they have previously caused disruption. That means any area, on any page, that can be reasonably construed as having a relation to the topic. It simply is not possible, or wise, to try and document every possible page that might be subject to the TBAN. We just handled a clarification request about something like this, and the consensus was that where there are only tangential connections such as you describe the user who is the subject of the ban may edit the page, but should void the specific area that involves the topic they are banned from. Traditionally, both the community and ArbCom have taken a very dim of view of users who seem to be deliberately testing the limitations of a topic ban, so if there is any doubt it is best to err on the side of caution. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I am more concerned with users that are not currently topic banned, but the application of "discretionary sanctions".

Do "discretionary sanctions" refers to "any area, on any page", or does it refer to only "related pages" as it specifies in "Affected areas"?
While topic bans are indeed meant to keep users away from a particular area, I presume that "discretionary sanctions" are meant to make users aware of being more cautious of a particular area, as described in the section "For editors"
Can you recall which Clarification Request was related to this, that you mentioned? --Iantresman (talk) 10:17, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

My guess is party movement. NE Ent 13:18, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one I meant. More experienced arbs may have more to add here, but I think whenever the committee makes a statement regarding related pages, whether a TBAN or discretionary sanctions, it should be approached as I described above. If you are unsure whether it applies or not, assume it does and act accordingly. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not an arbitrator, but my experience of watching clarifications etc agrees with Beeblebrox. If the article is directly related to the DS area then the entire article is subject to the provisions. If only a section is related, then that section is subject but the rest of the article isn't. If it's only sentences/facts that are related then they are covered, but tread carefully - if it's one user being disruptive across a range of articles (e.g. on articles about people who have had abortions) then it's likely best to bring their specific behaviour to the attention of a relevant noticeboard (at least in the second instance). If it's a group of people at a single article or group of closely related articles that are only tangentally related to the DS topic area, then again discuss specifically the problem behaviour and the topic may be adjusted or a new topic area authorised. In both cases though make sure the disruption is relevant to abortion before taking any action under abortion DS - for example if a user is targetting Brazilian people who have had abortions and the disruption is based on their being Brazilian then the abortion connection is likely coincidental and not relevant. Thryduulf (talk) 12:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for bureaucratship/Worm That Turned

For Dave's RfB, I've asked a question for other Arbs. I can understand if you prefer not to comment on the particular RfB but perhaps some discussion about tools acquired while sitting in office (or whether tools should be given automatically as part of office). Not a big deal as I don't think it's improper, just uncharted. --DHeyward (talk) 09:33, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@DHeyward, to weigh in on this after the fact, and out of venue (I know, two cardinal Wikisins): Plenty of arbitrators have been bureaucrats; it's not improper. However, I do not think the bureaucrat permissions should be routinely given out to committee members, not least because Wikipedia has a long history of arbitrators not enforcing their own decisions. AGK [•] 23:58, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

@AGK, no worries of impropriety of having both. NYB's response/reply/response was my concern (though he focused on impropriety of the arb while I was more concerned with influencing participation of the community). Mainly the influence the office has on people participating in the process of RfB. I wasn't concerned with a person who had the bit before Arbcom elections either as the community already weighed in. My concern was about if being an Arb and then seeking a side job would unduly influence participation or non-participation, whence my question about resitting for nomination after Arbcom term (which in hindsight of both turnout, "support and oppose" doesn't seem like it was particularly an issue except possible opposes based on time considerations - there's a concurrent RfB and it will be interesting to see if turnout is significantly different but historically it doesn't appear to be). It's not as visible as say Jimbo weighing in on something, but it's more visible than ordinary and I wasn't sure where that line would be. Heck, if Jimbo weighed in on an RfB on either side, I'd bet it would attract 10 times normal participation which I am not sure is a good thing for the process. My question was obviously before it closed and Dave suggested posting it here. The turnout didn't appear to be skewed much so it's not a big deal. If a 1000 editors weighed in (on either side), I'd be more concerned. --DHeyward (talk) 00:35, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

Arbitration Clerks seeking new volunteers

The Arbitration Committee clerks are currently looking for a few dependable and mature editors willing to serve as clerks. The responsibilities of clerks include opening and closing arbitration cases and motions; notifying parties of cases, decisions, and other committee actions; maintaining the requests for Arbitration pages; preserving order and proper formatting on case pages; and other administrative and related tasks they may be requested to handle by the arbitrators. Clerks are the unsung heroes of the arbitration process, keeping track of details to ensure that requests are handled in a timely and efficient manner. Clerks get front-line seats to the political and ethnic warfare that scorches Wikipedia periodically, and, since they aren't arbitrators themselves, are rarely threatened with violence by the participants.

Past clerks have gone on to be (or already were) successful lawyers, naval officers, and Presidents of Wikimedia Chapters. The salary and retirement packages for Clerks rival that of Arbitrators, to boot. Best of all, you get a cool fez!

Please email clerks-llists.wikimedia.org if you are interested in becoming a clerk, and a clerk will reply with an acknowledgement of your message and any questions we want to put to you.

For the Arbitration Committee clerks, Rs chen 7754 04:59, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Discuss this

RFC with potential impact on ARB, CHU and Oversight blocks

At Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#RFC:_Indefinitely_blocked_IP_addresses there is a discussion on eliminating indefinite IP blocks. As the RFC, if successful, could potentially conflict with blocks placed under the jurisdiction of the committee, and/or Checkuser/Oversight blocks, which the committee supervises, I wanted to bring the discussion to everyone's attention here. Monty ₈₄₅ 03:33, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

No policy against undisclosed paid editing

Could a member of ArbCom please comment on this, and whether the Committee was accurately paraphrased in that discussion? Thanks. Andreas JN 466 16:56, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Please don't join a dispute that you may be asked to rule upon (though I hope it will be resolved well before that ever happens). Jehochman ^Talk 17:35, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

If you allow me an analogy, in a state based on the rule of law, laws have to be worded clearly and must be publicly available for perusal. Laws are not written during legal proceedings. It would be unfair to punish citizens for an infraction of a law that was written by the judges during their trial.

Likewise, Wikipedia policy should be clear. ArbCom is our supreme arbiter on what is and isn't policy. It is a question of fundamental fairness that when called upon, ArbCom should clarify what is or isn't policy. It isn't good enough to say, Oh, we'll decide what is policy once we have a case. People have a right to know how the Arbitration Committee will rule in future cases hinging on this question before these cases start. Then they will know what they're at, and can adjust their behaviour accordingly.

Undisclosed paid editing is either allowed or not. It's time to have clarity on this issue.

It is a very simple question: Is undisclosed paid editing, at this point in time, allowed in Wikipedia or not? Andreas JN 466 18:47, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

If there is a policy which unambiguously bans undisclosed paid editing I have not seen it. However, the community has often frowned on those with advanced permissions engaging in such behavior. So, it's a grey area and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future. We no more know the possible outcome of a theoretical case related to this than you do. The committee is not empowered to change that, only the community is. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:36, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Beeblebrox. It is an answer.

The community can "frown" as much as it likes, but if you're not cautioned, admonished, desysopped, topic-banned, blocked or banned for the mere fact of engaging in undisclosed paid editing, then that means there isn't a policy against it. In other words, if a paid editor is blocked, topic-banned or otherwise sanctioned, it's for falling foul of some policy or guideline unrelated to their being a paid editor. This means that undisclosed paid editing in itself is fine.
And so it follows that anyone can hire a non-disclosing paid editor to manage their company's page or their biography, or edit it themselves without disclosing their identity, without that in itself being against policy – and that nothing will happen to such an editor as long as their edits and behavior are in line with the general content and behavioral policies and guidelines that apply to all editors, paid or not.

So, have I got it right in paragraphs (1) and (2) above? (I hasten to add that I am asking this out of purely academic interest. I have no intention of hiring or of being hired as a paid editor of any sort.) Andreas JN 466 20:16, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Not even close in the entire thread. False premises lead to false conclusions. NE Ent 00:53, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I am asking ArbCom, not you. It's the arbitrators' opinion that counts here, as they are the ones interpreting and enforcing the community's policies and guidelines according to their best judgment, and you have no mandate to second-guess them. If you are unhappy with ArbCom's interpretation of policy, the right approach is to try to change policy in such a way that the specific interpretation you object to is directly contradicted. Andreas JN 466 01:58, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

You asked a question on a talkpage monitored by many that do not include ArbCom members, and where replies by non-ArbCom members are not verboten. So, take every answer you get - they all add up to some version of the truth and/or reality ES &L 11:56, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

For clarity, Arbcom were copied in on a number of emails between 28bytes and Jehochman, as confirmed by 28bytes. Only one arbitrator weighed in stating that the email chain was not something the committee could do anything about and personally suggesting that they disengage. I did not see any comments which stated why the committee would not or could not act.
Now, speaking for myself, I don't know of any policy that stops paid editing, however much Jimbo talks of Bright Line Rules. We do, however, have a policy that requires neutral point of view - it's a core part of how this encyclopedia works. So, whether an editor is paid or not should be largely irrelevant, it's their edits that count. If they're being obvious and writing spammy text or being more subtle by tilting the weight of an article one way or another then that should be flagged and can lead to blocks or bans. Declaration of CoI (including paid editors) is useful to ensure there are eyes in the right places and trying to hide a CoI whilst also not adhering to an NPOV is something that should be taken very seriously. Worm^TT(talk) 09:41, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

That's a very good point. As a general rule, preventing or correcting POV pushing is not dependent on knowing the motivations of the user doing the pushing. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:57, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

So, would you say that the paragraphs numbered 1 and 2 above match ArbCom's understanding, or at least your personal one? In other words, undisclosed paid editing (or hiring a WP-savvy editor to manage a page in Wikipedia on your behalf) are not against policy, as long as no POV pushing is found to occur? Andreas JN 466 02:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

In my opinion. this is a false dilemma. We do not have to choose between saying "this is forbidden" and saying "this is allowed". We can say "this is strongly discouraged". --Guy Macon (talk) 03:05, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Waiting time for Arbitration Committee Mailing List

Expanded title from generic Arbitration Committee Mailing List. AGK [•] 02:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I am wondering how long I should expect to wait for a response from the Arbitration Committee to a very simple enquiry I sent three days ago. My previous experience indicates that "forever" is the answer, but I had hoped that things had improved. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:03, 29 March 2014 (UTC).

I don't see such a message in my inbox. Given amount of spam mail we receive (on the order of a few hundred per day recently), it probably got lost in moderation. I'll ask the list admins to take a look. T. Canens (talk) 00:52, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

@Rich Farmbrough: I have answered your question by email. AGK [•] 02:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 02:40, 29 March 2014 (UTC).

I also sent one in on an improper use of revdel over a week ago. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 03:27, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that, Hell in a Bucket. If you resend it to me via Wikipedia mail, I'll make sure it gets to the list. Roger Davies ^talk 05:17, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I've just found it. You should hear very soon. Apologies again. Roger Davies ^talk 05:25, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

No worries Roger thanks. Hell in a Bucket (talk) 05:30, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I just sent you our reply, Hell in a Bucket --Guerillero | My Talk 23:37, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

I wonder if there might be a mechanism for alerting an interlocutor that their email has been passed to the list - even CC'ing them on the message would serve the purpose. I have, as I have said before, sent a number of emails to the Committee over the years, and the only response I ever recall, was after I had made enquiries through another channel about the progress, which has uniformly been "sorry we temporarily lost it".

I am now in a position where I feel embarrassed to hassle committee members, who have enough to contend with, but conversely have zero faith that any email I send will end anywhere other than the spam pile, without zealous progress chasing.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:40, 31 March 2014 (UTC).

Hi Rich. We have actually been discussing these very issues quite recently. The mailing list receives an incredible amount of spam, and it seems our current filtration is not quite up to the task. This has unfortunately caused two issues: that already busy arbitrators have to spend a large amount of time hand filtering emails, and that sometimes things get thrown on the wrong pile. It seems as if every few days either an arb discovers something that was trashed by accident, or we get a follow-up communication asking what happened to the original message. We are currently exploring what can be done to mitigate these issues. I am not one of the list managers and not very technically minded so I am afraid I don't have a lot of details to share, but it is on our radar and we do very much desire to improve the situation. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:48, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply! One I received AGK's reply to my simple query, I sent the substantive mail. Needless to say, I have heard nothing on that.

Could someone look?
Who are the list admins?
Does the software use standard Majordomo?

If so a tweak to allow mail from en:WP accounts through would seem like one small step forward.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 19:08, 1 April 2014 (UTC).

The method is in the FAQ - any trusted addresses could be added here, as well as Arbitrator's alternative email addresses. If your spam is just general automated spam this method should be fine.

... set restrict_post to:
mylist:mylist-nomail
Then, create a configuration file and password for "mylist-nomail", but DO NOT create any aliases. (If you use something like mj_build_aliases, then don't set the owner)
The moderator, or subscribers may then subscribe themselves to this second list. Subscribers to the -nomail list will then be allowed to post to the first list, but won't receive duplicate copies of the first list.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 19:20, 1 April 2014 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: Thanks very much for your suggestions. However, coincidentally we seem to have resolved the spam issue this morning. It transpired the WMF Engineering department's written guidance on configuring the spam filters contained a fatal typo. (On a related note, who wants to start a "Die, Regex, Die Club" Wikipedia chapter?)

I've searched the moderation logs for your message. There is no trace of it. We could find your original query in the logs—and therefore retrieve it—but this one, we can't. Kindly resend, both to the list and directly to me (you have my address and it's on WP:AC). Sorry for the inconvenience! AGK [•] 21:56, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

To your earlier questions: See above; the message has disappeared, rather than been mistakenly discarded (by hand or by the system). The list admins are me, Roger Davies (temporarily deactivated as moderator by self-request), LFaraone, David Fuchs, NativeForeigner, and Worm That Turned. Arbitrators occasionally join or leave this team, as energy, availability, and interest demand. No, all Wikimedia mailing lists use GNU Mailman, including ArbCom; SpamAssassin provides the spam filters. AGK [•] 22:00, 1 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the information, glad to see that the committee's problems with automation appear resolved. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 22:31, 1 April 2014 (UTC).

Create / designate a page (this one?) for editors to post a generic "you've good mail" message which could be cross checked against the incoming mail. You could even pass a non-discretionary non-sanctions rule so Wikipedia step child (the banned, etc.) would be allow to post such a notice (only, of course). NE Ent 00:02, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

It seems tricky, even with AGK's good offices, even with a fixed regular expression, even with a guarantee that the mail got through (yes, Pony Express days) ArbCom have not broken their perfect duck of never responding to an email from me. (Disclaimer - hyperbole may apply, I may have got a response once, but I don't think so.) I guess from the point of view of email, ArbCom is just a bit like the three-letter-entities in Cliff Stoll's The Cuckoo's Egg they will listen to anything but never say a word. Ho-hum off to clarifications and amendments we go. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:45, 7 April 2014 (UTC).

Clarification and Amendment archives

Forgive my ignorance with regard to the details of how Arbcom works, but is there a way of finding past requests at Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment without having to dig through page histories? By the way, I just asked this question in what I realized was the wrong place, if this is still not the right place, please feel free to move this question to a better page, I am finding the layout and hierarchy of Arbcom related pages confusing right now. --Fæ (talk) 15:13, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

They are filed with the corresponding case. NE Ent 18:50, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Are they all supposed to be listed, or just the ones that resulted in some action? I just had that question myself--I was just looking at the Argentine history case, since there is a new request open. In the year-end arbitration report for the Signpost, I wrote that there had been five clarification/amendment requests related to that case, but when I go to WP:ARCA and click "view all closed cases" (in the table), then use the search function on that page, I don't see them. —Neotarf (talk) 12:26, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Argentine_History NE Ent 12:36, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Hah, all five of them, right on the talk page for the case. That's diabolically clever. —Neotarf (talk) 13:06, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes on the talk page - of course the history is lost, and in one case the actual talk page was overwritten. It would be far better if they were sub-pages of the case, transcluded onto the WP:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment page. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC).

Of course it's not lost -- it's just royal pain in the butt to access. NE Ent 01:38, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Lost in the sense that it is no longer tied to the content. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:55, 7 April 2014 (UTC).

Hi Rich, with the transclusion route the transcluded pages don't appear on watchlists (unless they're added separately). This makes it much easier to miss stuff. Roger Davies ^talk 05:53, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct, however Mirror Bot would have dealt with that problem. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 06:03, 7 April 2014 (UTC).

Still waiting

AGK Beeblebrox David Fuchs Floquenbeam GorillaWarfare LFaraone NativeForeigner Newyorkbrad Salvio giuliano Seraphimblade Timotheus Canens Worm That Turned Carcharoth Roger Davies

Is there any reason that the Committee still hasn't replied to my mail of 29 March - 14 days ago. I remember that the committee denied my request for 14 days to write a response to the "proposed findings" in the arb case. One would expect that a simple response to a polite query would take less time than that. Given that the committee was using automation to discard all my emails, due to a "mis-click" I would have expected common decency would have impelled a speedy response. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:52, 13 April 2014 (UTC).

Perhaps we are distracted by the two separate requests at ARCA related to you? I've just looked over your email, and I don't see anything in it that requires private, off-wiki discussion. You certainly seem willing and able to bring up such issues publicly, so I am left wondering why you even submitted this by email. (Also, due to the accidental auto-reject the committee was not actually aware of it until two days later, so it's only been twelve days at our end. Two weeks is pretty standard as far as replies to appeal emails of any kind go, in order to provide all committee members adequate time to review the situation and voice their opinion) Beeblebrox (talk) 18:26, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

The "accidental auto reject" I am prepared to forgive, just as I forgave the "accidental" sending of an email to other parties in the arb case, just as I forgive the "accidental" loss of previous mails, just a I forgave involved Arbitrators issuing blocks, just as I forgave an Arbitrator leaking a private email, just as I forgave an Arbitrator calling me an "anal retentive". However it seems to me that this goodwill should not be one-way.

The email requested clarification as to whether it was to early to bring matters up at ARCA - it was not an appeal. An attempt to establish a dialogue was ignored, and while I would like to quietly discuss the best way forward with minimum disruption, in the end if the Committee refuses to talk to me, except in public and then quite often confrontationally, there is really no legitimate option but to use the mechanisms in place. If, however, you would like to suggest an alternative way to discuss matters, and make progress on our mutual understanding, that would be acceptable to the committee, then please say so.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 22:15, 13 April 2014 (UTC).

If, as you say, you merely wanted to discuss if it was too early to bring things up at ARCA then I have to wonder what possible reason we could have to reply at this point as that ship appears to have sailed. Nobody has refused to talk to you. We're talking with and about you right now here and in two ARCA request, plus the email thread. Although we have not sent you any official response, there are now ten messages from at least half a dozen arbs in the corresponding thread on our mailing list. That being the case I am not sure I see any purpose to this particular discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:29, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, that at least is an answer "we are discussing it". It would have been nice if the discussion had occurred before the ARCA, but one can't have everything. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 04:25, 14 April 2014 (UTC).

The email was superseded by that ARCA request and conversation stalled when the ARCA request was filed, one week after we received the email. Emails to the committee do often take time to turn around, if you just want the opinion of one or two arbitrators then you should ask them directly. I don't believe anything problematic has occurred in this instance. Worm^TT(talk) 08:47, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

Rich: To put it another way, the email was answered on-wiki, so why are you complaining you received no response? AGK [•] 14:14, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I'm sure you didn't mean to say that a confidential email was answered on-wiki.

I only filed the ARCA request after 14 days of no response, as an emergency measure.

And I wish I had just filed on day 1 rather than bothering to establish parameters, when I see things like this

“

A request for an exemption for his own userspace may have been granted if it had been asked for before this violation

”

I am being told that I am both too soon and too late to make this request.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 18:51, 14 April 2014 (UTC).

Worm That Turned I should add that every attempt to approach an arbitrator directly has been rebuffed, I assumed because they did not want to "speak for the committee".
The best response I have had is "May I forward this to the committee". Which rather puts us back where we started.
I notice I never got any response to the mails I sent via Cacharoth, last year. A considerable amount of time went into those, hopefully enlightening missives, on the interpretation of statistics. I have no idea whether they were seen by anyone but Cacharoth, or indeed if anyone has an issues with what I wrote. I am, as usual, left in the dark.

I would love to discuss matters with responsive arbitrators, and I'm sure we could make considerable progress. Perhaps we could set up a mailing list?

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 22:13, 14 April 2014 (UTC).

Rich, as I said above I don't see any need for any off-wiki contact at this point. I am puzzled that you managed to wait out being blocked for an entire year, but after two weeks your editing restrictions suddenly became an "emergency". I am fairly certain that you are the one and only person who sees anything urgent in your requests, both on and off-wiki.

What you did was email us about your restrictions more or less immediately after your block expired, then violated them while waiting for our reply, then asked on-wiki for amendment. So, yeah, you were both too soon and too late and you have nobody to blame for that but yourself. That is more or less the central message you should be getting at this point. Your impatience and unwillingness to refrain from using automation have made you into your own worst enemy yet again. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:35, 14 April 2014 (UTC)

I am glad that you are puzzled. It shows that see a discontinuity in your model of me. I waited out the year, because I am patient, and wished to avoid disruption.

I had drafted several previous mails to the committee as a whole, but I was not satisfied with them, and hence did not send them.

I had also attempted to make direct contact with arbitrators, as suggested above by WTT, but had been rebuffed.

When I returned I had a pile of stuff to attend to, not one quarter of which is done. This really means I don't have time for any "automated" projects anyway, though if you peruse my talk page you will see that there is certainly a need for them.

Calling the disputed edit to a wanted items list "automated" is rather a bad idea, as it confuses "Remedy 2" with "Motion 2". It would be better to call it a "not typed" edit, if you think that it is significant enough to call anything.

I also think that it's worth considering carefully just this one point. Had I assumed that it would take, say, three weeks to get a response from the committee, we would only now be discovering that the mail system was set to discard my mail automatically.

So to sum up, yes, it's certainly true that I had the option to not edit constructively until I had posted my ARCA request, and had a result. I did not expect that anyone would take exception to straight-forward editing - perhaps I assumed too much good faith. I decided to edit while I awaited a response from the Committee, knowing from experience that a gentle reminder would be needed, maybe more than one.

If this constitutes "impatience" then any form of editing does, after all, the common saw runs "someone else will fix it" - strange, then, that I am fixing errors from 2008, and writing wanted articles from 2006.

All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 01:33, 15 April 2014 (UTC).

ygm

AC:

Hello. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

NE Ent 00:20, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Received, acknowledged, and under discussion. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:37, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 18 April 2014

This edit request to Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

‹ The template Edit fully-protected is being considered for merging. ›

Time to remove the consulation box per [6] NE Ent 00:07, 18 April 2014 (UTC) NE Ent 00:07, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Oh, on this page: Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions (you know, redirected talk page breaks the standard wiki model of how these things are supposed to work...) NE Ent

@NE Ent: which box is the consultation box? — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:39, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Done Sorry, forget that - I was looking at the talk page instead of the policy page. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 10:41, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Double redirects (protected)

From User talk:Arbcom and User talk:ArbCom

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:21, 30 April 2014 (UTC).

Fixed -- KTC (talk) 16:35, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

Template for Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions - or just BLP arbitration?

Is there a general template on discretionary sanctions that can be used for anything in the list Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#Current_areas_of_conflict?? I'm particularly interested in having something available for "Footnoted quotes", the biography-related arbitration, but I didn't see a template there. Given that the "Special enforcement on biographies of living persons" at the Footnoted quotes page have been "superseeded" and link to pages that average editors and even admins might find a bit confusing, it would be good to have a template that links instead to and quotes Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee/Discretionary_sanctions#Current_areas_of_conflict on biographies, if there is not a more general template. I don't know if any other Arbitrations also need a template. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 14:28, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

If you're looking for something to notify people about discretionary sanctions Template:Ds/alert is the one you're after. See the documentation for how to use it. For BLP you'd use {{subst:Ds/alert|blp}} to alert a user on their talk page. On the talk page of an article you'd use Template:Ds/talk notice - hence {{Ds/talk notice|topic=blp}}. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 14:57, 7 May 2014 (UTC)

Great. Will get the word out. Thanks. Carolmooredc (Talkie-Talkie) 01:41, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Inquiry on observed use of Reliable Sources and Notablity to justify overly broad page additions

Hi, I'm really not sure where to take this question/concern and it's quite possible I'm the one who is misunderstanding things but I need to sort this out. I'm confident this is NOT the page for resolving this issue, but I can not identify what the high level location for such a discussion would be.

Of late I have noticed a trend by editors to defend creation of dedicated pages on tertiary subjects simply because the editor can find the topic they would like to see more coverage of mentioned in a "reliable source". These citeable "reliable source(s)" are then used to justify "notability" implied by the topic's presence in said reliable sources. And poof! we have a dedicated page about something that in all honesty is not truly notable from an encyclopedic stand point, does not provide any depth of understanding to a reader and really would be better addressed on an off wiki resource dealing with that specialized topic.

How and where do I elevate this discussion and is it really worth a discussion? Thanks! BcRIPster (talk) 02:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

I would suggest you take this to one of the village pump forums for further discussion, you are correct that this is not an issue the committee is going to get involved in. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:02, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. BcRIPster (talk) 21:18, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

For future reference, if you (or anyone else) aren't certain what the correct venue is for something, then Wikipedia:Help Desk is probably the best place to ask. Thryduulf (talk) 00:46, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Please pass a motion authorising discretionary sanctions for Islam- and/or Islamophobia-related articles

Well, you see, I was at the Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions page and clicked on "talk", and this is where I was redirected to. I have no idea where I am or should be, but this is a post about discretionary sanctions.

Having followed Stop Islamization of America for some time, I've been struck (if not exactly surprised) by how polarized the editing is there, and how many SPAs seem to be here solely for the purpose of inserting The Truth™ into that and similar articles. Why don't we have discretionary sanctions enabled for Islam-, or Islamophobia-, related articles? Are they less infested with disruption and POV-pushing and zealots than Tree Shaping? (No.) I know why: because there hasn't been an RFAR about them. (Strangely enough, imo, but whatever.) Isn't it time we had a light-weight DS procedure, that wouldn't need the full majesty of an RFAR, but that would merely after a short (what am I saying?) discussion by arbs determine whether or not standard discretionary sanctions were needed for an area. Oh, look, that procedure already exists: "Discretionary sanctions may be authorised either as part of the final decision of an arbitration case or by committee motion."[7] Great, where should I request that a motion be considered? Here? I'll try: Please pass a motion authorising discretionary sanctions for Islam- and/or Islamophobia-related articles. Bishonen | talk 19:06, 22 May 2014 (UTC).

I full well support this proposal, and am quite willing to bribe any arbs willing to see the sense of it with free trips to Mars or any of the other near planets if that is what it takes. There are quite a few long-lasting controversies regarding matters of religion and law, and about multiple "new religious movements" or religious discrimination of various sorts. Actually, I think they might be some of our most contentious topics. Granted, I can't (or won't, because I'm a lazy bastard) actually name them all here, and I haven't gotten together the material to verify them that would be needed, but I think it would be extremely useful if we knew that at this point we had some sort of comparatively rapid process to finally end some of these topics of long-term contentiousness. John Carter (talk) 19:16, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

This can be done in two different ways: 1. you open a request for arbitration and, if ArbCom is convinced that discretionary sanctions are needed (and sufficient), we can pass a motion in lieu of a case, thereby authorising their imposition; alternatively, 2. one of us may propose, sua sponte, a motion on a different page (Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Motions). In the first case, you'd have to provide evidence of widespread disruption; in the latter, it would be up to the proposing arbitrator, which means that it would probably take longer, unless one of us is already keeping an eye on the topic area at hand. Alternatively, but this is something entirely different, you can ask for community discretionary sanctions on AN.

Salvio

^{Let's talk about it!} 21:22, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Discretionary sanctions aren't as effective if they don't originate from an arbitration case (cf. the failure of community discretionary sanctions in the Troubles). As a consequence, we may not be able to just pass the motion and be done with it. AGK [•] 23:06, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

As I think we all understand how extremely problematic it might be to place all Islam related content (which also relates to the narrower topic of Islamophobia) under discretionary sanctions, I think it would be in everyone's best interests if the scope of any potential sanctions were limited a bit at least in terms of the nature of edits, and I tend to think that the ArbCom is probably the best group of people to try to review such. Certainly, ANI and similar pages would be overwhelmed with input regarding such a potentially broad matter. I would also perhaps hope that an Arbitration case might make some decisions regarding possibly problematic edits regarding some new religious movements. There are a rather large number of such which are in some way "restorationist" groups claiming to have the original, lost version of some older faith at their core, or other serious potentially revisionist beliefs. Unfortunately, many of them are also based overseas, in areas where English isn't the main language, so the majority of the academic material is in foreign languages only a few people can read. The likelihood of prejudicial selection of such difficult to acquire material by individuals with a clear POV problem is, honestly, a fairly frequent concern.

Compiling evidence on a case-by-case basis would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, particularly as, unfortunately, the texts proving bias are kind of impossible for most of us to read. And, unfortunately, many of the somewhat controversial NRMs have SPA editors who seem to be almost single-mindedly interested in seeing the articles support their opinions. As Islamophobia itself is, kind of I guess, an NRM, maybe it might be posible to somehow address issues regarding some of the other less-frequented, but frequently extremely problematic, regardihg some non-Islamic problems as well. John Carter (talk) 23:39, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

@Bishonen: If you propose this on WP:AN I wouldn't be surprised if the community votes to authorise general sanctions (echoing ArbCom discretionary sanctions). If it already has been I apologise but that might be a good place to start before coming to ArbCom. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 06:23, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

@Bishonen: I endorse this suggestion. AN (not ANI) is the appropriate place for this. Wording is important - something about articles relating to anti-Islamic and Islamophobia issues. Although I take John Carter's point, I think we need to start with something more clearcut. I will say now that although a revert restriction sounds attractive at first, I think a significant amount of the problems are about edits by SPAs and sock puppets/IP hoppers, and revert restrictions don't work with them as well. An ArbCom case is also likely to be more drama-ridden then AN, although I could be shown to be wrong. Dougweller (talk) 13:45, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I too support this approach - though I would suggest WP:VP or a dedicated RFC page for the venue - it is community sanctions after all, not admin sanctions. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:27, 24 May 2014 (UTC).

URGENT: Real life threats

DISCUSSED, DISPUTED

The thread has been open ten days and OP request has not been taken: AGK is not going to resign and the committee is not going to vote him off. Whether or not AGK's email functioned as a good faith a priori warning for the recipient's benefit, or a threat to discourage further ban evasion, is disputed. There does not appear to be a clear consensus whether or not an ISP should be contacted for abuse if the ISP is also an editor's employer; as this is a community, not arbcom, decision, this page is not the best forum to discuss that. NE Ent 22:52, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

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.

It appears that User:AGK has sent the following email to another editor

“

Hi. You occasionally edit from U.S. Department of Defense IP addresses. You must be aware that an abuse report will shortly be filed with this organisation, alerting them to your refusal to abide by Wikimedia's Terms of Use. As I understand from previous, similar abuse reports filed with the Navy etc., the DOD take an extremely dim view of employees using their networks in this manner.

If you are in the armed forces, or a civilian employee of them, you are jeopardising your employment and risking real life disciplinary action. Please do not force us to contact your employer.

”

This text has been effectively confirmed by the editor AGK on User talk:Jimbo.

Note that the wording makes it clear that the other editor only "occasionally" edits from DoD (and in fact has not done so for some considerable time) - so choosing DoD rather than Verizon makes it clear that this is not standard "we will contact your ISP" note, with an extra warning but a clear threat.

Secondly mentioning "Wikimedia's Terms of Use" implies official sanction, rather than just an editor who has decided to act form his own initiative.

Thirdly the use of the second person "do not force us to contact" implies a group has sent or authorised this email. Given that the most prominent group User:AGK is a member of is the Arbitration Committee, this has been naturally assumed to be the group in question.

Fourthly, as indicated in the various discussions, it has been considered that this may pass beyond merely a Wikipedia issue, into the realms of criminal law.

Per Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jim62sch#Grave real-world harassment and Harassment and threats specifically "communicating with an editor's employer in retaliation for his or her editing on Wikipedia" I am reporting this to the Committee immediately, by the approved email mechanism.

Because the moderators of the email list have previously set it up to reject my emails, and also in the interests of transparency I will also post to Wikipedia Talk:ARB, and link from the existing discussion.

I would expect that as a result of this User:AGK would be asked to leave the committee, resign his admin bit and undertake not to email users in future.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:38, 15 May 2014 (UTC).

I was the drafter of the Jim62sch decision and am thoroughly familiar with the circumstances underlying that case. I do not consider the current situation as in any way comparable.

As I've indicated in the discussion on Jimbo Wales' talkpage, I would like to see this situation deescalated at this time. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

No. You didn't. You said you would like to see the Kumioko situation de-escalated. Indeed I made proposals that edit-conflicted with your comment to just that effect. However the AGK situation has gone way past a slap on the wrist - don't do it again. He has lost the trust of the community. His past checkuser actions, edit warring, ridiculous range blocks(which he now denies) could perhaps be forgiven, especially if he had ever admitted fault or apologised. This however cannot. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:18, 15 May 2014 (UTC).

As NYB said, this is not comparable to the cited case at all. Abuse reports to ISPs, sometimes to academic or corporate networks, have long been a process on Wikipedia (although that specific process has fallen out of use), and the release of data for the forming of an abuse report is explicitly authorised by the Wikimedia terms of use. I assume AGK's reference to the ToU was w.r.t. the section that mandated compliance with the binding decisions of dispute resolution bodies. L Faraone 23:27, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

As you say filing abuse reports is no longer done. The dispute resolution body on en: is ArbCom, so that would be representing Arbcom as denied. Laws of agency are quite important here, too. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:19, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

LFaraone, this is different freom an ISP abuse report. In this case AGK is threatening to contact Kumioko's employer, not his ISP. Also, as noted above, the edits from DOD IPs have been sporadic. It is also very different from contacting, say, a company because you can't just be "fired" from the military, especially if you are an active service member and not a civilian. Also, the Abuse reports page has been deprecated and cannot be used. I note that Kumioko would not fit their requirements anyway. Finally, "As I understand from previous, similar abuse reports filed with the Navy etc., the DOD take an extremely dim view of employees using their networks in this manner. If you are in the armed forces, or a civilian employee of them, you are jeopardising your employment and risking real life disciplinary action. Please do not force us to contact your employer" does not sound at all like a standard abuse report. If it wasn't a standard abuse report, which AGK admits to below, than what was it? A friendly reminder? Because it sure didn't sound friendly to me. KonveyorBelt 00:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Konveyor Belt - this is because the ISP is his employer. Nathan^T 00:09, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Sure, but its still rather different. Contacting the ISP is something like IP Number 86.xx is misusing your network, but contacting an employer sounds more like he'd mention real life identities. KonveyorBelt 01:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

An abuse report would be filed with all the ISPs used, or it would be ineffective. The other ISPs were not mentioned because they were irrelevant to the danger I was trying to draw Kumioko's attention to.
The abuse report would have to explain how the subject's actions constitute "abuse".
The exchange took place in a private e-mail between Kumioko and I (and a number of other individual editors). The committee mailing list was not connected to the correspondence.
As you know, your e-mail has in fact been added to the list of addresses to be automatically accepted.
Your position does not tally with Wikipedia policy or community practice, nor with ordinary practice in the rest of the internet, because abuse reports is not a legal mechanism. It is a request for a private organisation to assist a private community in stopping abusive behaviour.

Your attention has already been drawn to all of this on other pages. AGK [•] 23:51, 15 May 2014 (UTC)

AGK has already been told that this combative approach is not going to be effective in this case, and has chosen to ignore this advice, attracting more attention to the case he was allegedly trying to obliterate.

Clearly abuse reports are not going to work when an editor has so many hotspots and mobile options. They are a thing of the past if they ever worked.

There is nothing in this defence that advances AGKs case a whit. RF 00:39, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

You tone and language indicates you have gotten very emotional; when you are less so, perhaps you could consider the points I made. AGK [•] 15:08, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Good to know you can read my emotional state from my "tone and language" - except that you can't, and, surely by now should have realised that even if that was your particular forte, it is not wise to ascribe emotions to another editor. Right or wrong it does not make you look good, and, right or wrong, it serves no useful purpose.

So to address your points, as you requested:

The abuse report was never going to be effective. You either knew this, or should have known it - as blocking huge swathes of IP addresses didn't work.
This is not clear from the email. A significant number of people read this the way I indicated. If you write an email that is widely interpreted as a threat, you are not operating in a way concomitant with being an administrator or arbitrator.
I did not bring up the committee mailing list. I would like to know who these other editors are.
I don't "know" that my email has been added to the auto accept, I have been told that it has. I have to consider the possibility of a rogue or incompetent moderator as happened before.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:07, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

I too urge the ArbCom to take action with regard to this email. We simply cannot allow users to make threats of this nature, and if such threats are made from positions of power then they are even more serious. We don't want to give the impression that the ArbCom as a whole is trying to bully editors by threatening to jeopardize their employment. I hope the ArbCom will confirm for us that this was merely the action of one misguided individual and was not in any way endorsed by the other members of the committee. Everyking (talk) 00:59, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Salvio said as much on Jimbo's talk page, but that doesn't make it excusable. In fact, forget AGK is a member of ArbCom for a moment and consider his actions as you would any other admin. KonveyorBelt 01:21, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I know, but I think the ArbCom as a whole should make a statement to clarify it wasn't involved in this. This is a very serious thing, and I don't think the say-so of one other arb is sufficient. We need to clarify, first of all, whether this was misconduct by an individual or by the group. If we can confirm it was just the individual, then consequences for the individual should be considered. Everyking (talk) 01:36, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

In terms of analyzing AGK's behavior, it is already far serious enough to be considered in isolation from any role he has on ArbCom. It matters little whether he was speaking for ArbCom or not. What matters is the gross misconduct. I don't think we can separate ArbCom members into two persona each; one that is a member of ArbCom and one that is everything else. AGK's behavior casts an extremely poor light on ArbCom, regardless of whether he was acting as part of ArbCom or not. --Hammersoft (talk) 01:42, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I do think it matters whether he acted with the endorsement of other arbs, but we can certainly agree that AGK's behavior was unacceptable either way. Everyking (talk) 01:51, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I mentioned at Jimmy's talk page, I'll say it again here - abuse reports are a tool that is available to anyone. They are regularly filed, previously through a community process detailed here, but more recently just by individuals. It happens that one of the user's ISPs is also his employer - an employer who has in the past sanctioned their employees over such matters. I personally warned the user in question in the middle of March that continuing on his current path might lead to real life consequences. At the beginning of April, he confirmed that he understands the risks that he might get "a letter to my work or my internet provider". That was 6 weeks ago and he had not relented, even gloating that he would not stop.
In these circumstances abuse reports are the correct course of action. That's not a "wikipedia" rule - it's what the abuse@ address is set up for. So, the question is - should AGK have let the user know that the report was imminent, or just filed it? I prefer the former. I wouldn't have written that email, but if I were in his shoes I would have written a similar one. Worm^TT(talk) 09:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

AGK's use of the word "employees" makes it clear that he recognises he will be alerting Kumioko's employer and that he recognises (or imagines - I question whether it is necessarily so) that this will be very vexatious for Kumioko. That's the whole point of the threat. It's all about contacting the employer and not about filing a routine ISP abuse report (which incidentally based on your link doesn't seem to be active policy these days). It's quite plain that Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Jim62sch#Grave real-world harassment applies. The email contains this "As I understand from previous, similar abuse reports filed with the Navy etc., the DOD take an extremely dim view of employees using their networks in this manner." What were these previous abuse reports he refers to? I'm surprised they haven't been raised at discussion on Mr. Wales' Talk page or at the other place. And if indeed the DOD etc. did take a dim view, what precisely was that view and why and what was the outcome? The sentence frankly strikes me as fantasy, or wishful thinking. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 10:47, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Coat of Many Colours - I recognise that alerting a DoD ISP to abuse is akin to alerting an employer and could cause more serious ramifications than "loss of internet". That's what makes the situation different - but the abuse report is still appropriate. Were AGK threatening to write a letter to his employer, or phone him, I would agree - but sending an abuse report - which would be a standard action isn't the same. It might be that there are no serious consequences - I have no idea. I also am not aware of any abuse reports filed by Wikipedians with DoD in the past, the situation that's fresh in my mind though is in the UK vandalism has been coming from government computers and the impression I got was that there would be serious consequences for any employees found to be doing so. I expect the situation to be similar in the States, though I cannot be certain. Worm^TT(talk) 11:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi W (I think I would want to know you better before I start calling you your full monniker :)). The UK vandalism you are talking about is about illegal trolling, inciting racial hatred and so on. It's not comparable, and moreover these DOD addresses are also used for residential accounts on base. It's not just "akin" to alerting an employer. It is alerting the employer and that was precisely the nature of the threat. AGK was fully conscious of it. Of course it's not a plea, his whole reputation centres around his zero tolerance towards vandals. From his very earliest days he was threatening "implications". Here's one such, to a respected administrator if you please who had displeased AGK's sensitivities by citing a Grand Jury investigation into Roman Catholic sex abuse (no really - do the research yourself). That's the baggage he carries with him. He can't credibly defend his email as a friendly nod and word of advice from the local copper to the local drunk GP (his distinctly curious analogy) But the sentence I quote really does for him, I'm afraid. I'm pretty sure it's fantasy and if that is so then he has no position at all to defend. Rich is quite right here. He has to go. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 12:05, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Abuse reports are not generally available to anyone. IP addresses of named accounts are only available to CheckUsers. The CheckUser ability is wholly within the gift of ARbCom (which I have pointed out previously is a serious governance issue in itself). At this point the kindest thing for AGK, and the best thing for the project, is a speedy expulsion, not a semi-circling of the wagons. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:12, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

Not so, the user in question has been editing almost exclusively from IP addresses for months. Worm^TT(talk) 11:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I think you are reaching here. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 11:39, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

It appears to me that you are reaching here. I've seen no evidence that AKG has obtained K's IP address via CU, and it is clearly the case that K has been using IP addresses. What's happened here doesn't justify a "speedy expulsion". Or the scare section heading. Dougweller (talk) 13:44, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

IMHO, AGK's email was unwise, but not evil and not worthy of sanction. I'm convinced, from long headache-inducing discussions on the mailing list, that AGK's intent was not to threaten, but to warn that something that has been done in the past in cases similar to this would have much larger than normal consequences this time. I see it as an attempt to bend over backwards not to get Kumioko in trouble at work.

Now, the practicality of an ISP report is debatable, but IF it's being considered, such an email prior to the report is important. This was premature, not unacceptable. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:13, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

No - it wasn't "something that has been done in the past in cases similar to this would have much larger than normal consequences this time", rather it was "as I understand from previous, similar abuse reports filed with the Navy etc., the DOD take an extremely dim view of employees using their networks in this manner" i.e. in the past ArbCom have filed abuse reports with the DOD and they have their expressed considerable displeasure over the issue. Face it. He threatened to contact Kumioko's employers, said that ArbCom had acted similarly in the past (i.e. contact employers) and that in the case of the DOD they had responded with extreme disapproval. That's what he did. That's what you have to defend. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 14:25, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

- I think using the word "evil" is unhelpful. AGk's action is not appropriate, clearly does not conform to community norms (the procedure is historical), of dubious legality, appears to represent ArbCom when it does not, displays characteristics of gunning personally for one editor (especially when combined with AGK's other actions, over this, blanking archives, edit warring, apparently creating abuse filters - and then lying about it). This attitude is long standing, and is not conducive to good governance. AGK should leave the committee to protect the project, not because he is "evil". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 13:58, 16 May 2014 (UTC).
  
  Could I just clarify a few things here. Just because the page is marked historical doesn't mean it's not happening any more, and requests were still being made to the end of 2013. It was marked historical because they weren't being actioned by the volunteers involved - volunteers which by the way included a significant majority of non-admins. As for appearing to represent ArbCom, AGK's email was responding to one of Kumioko's emails to multiple recipients. I believe Kumioko had BCC'd the recipients, so AGK's reply was just to Kumioko, but given Kumioko had been emailing large groups the context implied that AGK was associating himself with the rest of the group, rather than Arbcom. AGK has made this point elsewhere. Worm^TT(talk) 14:15, 16 May 2014 (UTC)
  - So did he speak for the rest of the group? It does not appear so. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:09, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

Claims have been made (by Kumioko and others) that he doesn't edit from Navy IP addresses any more (eg. above, "has not done so for some considerable time"). Note that he used them at least as recently as 28 April 2014, to harass AGK as it turns out. Fram (talk) 13:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

The boot is rather on the other foot. AGK appears to have thought that preventing Kumioko from signing his name, by implementing an abuse filter was a good idea. That message, left over a fortnight ago, points out how useless this approach was. Had AGK been successful (which he manifestly was not, nor could he be) he would have been forcing Kumioko to edit anonymously - this would not have been a good thing by community standards. What is worse he specifically denies trying to stop Kumioko from using his name. I will leave it to others to confirm whether such an abuse filter existed and if so what the rules said and who wrote them. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:10, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

"He would have been forcing Kumioko to edit anonymously"? No, no one forces Kumioko to edit here, on the contrary, he is supposed to not edit here at all, "by community standards". Anyway, why did you claim that Kumioko hadn't been using these IP adresses for some considerable time when that wasn't really true and when the only apparent reason he finally stopped using the ones I checked was because they were blocked, not voluntarily? Fram (talk) 14:14, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Rich, I'm afraid that reply doesn't answer Fram's point. AGK [•] 15:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Fram's point is non-existent. If there was no ongoing editing from DoD IP then filing an abuse report there would be at best pointless, at worst malicious. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:20, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

Nice evasive answer. You (and Kumioko) claimed that these IPs were long abandoned, which they clearly weren't. Which indicates that your opening post (and posts you made elsewhere) was either misinformed or an attempt to poison the well (Kumioko obviously hasn't the excuse of being misinformed about his own use of some IP adresses). Fram (talk) 12:19, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

The important point is that the wording makes it clear that the other editor only "occasionally" edits from DoD. The parenthetical "some considerable time" is perfectly in tune with a fortnight - there was no ongoing editing. Of course if you find an actual error, please feel free to point it out. There is, of course, no shortage of material to supplement this report if it is required. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:57, 17 May 2014 (UTC).

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. There should be no doubt AGK misstepped here. To be explicit, we're talking trout level screwup, so let's just skip the de-sysop, de-arbcom, de-take away his birthday nonsense.

To address NYB's question about how to deal with a formerly valued contributor turned persistent troll with a plethora of disposable IPs, no need to reinvent the wheel -- we need to simply apply consistently, dispassionately continue the tradition of WP:DENY / WP:RBI via WP:RIS (revert, ignore, semi-protect).

Per the deny protocol, I'm only choosing to comment because no one has addressed the root issue regarding AGKs action. It's not his meant as a warning, comes across as a threat email. It's the Father Knows Best / condescension nature of the email. Contributors (even vandals and trolls) should be treated respectfully like adults. The terms of use make it clear that the greater "we" may take action up to legal action against users who violate the terms of service. Emailing a ISP an abuse report is clearly within that scope. The person's relationship with their ISP is not our concern; in fact, attempts to ascertain that relationship could easily run afoul of the site privacy expectations.

Although I honestly think it's moot per the above, so many editors have commented regarding someone getting fired by the US DOD due to an abuse report, I feel compelled to comment. Don't be ridiculous. It is expensive for the DOD to recruit, intake, train and separate an employee (active duty or civil service). I'm unable to get a solid number: for a solider the non-partisan / non-political US Government Accountability Office attempted to ascertain the cost recently, but gave up due to DOD accounting being so labyrinth to make a defensible number impossible. They did determine it was upwards of $100K. This idea that, oh, we've spent all this money on this person but they're disrupting Wikipedia! so we're going to terminate them isn't reasonable. Separating either an active duty or civilian employee is not a quick or easy task due to due process requirements.

AGK has stated that in the past a Wikipedian was referred for abuse and subsequently terminated. I am in not way disputing that. Post hoc ergo propter hoc remains a logical fallacy. The most likely scenario is that the person was a subpar performer in difficult to document ways, and the abuse report provided an easy to document excuse to separate someone the command really wasn't thrilled with anyway. For anyone, who is not, to use the informal US Navy term, a "dirtball," the most likely response to an abuse report would be a verbal directive to knock it off.

Perhaps there is a need to revisit Wikipedia:Abuse response, given the community concerns. But that should be via an RFC, not a discussion using either AGK or K as a coatrack for "evil admin" / "vile trolls" ad hominem drivel. NE Ent 13:58, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

@NE Ent: It was Risker who first raised the question of contacting ISPs (and inviting Kumioko to consider the implications) in this case here. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 14:52, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I think that NE Ent's analysis of the situation is spot-on, and the most sensible that I have seen throughout this whole discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Well-said, NE Ent. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 19:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. (But then you have the unfair advantage of not going off half-cocked (how'd you do that?).) All the more so contextualized, if such an ISP report was already openly mentioned by Risker on the Pedia. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

How is this governed?

The AGK and Kumioko business aside, an issue has been starkly highlighted. The project does not appear to have any policy or procedure for how to handle such abuse reports. Ok, Wikipedia:Abuse response has been marked historical (for good reason). But, several templates (examples: {{Shared IP gov}}, {{Shared IP}}) have verbiage stating "abuse reports may be sent to its network administrator for further investigation." Further, Wikipedia:Long-term abuse is active (or at least not marked historical). Am I wrong that there is no policy or procedure for this?

Sure, anyone can make a report about an IP. All it takes is a whois lookup. But, it seems to me the project is opening themselves up for some serious potential harm in allowing abuse reports to come from more 'official' channels on the project (admins, bureaucrats, arbcom members) without having any set procedure for doing so. I can imagine a form letter of sorts to avoid the sort of situation that has evolved in the AGK/Kumioko case.

Thoughts? --Hammersoft (talk) 14:28, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I suspect this is a point best clarified by the WMF, as the project has evolved beyond recognition since the abuse reports process was created. AGK [•] 15:11, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

As usual, no good deed goes unpunished. AGK told the user about the possible consequences, rather than just filing the report and creating those consequences. I view the warning as a kindness, not intimidation, under these particular circumstances. To avoid future ructions, I suggest that we should create a page that details what an abuse report is, and what the possible consequences may be. After than, any user can say, "If you continue, I will file an abuse report about you with your internet service provider. Please read about what that means. " Having standard text will avoid the risk of a warning being mis-perceived as harassment or attempted intimidation. Jehochman ^Talk 16:23, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Standard text is a good idea. A standard process is also a good idea. But both would require community consensus that community members that it is appropriate to us abuse reports. I would doubt that that would get consensus. Even then it is not true to say that "any user" could file a report, that would only be true of IPs. I would say that abuse reports of that type should be left to the Foundation, for the type of egregious actions we have, luckily, seen very rarely. Note depriving someone of Internet access, deprives their entire household, and can have far wider implications than it did years ago - even medical monitoring is done over the Internet these days. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:41, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

I think you are right Hammersoft. We have no procedure for raising abuse reports. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:41, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

@Jehochman No, AGK did not tell the user the possible consequences. He misrepresented the consequences. It's not true that ArbCom has contacted DOD in the past and it's not true that they take an extremely dim view of abuse of such reports from ArbCom. All that is fantasy and part of an extremely badly judged attempt to put pressure on Kumuiko. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 19:49, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

About "no good deed goes unpunished", it occurs to me that Kumioko's stated goal has been to troll Wikipedia to the point where editors end up expending an undue amount of time reacting to it. It looks to me like he has been very successful at that. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:54, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 1) @Coat of Many Colours: Kumioko emailed me directly, ranting about an administrator. I emailed back and said 'Fair enough, but if you do keep socking and somebody files an abuse report, you could lose your job. Do you understand that?' This did not involve ArbCom and I am not sure why you are talking as though it did. Could you please stop putting words into my mouth? AGK [•] 19:55, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

The email does not say "if" it says an abuse report will shortly be filed with this organisation - note the passive voice, again implying authority rather than just one random Wikipedia editor. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:13, 16 May 2014 (UTC).

@AGK I'm not putting words in your mouth. On the contrary, I'm reminding your apologists what they actually were. Of course Kumioko knew you were from ArbCom. Of course he would have surmised you were acting for ArbCom. Of course that's the impression you sought to give. You need to take responsibility for what you did. Your judgement was badly flawed and your response is immature. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 21:18, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

I agree. It's time for AGK to take some responsibility for his actions, and it's time for the ArbCom to hold him accountable for his actions. Everyking (talk) 22:23, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

In the interests of balance, I am not going to comment further. You ought to do likewise and let other people have their say. One group should not dominate a discussion. AGK [•] 09:48, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

No need to be demure. No one is interested in preventing you from having your say. In fact, a number of people are probably disappointed that the bulk of the discussion appears to be taking place off-line on the arb mailing list and not in public. —Neotarf (talk) 03:03, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

How do you know what volume of discussion is taking place on the arbcom mailing list? Please let us know how ordinary editors like myself can access these statistics. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 03:19, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Actually the discussions werent on the mailing list but on the functionaries and arbs irc channels. It should be noted that agk got read the riot act in private but no one dares speak up publicly because y hey would be proving kumioko right. And believe it or not, i am not kumioko. So feel free to revert this and blame it on them, but youll be proving his point about silencing critics. I was also the one who posted last time that james reverted. I am not banned and am in good standing but i dont dare make myself known and open myself up for retaliation.2607:FB90:1317:8F9C:14C3:9087:17BD:EE34 (talk) 03:38, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

(Note: there is no evidence known to me that this IP is a banned user whose posts should be reverted as such. The fear of "retaliation" is unwarranted, and he or she should really be posting from his or her registered account, but in the context of this discussion I'd say we let that go.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:16, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Er, how about "long headache-inducing discussions on the mailing list"? https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee&diff=prev&oldid=608830238 although it may be OR to assign a statistical value to what level of hot air is necessary to induce headaches in arbitrators. Apparently AGK has convinced the committee that he is only motivated to help Kumioko and be his friend. —Neotarf (talk) 04:09, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

They have met, apparently, so I see no reason they shouldn't be friends. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 06:12, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I hadn't realised that two of the respondents here who replied to me were on ArbCom, additional thanks for that. I think we need clarification as to whether the community has in the past knowingly contacted employers about ToS abuse (I don't mean criminal abuse) and what policy statements about that have been made in the past. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 10:06, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

See the inactive WP:Abuse response for one effort. Apart from that, any of thousands of editors might have reported abuse. Has anyone mentioned that what editors do off-wiki is generally considered to be none of our business? For example, there are cases where known users have contributed towards outing and other harassment of editors, yet attempts to sanction the users have failed because the issues did not occur at Wikipedia. Johnuniq (talk) 10:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for that. WP:Abuse response is inactive as you say, but it concerns reporting abuse to ISPs. This is about knowingly contacting employers. That's right about off-wiki. I suppose we ought to clarify whether AGK's email was a private email (i.e. not his account email) but I doubt it would go to much. Self-evidently he was emailing on behalf of the community. It's quite true that editors routinely use the royal "we" as a means of invoking the authority of the community (I frankly find that irritating), but in this case AGK plainly was emailing on behalf of the community. He surely knew that Kumoiko knew he was from ArbCom and at the very least should have made it clear he was acting in a private capacity if that's his claim now. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 10:53, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Private email? What on earth? My personal private email account certainly does not become the public property of the community (or anyone else) just because I happen to use it to register my Wikipedia account to. Just as it does not become an official contact method of Google Inc just because I also happen to use it to register my YouTube account to. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 11:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I assume that if a long-time abuser uses work computers to troll Wikipedia and it is at a company or organization that is large enough to have a dedicated network, informing the ISP would involve them passing along the abuse notice to the organization. Over 13 years of Wikipedia, I doubt this is the only time reporting to an ISP means them contacting an employer. The difference I see is that AGK gave Kumioko a warning/head's up that this was going to happen, I imagine in most reporting, the abuser is not alerted in advance.

The problem is that there is apparently no active page that logs these abuse reports any more or explains a) when they are sent and b) possible consequences of being reported. It might be commonplace for websites to send out abuse reports to ISPs but a notice of the condition under which this occurs should exist on the policy pages of Wikipedia. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 11:36, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

@ Demiurge. Well yes, of course. To clarify, if he was emailing though his account then that must be construed as emailing on behalf of the community and in his case, by extension, on behalf of ArbCom. What arises is whether they previously have had an exchange of emails (you say above they had met, so it's likely). AGK could then argue his email was "private", at least if it identified his private ISP email address. But the likelihood is that it's a Gmail address or the like, and in that case I can't see the claim is very convincing. And moreover it doesn't reflect well on AGK, Demiurge, that even after an exchange of emails he is apparently unable to show the slightest degree of real empathy, not even venturing a familiar name (it starts "Hi. You occasionally edit ...").

A problem I have addressing the issue here is I feel constrained about quoting the email as reproduced by Kumoiko in the other place, precisely because there may be a privacy issue involved. AGK (who posts in the other place) hasn't denied that's what he sent. May I reproduce it here? Coat of Many Colours (talk) 12:26, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Addendum: actually I see it was quoted in its entirety at the outset. Plainly it wasn't following a private exchange of emails. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 12:29, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

@ Liz. The point is that Wikipedia was knowingly going to contact the employer. This was a "your boss is going to get a call" letter, as succinctly pointed out in the other place. You can have "troll", but this was nevertheless not criminal abuse. It's not even nuisance given that a very great deal of Wikipedia's activity simply is fighting vandalism, indeed that's the sole raison d'être of AGK's account, why Wikipedia has him, why he's there. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 12:43, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

According to information given elsewhere, the email was sent to a group of people. Presumably the others were cc'd and the email was send on behalf of all of them, but there has been no indication of whether they were all arbs. —Neotarf (talk) 13:38, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

Then, COMC, it sounds like you believe the warning letter shouldn't have been sent and the abuse report simply filed with the ISP without informing Kumioko. I see the letter as a courtesy but I can see you view it as threatening so there is a difference of opinion on that.

My concern is not this specific case with its unusual circumstances but to get some area of Wikipedia where the process of filing abuse reports is explained, what are the circumstances causing the filing of an abuse report, who can file an abuse report, what are the consequences of an abuse report, along with a log of user accounts who have had these reports sent. That, to me, has a greater impact than simply focusing on Kumioko's case. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 15:15, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

I sense a certain irony in your opening remark, Liz. No quibbles about the second part though, up to the remark about Kumioko's case, where the point is that we in the other place are focussing not on Kumoiko but on AGK's action, and in a broader context on Wikipedia's intentions in general (ToS is about to be revised).

I can't speculate on AGK's motives here without entering personal attack territory. But that wasn't a "warning" letter Liz, it was a threat and the threat was to contact the employers, not just an ISP. AGK should have known it was not very well judged, should have sought advice from his fellow members on ArbCom. You ever received a debt collector's letter, Liz? Or for that matter (in all seriousness and if you're in the UK) from the BBC demanding you purchase a TV license. These are demands which unquestionably threaten "implications" (often fantasy in reality) very carefully crafted by (presumably) lawyers. AGK's effort in the same league, but without any of the subtlety and it really is not edifying that ArbCom is so slow to condemn it, as eventually they must. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:00, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

For the sake of transparency let me state for the record that in our mailing list discussions of these issues I supported just doing it and not bothering to warn Kumioko at all. I don't think K deserved any courtesy from us in light of the incredible, deliberate disruption he has been engaging in for several months and if he were to get fired from his job for acting like an ass on their ISP it is no more than he deserves. The vast majority of banned users have the sense to just go away, or to do a "stealth return" and avoid the issues that got them banned.

Once in a while we see someone who instead decides to spend enormous quantities of their time and effort deliberately being a pain in the ass. Old hands will know that K is really a minor player compared to some of the other WP:LTA nut cases, many of whom have been the subject of past reports to their ISPs. The only thing I find to condemn in AGKs actions is his naïveté in thinking K would act like an adult and go away as opposed to screaming like a maniac about all the future abuse of this site he intends to engage in. We've given this troll more than enough of our time. He does not desire to return as a productive member of the community. Nevertheless, he has tried to blackmail the committee by threatening to increase his harassment and disruption campaign until his ban is reversed. I have no patience with and no sympathy for someone who behaves like that. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:33, 18 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a perspective we needed to hear, Beeblebrox, to put this incident in context with how other long-time abusers were handled. It would be helpful if this admin response, and some idea of how often it occurs, would be documented somewhere. It's clear that many editors were surprised at the news of this email message and the abuse response to the ISP and some of this outraged might have been lessened if users realized that this is a standard procedure in WP:LTA cases. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 00:11, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

It doesn't really happen all that often because it often doesn't produce results. However, it is possible the DoD would be more responsive at might actually do something. That possibility, combined with the revelation that the DoD was not only the owner of some of the IPs used but also K's employer is why some arbs thought we shouldn't report his mounting abuses. Others felt we should make the report only after giving him one last chance to just cut it out. Websites of all kinds do this sort of thing all the time, and I seriously doubt most of them would even think about telling a troll they were planning to do so.

K wants to go down as the greatest,most disruptive troll WP has ever seen. He has said so again and again on WP criticism sites. Putting aside what an utterly pathetic and sad life goal that is and what it tells us about his priorities, why should we hold back from reporting his abuses to his service provider, regardless of who they are or what his relationship is with them? This isn't about calling his place of employment to get him trouble for editing on company time. I couldn't care less about that. What I do care about is what can be done to stop a sustained and deliberate campaign of harassment and disruption. K is a crybaby and a troll who just needs to go away. If he is so obsessed and irresponsible that he would rather lose his job than cease his trolling that is his problem. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:54, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

why should we hold back from reporting his abuses to his service provider, regardless of who they are or what his relationship is with them: because Wikipedia is just a website, and since it's just a website, it isn't worth doing something that might actually get someone fired for? I mean, even if Kumioko follows through on their threat, what does that really amount to? If they were threatening actual harm against anyone, that'd be one thing, and I don't think anyone would have a problem with contacting ISPs in that case. But I haven't seen any threats of that nature; why would we need to take it to this extreme? Like, do you really think that acting like an ass justifies us in possibly getting him fired? I don't; that's pretty messed up. Even people who are jerks are still, y'know, people, and I don't see what would allow us to do anything like this. I'm sorry, Wikipedia is just not that big a deal. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:12, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

If it's not that big of deal, then why even both reverting vandalism? Why even bother to make sure sources are correct for BLPs? Heck, why not just turn Wikipedia into another Usenet/IRC, with a bunch of Jackholes arguing back and forth about the stupidest bullshit they can think of? The reason you don't allow the constant disruption should be evidenced here and on Jimbo's Talk page, it takes up far too much time and volunteer service to deal with. So you just put a stop to it in the best available ways you can. Which includes filing an Abuse@ report. I see a lot of pleading about someone's job, but has anyone thought that you are giving the 'disruptor in chief' exactly what they want? If a certain someone doesn't want to put his employment in jeopardy, the decision is easy. Don't disrupt from that IP. It's not the fault of the person filing a report. And if people really want to drag this around to ANI, there is plenty of evidence that the user used the IPs to disrupt the project repeatedly. It's SOP to file a abuse@ report for persistent disruptions, those that vow to never give up and "become the most prolific vandal Wikipedia has ever seen". And if this drags on and on and on, who is really benefiting from all of this discussion about a community banned former editor? Dave Dial (talk) 01:49, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

"Not contacting people's employers" doesn't imply "don't revert vandalism", as you of course know. Yes, I have thought that this is giving the chief disruptor what they want. Of course that's what it's doing. I'm advocating it because the alternative, where we possibly ruin someone's life because they said some mean things and don't like our website, is not worth it. There is no sense of proportion here; it's ridiculous. And no, as far as I know, contacting ISPs is not standard practice, at least not for anything but the very worst abuse. Kumioko may have promised to become Wikipedia's #1 Enemy (whatever that means), but they haven't delivered on that promise yet, and unless they do in a big way, this is not something we should even be considering. I've certainly never even thought of contacting someone's ISP, much less when I know it to be their employer. As several people have pointed out, the abuse report page has been marked historical, and I don't know of any recent cases where it has been employed (though I certainly wouldn't necessarily know). Do you know otherwise? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 06:45, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The 'abuse report page' is not the only way one can send abuse reports. Any editor can send one. I've sent dozens upon dozens of reports, though most not about this project(I think I've sent a couple from here). Frankly, I think any administrator not willing to send an abuse report to an ISP concerning another editor who has broken the TOS repeatedly and blatantly refuses to cease, should turn in their tools. See section 4 - Refraining from Certain Activities, which the editor in question has violated several of the terms, by their own admission. Particularly harassing other editors. It's easy to ignore if you're not the one being harassed. As Jimbo stated yesterday Kumioko is a banned editor with a long history of harassment of other editors, including me. A report to Kumioko's ISP, whether an employer or not, is long overdue. I'm actually surprised that someone hasn't filed one already. Especially with all the attention Kumioko and supporters have drawn concerning this. Dave Dial (talk) 13:42, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Writ Keeper, it's not standard practice because it doesn't usually work. It didn't fall into disuse because everyone decided it was disproportionate. Reporting someone to their ISP because they misuse the service that ISP provides is fully proportionate and rational. If someone happens to work for that ISP (whether they work for the DoD, Comcast, Congress or whoever)... They knowingly took the risk of misusing and abusing the service provided by their employer. That risk, and the onus of the potential consequences, falls on them. It's not on the abused to measure the consequences of reporting and responding to the actions of the abuser. Nathan^T 16:49, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

It's always incumbent on us to measure the consequences of our actions. Always. And if it doesn't usually work, then why are we considering doing it at all, since there's not much benefit to outweigh the possible harm? Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 18:12, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Why consider it in this case? Well, I imagine you know the answer. If an ISP provides service only to its employees and contractors, whether its the DoD or some other organization, it is much more likely to respond to misconduct by an employee than a commercial ISP is for actions of a customer. As to the issue of consequences, I suppose we will have to disagree and let it go. Assuming Kumioko is not mentally ill and not a child, he is capable of taking the potential for punishment into account when choosing to misbehave. The analogy to a criminal is apt; any robber hopes to get away with his crime, but knows there is a chance he may be caught and go to prison. We report the theft (even if a small personal item, like an iPhone) anyway, because the burden of a bad act should fall on the bad actor and not the victim. Nathan^T 18:26, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The LTA page says: "In the vast majority of cases, Deny Recognition and Revert block ignore are more suitable approaches." But judging by User:Newyorkbrad/Newyorkbradblog#Wikipedia and the law of computer misuse, where Kumioko is mentioned by name, it looks like a different approach has been decided on here, but it's not clear why. And if the comment by a user above is correct, AGK and Kumioko know each other in real life. Any complaint sent to Kumioko's employer could state his real name. Kumioko may soon be sharing a jail cell with Chelsea Manning. —Neotarf (talk) 01:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it would be good if you reread what I wrote. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:48, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The only reason the banned user is being celebrated and encouraged is all the excited commentary. It is not our concern if a few editors decide to report a long term troll to their ISP, but if anyone does not want that to happen the best approach would be to stop talking and stop encouraging an attention-seeker. Johnuniq (talk) 02:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

@ Newyorkbrad. I want to excuse myself from further comment here. I have a program of edits on Wikipedia I would like to complete and thereafter I shall consider.

Kumoiko's behaviour is not criminal. I doubt it is actionable in civil law. I am quite certain that in the EU at any rate contacting his employers in this way is a infringement of his right to a private life enshrined in Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights. Since AGK is (for now anyway) a citizen of the European Union, I think it would be an honourable gesture for him to recuse himself from further meddling in this affair. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 02:12, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

As someone required to use VPN's for work and other purposes, I can tell you it's pretty easy to leave one turned on by accident when doing a non-work thing from the same computer (it's the other side of forgetting to activate an anonymizing proxy before looking at a privacy invading site like facebook.com). If someone posts a few Wikipedia edits from work addresses by accident, by using their computer at home with the work VPN still activated, it would be pretty obnoxious to jack that up into claiming misuse of an employer's network.

I don't take that "most disruptive user ever" thing of Kumioko even slightly seriously. He said that in a lame outburst in the immediate aftermath of getting banned, then slipped back to approximately the same occasional pitiful whining as before he got banned, and has had pretty low impact on anything I can tell. There are other editors (banned or otherwise) who are far more detrimental to the project. I'd suggest starting with them if Wikipedia witch-hunting is now also being pursued off-wiki. And any such reports should be only done by WMF legal or security personnel (after referral from arbcom/CU, for example). Having Wikipedia editors (including arbitrators) do them is IMHO obviously forbidden per WP:OUTING.

This incident is pretty disturbing and I may write more later. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 06:55, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

(Comment from uninvolved editor) Until one considers that the user in question (Kumioko) has a pattern of sockpuppetry and long-term abuse, and is currently banned from English Wikipedia for exhibiting such a pattern. That may also be why AGK wants to contact Kumioko's employer (not that I'm endorsing these actions, but still, look at the circumstances). Epicgenius (talk) 16:34, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my recollection of the public comments made by Kumioko so far align with Beeblebrox's description "the greatest,most disruptive troll WP has ever seen. He has said so again and again", than with the 70.* IP's description "a lame outburst in the immediate aftermath of getting banned" (my emphasis). It would appear there are also numerous comments (or threats?) Kumioko has made privately rather than publicly. So very few of us here know the full picture. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:33, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm with @70 in that there should be some provisions for making abuse reports including a) at what point is an abuse report sent (identification as a "long-time abuser"?) because it shouldn't be an individual judgment call by any admin, b) who can send in an abuse report, c) what the possible consequences of an abuse report to an ISP and d) a log of abuse reports that have been sent, to avoid duplicate reports and for transparency purposes.

I've posted these above (and I appreciate Beeblebrox's response) but I really think that implementing them, even if only a few reports are sent, would dispel some of the outrage surrounding this case. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:37, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

How would those limits work? Anyone who is the target of abuse from an IP address, or even anyone who comes upon it, can submit an abuse report. That's whether or not they've seen the project abuse report pages, or LTA, or anything else. Do we want to have another policy that is most likely to be often ignored, that purports to prevent people from filing abuse reports when they themselves are the targets? Given the kind of abuse people have experienced over the years, that seems unwise. I suspect making the list public would be a mistake for many reasons that are generally more important than preventing duplicate reports. There might be room for some public information about when and how CUs make abuse reports based on data from the checkuser tool, but otherwise I don't see the benefit. Nathan^T 17:47, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's useful for editors here to speculate about whether or not an abuse report would affect Kumioko's employment. The last time I looked at the "other" website, Kumioko was making it very clear that he is not worried about losing his employment, even saying that he, himself, would be part of the team that would look into any IP abuse complaint. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:57, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

The indent suggests that comment was replying to me, but I'm not sure how it relates to what I wrote. Nathan^T 18:20, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Nathan, I'm sorry about that. I just put it there in response to the whole series of edits above, and not to your comment specifically, because it wasn't obvious where else to put it. But no, I wasn't calling you out, and I apologize that it looked that way. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:50, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Nathan, it's the same idea as WP:NLT: you can pursue a grievance against someone on-wiki, or you can pursue it off-wiki, but not both. DIY enforcement of the TOS vigilante-style when you don't have the standing to enforce it in a court of law seems completely wrong to me. That's why the WMF (the entity with the standing) should handle it directly. They could delegate it to arbcom or stewards or whoever in an official way, I suppose, with the implication that the WMF will back up any actions taken under such delegation, but people should still not do it unofficially on their own. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, this skittered off into becoming another chastise Kumioko/AGK thread. This was not my intention. There have been other places to do that. I do feel we need to have an established process for handling this for any future cases. But, this thread's unfortunately gone off the rails on that point. Oh well. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:47, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Whether people support AGK in this instance or not, I think we can all agree on one thing: abuse reports are not to be taken lightly. My belief is that an ISP should only be notified in circumstances where a user's activities can actually cause genuine harm in someone's personal life. Examples include repeated and malicious posting of personally identifying information, paedophilia advocacy (barring attempts to promote recognition of the condition as a legitimate mental disorder), the crime of stalking, and providing assistance to any unrelated police investigation. I would not feel comfortable jeopardizing someone's livelihood just because they are an unrepentant nuisance on a popular website, especially not if the justification for doing so amounts to "he had it coming". If I were to support this measure against Kumioko, there would have to be significant documented evidence of criminal harassment against one or more editors (generally both on and off-wiki). This means that the threshold must be exceptionally high, and such a motion should probably be initiated by the victims of harassment themselves. If they are using ArbCom as a vector for pursuing legal avenues and their plight is justified, so be it. If AGK, ArbCom, Jimbo Wales, or any other party chooses to go forward with this course of action, it could cost Kumioko his job — and if Dennis Brown's sentiments hold true today, his liberty. Kurtis ^(talk) 19:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, actually, I don't agree. Last fall, I looked into WP:Abuse reports, a group of volunteers who sent letters to ISPs in long-time abuse cases and I was told that these letters actually had little impact and that's why the project was no longer active. It was then marked as an inactive, historical project after I couldn't find any previous volunteers who wanted to return and continue with it. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:01, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Can't agree with Kurtis either. Boiling that down, it's a weird position to take - we can only report abuse to an ISP when the abusive conduct rises to the level of criminal activity? Criminal activity should be reported to the police. ISPs aren't cops. Maybe the confusion rests on the nomenclature: An "abuse report" is basically a report to an Internet Service Provider alleging that a particular user (or, IP address) is violating the Terms of Service of a website and / or the ToS of the ISP's service itself. In most cases, the maximum penalty an ISP can impose is terminating the connection. In a small number of instances, the ISP happens also to be the employer of the user. What happens in those cases is something Wikipedians don't have much insight into, and regardless shouldn't bear on whether any individual decides to file a report with an ISP. Nathan^T 20:24, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Exactly. It would boil down to a proposal that some subset of editors can claim complete immunity from any action on their behaviour purely because they choose to abuse their employer's internet facilities for that behaviour; whereas editors who do not commit such abuse can suffer consequences. It's an entirely irrational suggestion. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

- I guess I'm wrong in this case; revisiting my above comment a couple hours later, I now concede that it was far too narrow in scope. I'm also not sure why I had somehow conflated contacting an ISP with contacting the police; I've stricken those parts. A regular report to a regular ISP after extensive long term abuse is probably warranted in some cases. Even so, disconnecting access to a certain website is a little drastic unless there's very good reason to do so. The situation with Kumioko has special considerations that need to be taken into account. Kurtis ^(talk) 21:31, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
  - Additional addendum — I've unstricken the above text from earlier, yet I retain the same caveat regarding my original post being too narrow in scope. Here's my stance: ISPs should generally not be contacted outside of issues pertaining to criminal activity (e.g. stalking), unless there have been extensive long term issues with abuse on a given domain name. An abuse report to an ISP should only be used as a last resort. Kurtis ^(talk) 15:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Kumioko has reported on the Other Site that his employer has now received a letter linking his user name with his name in real life. —Neotarf (talk) 20:44, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

I take this claim with the same seriousness that I take other claims made by Kumioko. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:27, 19 May 2014 (UTC)

Thus quite seriously then, given that his original report about AGK's email was confirmed by AGK himself?

I'm sorry that Kurtis struck part of his post, because it was a good summary of the real position (as confirmed by Liz, another useful contributor here). Abuse reports which don't allege criminal behaviour don't receive much attention from ISPs and it's not criminal to violate ToS. What is new here, what I don't doubt Risker was hinting at and which AGK duly enacted, was the threat of effectively contacting his employer, and if notifying the employer really had been coincidental (as Risker was careful to keep open), well then there was not much recourse for Kumoiko. But AGK made the threat precise, so that effectively Wikipedia was knowingly contacting the employers. I don't doubt this is where AGK is being attacked for his lack of judgement on the mailing list.

The real problem for Wikipedia here is that some editor might now (apparently has already) contacted the employer (no doubt with diffs and proofs and god knows what else, the usual productions). Coat of Many Colours (talk) 03:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

The entity "Wikipedia" has not contaced anything, and per my reply to you above at 10:29, 18 May 2014, events that occur off-wiki are not within the scope of matters requiring attention by this community. About all that can be said is that some editors would be prepared to make abuse reports, and some would not. Personal opinions about whether such contact would be effective are not relevant. Johnuniq (talk) 04:07, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Johnuniq, don't forget the Sandifer matter. —Neotarf (talk) 04:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

@Johnuniq That's generally right about abusive behaviour off-wiki, but that's not what it goes to here. Reporting putative abuse to an ISP is necessarily off-wiki. This goes to knowingly contacting the employers by so doing, potentially actionable, and as Everyking notes blow, sanctioned both by ArbCom members (with no record of opposition) and by Jimbo Wales himself. How much more serious does it get? Coat of Many Colours (talk) 08:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I've unstricken that part of my original post, although I do stand by my subsequent concession. Kurtis ^(talk) 15:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Sad to relate, Kumioko has apparently been "pretty busy" and thus has not been able to obtain a copy of the supposed report to his employer. He'll be getting round to that as soon as he's not "pretty busy", I'm sure. He also mentioned he's kind of not thinking of releasing it or quoting from it anyway. So, well then. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:30, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

You should probably take the claim seriously. After all, a certain arbitrator had threatened to do it, and his threat was effectively endorsed by several other arbitrators, as well as Jimbo Wales. So clearly they were not above taking such an action, and now the target of the threat says it was carried out. While we can't know for certain, the facts suggest Kumioko is telling the truth. Everyking (talk) 07:00, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom needs to deny this

This thread is rapidly generating more heat than light. I respectfully suggest that any outstanding issues are discussed in a new thread, and in a less personal manner than has been the case for some comments on this page, but I would request that you consider whether such a thread was likely to progress the discussion to any useful point. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 19:48, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

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

Given that apparently Kumioko's employer has been contacted, ArbCom needs to come forward and openly deny they had anything to do with his employer being contacted. ArbCom: Failure to do so is tacit acknowledgement you have done so. If in fact ArbCom had anything to do with his employer being contacted, this is an extremely cold day for Wikipedia. The stakes here are very, very high. Few among us who have access to the Internet from work have never accessed Wikipedia from such locations. If ArbCom is not above destroying someone's job over a ToS violation, then no ethical violation is beneath them. --Hammersoft (talk) 12:55, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

If this was actually done by someone, it was not with the approval or knowledge of ArbCom or the functionaries or WMF. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:09, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Excuse me? <thank you for rephrasing> Not once have I ever said anything against or for you. Off and on I have been an opponent of a number of actions taken by ArbCom, have criticized structural issues that plague ArbCom to this day, and have made numerous suggestions for improving ArbCom. Rare has been the occasion that I have ever called out any particular ArbCom member over any issue, and to my recollection not ever have I done so with you personally. Whenever I have called out a particular ArbCom member, it has been with direct and explicit evidence supporting it. I am not questioning your ethics personally. Had ArbCom made a decision to contact Kumioko's employer over a ToS violation, it certainly would be an ethical violation in my opinion. That would be on ArbCom, not you personally. In fact, this is exactly WHY I asked the question; to separate individual actions from that of ArbCom. If ArbCom had internally voted 7-5 to contact Kumioko's employer, certainly you personally could have been on of the five. The point is whether ArbCom had made such a decision, not whether any particular member had done so. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:25, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

So "fuck you" is an ArbCom-approved edit summary now? DuncanHill (talk) 13:29, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

So you're so stupid you think everything I write is ArbCom-approved beforehand? Or is this just more rhetorical gamesmanship? Believe it or not, I'm not "an Arb", I'm a human who volunteered to be on the ArbCom. No, it's just sometimes I forget that there is a type of person who sees nothing wrong with casually saying I'm probably dishonest, and thinks they're entitled to do so. I usually remember that I should just ignore such people, but sometimes I forget. --Floquenbeam (talk) 13:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, fuck you for that stunning example of either assuming bad faith or accusing me of stupidity - or both. Great to see your skills on display. For the record, I don't think you're being dishonest here (and can't recall if I've ever thought that you were being dishonest about anything else you've said or done). DuncanHill (talk) 13:43, 20 May 2014 (UTC)edited for clarity DuncanHill (talk) 14:57, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Floquenbeam, I remind you that I said nothing about you. In fact, I didn't even say ArbCom had done anything in this subthread. I said "If ArbCom had anything to do with..." (emphasis added here). Please, let's all calm down. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:45, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Could the original language be restored with a strikeout, so it can be read without going to the history? I don't think a display of strong feelings necessarily reflects badly on anyone, considering the situation. But the accountability of the ArbCom is at issue here, as it should be. —Neotarf (talk) 14:28, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

And a certain attitude is being displayed by the floquenbeam on Arbcom where their response to a request for accountability is vulgar abuse. This whole exercise is proving K's point that a lot of admins including arbs are arrogant tossers who think that they are above everyone else. --92.238.57.40 (talk) 14:46, 20 May 2014 (UTC) (Not banned, just gone because of the arrogant tossers.)

No point. The above discussion is clear: Request/demand for denial; Denial (with some unnecessary/rude verbiage). What's been refractored has been refractored -- as an apparent momentary lapse, and can easily be found by anyone. People sometimes take umbrage when a denial is demanded or requested. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Vulgar epithets to all; with a side of love. Peace!—John Cline (talk) 15:15, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
Seconded, (not that I really fucking care very much mind). Hammersoft is quite right, but until Kumoiko provides documentation I don't see how we can progress this. Very likely this was "anyone" (and I'm prepared to believe it wasn't "official" after all this debate). God knows anyone's had enough encouragement. I do hope the initiating parties are now getting a sense of just how divisive their mischief was. They should ask themselves how this could possibly arise. If it was me that had pissed off Kumoiko so grievously, I can promise you that I (like most other reasonable adults, hell most children come to that) would have made the necessary apologies and concessions to restore good feeling or at least an understanding together. The only way that wouldn't have happened would have been if either or both of us was actually psychotic, and that's not the case. So it speaks volumes about the social skills (erm ... mental health) of the parties involved here, does it not? Liz above quite right to insist there should be a properly defined policy here. She wins my vote if she ever goes to RfA. Signing off here. Thanks to all. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:16, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, COMC. I have the feeling that editors keep adding to this discussion without reading the entire conversation that has occurred already. I see it this way: If editors feel that letters concerning long-time abusers should not be sent to their ISPs, that should be the focus of the discussion because this is not the first letter like this that has been sent out from Wikipedia and it is a very common procedure for websites. It's clear given the comments (above) that it is very unlikely to "destroy someone's job" or their life, this was even stated by Kumioko himself. I think dire consequences were stated in the email message to get Kumioko's attention to curb his behavior but, in fact, a report to an ISP is not likely to get someone fired.

If editors truly believe this incident is the sign of some Wikipedia implosion or catastrophe, address the policy, not the people and not ARBCOM which had nothing to do with this letter. In fact, this discussion shouldn't even be occurring on Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee as it doesn't concern any acts done by the committee. It's a policy issue. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 17:43, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Just a note - it needs to be remembered that this isn't just a note to an ISP, but a note to an employer. Where the employer and the ISP are known to be the same we can't reasonably wash our hands of the consequences. Having experienced an editor complaining to my employer about my editing in the past, I'm particularly conscious of the effects this can have on someone's real life. - Bilby (talk) 21:58, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry that happened to you and I hope it didn't cause you any problems. I would be appalled at any user contacting another user's employer to complain about their editing. However, I would ask you to remember that this is not what we have here. This is a user who was banned by the community. (not ArbCom) When their appeal of their ban was denied they publicly announced their intent to troll and harass certain members of the community until their ban was lifted. The owner of some of the IPs they use to commit these abuses also happens to be their employer. Not the same situation at all. In fact the only thing that kept a report from being filed for so long was concern that it would impact him in real life.

And in the end, just so we are clear, no decision was made by the committee. Someone acting on their own filed the actual report. And they were right, there has been constant abuse, ban evasion, and harassment coming from a variety of IPs operated by this troll. K claims to be a grown man, with a military record and a family, yet apparently the most important priority in his life is disrupting Wikipedia and harassing the committee. Don't feel sorry for him, he's an adult who knew full well what he was doing. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:56, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

From what I can see of this, what Beeblebrox said here is the right conclusion to draw. And, without intending any disrespect to what Hammersoft meant in opening this thread, I would argue that we are well past the point where ArbCom, and everyone else, really should WP:DENY this, in the sense that the banned user has been getting way too much community attention over what happened. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:19, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

I'm generally aware of the issues with this editor, but I'm not in a position to determine if contacting an employer was an appropriate response. It may well have been, although it is not a move I'd generally support. That said, my concern is an attitude that we can do one act (contact an ISP) without also taking into consideration that we are also knowingly performing a second act (contacting an employer). Saying that our intent is to do the first cannot be seen to absolve ourselves of the performance of the second. If the community is comfortable with contacting an employer in this case, then that's where we sit. But the community can't absolve themselves of responsibility and say that it was ok to contact an employer, because all we were doing was making an abuse report to an ISP - that doesn't work. - Bilby (talk) 23:58, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

It seems intuitive to me that to enshrine a best practice of not contacting an ISP when that ISP is also the vandal's employer does nothing but give carte blanche to an editor who uses his or her employer's assets to perform said vandalism. I can hardly imagine a more detrimental stance! If clarification of our TOS is needed, then let's clarify; unequivocally, and say that an exception is mandated in circumstances such as these; while perhaps reserving implementation unto a select office, like Arbcom for example.—John Cline (talk) 00:30, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

My concern is not that it will always be inappropriate to contact an employer. Personally, I've taken the line that it is inappropriate, but that's a personal stance. My concern is that we have to accept the consequences of doing so, and acknowledge that this is what we're doing. We can't absolve ourselves by saying that we were just filing an abuse report when we are also aware that the ISP is the person's employer. I'm worried that there is an emerging line of argument that we don't have to take this into consideration if it is simply an abuse report, and that seems to me to be a very mistaken line to take.

Given that, your approach seems like a good one, as it is tackling both the consequences. - Bilby (talk) 00:45, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Could we get an indication of what was voted on, whether the vote was split, and the Arbcom's approach to the issues? There are partial quotations from individual arbs being posted elsewhere, and while I haven't checked their accuracy, they make it look like committee members were urging the action that was evidently taken. Is there some reason for secrecy on this issue? —Neotarf (talk) 03:59, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

I think this is important. All the secrecy just leads to distrust. We need to see more transparency. Everyking (talk) 04:19, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

This discussion is totally unhelpful. We know that some editors would not report an abuser to their ISP/employer, and some would. We know that Arbcom is a group of volunteers elected to deliberate on matters they think require their attention. Because Wikipedia is just a website, there is no need for a perfect system of governance with just the right amount of transparency that satisfies everyone. The best thing would be to resume WP:DENY and stop feeding an attention-seeker. Johnuniq (talk) 05:09, 21 May 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, no one needed to make a banned user feel special, most elected to WP:RBI, or just Ignore. However, as far as I can see, AGK decided to

Blank the user's SPI archive page (which has never been done before) supporting this by:

Breaking BRD and editwarring
Claiming that the "SPI archiving software" will edit through the blanking (The SPI was later archived manually, and indeed broke)
Claiming his edits need several "checkusers or a larger number of editors" to revert
Denying that he blocked 68.149.0.0/16
Making personal attacks
Used rollback incorrectly

When called on this he claims to have read the policy and misunderstood. He then apologises for "confusing anyone". Not for misusing rollback, not for breaking BRD, for edit warring, for out-of-process blanking, personal attacks, ABF....

Apparently create special (if ineffective) edit filters, expending valuable edit filter resources.
Make /16 rangeblocks, a blunt instrument, especially where a /19 would do the job
Threaten the user's livelihood and liberty, with a misleading email.

All this trouble, invention and rule-breaking for "a minor banned, abusive user."

This is an allegedly experienced admin, mediator, SPI'er, CU and arb. :These actions are indefensible.

Time for AGK to hand in his hat collection.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:09, 22 May 2014 (UTC).

In this case, the ISP is assigned to the employer. Are we supposed to give him a pass just because he deliberately chose to disrupt the website from his employers ISP?--MONGO 15:36, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

How are you defining "disruption"? Eric Corbett 15:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Then it ought to be the same as any other employer. Contact the employer, name no names. AGK was not going to abide by that rule. KonveyorBelt 15:56, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

AGK said the editor is "a minor banned, abusive user." He took the above list of actions agaisnt this user. Most of us do not rule out large IP range blocks, edit filters and abuse reports as options for dealing with, for example, real life stalkers, those sending threats, long term extreme vandalism. To invoke the full panoply against "a minor banned, abusive user" - even one whose good faith and past works was not as widely credited as this one, would be extreme and worrying. Coming from an Arbitrator it is worse. And backing it up by breaking so many basic tenets, misleading about consensus, and so forth makes it crystal clear, whatever else AGK may have to offer the project, he should not be involved in any sanction related roles. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 16:34, 22 May 2014 (UTC).

A case filed with the committee is the last recourse and they may accept it, but this incessant whine will solve zero.--MONGO 17:01, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

And indeed let us hope it doesn't come to a case - ArbCom have yet to reply to my email. Interesting, though, to be asked a direct question, and accused of an "incessant whine" when I answer it. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:50, 23 May 2014 (UTC).

Convince us that none of this has anything to do with retribution, retaliation or revenge...--MONGO 01:02, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Funnily enough I was watching Blazing Saddles last night: we are all prawns tossing and turning in the ceaseless ebb and floe of history (*COAT stares straight into camera*), MONGO, never forget that.

Retribution, retaliation and revenge would be fair enough reasons to go after AGK if this was just about him and we could deal with it by throwing him under a bus (lordie good golleee how do we do that? we find a bus and we throw him under it m'kay ...). But we do know how all this happened now 1 NewYorkBrad writes a long opinion about computer misuse wondering whether Kumioko can be nobbled by it (observe that computer misuse is not the same as web abuse and of its nature implies that the employer needs to be apprised of the misuse). NYB concludes that he can't, but nevertheless countenances K in the nicest possible way to walk away backwards from the situation whistling cheerfully (know what we mean?) 2 Risker posts bollocks the court case. All we have to do is contact the ISPs (know what we mean?) 3 surmised furious exchange of emails on ArbCom mailing list 4 AGK, who didn't make it to Secretary-General on force of intellect alone, emails K to tell him in the nicest possible sort of way that we at Wikipedia are going to give his boss a call if he carries on like this (know what I mean?) 5 someone points out that's not very fair and probably illegal and AGK should be thrown under a bus 6 further surmised furious exchange of emails on the ArbCom mailing list - what the fuck are we going to do now? 7 Jimbo saves the day. This is the American way so there (*phew*) 8 someone gives K's boss a call.

So right. Nothing to see here. MONGO straight, ARBCOM straight, JIMBO straight. KUMIOKO not straight m'kay. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 08:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

That's a hell of a conspiracy theory you have there.--MONGO 14:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

It would be a conspiracy if it wasn't completely supported by facts provided by multiple people including the Arbs themselves. All you have to do is red the comments. They have admitted it themselves. Why else would they choose now to review their policies and procedures. So they can retroactively change their policies to allow them to do legitimately what is currently against policies they are ignoring and refusing to enforce on themselves. Several in this string have talked bad about Kumioko, which I used to agree with, but I for one have now seen that what Kumioko has been talking about is correct and have started to think that what they were saying about the abuse on this site has some validity. Not by their actions, but by the actions of the admins and Arbs he has been complaining about. 108.28.162.195 (talk) 16:41, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

MONGO in denial. MONGO way over hills on choo-choo train (and thanks IP). Coat of Many Colours (talk) 16:49, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

No problem and I should have said this before but it shows a lot about AGK's and the Arbcom that AGK hasn't been asked to resign as an arbitrator. Also, Coat of Many colors. If I may make a suggestion. It might be useful to link to the appropriate discussions in your 8 bullet statement above for those that may not have followed the whole drama as closely. 108.28.162.195 (talk) 18:14, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Between this discussion and the one on Jimbo's talk page, several people have suggested AGK resign. I disagree with this suggestion and I doubt it will happen but it has been brought up. However, the policy surrounding issuing ISP abuse reports is opaque, it seems, on purpose, and it isn't clear if any norms were violated. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:40, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

Oh hogwash, you can believe that if you want too but AGK and other arbs all violated multiple policies and I haven't even been editing that long. Not to mention this whole mess violates at least 3 of the 5 pillars that are supposed to be the most revered of all rules here. Wikipedia is free content that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute, clearly isn't the case; Editors should treat each other with respect and civility clearly wasn't followed and then theres Wikipedia does not have firm rules when it clearly does have not only firm rules, but apparently there are rules that rules can be broken if you are in a certain "trusted" billet like Arbcom. Then, looking under User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles we find #7. Anyone with a complaint should be treated with the utmost respect and dignity.. I'm not sure how the way Kumioko was treated can be considered having respect and dignity nor do I think whomever contacted their employer, whether arbcom or not, showed any honor in doing so. I can also see at least 8 from the list of policies here that were violated including No legal threats, Civility and Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point which was obviously a big part of making Kumioko an example. Frankly I think AGK, Arbcom as a whole a number of others should be ashamed of themselves. All this making excuses for Arbcom and its members doesn't help either. Either the policies exist or they don't, we cannot simply choose when they apply to best suit our needs or we are no better than those we are branding as the enemy like Kumioko. 108.28.162.195 (talk) 20:58, 24 May 2014 (UTC)

There are rules. There are no rules. (See Tao Te Ching). That sounds flippant, but rules are Wikipedia are gray, as evidenced by the fact that, as 108 mentions, one of the five "big" rules is we don't rigidly follow rules for the sake of following rules. NE Ent 00:06, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@NE Ent: Policies shift and change. There is in fact no policy in place at present that allows the Wikimedia Foundation to make ISP abuse complaints let alone contact employers to make these complaints. If it can genuinely be argued, and I suspect the historical precedent shows that it can't, that making such abuse reports improves the encyclopaedia, then pillar five can reasonably be invoked to support making such complaints until such time that Terms of Service can be amended to reflect the new policy (plainly it's untenable to report an editor for abuse of ToS when that reporting procedure isn't even reserved in the ToS).

It's common ground that K's behaviour was not criminal. No doubt it is strictly actionable given that he is making a nuisance of himself, but the chances of a civil action being successful in this case are remote given the energy and resources which the community devotes to these dramas in any case (there is a dialectic at work here is there not? and moreover K can claim pillar five on his own behalf, that he was genuinely trying to improve the encyclopaedia, can he not?). I don't know the law in the US, but in the EU contacting the employers as Wikipedia proposed (apparently has) would be an infringement of K's right to a private life as enshrined in article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights were he a citizen of the European Union. There is moreover a special issue possibly involved here, and that is in the case where Wikipedia brings pressure on a member of the armed forces in this way, then plainly issues of national security arise. Again I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in the UK I think AGK can safely assume he is on the radar at the round house.

Other than those general remarks I haven't the faintest idea what it is you're arsing on about. Cheers. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 10:17, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Who said the WMF has made an ISP abuse complaint? Let's leave it up to the legal department to offer advice concerning whether someone's human rights has been infringed. I'm not sure who to ask for advice about a possible issue of national security, but perhaps this discussion is already being monitored... Johnuniq (talk) 11:21, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom surely acts on behalf of the WMF? Indeed I would be curious to know from the legal department what the situation is in California (location of servers). I'm researching this afternoon. I was pointing out a matter of fact regarding EU law. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 11:49, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Edit_warring/Archives/2013/February#Florida_.E2.86.92_Virginia for the "location of servers" discussion. NE Ent 17:36, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for that. ToS is apparently governed by the laws of the State of California. I should imagine the relevant legislation is this. I considered filing a case with ArbCom, but frankly what's the point? Thank you for your input. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 17:59, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I think this discussion has long since stopped serving any useful purpose. However, there is some very uninformed wild speculation going on here. For the record:

ArbCom does not "act on behalf of the WMF". We sometimes have back-and-forth contact with the office for informational purposes but we do not act at their direction and we do not represent the foundation in any way.
ArbCom did not act at all in this matter. We do not even know for certain that an abuse report was even filed, much less who filed it.
All this talk about server locations, national security, and EU law is a lot of irrelevant noise. I suggest those pursuing those lines of argument/enquiry find something better to do with their time.

Beeblebrox (talk) 18:08, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Arguably, vast swaths of the entire Wikipedia:: namespace are irrelevant noise, so there's nothing particularly special about this particular page. Since I'm not being paid to work here, I'm confident that how I choose to spend my wikitime is up to me. (If there's some policy suggesting otherwise, a link would be appreciated). In fact, while I don't agree with CoMC viewpoint, I have no reason to doubt their good faith; accordingly describing their contributions as "noise" is not entirely "respectful and considerate," we do have a policy on that, despite the fact that, collectively, we really don't seem to know what it means. NE Ent 18:32, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

ArbCom doesn't recognise the WMF ToS? Wikipedia is an international project: the EU (old country) has its humble place in the grand design. I'm pretty sure there are military out there alarmed by what amounts to the public hazing of (apparently) one of its personnel. Don't bring it, and in conclusion consider boiling your head in acid. Thank you. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 18:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

"Heads boiled in acid", is this a PG13 thread?--Ubikwit^連絡_{見学/迷惑} 18:46, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Me, I'm still laughing at the theory that ArbCom's review of its procedures is some kind of nefarious cover-up. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, to much Games of Thrones maybe? It seem to be going' around.

This is becoming a bit much though.

Incidentally, Coat of Many Colours, have you spent time in the military?

Well, I have. Suprise!

And I'm sure that there are as many people in uniform (among those aware of Wikipedia's existence) that have exactly the opposite take; i.e, "Who is this troublemaker? I hope this fuckup doesn't affect our Internet privileges". In other words, they don't want the actions of some fuckup negatively impacting their right to edit Wikipedia.

Who the fuck do you think you are, anyway?--Ubikwit^連絡_{見学/迷惑} 19:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@Ubikwit: Well, regarding the above, you have certainly made this an NC-17 thread in the tradition favoured by your mentor. One of the first people to come to K's defence here was a very respected administrator who certainly has been in the military and who took the issue to Jimbo's Talk page. I would say your response merely hardens my suspicion that at the bottom of all this is some good old fashioned hazing. I have posted a committed identity on my user page, that's who the fuck I am. HTH. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 20:00, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@Coat of Many Colours: you are entitled to your opinion, but your posts seemed to more than push the bounds in more than one regard. the right to speak one's opinion is not the same as a license to speak as an authority.

I don't even know Kumioko, but I'm fairly convinced that he could probably being spending his time in more productive ways than he has been with respect to this site of late.

You, on the other hand, have a user name that resonates with medieval "coats of arms", etc., so you might want to tread a little more lightly in areas related to the modern military. Your posturing is not impressive to someone like me.

Incidentally, what were your trying to insinuate with the "your mentor" quip. --Ubikwit^連絡_{見学/迷惑} 20:44, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

It's a biblical reference Ubikwit. Sorry about the mentor jibe. I got the impression from your spirited langauage that you were a disciple of BB, but rereading I see that's not so and I apologise. Have you ever looked through Kumioko's edits about the military? They were very fine efforts indeed. Whatever went wrong here, it went profoundly wrong. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 21:07, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

OK, CMC, no problem, apology accepted.

I take it that you mean you user name is a biblical reference. OK, well, then I just exposed my erudition in terms of biblical scholarship... i need to get back around to that eventually, but I've been fortunate enough to make my way to a path that continually provides me with fresh subjects of interest. As I mentioned, I'm not familiar with Kumioko's editing at all. So while I don't have anything against the guy, and would be happy for him if people find a way t rehabilitate his status here if he could become productive again, the conflagration surrounding this incident seems to have grown beyond any sense of proportion. I don't know your history with BB, but the "boil your head in acid" remark was a bit over the top!

By the way, the military was not much fun most of the time, but it had its moments of camaraderie, etc. It also provided me with a modicum of discipline that I believe has served me well. I suppose I owe Wikipedia a debt of gratitude for this encounter, which made me revisit that in a new context. Anyway, hope to encounter you again under better circumstances. Regards. --Ubikwit^連絡_{見学/迷惑} 21:39, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Cheers Ubikwit. Thanks for that. Appreciated. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 22:07, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 - California Business and Professions Code sections 22575-22579

I see that the preceding section where I raised this has been closed by an administrator. Can I ask AGK to explain to we the community where Wikipedia's privacy policy complies with the above in relation to his advice (which I suggest can only reasonably be construed as a threat) that Wikipedia would post an abuse complaint with Kumioko's employer? The relevant section is at 22575 b (1) and reads: "The privacy policy required by subdivision (a) shall do all of the following:( 1) Identify the categories of personally identifiable information that the operator collects through the Web site or online service about individual consumers who use or visit its commercial Web site or online service and the categories of third-party persons or entities with whom the operator may share that personally identifiable information." Thank you. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 20:25, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

It's all spelled out here. I assume "It is the policy of Wikimedia that personally identifiable data collected in the server logs, or through records in the database via the CheckUser feature, or through other non-publicly-available methods, may be released by Wikimedia volunteers or staff [...] Where the user has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way, data may be released to a service provider, carrier, or other third-party entity to assist in the targeting of IP blocks, or to assist in the formulation of a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers" is the bit that applies, assuming they can demonstrate that the user "has been vandalizing articles or persistently behaving in a disruptive way". Mogism (talk) 20:33, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. I considered that, but the section of AGK's email I take issue with says "If you are in the armed forces, or a civilian employee of them, you are jeopardising your employment and risking real life disciplinary action. Please do not force us to contact your employer.". Where in the privacy policy does Wikipedia says it reserves for itself the right to contact employers in the way AGK was envisaging? At the least I would expect a qualification such as " ... a complaint to relevant Internet Service Providers (who may be the user's employer)" I don't think it reasonable to argue that the scope of "relevant" extrends to "employers". Jimbo in his closure of the discussion on his Talk page said "A report to Kumioko's ISP, whether an employer or not, is long overdue", so it can only be that Wikipedia reserves for itself the right to report users to their employers and this must therefore be made transparently clear in the privacy policy to comply with 22575 b (1). Coat of Many Colours (talk) 20:57, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

You will have to discuss Jimbo Wales' comments with him. I do not believe he usually monitors this (the Arbitration Committee's) talk page.

I believe the correct interpretation of my e-mail has already been explained elsewhere[8]. To summarise again for you: nobody would, I hope and to my knowledge, set out to contact Kumioko's employer. However, somebody was likely to contact his ISP, in line with Wikipedia's usual approach to ban and TOU violators, and my point was that his ISP is his employer. The law, nor the statute which you have quoted for us here, does not go out of its way to afford undue protection to people who are harmed in the process of doing something they should not have been doing. AGK [•] 21:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

@Coat of Many Colours: You propose that I threatened to sack Kumioko, despite my repeatedly saying I did not intend to do so, and despite Kumioko saying, at one point, that he actually thought, in the end, that it was probably the right thing that he was forewarned about the possibility of an abuse report being filed. You are calling me a liar. Fine; let's play that out. If I were, my actual objective would have been to cause Kumioko's employer to discipline him. Would a far more effective way of doing so not have been to simply write his employer an anonymous letter, and give him no warning whatsoever? Exactly what do you suspect me of here – is it of wanting Kumioko to be sacked, by not getting him sacked? Do you not see the fatal inconsistency in your logic? AGK [•] 21:29, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

I see no evidence of CoMC calling AGK a liar. It would be best -- before this thread gets hatted and yet another starts -- to dial down the rhetoric; I'd like AGK to strike the "liar" comment or provide a diff. I'll also note that AGK has provided sufficient explanation of his thinking that any reasonable editor would say he's more than met the requirements of WP:ADMINACCT, so he needed feel compelled to answer the same question over and over. NE Ent 21:54, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

As much as I wish that were the case, CoMC has asserted that my email can only reasonably be construed as a threat, despite – as you graciously describe – my saying, over and over, that I wished to do no such thing. We cannot ignore the elephant in the room: that he thinks me a liar. But actually, it's the flimsy reasoning that troubles me most. AGK [•] 22:02, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

It could not possibly seen as an nice chat. It seems to me that it quacks too much to be called anything else. But hey.....threatening our armed forces to out them over edits on Wikipedia does indeed sound like something that violates our terms of service, our policies and procedures. Not to mention it was just plain rude. But hey....this isn't a love fest. AGK did what he did and there doesn't seem to be much anyone can do about it. He doesn't seem to get the concerns of others and that as well is cool...just not something I support or even understand. But then he did this on his own and not a part of arbcom as i understand it.--Mark Miller (talk) 22:16, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Regarding ex turpi that's a principle of English law which relates to a plaintiff's remedy in law when his own actions were illegal but 1 this isn't about Kumioko's remedies but rather his rights 2 his actions weren't illegal.

That much I can do pissed and half-asleep. The rest will have to wait until I've slept it off. Coat of Many Colours (talk) 22:19, 25 May 2014 (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.

Awareness and alerts

This section states that any editor may be sanctioned without warning simply for having participated in any process regarding the area of conflict at arbitration requests or arbitration enforcement, even if only providing an uninvolved opinion. If, for example, an uninvolved editor simply explained WP:SPS, they automatically risk being sanctioned without warning. This seems insane to me. We shouldn't be discouraging uninvolved editors from participating in arbitration/arbitration requests. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 23:27, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, the obvious issue is that if someone brings a case to AE, they should not be immune from a boomerang, having essentially invoked the process themselves. As for people who are uninvolved, I kinda agree with you, but it gets into the conflict between sanction notifications are just a notice that sanctions exist, or also intended as a warning. Monty ₈₄₅ 23:42, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

Resolution

While it is very boring compared to working directly on content, or indirectly to help other editors, at some point soon I will need to take the time to resolve the difficulties that strew my path to performing those tasks, not least the sanctions imposed by the Arbitration Committee in the now somewhat distant past.

I have been, over the last 48 hours, somewhat encouraged that pursuing this might be worthwhile, by very supportive and positive comments from members of the Wikimedia community here at Wikimania in London. (Thanks to all those who have approached me with these supportive comments, both here and at other meetups and venues over the last few years.)

The question is, of course, what is the best way forward? To me, and apparently many others, it is clear that de-sysopping someone for saying "tosh" - a word used, and apparently accepted, in good humour , cannot represent a sensible outcome. I can, charitably, assume that the findings were rushed by the drafter, and that the voting arbitrators did not examine the diffs, but took on trust that they were robust, placing faith in the drafter.

One would also assume that the Committee as currently constituted would find it a good thing to put this matter behind us and move on to more productive pastures. Indeed Roger Davis indicated that he does not have the wish to go point by point through the findings of an ancient case, whether right or wrong.

I would therefore request that the Committee speedily evaluate the alternative ways forward which would result in:

Rescinding of the sanctions imposed by the Committee against me.
Removal of any findings which impugn my character, notably those which imply or state that I am "incivil" or unresponsive.

I will note that, despite my respect for individual Arbitrators and work they have done for the movement, I have to date found the only way of getting a response from the Committee is by the (to me) totally unnecessary application of the quasi-legal processes of Wikipedia. No mail I have sent (on related or unrelated matters) to the Committee has ever had a substantive response - not even a courtesy "we are taking no action." In a triumph of hope over experience I am posting this appeal for a positive forward looking collegial response here, which I firmly believe would be infinitely preferable to a grinding procedural solution.

Since a goodly number of Arbitrators are present at WikiMania, there is also ample opportunity for them to spend some time discussing these matters with me, face to face.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC).

I think we were clear in our April 2014 clarification that not only had you just violated your restriction, but that we were fed up your attempts to push the boundaries. The course of action that I would recommend would be for you to constructively edit for an extended period of time (four months quite clearly not being sufficient) without testing the boundaries of your sanctions, or wasting arbitrator and community time with further attempts to adjust the decision. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:45, 9 August 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for that response. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:38, 10 August 2014 (UTC).

I should just point out that there is no pressing urgency, but I am sure that open lines of communication rather than a [/dev/null] approach will help save everyone time in the long run. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:37, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

Thank you to those Arbs that made the effort. I think it was a worthwhile exercise, and I certainly learned some valuable lessons. Though my email is currently a bit flaky, I do welcome further conversation, information and advice there, which may be marked confidential if wished. Of course my talk page is always open for Arbs to visit, I am often at meetups, and at a push I can use a telephone. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:57, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

@Rich Farmbrough: I was at Wikimania, but as a rule I was avoiding work on arbitration matters as I do enough of that the rest of the year. If you wish to talk with me at some point about your restriction, I am certainly willing to offer my time. As text-based discussion has not been fruitful, setting aside time at a meetup or taking a call would be best for me. I am not likely to offer a different view from GorillaWarfare for the time being, but that is not to say that communicating would be a waste of time. AGK [•] 23:03, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

It is far better to talk to the non-regulars, and especially friends and colleagues from around the world at WikiMania - this is a rare opportunity, which I grab with both hands to discuss matters ranging from cultural and governance issues, to academic research, to content matters, to technical progress - this was way down on my list, but still important. It takes years to complete the projects started at a Wikimania, but they are not less valuable for that. I am likely to be at most London, Oxford and Cambridge meetups, I rarely make it further afield, though it is possible. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:44, 11 August 2014 (UTC).

RFC: Arbitration Committee Elections December 2014

The yearly Arbitration Committee Election request for comment is now open. All editors are invited to participate. Mike V • Talk 06:33, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

This ought to be easy

A while back, Roger Davies asked me to prepare User:Tryptofish/Draft for ArbCom. It should make life on the Committee a bit easier, so you would be doing yourselves a favor to make use of it. Most of it should be pretty easy to implement: just a simple copy-and-paste. You really ought to do it before yet another election gets here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:35, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

No, actually, I ought to do it. I'm very sorry indeed that I've not done this before but real life stuff was piiing up and I never got round to it. I'll do it first thing tomorrow. Roger Davies ^talk 22:46, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

That's OK, thanks. I'm glad if it is helpful. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:56, 2 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Roger, for putting one of the tables on the page. As a follow-up question, I'd like to ask what (if anything) ArbCom is planning to do with the second table that is on the draft page. Roger moved two lines of that table out of the table, leading me to suspect that the intention is to add what remains of the table to the main Arb page, but that has not happened so far, and that leads me to ask about it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:59, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

We are not planning to use the second table. As far as I'm aware, there is no interest among the committee's members in implementing it. AGK [•] 19:39, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the honest answer. If any other members of the Committee do in fact have an interest, I'd welcome hearing from them here (especially since everyone who was elected or reelected in the last election expressed a favorable opinion of it in their answers to my election question; also there seemed to be some differentiation between the lines of the table that Roger left in the table, and those he moved out). Otherwise, I'll leave this discussion to another time. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

About what is already implemented, please let me suggest the following copyedits:

"Legal matters...": need a period at the end, for consistency.
"Threats of harm...": n-dash instead of hyphen.
"Requests to review actions of checkusers or oversighters": need to delete the extra colon.
All: I would suggest putting the topic in bold font (for example, Spam: → Spam:).

I hope that helps. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Am I (as a non-Arb, non-clerk) permitted to make those copyedits? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:24, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

It's okay. I've just done it. Roger Davies ^talk 21:05, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you! I hope that this has been helpful. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:08, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

2014 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission

The RfC to appoint 3 individuals to the 2014 Arbitration Committee Electoral Commission has begun. Nominations will be accepted through October 17 23:59 (UTC). Following the nomination period, comments will be welcomed to discuss the suitability of the candidates.

Best regards, Mike V • Talk 04:00, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I thought Arbcom elections were meant to be managed entirely by the community. What is this notice doing here? Tony (talk) 09:54, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

It appears to be a notice placed here for information only, and to alert those watching this page (arbs and non-arbs). It is perfectly OK to post such notices, which have nothing to do with who is managing the process (that is the community, in case that wasn't obvious). Carcharoth (talk) 20:25, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

How to request that discretionary sanctions be extended to a new article?

I'd be grateful if someone could clarify how to request that existing discretionary sanctions be extended to an article under dispute. Specifically, the article is The Federalist (website) (see Talk:The Federalist (website)#BLP - Arbcom), which is experiencing heavy edit-warring and some very dubious BLP-related behaviour by editors. It wouldn't surprise me if it ends up being an arbitration case in due course. It's clearly within the scope of the discretionary sanctions in Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/American politics but I can't see where I would need to request that someone extend the sanctions to that article. Prioryman (talk) 12:25, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Prioryman: The issue is that American politics is currently not under discretionary sanctions. However, the committe outlined in their final decision that discretionary sanctions for specific articles/subtopics may be requested at WP:ARCA. → Call me Hahc21 16:32, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, all edits concerning living people are already covered by discretionary sanctions per WP:NEWBLPBAN; so, if an editor is making disruptive edits about a living person, then he can be warned and, if he persists, sanctioned. Apart from that, if you believe the article should be covered by DS in its entirety, then you have to propose an amendment request at ARCA, asking arbcom to extend DS under AmPol to the page.

Salvio

^{Let's talk about it!} 08:59, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

[1] Check Hayden, Erika (26 Aug 2013). "US behavioural research studies skew positive". Nature News. Retrieved 24 Dec 2013.

[2] "Trouble at the Lab". The Economist. 19 Oct 2013. Retrieved 24 Dec 2013.

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