Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard/Archive 20

Good news, and a solution

I just checked. Go outside. Look up. The sky is not falling. The Earth's rotation is not stopping. Pages are still getting editing, folks are still squabbling, and somewhere an MOS expert is fixing some factually correct but wrongly formatted edit. What we have here is the continuation of a pattern of both this community and this committee throwing out words loosely, pretending we all agree out what the mean, and having sparks fly when we get down to brass tacks. Words like civility, automation, talk page bans, and most recently, arbcom-l privacy. The world is not black and white, and we actually enshrine the gray in one of five conceptual foundation pieces: "not bureaucracy." One arb deserves a trout for misusing arbcom-l, and another deserves a trout for dealing with poorly, and the rest of 'em deserve a trout for not dealing with it all (or not effectively, whatever). The best solution to arbcom hijinks is Vote da bums out.

There's a specific problem -- arbcom-l privacy and appropriate use -- which we can address specifically. Here's a sketch:

1. After the new committee is seated, harass them until they hammer a specific policy for use of arbcom-l. It should be used for case discussion and evidence which needs to be private. (And no, "make everything public" isn't gonna fly.)
2. Form a 6 or more arbcom-audit group which has read only access to the list. Active auditors don't participate in cases, they just guard the guardians. They get read-write access to a new list (arbcom-audit) for their deliberation, and the AC gets read access to the new arbcom-audit list.
3. Obviously arbcom-audit has to identify to the Foundation.
4. If a 2/3 majority of the audit list determines an AC post is not legit per the privacy/appropriate use policy, they notify the committee as a whole. Individual arbitrators are then released from the vow of silence and can do with the out of bounds post however they see fit.
5. They audit team never reveals any contents of arbcom-l outside of their discussion on arbcom-audit.

Note: I don't care whether "the list" is a email list or a CRM or whatever. That's not really the issue this addresses.
Problem solved. NE Ent 23:55, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't solve the problem. It just creates a different group whose members could be just as disruptive as the issues we've had this year. Risker (talk) 16:37, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

A bureaucracy to deal with the bureaucracy? I dunno, but I think the last thing we need are more sub-committees. - jc37 00:01, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Or to put it another way: the community is a "committee of the whole". The less we have exclusive sub-committees (committees made up of, or open to only a few), the better I think. - jc37 00:05, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm pretty much with NE Ent on this one. (If nothing else, I appreciate the sky-not-falling message!) I think that ArbCom is having a lot of problems with the list, and I think an approach somewhere along these lines is worth considering. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:42, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd put to you that Arbcom isn't having a problem with the mailing list. It is having a problem with certain members of the Committee deciding that their personal agendas are so important that they should be allowed to disrupt the functioning of the Committee. Risker (talk) 16:34, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see what would prevent this new committee from being subject to the same controversy kind of controversy. Whatever the answer is, I don't think yet another committee is it. Ultimately, I don't think this is a structural problem. ArbCom has been around for years and, for the most part, has worked. I think the current issue is more to do with individual members than the structure of the bureaucracy as a whole. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 17:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Risker is correct that there are no troubles in the Committee that are caused by the medium of communication. An incident of that nature is entirely the result of individual actions that would have happened in substantially the same way regardless of medium. Whether you see the original off-topic message or the subsequent copy-and-paste as the biggest problem, neither were a result of how the Committee communicates. — Coren ^(talk) 17:59, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Risker and Coren, I take your points (although I could point out that a separate group of observers would be observing possible misbehavior by Committee members, and not just technical aspects of the medium of communication). Obviously, I'm seeing this from the outside. I've seen, many times before, Risker comment on how one of the strengths of the Committee is that it draws on members who are each different – and I've been pondering about how, here, that isn't turning out to be a perceived strength. The obvious answer is that it's fine to have different viewpoints in Committee discussions, but there can also be a problem when (allegedly) members use the list in bad faith. The one official statement from the Committee, and the failed motion, focused more on the leak than on any use of the list for personal agendas. I keep hearing about messages that were much worse than the message that was made public, but no one out here really knows what "much worse" consists of. As such, it looks to me like the Committee is, indeed, having a hard time figuring out how to communicate to the rest of us what went badly on the mailing list. Thus, you are having a problem with the list, in the sense of dealing with what to do when individual members act in ways the other members find problematic. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:56, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Total honesty from both arbs involved in this mess would be very refreshing, but it seems clear we aren't going to get that and attempts at revisionism/spinning will continue, with both of them playing the victim when in fact neither of them are. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:51, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I must add my voice to Risker's and Coren's - the problem was pretty much as stated openly, and related to people not processes. 99% of the time everyone accepts each other's opinions and works together to gain consensus. I think we have a pretty good strike rate of harmony considering all the water that flows under the arb bridge....Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:21, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

If "works 99% of the time" is the appropriate standard of effectiveness, the reductio ad absurdum argument is to simply eliminate the committee, as 99.9% of content questions are resolved without involving the committee at all. NE Ent 15:25, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

This whole kerfuffle indicates to me the committee doesn't have any effective, non-disruptive way of dealing with an individual member misusing the list. In my observation it's pulled the curtain back on what I had hoped was a council of wise philosopher kings and revealed it to me much closer to a group of junior high school kids. Ya'll took days just to figure out whether you need a majority or a 2/3 vote to throw Elen under the bus. If there's a solution to the misuse of privacy issue other than an individual arb risking wikicide, I seem to have missed it. NE Ent 15:23, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

The structure of the audit committee would prevent it from being nearly as disruptive as the arbitration committee because it would have virtually no power. It's the combination of secrecy and power that gives arbcom the potential for massive disruptive. Auditcom would provide a separation of powers solution. NE Ent 15:33, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Beeblebrox that more openness would be good, but I wouldn't pin it merely on Elen and Jclemens. NE Ent is correct about how the rest of the Committee really found yourselves unable to deal with the conflict as well as you should have. But I don't see it as you all acting like junior high kids. I see it, instead, as responsible adults trying their hardest to adhere to existing rules about the mailing list, where those existing rules are actually unworkable. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:49, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

More bureaucracy? No, less is the way

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

As noted in the "Replace ArbCom..." section above, ArbCom is becoming increasingly irrelevant. If we formally retire ArbCom in its current form, and restructure it to handle only cases that require confidentiality, then arbcom-l (or whatever software package stands in for it) becomes a host of considerably less material. Less material, less that needs to be protected, to be reviewed, to be secured against distribution. The community has already informally taken away the vast majority of ArbCom's case load. We don't need to add yet another layer of bureaucracy to solve what ails ArbCom. We need to remove as much as we can. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:00, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Consider any of the cases that arbcom has historically handled, that didn't happen to involve confidentiality. Despite this, they were cases that the community failed to handle, or else they wouldn't have reached arbcom. So how would you deal with them? 66.127.54.40 (talk) 18:38, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

ArbCom is a necessary evil. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 22:47, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I agree that less bureaucracy is the way; however, a very simple solution would be to rule that any misuse of the list, where it is quite apparent that making others aware of what occurred without releasing any of the genuinely (and necessarily) confidential information, such as privacy issues of other editors etc., should not fall within the confidentiality guidelines and that nobody should be penalised in any way if material falling into that kind of category were to be forwarded to anyone outside the list. I was, personally, absolutely shocked that such a threatening misuse of power occurred in the first place. I'm well aware that it's species-normal for H. sapiens to suffer from power-plays and hidden agendas, but when we consider the phrase "power corrupts" (not everyone, granted, but some) we need to be very, very careful as to how much of said corruption is allowed to exist without immediate expulsion from the position of power, and laud the courage of any whistleblower prepared to expose the corruption and abuse of power. The community actually has a right to know what kinds of abuses of power and abuses of the "protection" of a closed mailing list any individual Arb has committed. Without that information, such abusers of power are more likely to retain their status and be in a position to continue to abuse the power granted to them by the community which votes them in (or out). The community can't make informed judgments in the absence of this very relevant data. Pesky (talk) 10:40, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Ummm..Pesky I'm not sure I follow what you want to be done here. Good thing there is an election now and folks can show what sort of committee they want by the wiki-ballot box. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:21, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Reading what Pesky wrote, and Casliber's reply to it, illustrates some things for me. In principle, Pesky is right that the rest of the Committee really should have been better able to figure out what to do with the putative inappropriate messages on the list, and I think it may be over-optimistic to expect the election to settle it. That's why I would urge that we not be too quick to reject NE Ent's proposal on bureaucracy grounds. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

There are several problems with Arbcom, too much is done by too large a committee. My experience is that any committee of more than 7 gets very unweildy if everyone is pulling their weight. There is excessive secrecy, as evidenced by the amount of stuff leaked in the past that didn't really need to be secret, and there is a real risk of Arbs losing touch with the community. The first problem could be addressed by having them work more like magistrates with a panel of three of them sitting on the typical case. Those three would hopefully engage more with the community on that case, but not be involved in all other overlapping cases. Also the committee's role could be split with the appeal committee spun off and no one person serving on both committees without an intervening gap of at least a year. The secrecy problem is more difficult to counter, I suspect it needs a cultural change and at least a couple of arbs challenging whether particular threads actually need to be secret. Ideally all Arbs should be committed to only classifying as secret the minimum possible amount of their business, but it is difficult to see how we can achieve that other than by booting out those who misuse secrecy. Reducing the workload on individual Arbs would go some way to keep them active in the community - assuming of course that the problem is that they only have a certain amount of time for this hobby and that Arbcom membership is as much as most people can give the project. ϢereSpielChequers 14:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that the Committee would function better if it were not always necessary to achieve consensus amongst so many members (though three per case may be a little on the low side). Some division of labors would also lessen the workload burden. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:58, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

One of the reasons I was happy with more was that more arbs could go and edit in other areas to keep in touch with the community and go through periods of more or less arb-related activity. We also do divide tasks. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:16, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I think it's vital that arbs should still be spending time down in the murky end of article-editing, just so that they don't end up completely out of touch with the kinds of shite that have to be put up with and end up being seen as the Ivory Tower brigade. So yes, we need enough arbs. The secrecy thing – anything which doesn;t have to be secret should be openly disclosable by any arb. Shrouding stuff in unnecessary secrecy leads to abuse of that protection. History shows us this, over and over and over. Of course, one of the biggest disadvantages of having far fewer arbs on a case is that we'd be more likely to get groupthink with a smaller group, and putting powahz in the hands of fewer people, therefore with a strong possibility of less of a balanced view. (Think of the difference between your three least-favourite and three of your most-respected arbs hearing a case against you, for example.) But the chilling thing, for me, was an arb using the blanket of secrecy in what appeared to me to be such a dishonourable way. That wasn't a confidential mailing list use, that was a cloaking device which didn't even need to be uncloaked in order to fire photon torpedoes ... Pesky (talk) 18:11, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

The obvious problem is that already now it is very difficult to find good arbs (in my opinion, rightr now we have less acceptable candidates than available positions). If, on top of this, you would require considerable article contribution, we might not be able to elect anybody, especially since there is very little correlation between skills needed for editing articles and skills needed to resolve complex conflicts.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

A really, really good arb is worth their weight in something valuable ;P (Beer?) I do think, though, that in order to have a real, down-to-earth personal understanding of some of the stresses in the backgrounds which result in some of ArbCom's most tricky cases, they absolutely have to be in touch with the soul-destroying inanities and frustrations which those who are regularly dealing with article work come across. It's much more easy to stay out of trouble if one's not working on protecting articles from being trashed by troublesome people. I think maybe my best wording of this bit is what I put in the questionnaire-wossname:

A driver who does 1,000 miles a year of driving along quiet country lanes is far, far less likely to be involved in an accident than a driver who does 30,000 miles a year in inner-city areas frequented by boy racers. It doesn't mean that the 1,000 mile a year driver is a better driver.

An editor who turns up making snide or judgmental remarks about someone on noticeboards or talk pages once every twelve edits is a far worse editor, civility-wise, than one who responds coarsely to stupidity once every 1,000 edits.

Pesky (talk) 22:03, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Wow. I have no idea who you're referring to in that boxed comment above, Pesky. But it's quite possibly the oddest non sequitur on this page. Risker (talk) 22:20, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Apologies if I confused you! It was part of my response to this thing, which I felt expressed my own views on why arbs should remain in good touch with article work (and if we have plenty of arbs, and not every arb is involved in every case, they have a bit more time for that). It seems to be very easy for the vast majority of editors (and probably a lot of arbs, past, present and future) to lose sight of the proportionality thing (Jeeze, words are being stubborn about coming to mind tonight!) about plain numbers of blocks, appearances at ANI, "offences", etc. that some people accrue, instead of about ratio of offences to edits, or time served, etc. I am trying not to be too random, but family circumstances are playing havoc with my think-processes. Pesky (talk) 22:59, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Well that just actually makes it worse. You're accusing arbitrators of being uncivil for, what, not making 30,000 edits in article space a year? That is the only message I can divine from all of this. In which case, I'm afraid I'll have to stop responding to you, because anything else I might say would probably be....uncivil. Risker (talk) 23:08, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Nonono! That's not what I meant, at all! I do apologise if it came across that way! I seem to be expressing myself quite incredibly badly tonight. I'm trying to think of some better way of saying what I meant ... but my brain is malfunctioning! I think it's important for arbs to stay regularly in touch with personally having to cope with some of the worst of the stuff that goes around when people are trying (for example) to stop someone totally screwing up a serious article (like, f'rinstance, slapping a heap of anecdotal and potentially dangerous bullshit into a medical article which, no matter what we say, some readers do use to decide on self-medication ...), in order to be a bit less inclined to be harsh when an editor just "loses it" with someone. And, obviously, the more of that kind of article work an editor does, the more often they are going to come across the kind of nitwits that are likely to make even the best of people lost their cool. Again, sincere apologies if I upset you in any way; not intended. Pesky (talk) 00:27, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Adding: if you have three editors whose behaviour patterns are identical in that each of them does something uncivil enough to appear at ANI once every 5000 edits, the guy who does 10,000 edits a month is going to be appearing at ANI every fortnight. The guy who does 10,000 edits a year is only going to turn up at ANI twice a year. And the guy who only does 1000 edits a year is only going to appear there once every five years. But the actual patterns of behaviour for all three are just the same - it's just that the prolific editor runs through that cycle much faster. Pesky (talk) 00:39, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

The logical leap you seem to be making, Pesky, that other people aren't, is that any of those people are justified in being uncivil to others. That is, you say, "the more often they are going to come across [...] nitwits" and immediately transition that to an assumption that the only way one can deal with nitwits is to lose one's cool at them, so it's really just a matter of how often anyone does that. The expectation a lot of other people have, that you seem to be missing, is that Person X can run into nitwits five times a day while Person Z runs into them once a year, but neither X nor Z has a right to, upon running into a nitwit, call them names or belittle them. That is, it's not a matter of how often you lose your cool, it's a matter of how much effort you're putting into not losing your cool. I agree with Risker that this seems to be a really weird non sequitur conversation to be having in the midst of a discussion of arbcom transparency. Not sure I'm seeing the connection, though I seem to be talking anyway. Bad Fluffy. Stop talking. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 00:49, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Let me try to help explain this. Please correct me, Pesky, if I misunderstand. Here, we are discussing things in the context of what Were said about possible changes in Arb work assignments. If Arbs end up with lesser burdens on the Committee, they would potentially have more time for regular article editing. Spending more time outside of arbitration seems likely to be a good thing, for maintaining familiarity with what's going on out there, for example. (And, in my opinion, for being less likely to feel burnout.) Pesky argues that such an allocation of time would leave Arbs better able to judge the kinds of things Arbs are asked to judge – and not that users who spend a lot of time working on dispute resolution instead of content creation are somehow prone to being incivil. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Obviously people make mistakes. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and so 4 other pillars are important, not just the latest pillar, civility. Nobody seems to be obsessed with occasional failings of prose or scholarship, though. Fluffer's rhetorical "seems" is odd. Does Fluffer seem to excuse grammatical, spelling, scholarship errors? Are people justified in making such errors? Obviously not. But they, being human, do err. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:05, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Your passive aggression or active condescension, Risker and Fluffer, are inappropriate, particularly in a discussion of civility. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:36, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Tryptofish has my point very well, Fluff, yes, you've got it, too. It's not quite spot on, but it's very close! It's not so much that person X is likely to blow a fuse every time they meet a total pillock attempting to wreck the integrity of the content which the reader relies on, it's that by the time each person has dealt with 99 such people (constantly!), the sheer build-up of frustration is likely to make quite a large proportion of people blow a fuse at the 100th one. We all know that, in Real Life™, stuff just builds up until something in us snaps. (The "last straw" situation.) Even I can do it, and even in Wikipedia, though I like to think that I'm unusually patient and forbearing and understanding both in the 'pedia and in Real Life. Within reason, the more arbs we have, the more time they can spend dealing with the 99 pillocks and get to the point where they, too, could blow a fuse with the 100th one, and have a more personal understanding that the last-straw explosion thing is just human nature. It's species-normal. I wasn't touching on the transparency thing particularly here, though I've said elsewhere that any deliberation which doesn't absolutely have to be private, etc., in order to protect individual privacy, should be able to be seen. It would help the rest of us have a better understanding of the issues that arbs are dealing with, and the thought processes etc. of those things. It's the other side of the coin - we'd understand the arbs better, too.

Adding: another thing we could all consider is that, maybe, everybody's snapping point is the 100th total pillock (or the 100th instance of pillockry, divided by however many pillocks). In which case, even though our apparent irascibility is so different, depending on what we're all doing, then we'd all be doing exactly the same thing.

Oops, adding more (heh!) Kiefer has actually made an excellent and very insightful point there, which I hope nobody misses. At present, we seem to be giving the Civility Pillar more weight than the other four pillars put together. We seem to be having trouble prioritising. It seems that we're taking the civility issue far more seriously (and dealing with it far more harshly) than anything else – and it's the one of the pillars least likely to have an impact on the vast majority of people who come to the 'pedia for information, rather than to get involved behind the scenes.

We seem to lose sight of the fact that the prolific content-producer and defender is the chap or chapess who is most likely to be defending the sanctity of the other four pillars (all of which are to do with the quality of content); and then come down on them like a ton of bricks when they're actually reacting far less harshly to violations of those other four pillars than we are to their violation of the civility one. Weighting is important in how we deal with all this stuff. Pesky (talk) 08:36, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

With respect I would dispute that. For example an editor found civilly committing copyviolations has to amend their ways or will be blocked or banned far more quickly and with fewer defenders than an incivil editor who doesn't commit copyvio. Perhaps you have a point re NPOV, but in my view the current high profile of civility is partly because we can't agree on a definition of it and also because some of the community are more tolerant of breaches of that pillar than of other pillars. When did you last hear of a serial copyviolater being allowed to occasionally commit copyvio because they are polite? ϢereSpielChequers 10:46, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

To answer your last question about serial violators of copyright, I would refer to SandyGeorgia's discussions. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 11:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I've not followed this discussion, but saw my name in Kiefer's edit summary. I'm not sure what Kiefer is referring to, but absolutely we routinely have serial violaters of copyright at DYK, and their continued vios are not only accepted but defended by regulars there basically because they're nice guys and do a lot of work. Not sure if this response is on topic because I haven't read the whole thread. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

That's troubling. I'm not sufficiently engaged with DYK to dispute that, but I can remember times when admins have been found committing CopyVio and have resigned PDQ. Also I am very familiar with RFA, and I wouldn't recommend that any former copyviolater run there until at least a year after they stopped doing copyvio. And that's just one of the four pillars, Pesky's claim was that we were giving more weight to civility than to the other four "put together". I'm not convinced that we are giving it more weight than any of the others, let alone all of them together, far more discussion yes because we can't agree where to draw the boundary between civility and normal discourse. But not more weight. ϢereSpielChequers 22:37, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Re Pesky's point about groupthink and other concerns about panels of three; I can see a risk of groupthink if the same people always sit together in the same panels of three, so to clarify my proposal, each panel would be convened for a single case (panels of 4 would risk being deadlocked 2 2 and panels of 5 would be too large a proportion of the Arbs to make much difference). Shuffling the arbs so that each panel they serve on is likely to be unique would hopefully undermine groupthink. But the most effective ways to undermine groupthink would be to minimise secrecy and maximise interaction with the rest of the community. I accept that there is a risk that panels of three arbs could sometimes give anomalous results depending on who the three were. However this risk should be mitigated, hopefully more than mitigated, by the increased interaction with the community that should happen if each case has just three arbs. There are other ways such as sentencing guidelines to mitigate that randomness, but they tend to produce Groupthink. To some extent it is a tradeoff, groupthink does lead to consistency, whether that is consistently good or consistently bad. My hope is that panels of three would be less subject to "Arbthink" and more to the groupthink of the community. As to the point about editors with the same proportion of incivility being treated more harshly if they are more active, yes that's a fair observation, at least so far as individual incidents that don't merit a block. But there is some logic in that. Editors who are more active can normally be be expected to have a better understanding of the mores of our community, there is also the pragmatic point that if someone is warned and behaves themselves for long enough then the community is likely to treat the previous warning as moot. As a community we have a surprisingly short de facto statute of limitations. In the real world if I was to get 12 points on my license within three years I'd lose my license, with 35 month old points counting equally with brand new ones. On wikipedia we rarely worry about incidents from more than two years ago, and we certainly don't give them the same weight as recent ones. Of course that's tough on very active editors who fall foul of the Arbs, and probably means there are some incivil intermittent editors out there who fly below the radar. But I see that as a community problem rather than specifically an Arbcom one. If anything it reflects our heritage of formerly being a community with a high proportion of adolescents and teenagers; That has clearly been changing and with the greying of the pedia there is bound to be a re-evaluation - silver surfers being more fixed in their maturity level than the young. ϢereSpielChequers 10:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

While we are using legal analogies, the concept of civility itself has to be looked at: " [The law is not a general civility code for the American workplace" Oncale v. Sundowner (1998)]. it is important to prevent people from being abused and harassed, but it is near-impossible to keep people from having hurt feelings; no "civility" code can prevent that, as humans are so variable in their responses. Perhaps a better definition of what is sanctionable is, as the court said in Oncale, "behavior so objectively offensive as to alter the "conditions" of the victim's employment. Conduct that is not severe or pervasive enough to create an objectively hostile or abusive work environment-an environment that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive-is beyond [the law's] purview." Also, to play with WereSpielChequers' analogy, while perhaps our SOL on civility seems a bit too short to him/her (though two years seems plenty to me, particularly because we have a lot of young, maturing users), WP also has the opposite problem; we issue "life sentences" for misdemeanors -- even if you lose your driver's license for having too many points on your record, you usually DO get it back, eventually. On WP, your sins are, too often in practice, never forgiven (like the death penalty for DUI so popular in modern urban myth); scan any longtime user's RFA should you doubt me - I've seen very old stuff dredged up't actually do what they were accused of doing (or committed a much lesser "offense"), even if they didn even if the person is no longer doing whatever it was they allegedly once did, and even if they have agreed to not only reform but to seek additional help to keep them on the straight and narrow. WP also has a bad habit of continuing to condemn people for errors when their only ongoing "sin" is to keep their pride, but in doing so, to take minor pokes at the system: Our Good Friend Malleus has called someone a "c---" but never a true newbie; however, he does afflict the comfortable on a regular basis. My point? Civility is something that has to take into account the big picture. Sometimes people just have to be peeled off the ceiling, not slapped for civility. Montanabw^(talk) 20:34, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

To tangentialise slightly (following from WSC's comment on sentencing guidelines) I like the idea of alternative sentencing, if it can be done, particularly if there was some kind of automated way of monitoring it! WSC is also absolutely right about the biggest problem with the civility issue being definition, perception, and interpretation; I think the second-biggest problem is that we seem to be so polarised on the issue, with few people occupying the middle ground between tolerance of minor stuff (even repeated) and "Off with his head!" Montana's point about SOL for various sins is excellent, spot on. And so often the original sin is misremembered, or only partly remembered. People remember that Mr X got into a big row-type scuffle with a number of other people, but then forget that the "number of other people" were subsequently discovered to be socks, or violating something else (or both) and ended up banned / blocked / whatever. It's the "big row" that sticks in the memory, and the subject of ancient sins being dragged up at RfA is no new subject. On the subject of how we deal with incivility, Barack Obama made a very good point when he said: ""Laudable efforts to restrict speech can become a tool to silence critics or to oppress minorities. The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech." And Rowan Atkinson's speech at the "Reform Section 5" thingie should really be compulsory viewing. Transparency? The more, the better, for any number of excellent reasons. Pesky (talk) 05:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Temporary approval of checkuser status

Original statement

I suppose us non-Arbitrator checkusers should keep an eye on them, as a form of impartial oversight. That is not to say I do not trust them, however. --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 00:27, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes, experienced checkuser assistance would be appreciated. While steward-scrutineers do know how to run checkusers, the peculiarities of en.wiki, the functionality of SecurePoll, and the non-native language aspects all counsel help. MBisanz ^talk 00:30, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Curious, why do they have to be authorised to grant themselves a technical right? Don't they already have that right as stewards? Of course I understand that it's different from "having the right to do ___". Nyttend (talk) 01:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Long standing policy is that stewards in most instances need to be asked/approved by the local community to take action. In this case, arbcom, acting as the community's representatives have made the request/approval, and is now notifying the rest of the community. - jc37 01:05, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep Jc37, we are supposed to act as backup for local sysop/oversighters/checkusers/bureaucrat, only if needed ofc.

@Nyttend: currently we have no "universal" checkuser rights but we can self-assigned them on need. This method has been chosen for transparency (actually I don't like so much this system but it works...more or less) because it wouldn't have been impossible to track checks made on ~800 different wikis.--Vituzzu (talk) 01:10, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

No, sorry; I mean "why couldn't Arbcom simply say 'You're allowed to exercise the checkuser extension' or something like that". I'm not questioning the idea of getting local approval; I simply don't understand why you'd need to give yourself the checkuser right before exercising that local approval. Nyttend (talk) 01:29, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the steward flag is set up so that it gives checkuser access without a local CU flag, though I could be wrong. Courcelles 01:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

You're correct, Courcelles. We may, as a community, want to consider whether or not the use of CheckUser to examine votes is required in the future, although I don't propose to change things for this election. There is normally sufficient information in the SecurePoll data to determine whether or not there is socking happening; the community can also point out likely socks, and that would be the one exception that I could see. For the image filter referendum, we reviewed over 25,000 votes from dozens of projects, and didn't need to do a single checkuser. The bigger challenge for this time around is verifying sufficient edits, since there wasn't time to set up SecurePoll to prevent voting by those who did not meet the edit count criterion. Risker (talk) 01:42, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Right, the Steward right does not give technical access to the local Checkuser; the Steward must grant themselves a local CU flag to do a checkuser. I seem to recall from 2010 that Checkuser did catch one or two sets of abusive sockpuppets. It's worth examining though depending on how useful the Scrutineers find it. MBisanz ^talk 01:48, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Courcelles — thank you. I simply misunderstood, as I thought stewards had all userrights by default, not just the ability to grant all userrights. Nyttend (talk) 01:53, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't sure how this works either, actually, so it's good to have clarified. Newyorkbrad (talk) 05:07, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Nope, we only have the rights checked at meta:Special:GlobalGroupPermissions/steward and other automatic rights that everyone has (like the read right). MBisanz ^talk 18:01, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit count verification doesn't seem like a problem. Just put up a list of all the voters and someone can run a script that checks the edit counts. 66.127.54.40 (talk) 07:39, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Legoktm was helpful enough today to run such a query and we are moving along with the verification. MBisanz ^talk 07:51, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Instead of granting the rights to everyone right away [1], maybe it would have been better for each scrutineer to just set the flag themself if and when they need it. After all these are all users who are perfectly capable of assigning themselves the rights they need to do their job and removing them afterwards. It probably doesn't make much difference, but just a thought. Jafeluv (talk) 10:39, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Stewards only get to take checkuser on enwp in very specific circumstances and that log is the primary method of accountability. Having gotten the okay to use the bit for this purpose, I would think it cleaner and simpler to have the log show that as a single operation (they get the bits, they remove the bits once done). — Coren ^(talk) 14:12, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Announcement of changes in CheckUser status

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Prem Rawat 2

Original announcement

Arbitration motion regarding Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/SchuminWeb

Original announcement

Thank you for advising me of the results of this RfA. I believe that this solves the issue as, by his formal "Retirement" and statement posted on his user page, it seems that the subject Admin has made it clear that he has no intention to ever answer or participate in this Arbitration process thus constructively renouncing WP Adminship and indicating that he does not intend to contest being desysoped. Centpacrr (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

• Indeed, in light of the circumstances this seems like the path of least drama. The 2012 ArbCom can go out on a high note, as it were. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:58, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Jerusalem

Original announcement

thank you for posting this notice. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Changes to the Audit Subcommittee (AUSC)

Announcement

Yay! More work. MBisanz ^talk 00:46, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Minor request, can I have Checkuser back and be re-subscribed to the AUSC mailing list? It's the same info as my membership on func-en and oversight-l. Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 04:16, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Ooops. I've filed the paperwork on meta for you: [2] Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:39, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! MBisanz ^talk 05:42, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Advanced permission changes

Announcement

Changes to the Arbitration Committee

Announcement

• I'll go ahead and thank the outgoing Arbiters for their service. It is much appreciated. Eluchil404 (talk) 19:33, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
• Many thanks from me too for the work done by the outgoing arbitrators. It can be a bit of an adjustment to make (both ways) but they should all have our thanks and best wishes. Carcharoth (talk) 23:58, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration Clerks Seeking New Volunteers

Original Announcement

You might like to change the wording slightly

"opening, closing, passing and declining cases and motions;"

gives a slightly broader impression of a clerks job than is probably intended. Rich Farmbrough, 23:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC).

Looooooooool. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 23:15, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I've edited it a bit. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:21, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Archive time

The setting of an archive time of a talk page does not fall with the committee's responsibilities Wikipedia:Arbitration/Policy#Scope and responsibilities; so why should the community accept some off-wiki clerk-l discussion as valid for setting of the page archive time, especially when such setting conflicts with community approved guidelines? ArbCom, not GovCom. NE Ent 13:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

And by that same policy, the Committee's clerks are responsible for "management of all the Committee's pages and subpages", of which this is one. T. Canens (talk) 13:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

While the first change to the archive timing of this page has been done by Timotheus Canens as an Arbitrator and as such it could be argued that it does not fall within its powers but rather the clerks', the last change has been made by a clerk and as such it seems admissible on the above notion, tho I am not particularly sure of the relevant of this whole thing. Last I checked the parameter that has been changed means it's archived 10 days *after* the last comment has been made, and as such it is seems irrelevant. I however agree with the spirit that the Committee shouldn't retain ownership rights over the pages about it, especially those where no argument could be made for a pressing need for it. A reasonable argument can be made that Case pages and the like need strong management from the clerks, but I fail to see why the archiving time of the discussion page of a noticeboard is set following consensus on a private list by a limited subset of wikipedians. It does not bode well that the Committee and its clerks seem to use such mailing lists for so trivial a matter rather than openly discuss it here, as it seems much more appropriate and sound. While it does not surprise me any longer, it is however an indication of a forma mentis and default reasoning in which some of our most prominent wikipedians have fallen into, perhaps. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:01, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Do we really need to have an RFC on the trivial matter of the archive time of discussions which are finished in order to prevent a low-level edit war over the number of days? The clerks-l list is used for coordination between the clerks, so we had a short discussion there to gauge what we and the arbitrators thought would be an acceptable compromise between 3 days and 30. If the community wishes to micromanage every element of the routine housekeeping clerks perform, then I think I shall move on. --Alexandr Dmitri (talk) 14:30, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

If you have a beef about lack of transparency on this one, please bring it up with me instead of the Clerks as I asked them for their thoughts on the slow edit-warring that was taking place. I remind evryone that this very noticeboard - which was set up by ArbCom initiative and not by community request - was created to increase transparency and to provide opportunities for comment and feedback. Otherwise, I endorse what AlexandrDimitri has said. Do we reslly need GovCom accusations over something this trivial?  Roger Davies ^talk 14:47, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Nobody has suggested that a RFC is needed. I just fail to see why you couldn't held that discussion on-wiki so that any community member could give their $0.02, as there's no confidentiality or urgency in the matter, clearly, and it would have allowed consensus to develop, instead of having consensus thrust upon us from ML. That said, I don't see anything wrong with the actual change, but I would rather hear that the clerks and the arbitrators don't default to discussing even the most trivial of matters behind closed doors and invoking their rights to manage the Arbitration pages to enact a change. It's precisely because this matter is so trivial that I find it sad for clerks to discuss it on a private list and for arbitrators to invoke the right of clerk to arbitrarily manage pages. Unlike NE Ent, I agree that you have a right to do so. I just don't think that when you were given this right somebody expected you to exercise it to full effect for such a silly thing. I am however really saddened to hear you describe community input as "micro-managing" with a clearly negative accent put on it. This is a wiki, my friend. Community input is what we're here for, the whole everybody can edit, we all have to collaborate together. Surely a few pairs of extra eyes and a few extra minds commenting on an issue should be great news to you :) That doesn't make us right, but it does make us good wikipedians, trying to comment, change, discuss; the whole vibrancy and colorfulness of a Bazaar, not the monolithic top-down approach of the Cathedral. Surely you will agree with me that the wonderfulness and inspiring nature of this project lies in the great people we have here and in the ability of everyone of us to speak our mind and contribute to the place :) Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 14:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

NE Ent, could you possibly have picked a more pointless and insignificant nit to pick and make drama about? The archiving delay of a noticeboard talk page? Really? — Coren ^(talk) 14:36, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• This thread is undoubtedly the most insignificant thing I've seen on Wikipedia since the Userbox Wheel War. AGK [•] 14:42, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

(e.c.) Actually, I think the point was about AlexandrDmitri adding a note that the archiving time can't be changed without permission of ArbCom, not about it being 10 days. Surely having a discussion here rather than coming to a decision on a mailing list (you know, the ones for stuff the community can't see) and then decreeing ArbCom untouchability to the conclusion would have been sensible? The archive time issue itself is totally trivial, but the impression being created regarding inclusive v. authoritarian approaches is disappointing. EdChem (talk) 14:48, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

EdChem, he didn't say that at all. He said "do not change without discussion". Roger Davies ^talk 14:59, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Roger, the context of the instruction is a statement that the setting was made by Arb and Clerk discussion. To me, that indicates the discussion required and it does not indicate that community views are welcome. Maybe I have watched ArbCom too long, but I would not violate an instruction like this because I believe ArbCom over-reacts at times to anything they perceive as an affront. I accept that you might view the notice as meaning that change by community consensus is acceptable, and I hope you can accept that others' views of the meaning of the instruction may differ from yours. EdChem (talk) 16:02, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure, though your response is somewhat loaded as well. Speculation based on perceived sub-texts, rather a discussion of actual text, is rarely constructive. Everyone ends up constantly bickering like old married couples, with even the most innocuous remarks coming with baggage.  Roger Davies ^talk 08:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Wait, one second. Are we really discussing this? I'd have to agree with AGK. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 14:53, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Facepalm --Rschen7754 08:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, this looks quite ridiculous. What looks the most ridiculous of all is two things: First, that Editors (most of all Arbs and Clerks?!) pile up in here to bash a user's question. Second, that someone says "do not change without discussion" but then when there is a start up discussion it is shut down as ridiculous, nitpicking, and micro-management... If you do not want a discussion, say so; But if you suggest a possible discussion, then discuss it. Or not, but do not go after the one doing as you asked. Damn, this IS ridiculoius, but it is not the other one which is ridiculous, it is YOU (and me, quite likely, that should be out shopping for groceries instead of here). Oh, I think that 10 days is a good period, and I think stopping that slo-mo-revert-war is a good thing. Wouldn't hurt either if someone made a one line summary of the reason to set it to 10 days. I think it is a fine period has it allows for weekend editors to keep in touch if they which to, while keeping the page mostly fresh. - Nabla (talk) 11:06, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
• I agree with NE Ent, Nabla, EdChem, and Snowolf. The actual action isn't a concern. The concern is the thought process of the people taking that action and the fear of the next action that said thought process could produce. I strongly agree with Nabla's point that once discussion starts it is kicked around. Really sad really. It just makes another worrying thought process worth discussing.--v/r - TP 15:29, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

NE's replies

Background

My understanding of the situation was bold edit [3], revert [4], discussion, followed by [5]. This hardly qualifies as an "edit war."

I've since realized there was an intentional edit by a clerk [6] -- which I missed as the edit summary did not mention a change of archive time -- followed by another revert [7]. Had I realized Lord Roem (talk · contribs) has taken action I would have not limited my discussion TC's talk page. NE Ent 18:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Importance:Transparency

The time setting of the archive of this page is trivia of little importance. On the other hand, per Wikipedia specific, published peer-reviewed research:

The authors note the importance of transparent interactions in spaces like talk pages, and note that "the reported use of interaction channels outside the Wikipedia platform (e.g., e-mail) is a cause for concern, as these channels limit involvement and reduce transparency." Citing Ostrom's governance principles, they note that "ensuring participation and transparency is crucial for maintaining the stability of self-governing communities."
— Signpost

Similarly, usage guidelines for the admin IRC channel explicitly state: "However, it is not an alternative to on-wiki debate, and is not intended to shortcut or replace good discussion elsewhere."
I'll add my own observation that there is a small but significant number of Wikipedia editors and observers who hold and advocate a Protocols of the Elders of Wikipedia viewpoint. While I don't believe in such conspiracy theories, and do not consider engaging in conversation with such folks a good use of my time, the more off-wiki stuff that happens the more fuel that is added to the conspiracy fires.
Given the recent arbcom-l incident(s), the ArbCom community should be very sensitive to use and misuse of off-wiki discussions.
Obviously cases involving privacy matters must be discussed off-wiki. Additionally I understand that off-wiki discussion, compromise, and negotiation of wording of case and motion language will be frequently beneficial to allow spirited free discussion among the committee.

In regards to the importance -- given there are relatively important functions that no one but the committee can perform -- are you really that under worked that worrying about an archive setting is worth your time? At some point ya'll might get a Civility Enforcement type case that could (or should) chew up lots of your personal time -- I sincerely encourage not to waste whatever portion of your life you have set aside for wiki-time on trivia.

So I'll turn Coren's question around: could the committee have picked a less trivial topic to not discuss on-wiki? NE Ent 18:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Clearly, judging by the number of electrons already wasted here on what took all of a dozen one-liner email most of which read something along the lines of "Sure, 10 seems about right."

The bikeshed problem is no joke, and noticeboards are especially vulnerable to it. I'm certainly not going to encourage long drawn-out discussions over trivial page management questions that nobody should worry about. — Coren ^(talk) 22:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Actually I am not at all against the ArbCom, I have no grudge, no bad past with it (quite the opposite). But if you get secretive and, most of all, rude about trivial matters, it is natural that some will suspect of your overall actions. Why not a short, simple, polite reply (say 'oh! come on, this is trivial, so we talked about it and 10 days simply felt ok because of (whatever-one-sentence-long), feel free to suggest something else, but please let's not go on changing it a few days back and forth' or whatever like that)? That would certainly not appease everybody, but it would certainly be good enough for me. Also if Lord Roem's edit was made out in the open, with a proper edit summary, it would be better. Done undercover as it was - probably unintentional, sure - it even look like a bad faith change (and that is why I reverted promptly). Also note, that trivial simple things are important not only because we simpletons can not understand anything beyond the bikeshed color, but because if the issue is not important then you are not doing things in a somehow forced circunstances, but simply because you think that is the way to go. - Nabla (talk) 23:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

My apologies for not noting the archive change in the edit summary; I overlooked it as I was in the process of posting the motion. Best, Lord Roem ~ (talk) 05:06, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Nabla: it doesn't follow that list discussions are motivated by secrecy. Usually, it's just the quickest way of flagging something for peoplke to take a look at. On the more substantive point, this discussion got off on the wrong foot because positions rapidly polarised. For information, here's text I was going to post when an edit conflict and additional trenchant comment intervened Hmmm. What the note says is "do not change without discussion". So, if you believe ten days is wrong, why not initiate the invited discussion? Also, out of interest, what kind of strong management of case pages would you think is appropriate? What sort of things do you think need managing? Stuff of peripheral relevance? Coatracking? Incivility (as if we'd get consensus)? It would be great if people discussed things dispassionately but on this page, human nature being what it is, that is probably impossible. Roger Davies ^talk 08:42, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

[@both] Thanks. Hey, if we were dispassionate about WP then it would really be in trouble :-) - Nabla (talk) 15:05, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Supplementary notes

With regards to the suggestion I am "creating drama": The oyster makes the pearl.

I find Roger's comment "I remind everyone that this very noticeboard ... was created to increase transparency and to provide opportunities for comment and feedback" in a context where I'm being criticized for providing feedback for non-transparent actions most ironic. NE Ent 18:24, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Many people will probably find it ironic that you found ironic my response to a situation that I found ironic.  Roger Davies ^talk 08:45, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

OK there are three issues here, by addressing them we can deal wit the issues and save electrons

1. Archive time. This is trivia, 3 days was to short, maybe 30 was to long. I don't care much if it is 10, 20 or 30 (though the argument for 20 seems to have merit) and I suspect most people don't. Unless we have conflict over this there should be no need for discussion. If there's conflict, lets have a discussion.
2. HTML comment. Per the above, leave it to normal WP processes. I would be grateful if clerk or arb could simply remove the comment.
3. Off wiki discussion. Happens all the time - but the Arb and Clerking mailing lists are private. They should only deal with private matters, not election tactics, not how some editors are "pompous", not anything that can be done on-wiki. Simples. Be nice to have acknowledgement of that from functionaries.

Rich Farmbrough, 18:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC).

Arbitration motion regarding Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough

Announcement

It would be rather helpful if the committee could clarify the basis for why they have vacated this finding. As in, was it that the arbitrators had drawn the wrong conclusion from the evidence presented to them? Or has further evidence been made available to the committee that has made them change their mind? I'm not expecting the full gory details, but if a committee vacates a finding of fact, I think editors have good reason to be provided with broad reasons why that decision was made. —Tom Morris (talk) 03:11, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Rather helpful is the outcome - can you not just read the story and get the point without wanting a worthless wikispeak label sticking on it - Youreallycan 03:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

@Tom: The finding of fact was vacated because a second thorough study of the evidence provided enough context to consider that the original finding of fact wasn't completely a fact. At least that's my personal assessment of the motion. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 03:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, editors shouldn't have to interpret and explain arbitration decisions to users with advanced permissions - Youreallycan 03:35, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Do we really need to be so snippy? There is close to 300 KB (307,000ish characters of text and markup) of formal-post-case arguments before the committee since the case closed eight months ago as well as an equal amount of informal discussion. This motion is a descendent of much of that discussion. It is only natural that someone who hasn't been closely watching arbcom would be confused by the backstory. No harm; no foul. --Guerillero | My Talk 04:05, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

If I'm being accused of not having kept up with ArbCom minutiae, then I have to plead guilty as charged. Part of the reason we have clerks and noticeboards and announcements on WP:AN is so that editors who aren't obsessive ArbCom watchers can have a basic idea of what's going on. —Tom Morris (talk) 04:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

This is my own personal interpretation -- totally unofficial:

• There was some irregularity in the passing of the prior revision to the finding.
• There wasn't 100% agreement on whether all the unblocks were copacetic or not.
• The finding wasn't particularly important to the rest of the case, and it wasn't going to be a good use of time to work through a discussion to come to consensus on what the exact wording should be.

To get a more accurate and detailed understanding of the committees edit please see Wikipedia talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Rich Farmbrough#Arbitrator views and discussion 4 NE Ent 13:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

That is pretty much exactly it. — Coren ^(talk) 00:24, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Concur with Coren. Carcharoth (talk) 06:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Revision

By vacating the revised finding, does this mean that they've gone back to the original finding? Or does it mean that they've completely gotten rid of #8? Nyttend (talk) 04:15, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

As far as I understand, they are getting rid of it. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 04:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

That is correct. Reading the page version at the link associated with the word 'motion' in the announcement should make things clearer (the original link takes you direct to motion 3, the link I've provided leaves you at the top of that page version). Four motions were posted for voting. One passed ahead of the other three. Looking at the arbitrator comments on all four motions should make it moderately clear what was going on. Carcharoth (talk) 07:05, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Next steps

I sense a limited appetite from the committee for more amendments, however I also see little other way forward. Coren has suggested an appeal (presumably to Jimbo but to whom? ), and Roger an "omnibus motion". Both of these require a huge amount of work up front, with no guarantee of any positive result.

There is also the repeated refrain about having the wrong mindset. The "what we have here is an attitude problem" contingent.

Firstly I want to make it very clear that I find this approach Orwellian and deeply disturbing.

Secondly I think it misses the point. Parties to the case cited responsiveness, and leaving errors unfixed. I built a system which allows accurate tracking of responsiveness, and clear up of errors. I also proposed a remedy which would have compelled me to fix problem edits brought to my attention. Now to me this remedy was not onerous, because I believe I was already being responsive and fixing errors: To my critics it gave them what they said they wanted on a plate. This was not welcomed but rather ignored by both the critics and the new drafting admin, in favour of blocks and bans.

Previously proposed remedy
If Rich Farmbrough fails to make good faith attempts to reasonably fix systemic errors introduced by his editing then he may be restricted from continuing the task that caused the errors, or commencing any new tasks until the problem is resolved. Breaking this restriction would be considered blockable.

Assuming we can get these personal attacks based on my "attitude" out of the way I would be interested in any suitable proposal to vacate the rest of the decision that won't involve the amount of work and time that this has. Rich Farmbrough, 23:07, 6 January 2013 (UTC).

This is my personal opinion, as an arbitrator, on the applicable policies and practice. This may help you to put events in context and give you some insight into the way the Committee often views things.

• Arbitration cases are the "final binding solutions" specified in policy. They are the last stage in community process, so that lines can be drawn under intractable disputes.
• Arbitration cases are not a legal process and their focus is not the administration of justice. Instead, the objective is usually providing the means by which the work of building an encyclopedia may continue with the least disruption for the largest number of people. For this reason, decisions often require people to disengage completely from the area/s of conflict.
• If you disagree with the final decision, you may - within reason - request amendment. However, the amendment process is not a vehicle for substantially re-writing the final decision. Additionally, we may require a minimum period to elapse between amendment requests, usually to ensure that our limited resources are reasonably and proportionately allocated.
• You may appeal the remedies to Jimbo: to reach his decision, he has in the past looked at the case overall to see whether the remedies are fitting and proportionate.
• You may also ask the committee to reconsider: the committee has in the past been persuaded by assurances that the user has accepted the feedback that the final decision provides and moved on, and wishes to have a second chance.

I hope this is helpful,  Roger Davies ^talk 03:42, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the feedback is in the findings of fact 2-8. We have demonstrated that 1/7 of feedback is wrong. I am pleased therefore that I did not accept that wrong feedback. Of the remaining FoF, 4 FoF are wrong, and 2 are misleading, all are unhelpful. There has been at least one previous case where the committee withdrew its entire decision in 2010 I think, quite apart from the Orange Marlin case a little further back. Rich Farmbrough, 07:00, 7 January 2013 (UTC).

Which 4 FoFs are wrong? 12.22.139.195 (talk) 03:25, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

I have a friend who is a barrister, and this reminds me a of a story he once told about applying for leave to appeal a case in the High Court (you cannot appeal as of right to the high court, they only allow cases that have special importance/legal significance). The opening exchange went something like this:

<Barrister> Your honour, this case should be heard before the court, because frankly, it is blatantly wrong, and a travesty of justice.

<Justice> Mr Synden, since when has that ever been a reason for leave to appeal to the Court?

(long story short, he did manage to get leave to appeal, but that's irrelevant here)

The point that the Justice makes is an important one. There has to be a point where you draw a line in the sand and say stop. Even if the decision is wrong. Otherwise where does it end?

I would say that we've reached that point here. --Chris 04:16, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

As I have stated in the past I still consider the sanctions against Rich to be a net loss to the pedia and every day that he and his bots are not editing, the pedia is losing out. To this point tens of thousands of needed edits aren't being done. I think that the majority of the complaints against Rich were unfounded and were mostly the same three or four users hounding him. I also think this whole sanction is a knee jerk reaction to satisfy too few editors and ended up putting the work on those of us that were willing to do it after Rich and his bots were banned. Edits that those editors that wanted him sanctioned and blocked were mostly unwilling to do by the way. Some of the bot tasks still have not been duplicated even after multiple requests on the bot requests page by multiple editors.

@ Chris, it only ends when the best possible thing for the project is accomplished. That is not this sanction. Kumioko (talk) 04:20, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Very well, I sincerely wish you guys good luck -- I too want what is best for the project. That said, here's my prediction: All this will result in is, walls of text, wasted time and a solution no one is happy with. --Chris 04:57, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Chris G, there are no solutions that everyone is happy with (and I grant that as a general line taken by the Arbitration Committee) - there are however solutions that do draw a line in the sand (like the current solution also does), but that do make a lot more people happy. The current solution is not that solution (in fact, it is not a solution). --Beetstra (public) (Dirk Beetstra^{T C} on public computers) 06:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding User:Hex

Announcement

During the RfAr and prior AN discussions, Floq, Hex, DHeyward and I discussed the possibility of Hex restricting his use of the block button to cases of obvious vandalism and spamming. In the end, Hex agreed to not use it at all for a year.

There is a lot of discussion on user talk at the moment about inappropriate blocks, and a succession of threads beginning at Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy#Blocking policy alterations. Accurately diagnosing and dealing sensitively and effectively with anything but the simplest behaviour problems demands good social sensibility, intelligence and wisdom. This mix of traits is rarely found in the average person, and more rarely found here. Most of us recognise that RfA is broken; that it is not a good process for determining whether a person has these traits; and that we frequently give the block button to people constitutionally unfit for deciding when to use the block button. (I have no idea whether or not Hex fits that category, his may simply be a case of inexperience.)

Would you please consider, where appropriate, in future cases, restricting the use of the block button by some admins?

(Slightly off-topic for this board but ...) The community needs to decide whether automatically giving the block button to editors who have a genius for page protection, RevDel or AfD is really such a good idea. I think not. The block button needs to be treated as different from other admin permissions because the effects of blocking a content editor can't be undone like a bad RevDel.

Kww said in the abovelinked blocking policy discussion, arguing in favor of the Judge Dredd approach (him deciding who's the trouble-maker on an article talk page, rather than protecting the article), "Saying 'you can't edit until you agree to stop edit-warring on article x' shouldn't be a major problem. It's generally resolved within hours, and quite painless." In expressing this sentiment, or lack of sentiment, he enunciates nicely the problem. He and a number of other socially incompetent admins don't even know about the emotional impact of a block - particularly an unjust block - on content editors. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Struck per User_talk:TParis#Whining. 04:01, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Peter principle. If WP is an auto factory Rfa is "Hey, you just proved you can build a car. Now we'll let you mop the floor." NE Ent 04:11, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Before I respond to your question, Anthony, please remove the (as far as I can see) unprovoked personal attack towards Kww from your comments at once. Thank you.

Now then. I do thank Hex for agreeing to a voluntary restriction in this manner, as I do believe it helped diffuse and resolve this situation much more amicably; had he not, I doubt that a case would have been opened anyway in the lack of evidence showing a pattern of misuse of the block button and/or other misconduct (such as that at AN), but in doing so he helped to reassure the community that such an incident will not recur and at the same time more-or-less gave those calling for a desysopping what they actually wanted. As to whether ArbCom would forcibly prevent someone from using a particular facet of the admin tools... I'm not sure. I know we have in the past forbade admins from undertaking actions with respect to a particular topic area and/or user; this more-or-less amounts to a topic ban, something that is routinely done by both ArbCom and the community at large. I do not think, however, that we have forbade any admin from using any particular tool project-wide before. Nor do I think it is terribly likely in the future. Doing so creates a "partial admin;" a notion which has been proposed to and rejected by the community on a number of occasions. Our project's adminship is set up in such a way that for the community to grant a user access to the tools means they are trusting that user to use all of the tools appropriately and knowledgeably in all situations, or at the least recognize when they lack the knowledge or ability to use the tools appropriately in a particular situation, and then refrain from their use. Our community has made clear on several occasions that they see the admin tools as an all-or-nothing setup; for ArbCom to overrule this and impose our own definition of what a particular administrator can and cannot do would be, I believe, a violation of the community's trust in us.

Anyway, this was a long version of me saying that I personally would not support any motion to deny access to the block button from an administrator without removing the rest of their tools... at least, until the community demonstrates that they as a whole would support such a notion. If individual administrators take it upon themselves to restrict their own use of the tools, that is their decision, and one that the community has trusted them to make wisely. Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 04:33, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I've removed my commentary on Kww. I came back here to do that, actually, without having seen your comment, because it was redundant, and would likely generate unnecessary heat, not because it is a personal attack, whatever that is. We need to be able to discuss frankly and openly the merits and demerits of, particularly, our admins and arbitrators. I have to go out again so will read the remainder of your comment when I get back. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Anthony, looks like some of that commentary is still there as I write this :P

Hersfold, regarding "Our community has made clear on several occasions that they see the admin tools as an all-or-nothing setup", I'm not sure that the community is so clear about that any more, and I think there would be wide support for Anthony's suggestion. I certainly see it as sensible - the problem of block-happy administrators, as it relates to community morale, community calm and editor retention (and thus, just tangentially, encyclopedia-building), is far more important than the rather detached meta-principle of administrator toolsets being monolithic. Arbcom frequently clashes with the will of the community on all sorts of matters; I suggest this could be an example of arbcom actually doing what the community wants. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 05:20, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm back. Yes, I deleted the redundant introductory comment. Kww's own words make it very plain he's not socially sensible enough to be trusted with blocking anyone but very obvious spammers and vandals, and this is a necessary example that clarifies the point of my comment here. Contrary to Hersfold's apparent belief, it is permitted to discuss the competencies of admins and arbitrators. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:53, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's still there. It would be nice if Anthonycole would actually read the whole discussion, and recognize that the quoted statement was in regard to editors that had already been previously warned about the edit war or blocked for edit-warring and were continuing to edit-war. Those editors can be presumed to know full well what our policies on edit-warring are and what to expect when they are violated. Understanding that when such editors begin edit-warring again that warnings aren't useful is actually a sign of cognitive skill on my part, and not a lack of social sensibility. If editors don't want to be be blocked for edit-warring, then not edit-warring is a first and necessary step.—Kww(talk) 06:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I read the whole discussion. You have, sadly, missed the point. and I suspect you're constitutionally incapable of getting it Blocking content editors hurts them. It is not painless. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:12, 8 January 2013 (UTC) Struck per User talk:TParis#Whining. 04:05, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

This is being discussed elsewhere? It would be better to make a statement here stating how the discussion elsewhere relates to this arbitration action, and then link to the other discussion and invite participation there from here. As opposed to dragging the discussion over there, to here. Carcharoth (talk) 07:36, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

The question of whether ArbCom should, where appropriate, restrict the use of the block button by some admins is not, to my knowledge, being discussed elsewhere. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

So the entire post above can be collapsed to "Would you please consider, where appropriate, in future cases, restricting the use of the block button by some admins?"? This noticeboard talk page isn't really the right place to ask that. Having said that, I'm not entirely sure where the right place to ask would be. It is, as Hersfold notes, something you would likely need to propose somewhere to get community consensus on it (hint: starting such a discussion is only the starting point, you need to publicise it widely enough that enough people take part that the change sticks and isn't reverted when people previously unaware of the discussion start turning up and objecting to it). And then take things from there. I doubt we (ArbCom) will (or should) unilaterally start changing practice without such a discussion. And here is not really the right place for that discussion. Carcharoth (talk) 08:18, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I am addressing the question to you (plural), and this appears to be the right place for that. I'm unaware of anything that would prevent you from acting on this request, should you wish to. Can you please point me to what constrains you? There's a lot of policy here that I haven't read. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:37, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Would anyone mind if I moved this text to Wikipedia talk:Blocking policy? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:13, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Probably best to copy it.  Roger Davies ^talk 08:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Done. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:14, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

With due respect to Carcharoth (he said,to warn of impending criticism ;)), this is hand-wringing nonsense that simply wastes the community's time and dooms us to another round of drawn-out process and policy discussions to deal with a very small matter. I'm not making comment on the Hex situation, or even as to whether issuing admin blocking prohibitions would be a good idea; but the idea that Arbcom would need a community endorsement to consider this is absurd. Arbcom is elected with a mandate to resolve disputes the community can't handle and has traditionally been given a fairly wide latitude as how to do that. Arbcom has, over the years, used a number of remedy types and reflected and refined its own ideas of which ones work and which ones don't - it has a latitude to experiment. We had civility paroles (now disused), short-term sysop suspensions (now disused), developing usage of topic bans, growing use of discretionary sanctions, and plenty of other cases of remedy evolution and experimentation. The notion that Arbcom could not decide to instruct an admin not to use a certain tool seems, frankly, limp. Yes, the Community has rejected "partial admins" - but that was largely about creating a whole class of differentiated user-rights, not about exceptional remedial situations. (I'm not saying it is a good idea, only that Arbcom have a clear mandate to take a view on that - and experiment if they see the justification. And, of course listen to Community feedback.). Further, I'm not sure this is about the "blocking policy" it could apply equally to deletion, undeletion, or page protections too.--Scott Mac 09:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

We have restricted admins from tool use in the past (I've been trying to find examples); and placed them under mentoring. They're just other types of routine ArbCom sanction, along with topic bans and so on. If an admin were placed under several such rstrictions, the point comes where it might be better to desysop, because their credibility as a sysop is shot. This, I suppose, could lead to situations where admins are desysopped for a string of conduct issues which wouldn't normally individually normally justify it. This has parallels with admin admonitions. If an admin accumulates a couple of admonishments, they are usually desysopped on the third.  Roger Davies ^talk 09:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Yup. I'm not saying it is a good idea - I'm just saying that it clearly lies within your prerogative as a Committee. Once we say that you need a community mandate even to consider such innovation (as is suggested here), then we tie your hands in regard to a myriad of possible remedial solutions - and arbitration disposal becomes moribund rather than flexible and situation responsive.--Scott Mac 11:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I, for one, agree with Scott Mac and I'd be willing to support restricting admins from using part of their toolset. I am not talking about this case, where I believe anything more serious than an admonishment was not appropriate; but, speaking in general, yes, it would be a good idea. It fits well with my idea that when a plurality of remedies are all suitable to stop the disruption an editor is causing, only the least onerous one should be imposed. Clearly, when applying such a restriction, ArbCom should be careful not to surreptitiously strip an admin of all of his tools, because that would amount to a de facto desysop, but, if used with caution, this would be a very good sanction to add to our arsenal. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 14:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Please consider this a gentle reminder: Toolset, not arsenal -- it's supposed to be a website, not a battleground. Probably easy for the committee to forget since you see a skewed sample of editors. NE Ent 14:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

My mother tongue got in the way... In Italian, arsenale sanzionatorio (arsenal of sanctions) is a term of art referring to the array of sanctions a given body may impose. That said, your words convey a sense of condescension. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 19:40, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

In American English it means guns, grenades, missiles and bombs. Condescension wasn't intentional and have therefore struck comment. NE Ent 20:16, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm American, and I use the phrase "arsenal" quite often to refer to what Salvio was referring to. More often than "toolset". Maybe it's just a dialect thing. (X! · talk)  · @928  ·  21:15, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, it's primary and secondary meanings are military according to our sister project wikt:arsenal, at least ... NE Ent 21:27, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for striking, it's much appreciated. That said, unfortunately, since English is just my second language, sometimes you'll all have to tolerate weird choices of words on my part; I promise I'll try to keep them to a minimum. (Seriously, I apologise in advance for similar misunderstandings I should cause in future.) Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 21:41, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I've commented on this on the blocking policy talkpage. Bottom line as explained there, the fact that the Committee hasn't (as far as I recall) done this before suggests it will never be a common scenario, but I don't see any reason to rule it out a priori as a possible remedy in an appropriate case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:45, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the Committee has innovated before, so it could again. Discretionary sanctions were at one point not a "common scenario", and that didn't mean they couldn't become one. I don't think you need to bind yourself here at all. You'll do what seems right and reasonable in each case, the fact that you've not done this before simply indicates current thinking - and that may or may not continue to be the case. (If one thinks it a bad idea now then hopefully the Committee will continue to think it a bad idea, but your (and future Committees') mileage may vary.)--Scott Mac 19:57, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you. If in a given future case it seems to be the most logical and proportionate disposition, we can vote it. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:10, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for removal of adminship process

• Wikipedia:Requests for removal of adminship

A Request for Comment on a proposal to create a new process to allow for removal of adminship through community discussion. I'm posting here as this includes arbcom. I welcome everyone's thoughts on this. - jc37 21:30, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles

Announcement

Interestingly enough, the 3 closers were all recent ArbCom candidates - 2 of them got over 50% support; the other is the non-admin Pgallert. Is there any reason for these 3 specific candidates, and not the others? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:13, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

That was a coincidence. AGK's comment in the motion voting goes into more detail as to how they were chosen, but the short of it is that we simply tossed around names on the mailing list as to who we would feel comfortable with and the final list happened to be composed of candidates from ACE2012. I wouldn't be averse to trying a new system for this in the future, such as people nominating themselves to be called for the task well ahead of time, but that would be predicated on, well, people actually being willing to do so. NW (Talk) 12:40, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Speaking personally and based on my experience over time, I believe that administrators and other editors who have actively demonstrated an interest in dispute resolution and/or the Arbitration Committee are a good fit for tasks such as this. It can also help those editors to decide if they are interested in taking a more active role in dispute resolution (as an arbitration enforcement administrator, a mediator or even an arbitrator). In the case of these three, they demonstrated their interest in the recent Arbcom elections. Risker (talk) 13:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

It's a coincidence, but not a surprising one: when considering people who (a) have shown a desire and aptitude towards dispute resolution and (b) who hold a measure of community respect, people who have run for ArbCom will bubble up naturally. — Coren ^(talk) 13:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Some not all. NE Ent 15:58, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I mean, of course, that the profile of editors being considered aligns closely with the profile of editors who'd run for Arbcom; not that anyone who runs for Arbcom fits that profile. — Coren ^(talk) 02:05, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

New Trainee Clerks

Original Announcement

• Congratulations to our 2014 Arbs then! Sven Manguard Wha? 05:00, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
• My condolences to the new unpaid civil servants. Good luck with your work. MBisanz ^talk 12:45, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Changes in Advanced Permissions - 15 January 2013

Original Announcement

Extra appreciation here for the mini-biographies! – Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 21:32, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

BASC: Asgardian appeal

Original announcement

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.

---

Two questions

1. Log says year banned was extended to indef by KnightLago (talk · contribs) -- was that via WP:AE? If not, what was the context of the extension?
2. Where does the committee want the discussion to take place? Here? WP:AN? NE Ent 23:22, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

   As to question 1, I do not know, perhaps someone who was on the Committee then will remember. As to 2, here is usually where these things are done. Courcelles 23:33, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

   Per case, using a sock to evade the ban. Apteva (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

   Here will do (though who to notify of this discussion is not quite clear yet). It is worth making the point that this is a consultation, a solicitation of views, not the actual appeal itself. That is still being handled by ArbCom. But we want to get the views of others as well. Remember that most appeals are summarily declined (for various reasons), so only appeals that have a chance of success tend to get this far. Carcharoth (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Noting here for the record (out of chronological order, but it should be near the top of the discussion) that SilkTork notified 14 editors of this discussion. I think that list is based on criteria related to the case (or some criteria involving edit-warring, per the notice left) and whether those editors are still active or not, but SilkTork will be able to clarify that. Whether others should also be notified is, as I said above, not clear. Ideally, a notice would be left on Asgardian's talk page, so anyone who has that watchlisted would become aware of this discussion related to Asgardian's appeal. Carcharoth (talk) 01:10, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

• Basically the proposal of the BASC appears reasonable. A probation of three months was requested, BASC effectively extended that to a year, which is more realistic. Mandatory mentoring has not had a good track record, a voluntary mentor is basically what was suggested, and certainly could help. The subject area being edited is what I classify as the 99% of Wikipedia that is not useful, but obviously it is useful to others. Even one edit a week is better than none, if it is constructive and helpful. Most banned editors actually would make some constructive edits that are lost by banning them. Apteva (talk) 23:35, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• The proposed terms is potentially confusing. How long would restriction 1 be in force for? If the terms can be removed from the talk page after 1 year, does that mean any or all of the restrictions will no longer be in place after that? KTC (talk) 23:52, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
• In Asgardian's appeal he made some comments regarding his attitude toward those he edit warred with over the four years he was active on Wikipedia. He has been asked to clarify those comments as the majority of those he edit warred with are still active on Wikipedia. He has not yet responded, and it might be worth asking him to respond directly here so the community, and in particular those he warred with, can assess his attitude today in comparison to that of 2006-2010. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 00:07, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
• I don't think this is someone who can change. He'd argue nonstop with everyone, refusing to listen to consensus, no matter how many people disagreed with him on what should be or not be in an article. He edit warred on various comic book articles. Will he now be able to return to those same comic book articles and continue his same method of editing? Dream Focus 00:45, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

The appeal has not yet been granted. It is still under discussion, as are the terms if the appeal is granted. A topic ban on comics might be worth considering. After reviewing his contributions, his block record, the two ArbCom cases, and that he persistently evaded restrictions and bans, I am not positive toward this user. However, people can change. I have some hesitations regarding his appeal request and have asked him for clarification on two points; however, I am alone in this - the other Committee members who have given an opinion, have accepted his appeal as a sign that he has changed his attitude. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 00:55, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Asgardian should not unblocked unless he is willing to participate in a discussion about his previous behavior, in which he is willing to give direct answers to critical questions regarding his serial violation of WP:OWN, WP:EDITWAR and other policies, his ad hominem attacks upon his critics, and the deceptive manner in which he dismissed criticism of his behavior. If he is willing to do this, then I am willing to welcome him back into the community. If he is not, then the block should not be lifted. None of the three suggested restrictions would address the problem of his previous behavior if he continues to refuse acknowledge that he exhibited said behavior, or if he refuses to acknowledge specifics. Moreover, these suggestions are either redundant or irrelevant to the problems he created for the community. Being logged into his main account, for example, was never a salient issue. And compliance with policy is implicit in all editing by all editors, so if an editor is dead set on not doing so, or on not acknowledging that he has failed to do so, then stating that he will comply with policy is meaningless. Similarly, assigning a mentor to him would be ineffective if the mentor assigned is one of the editors who previously enabled him because they were not able to separate the wheat from the chaff, or not committed to opposing his behavior decisively. He should only be unblocked following an involved discussion in which he is willing to answer for his previous behavior. I want to make clear that this is not vindictiveness or a desire to punish on my part; Asgardian is capable of good writing and editing, but his narcissistic belief that he was the only editor capable of maintaining the articles in which he took an interest, and the disregard for the rest of the community with which this belief manifested itself, made it impossible to collaborate with him. If he is willing to not merely assert that he no longer harbors this belief, but acknowledge certain things about his past behavior and statement, then I would favor welcoming him back. Nightscream (talk) 00:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't say lightly that his return would invite chaos. I tried many times to be encouraging to him and to support his better instincts, as did several other editors, and it invariably blew up in our faces. The amount of wasted time devoted to edit-war notifications, mediation, arbitration and — and this is something that particularly bothered me — disingenuous and actually dishonest discussion on his part was enormous. (See the reference immediately above to "the deceptive manner in which he dismissed criticism of his behavior.") It saddens me to say that some people, here and in the outside world, are recidivists, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. I add my voice to those who oppose his reinstatement. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Possibly. But I would like to give him the opportunity to prove that suspicion wrong. Nothing to lose by offering that opportunity, and I would gratified if it were indeed proven wrong..Nightscream (talk) 01:03, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I.E. they would need to be unblocked so that they could discuss here? Apteva (talk) 01:30, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I must disagree with the suggestion that we have "nothing to lose." Over the years, too much time and effort have been wasted by too many people because of Asgardian's relentless edit warring. We can lose more WikiProject Comics editors who get so frustrated over having to go through this all over this that they quit Wikipedia. Doczilla _STOMP! 10:37, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

He has done many condensing to some of the media appearances of specific Marvel Comics characters which he edit warred with me. When he was blocked, I was able to undo the condensing that he caused. Maybe we should allow him another chance to see things that we have been doing the Marvel Comics characters that he had condensed. I say that one of you should notify him and have him take part in this discussion. Rtkat3 (talk) 8:05, January 22 2013 (UTC)

I have to agree with everything Tenebrae said and oppose reinstating Asgardian. He was given more chances to fix his behavior than I thought he deserved, and he continually showed that he would cause problems. Spidey104 02:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I oppose this whole-heartedly. It's both sad and hilarious that this proposal takes an indef blocked editor and gives them five (5) more chances before an indef block has to be applied again. For the hard-working volunteers who were the victims of what led to his 13+ legit blocks, what are we supposed to tell them? If he wants to contribute, let him suggest changes on his talk page for six months. Dayewalker (talk) 05:06, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't edit anymore. But, if you bring him back, he'll do the same things he always did. He was one of the most relentless editors I've ever seen. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 05:11, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I vehemently oppose reinstatement of the most frustrating Wikipedia contributor I have ever seen. He got blocked repeatedly. For years, this stubborn person caused frustration and stirred up so many arguments. The edit wars wore so many of us down for no good reason. Early in his warring history, he once admitted that he was deliberately making trouble for the sake of some experiment (see 2006 discussion). I see no sign of change. The response Asgardian has given[8], at least before seeing this, still indicates that after 7 years, it's all still about getting his way. He talks about needing to improve how he corrects others, how he tells other people why they're wrong and he's right, but without offering any hint that he can compromise or accept correction himself. I got so tired of getting dragged into repeated and futile discussions over Asgardian that my response to one such discussion three years ago started with "same crap, different day."[9] At that time, I also said, "Frankly, ongoing Agardian-related squabbling is the main reason I don't do much editing in the comics project any more. I have better things to do with my time. I should hope other people, including Asgardian himself, would too." Editors who remember when I was a lot more active on Wikipedia know that I would typically provide more thoughtful contributions than that, but I'd given up at the time. Everybody, including Asgardian, has better use for the hours, days, weeks, and years of breath we have during our time on this planet. Nobody should have to expend time mentoring him. He has received and wasted too many opportunities. Doczilla _STOMP! 10:21, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

• comment from Youreallycan - User:SilkTork nudged by to see if I want to comment as someone that was involved in some disputes with the user - I have had a little look through the Users contribution history and block record to remind me - specifically I remember - User:Nightscream/Editor_experience_list#February_2010_Asgardian-Off2riorob_Edit_Warring_on_Beyonce_Knowles - I wasn't blocked and neither was he for the editing. He was/could be relentless; as Peregrine states. He was a bit disruptive at lots of locations as I remember and finally support was for a one year ban at Arbitration - Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Asgardian - this was two years ago, people can and do change in such a period, grow up, perhaps. I can support allowing him another attempt to be a constructive contributor, under the restrictive conditions in the suggested conditions - I would also suggest adding a condition he accepts WP:Adoption with the committee naming the adopter, one of the users that have a good set up for learning the basic WP:Policy and guidelines ropes - this will give him good grounding to return to contributing . Youreallycan 18:14, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

• I don't remember this editor at all. That said, his proposed conditions seem a bit self-serving. I would support this with the condition of an immediate, infinite block in the event of sockpuppeting, and the third block becoming indefinite, not the fifth. It's rare that anyone that started out with a clean slate gets five blocks before being shown the door, much less someone returning from a ban.—Kww(talk) 23:56, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, I could support a little less rope as well as per Kww - Youreallycan 00:00, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
• Well, the ArbCom ban was for a year, the last socking was a couple years ago. I'm not a huge fan of unblocking with custom truth tables which then provide fodder for haggling over later... unblock with Discretionary sanctions for six months, to wit, if they start making a ruckus on an article or topic area uninvolved admin can just ban them from that until the end of probation. NE Ent 03:24, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
  • 10 months ago actually, plus anon edits later than that. Amalthea 10:53, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
    • Another beautiful hypothesis destroyed by an ugly fact ... not now, then. NE Ent 12:40, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
      • I'm not endorsing any particular position, but NE Ent: if not now, then when? Would you, personally, support an appeal in six months (if there was no further socking)? I say six months simply because that's the usual buffer period we set between consecutive appeals. AGK [•] 23:21, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
        • I'd say 13 March 2013, which is one year from the last logged sock activity, but six months is reasonable, too. Full disclosure: I have not reviewed this particular case in detail and am just using the one year sanction the previous ArbCom issued as a heurestic. NE Ent 23:27, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
          • Or maybe a lot more recently than that. BOZ (talk) 00:04, 24 January 2013 (UTC)
            • If that is Asgardian as it appears to be, then it looks like we shouldn't be considering this appeal until November. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 08:55, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

• • • • • • • • That's him, alright. The tell-tale "Jul." and "Apr." for July and April here, violating WPC MOS, is one of his tells. --Tenebrae (talk) 00:20, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
                • CheckUser shows that both accounts geolocate to the same spot.
                • The attitude shown below if I was one of the editors he warred with, would not make me feel comfortable. He edit warred with a considerable number of users, some of whom have written Good Articles and/or Featured Articles, and some of whom are trusted enough by the community to be admins - are these the "junior editors" he refers to? The user appears to feel that he knows better than others (for example, replacing consensus format style with his own format style), and displays that arrogance even in his appeal. If he had written an appeal that showed more understanding of why he was blocked rather than displaying the same arrogant attitude, and if he hadn't been evading his ban just a few months ago (the latest in a long series of evasions), then there would be room for discussion, but as it stands this, for me, is a straightforward decline. People can change - but they need to show us evidence of that change, not evidence that they are still arrogant and deceptive.
                • Just so we are clear - the philosophy Asgardian expounds of being supportive to "junior editors" is fine; the reality is that he edit warred with everyone who changed his inappropriate edits. He is the junior editor, and he didn't listen to reason from those who knew better. To get a better perspective of this we need to do more than just read his appeal. I have looked at the previous ArbCom cases and checked his contribution history. This person shouldn't be let back into the encyclopedia. I would ask that anyone considering granting his appeal to please do more than read his appeal. His appeal to ArbCom and his appeal here follows the same lines he has always followed of implying that others are to blame. Take a look at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Asgardian/Evidence in which it is pointed out that "Despite his claims his disagreements are usually with inexperienced editors, he has frequent contentious dealings with many long-experienced, responsible veterans" - that matches my own independent findings.
                • I support my colleagues in wishing to give a chance to a useful but troublesome editor who has reformed, and in spending the time to find out if this user has reformed. But, given the evidence we have to work with, it is clear that he has not reformed, and it is dubious he was useful when he was active. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 14:31, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Asgardian's own response (below, copied over from his talk page) is like a satire of a defense. My first thought reading it was, "Is this a joke? One of those elaborate pranks people have been known to pull on Wikipedia?" He claims articles would have been made "near-perfect" because of his edits, and that it was only his "process" and not his edits with which others had issue. That's simply, and wildly, not true. It was both his edits and his edit-warring. That's why we don't call it "process-warring.

The "junior editors" remark is equally, astonishingly disingenuous. He was warring with editors of equal and longer tenure, as well as with admins. As for "teaching [them] to fish so they can eat for a lifetime," Asgardian, to follow through with this analogy, is incapable of even baiting a hook or opening a tackle box without getting into endless arguments with others.

And finally, regarding his recent ban evasion through sockpuppetry: His transparent lie about "hardcore fans in my native city" who just happen to use the same, highly idiosyncratic violation of WikiProject Comics MOS for issue dates — "Jul." instead of "July," "Apr." instead of "April," for example — shows a complete inability to accept responsibility, and frankly insults our intelligence. There is something not right with this person, and he will never not disrupt Wikipedia for his own, as he concedes, narcissistic need to gain attention by deliberately creating trouble and aggravation. --Tenebrae (talk) 15:42, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Noting here that Asgardian has stated on his talk page (User talk:Asgardian) that he wishes to respond there. I've replied there and am noting this here so that people here are aware and any statement can be copied over, with a diff as well. Transclusion works less well (no record in the page history), unblocking to take part here not really needed as things don't need to move fast here. Also, for the record, we will probably wrap up this discussion at around the one week (7 days) mark unless things conclude earlier or are still being discussed. Carcharoth (talk) 02:20, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Asgardian's response, copied below:

My request to be unblocked seems to have solicited a variety of responses. Some are perhaps a tad melodramatic (I never thought of myself as a recidivist) or being "relentless". That said, I can understand why there is cause for concern. I was one of several people who at the time engaged in consistent edit warring to ensure that the articles were written "my way". As I indicated in my initial statement, I realize that this was a mistake. A near-perfect article (if there is such a thing) is wonderful and a point of pride - but not if you've walked over everyone else to reach this goal. The process is just as important as the outcome. I know now that instead of say, just verbally crushing a junior's editor's effort, I should explain to them why their edits need reworking and refer to policy (teaching to fish so they eat for a lifetime and all that).

I'd also like to applaud Nightscream for his civility and being a firm voice of reason. "Narcissistic" was right on the money. I would hope everyone can keep such perspective as we discuss this.

Finally, I see there have been some claims re: sockpuppets. Definitely not me - although there are some hardcore fans in my native city who I believe dabble in Wikipedia (after all, not everyone is based in the US).

Feel free to ask questions as we proceed. Regards Asgardian (talk) 23:10, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

• I'm a big fan of second chances. But before this should go forward, I think a mea culpa from Asgardian, or at least some explanation of the past is in order. In the past there was too much denial and not accepting that particular actions in the past were issues. As I recall, these ranged from socking, to his perspective on what a "perfect" article was. And a whole range of ownership issues. And talk page and edit summary issues, and and and... Noting that I say this as someone who has attempted to mediate discussions with Asgardian, as has also blocked asgardian due to violating past restrictions. See also my comments here - jc37 00:15, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
• 2¢ worth...
  Just looking at the 3 proposed limitations and the ramifications would almost be comedic if it weren't for the history here. The editor had little though or care if he edited while "logged out" or to try and just pay lip service to some policies policy. It is telling that point 3 ignores guidelines and consensus, there area where the real problems cropped up. "[M]ay be blocked by any administrator if he edits in violation of the above three conditions." is a wonderful defense... if accepted as worded he would have to breach policy, in a second revert, within a week of the last, while not logged into his account. Likelyhood under that of 1, let alone 5, block that would count to re-triggering the indef looks a lot like "nil". And as other hav pointed out, 5 strikes is obscenely generous in this type of situation.
  As for the continued evasion... I'm more inclined to defer any though of downing the block until at least a year after the last evasion incident. It is hard accept someone saying "I'll follow policy." after they have been routinely avoiding it. And the defense of "some hardcore fans" is as much WP:LITTLEBROTHER as anything, and it carrys as much weight.
  "some hardcore fans" also has a worrisome connotation to it since Asgardian was vague. It reads as if they are fans of him. That's a connotation I don't want to see tested by validating his return to Wikipedia.
  - J Greb (talk) 00:40, 26 January 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.

Thank you very much to every editor who offered their opinion or brought up points of fact concerning Asgardian and his appeal. Asgardian failed to disclose to us that he had anonymously edited Wikipedia in the past six months. Having re-considered his appeal in light of our discovery that Asgardian has circumvented his block in recent months, and in particular having considered the fact that he failed to disclose that he has done so, the committee has decided to decline his appeal. Thank you again to everybody who participated in this discussion. For the Arbitration Committee, AGK [•] 21:49, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Amendment regarding Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waldorf education

Announcement

Hi, being a new user I have absolutely no idea what this is about. I am not trying to dispute anything, I literally don't understand what this is or what the source of the concern is. Could someone please explain what I have done? Jellypear (talk) 22:23, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

This is a (slight) relaxation of the sanction currently in place over these articles; it used to be a fairly stringent probation and this has been downgraded to a more flexible discretionary sanctions regime we use in difficult areas. — Coren ^(talk) 23:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

All articles on Wikipedia should follow various content guidelines and policies. This hasn't changed for the Waldorf education articles. What has changed is how the community can handle content disputes or infringements of policy regarding those articles. Previously the articles were under WP:Article probation which meant that "Editors making disruptive edits may be banned" from those articles, which was a fairly limited response giving limited guidance to admins in how to deal with the matter. Now the articles fall under Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions, which is a clearer, fairer and more comprehensive guideline for how to deal with content disputes or infringements of policy regarding those articles. In short, we've simply updated the protection on those articles. SilkTork ^{✔Tea time} 10:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

In still other words: When editing Wikipedia, all editors are expected to abide by our policies and guidelines. Experience has shown that in certain controversial topic-areas, there have been an above-average number of disputes and violations. These can adversely affect the quality of the articles as well as the editing experience for our contributors. Therefore, either the Arbitration Committee or the community at large can apply special rules to these pages. This vote was to update the set of special rules applicable on the Waldorf Education pages.

What does this mean for the ordinary editor? If you edit appropriately, probably nothing. If an uninvolved administrator believes that you are seriously or persistently violating policy in your editing of this article, he or she will give you a warning telling you what you did wrong. If you were to continue violating policy after that, you could be subject to a restriction, such as limitation on your edits or a ban from editing in the topic-area. But if you edit neutrally, use reliable sources, remain civil, and so forth, then it shouldn't have any effect on you at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:51, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks from the newbie! :) Jellypear (talk) 20:22, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding withdrawn case requests

Announcement

• Cruft! Sven Manguard Wha? 07:41, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
• Per the comments made on the proposal page, I have a very strong feeling that this will come back to bite someone sooner or later. Possibly the worst decision made by the current committee. Thryduulf (talk) 01:31, 9 February 2013 (UTC)