Edit this section for new requests

Add new requests to the top of the page. Old requests will be automatically archived off the bottom three days after the last time stamp.

This article, subject of the ArbCom case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Free Republic has had to have been full protected due to edit wars three times in less then two weeks.

1. 10:38, 30 January 2008 SirFozzie (Talk | contribs | block) protected Free Republic ‎ (Another edit war between participants of the Waterboarding ArbCom case [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 15:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC))) (Change)
2. 16:39, 22 January 2008 Jj137 (Talk | contribs | block) protected Free Republic ‎ (Full protection: Dispute, Edit wars. using TW [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 21:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC))) (Change)
3. 11:48, 18 January 2008 Prodego (Talk | contribs | block) protected Free Republic ‎ (edit warring, short cool down period [edit=sysop:move=sysop] (expires 00:48, 19 January 2008 (UTC))) (Change)

The parties involved in this edit war are familiar to those who remember the past ArbCom case.

User:Eschoir, an outspoken critic of Free Republic, who has had a real life COI with Free Republic due to legal issues initiated by Free Republic.

And a group of users widely believed to be reincarnations or meatpuppets of banned user User:BryanFromPalatine. (there is evidence in the ongoing Waterboarding ArbCom Case that supports the following users being linked in some way to the banned user.

User:Samurai Commuter User:Shibumi2 User:Neutral Good (who emailed me to ask me to watch over/supervise the article despite never having edited in at least the last 500 edits to the page, going back to May, 2007).

I request the following enforcement following on to the Free Republic article:

A) That Eschoir be placed either on a strict, 1 Revert/Week probation with regards to Free Republic, or a full scale topic ban. It is very doubtful that having been such an outspoken critic of the site, he can edit with regards to WP's NPOV policy with this page.

B) That the three users above, and any other account or IP reasonably believed to be related in any way to User:BryanFromPalatine be topic-banned from the article until ArbCom decides if they are sock/meatpuppets of a banned user. I am willing to monitor the Free Republic article for a while if need be to enforce this. SirFozzie (talk) 05:37, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I point out that there has been no evidence taken about whether I can edit with an NPOV, and I sugggest that the record shows a long history of neutral edits of the article in question. From the time Dino was bannned (was that April?) to when Shibumi2 returned channelling Bryan reverts (in December?), the article was balanced, there were no edit wars. I personally cleared all the fact tags. I am the source of the O'reilley "planted" quote so relied upon by Bryanpuppets. I added the first Huckabee ball section. I removed the unsourced "messicans" section. I supplied the Appendix 4 Memogate quote. Are these facts less worthy of consideration than the insistant ululation of the puppet-mob?

With all due respect, would it be appropriate due process to take some evidence before rendering judgment? Eschoir (talk) 06:14, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• The Article probation in the case of Free Republic is worded in such a way as to make it unenforceable except by Arbcom. BryanfromPalatine is a community-banned user and any admin may block any account he believes is a sockpuppet, subject to review by other admins, of course. If the situation at Free Republic is really obviously unacceptable, you could try asking at WP:AN for community-imposed article probation, as was done today for Homeopathy. (If the case for probation is so obvious that no admin seriously disagrees, the community can impose it rather than Arbcom.) I'm not sure this board can play a role in this dispute at this time. Thatcher 08:09, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There's a current arbitration case (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Waterboarding) where there are allegations that various accounts are sock/meatpuppets of BryanFromPalatine. If an admin blocks these accounts, would that be short-circuiting the arbitration case? (I'm involved, so I won't be blocking in any case.) --Akhilleus (talk) 17:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That is one of the reasons I brought this case to AE, instead of going ahead and placing the blocks myself already. With the words above from Thatcher, I am looking into which actions I may take myself, unilaterally, (posting those actions for review, of course) to resolve this. As reincarnations of banned users, they would not have the right to contribute to the ArbCom case (they can send info into the clerks or arbitrators via email), so that is an option, as well as keeping them unblocked only to contribute to the ArbCom case until their situation is resolved. SirFozzie (talk) 19:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the question is not one of blocks per se. Can we ask (or insist) that the accounts listed by SirFozzie above refrain from editing the page until ArbCom has reached a final decision on the case? That is, a topic ban? I would say yes for the 3 potential BryanFromPalatine socks. As to Eschoir, a 1RR probation would make more sense - he seems to have made some good edits to the article, overlapping with edit-warring. These sorts of restrictions could be appealed to WP:AN/I; they wouldn't really be an issue until the protection expires anyway, but they seem very reasonable given the situation. MastCell ^Talk 19:28, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meowy has been placed on revert parole and other restrictions in accordance with Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 ruling: [1] which limited him to 1 rv per week. Recently he violated his parole by reverting Shusha pogrom using both his username and IP, for which he was officially warned: [2] Since that time he violated his parole at least 3 times on the same article. This edit removed the fact about Armenian revolt in the city, supported by 4 third party sources: [3] Following User:EI C’s advice with regard to my previous report, I duly warned Meowy about the consequences of his actions on talk of the article: [4] But it had no effect, after that Meowy reverted the article twice more: [5] [6] Note that the last rv is accompanied by an incivil comment, claiming that the other editor is engaged in vandalism. It is also of interest that Meowy makes clear in his edit summary that he is aware of violation, but does not consider his action to be a revert. Even if we consider first removal of sourced info by Meowy to be just an edit, the last two diffs cited by me are clear self-admitted reverts in violation of his parole. Grandmaster (talk) 16:19, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Both times Meowy just reverted what can be considered as a editwarring with the elements of obvious vandalism [7][8] (according to WP:Vandalism: "Vandalism is any addition, removal, or change of content made in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia") by two users (User:Parishan and User:Atabek) who never show any interest to the topic reseach or didnt any significant addings, just reverting to Grandmaster's POV version with only purpose to support dubious and propagandist view of porgoms' denial. They even didnt previewing what they're adding, so Meowy have no any other way to return the article to a correct form except to delete the elements of vandalism (the double-addings of the same propagandist text to the lead). Will Atabek and Parishan be warned for their behaviour? Andranikpasha (talk) 16:55, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Please mind WP:AGF and do not accuse other editors of vandalism. Content disputes are not vandalism, and there's no justification for repeated deletion of sources that Meowy happened to dislike and for which he was officially warned just recently. Grandmaster (talk) 17:26, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Its not a content dispute, but a fact of technical (factual) bad edit repeating the same denialist text twice (and without any real discussion or consensus) and if Im calling these reverts "editwarrings with the elements of obvious vandalism" its because of my tolerance (Im discussing only edit's not users despite at least one of them, Atabek, didnt look what is he reverting: is it good?)! After this you're going to support these edits and oppose Meowy's corrections: what about the same WP:AGF? Let other users look on this and this and consider what are these? Andranikpasha (talk) 18:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind if someone looks at it. Meowy introduced a strong POV into the intro, and his edit was not acceptable. But more than that, he removed 4 third party sources, and Atabek was absolutely right by restoring them. But most importantly, Meowy made at least 2 clear reverts after being officially warned, and his comments leave no doubt that he was aware of consequences. Admin attention to this issue will be much appreciated. Grandmaster (talk) 18:23, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

And here's another content deletion by this user without any discussion at talk: [9] Grandmaster (talk) 19:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I hope, and expect, any administrators will look carefully at the activities that have being going on both the article and talk page for Shusha pogrom. As I fully explained on the talk page, I removed Atabek's edit because I considered that it fell under the category of vandalism. That editor has simply copypasted in a previous edit, complete with its error (the error being that two thirds of it just repeated what was contained in the paragraph that followed on from it). Atabek's edit resulted in the article's introduction appearing amateurish and silly-looking (thus compromising Wikipedia’s integrity as a credible source of information) and that is why I removed it.
Grandmaster's complaint, as usual, contains more wind than truth. The time-period between my first revert and the second one is more than a week, so I have not broken any revert parole. I would also argue that the second edit is not a revert anyway because it was also done to remove vandalism (though I accept that Parishan's edit was probably not a deliberate attempt to vandalise the article, and the error just arose due to a mistake in his edit). Atabek does not have that "made a mistake" excuse because I had already pointed out the error in the talk page: Atabek appears to have ignored that, suggesting a disinterest in both accuracy and discussion by that editor. Meowy 22:52, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meowy, your calling of my edit a vandalism [10] in this case is a violation of WP:NPA and WP:AGF, especially given the fact that you, and not me, removed a large portion of material sourced with references in your edit. Thanks. Atabek (talk) 23:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I consider the result of your edit to be vandalism. Whether the aim of your edit was vandalism will depend on how you answer this question. Can you explain why, when it was clearly pointed out by me in the Talk page, you reverted to an edit of which 2/3rds was simply duplicated material, duplicating almost word for the content of the paragraph that folowed on from it? I did not remove "a large portion of material": the text you removed contained 72 words, and links to other Wikipedia articles, the text you replaced it with contained only 46 words, and three less internal links, when the duplicated words are discounted. Meowy 23:41, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Grandmaster has claimed in one of his above postings that I "introduced a strong POV into the intro". Admins can decide for themselves which version is more encyclopaedic and neutral, and more suitable for the introduction section of an article. Is it Grandmaster's the pogrom occurred "when Azerbaijani soldiers suppressed an Armenian revolt", or is it my "had as its background a conflict over competing claims of ownership of the region by Armenia and Azerbaijan" complete with links to Wikipedia articles on the wider conflict and the republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia. "Revolt" is clearly a POV word, used by Grandmaster because it implies rebellion against an established authority (i.e. Azerbaijan), However, Azerbaijan had no such authority over Shusha in 1920 - ownership of the territory had yet to be finalised. Meowy 00:10, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Revolt" is the word used even by Armenian sources with a strong bias, such as nkr.am. You had no problems using that source in the article, but did it very selectively. But I do not refer to any sources representing sides of the conflict, I used 4 perfectly neutral sources, which you deleted. However this is not about content dispute, which is not dealt with here, this is about the fact that you reverted the article at least twice within the last 3 days, and made personal attacks on other editors calling their actions "vandalism". This is a repeated violation of your parole, which occurred soon after you were officially warned for similar actions on the same article. Grandmaster (talk) 05:10, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Grandmaster, this is not a good place for content dispute, and your misinterpretation of Armenian sources is already proved at article's talk page so pls stop represent your denialist view as something recognized by Armenian sources. That's not true and have no deal with bad editwarrings by Parishan and Atabek!Andranikpasha (talk) 16:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meowy, the vandalism has a specific definition, so your comments are not appropriate. I haven't removed any material but only added back large portion with references which you removed without agreement and in violation of parole! AE is not a place for content discussion but for specific reports of ArbCom violations. There is also a talk page of AE, where your points could be presented. I personally see no reason why contributors are given opportunity to open lengthy discussion threads on formal AE or RFCU reports to distract attention from the report of disruption but concentrate on time consuming content disputes, which obviously lead no where in terms of AE. It seems though as a result AE became dysfunctional enough to the point of not enforcing even the ArbCom paroles. Atabek (talk) 05:30, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, Atabek, adding of nonsence text (see the description of obvious vandalism) is surely a violation of Wiki policies. So I see no any justification for your "addings", and as you even dont want to recognize it was a mistake by you and Parishan, an admin opinion on your "edit's" welcomed!Andranikpasha (talk) 16:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Meowy blocked for 31 hours for violation of revert parole. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moreschi, User Meowy asked the same question, which I already posted here: "I would be grateful if you would pose the following questions to Moreschi. Has he looked at the edit which I removed, and if so does he think that the removed edit was an acceptable edit given that most of it repeated verbatim the content of the following-on paragraph? Also, does removing vandalism, even if it is inadvertant vandalism, count as a revert? My understanding was that it did not." My understanding is the same. So Ill be glad if you represent your opinion on Parishan's and Atabek's reverts. Andranikpasha (talk) 20:08, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I have looked at this. No, he was not reverting vandalism. Vandalism is stuff like "WE ALL HATE KURDS" or "LOL PENIS", or adding gratuitous links to hawtlesbiansex.com in the middle of George Bush. This is quite a strict definition: it is one you would be best off sticking to. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:27, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Emphatically endorsed. Disputes over content are not vandalism no matter how much you disagree with it. Thatcher 21:58, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

?? Im asking about repeated part in the lead, not content disputed! If I readd the lead of George Bush once again to have 2 leads at same time (a double lead), will you call it a content dispute, not an obvious idiotism? According to you if anyone copies "NKR is a de-facto independent republic" from the lead of NKR and readdes to the same lead once again, its nothing but... disputes over content. Andranikpasha (talk) 22:12, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

History review

1. The background is that there is a long-running dispute over sources, particularly a source by Waal. The worst offenders seem to be Andranikpasha, Atabek and Grandmaster.
2. Meowy made several edits including rewriting the intro. [11]
3. Parishan added back part of the old introduction restored deleted parts - see talk. By adding back text copied from a prior version, Parishan actually duplicated the content of Meowy's rewrite. The text is almost identical, and every reference and footnote is identical:

   500[14][dubious – discuss] to 30,000 Armenian[15][4][16][17][18] and 15,000 Azerbaijani deaths,[19] and destruction of many buildings in Shusha. The Parliament in Baku refused even condemn the accomplishers of the massacres in Shusha and the war was started in Karabakh[20]. Historian Giovanni Guaita wrote, the Azerbaijani and Soviet authorities "during the decades will deny and try to hush up the mass killings of about 30,000 Armenians"[4]

4. Meowy reverted, Reverting the badly executed edit of the previous editor - see talk page
5. Atabek readded the extra paragraph references readded
6. Meowy reverted, Vandalism by previous editor removed - nb, I do not consider this action to be a revert.
7. On the talk page, Atabek and Grandmaster criticize Meowy for removing a source by Waal and for removing "the mention of the fact that the events started with the Armenian revolt in the city along with 4 third party sources supporting the fact." This is true but the edits in which Meowy did that were #1 in this series on 25 Jan and the addition by Parishan and the revert by Atabek did not fix it because they were adding back the wrong section.

Analysis

1. This is not vandalism. It is incredibly sloppy, and bad editing, but it is not vandalism. Meowy's edit summary referencing vandalism was misleading and needlessly provocative. A neutral edit summary about removing a duplicated section would have been better.
2. Parishan's first addition of the duplicate paragraph is an excusable mistake.
3. Atabek's second addition of the paragraph and Grandmaster's comment on the talk page shows that they were not actually reading what they were editing.

Results

1. Meowy is unblocked but warned not to characterize content disputes as vandalism. Even sloppy edits can be well-intended.
2. For persistent edit-warring over the Waal source, Andranikpasha is banned from editing Shusha pogrom for two weeks. He may make suggestions on the talk page.
3. For persistent edit-warring over the Waal source and for failing to actually read either their own edits or Meowy's talk page comments about the duplicated paragraphs, Atabek and Grandmaster are banned from editing Shusha pogrom for 3 weeks and banned from commenting on the talk page for one week. (Since they won't actually take the time to read and comprehend others' comments, their own privilege to comment is temporarily suspended.
4. Andranikpasha, Grandmaster and Atabek are reminded that during their bans they are not to instruct other editors to edit on their behalf, called proxy editing. Evidence of proxy editing will result in blocking for both the editor directing the edits and the proxy making them. Thatcher 02:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be an edit war going on here, in violation of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles, where it seems users are edit warring. It seems tag-team reverting may be being used in this case. Yahel Guhan 05:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some diffs please? Thatcher 13:07, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

my bad. The following users are tag team- edit warring largly seems to be against User:Michael Safyan.

User:Bless sins: [12] [13] [14]

User:Tiamut: [15]

User:Al Ameer son: [16]

User:Michael Safyan: [17][18][19] Yahel Guhan 01:03, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• With the exception of a logged out editor using a public terminal to avoid scrutiny (possibly), the article seems to have calmed down for now. Please report if it flares up again. Thatcher 12:47, 31 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See all under "Another Eastern European flamer". The answer of the user for the notice was a accusation of racism or nazism against the admin. [20].--80.190.200.171 (talk) 18:19, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

people often lash out when informed of blocks or other restrictions, and admins are expected to have thicker skins. I would be much more concerned about his behavior on articles and talk pages. Thatcher 04:06, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Highways 2: Does this violate the temporary injunction? --Rschen7754 (T C) 02:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It just looks to me like the editor created subpages for the project for things like participants. I don't see how this is a change in scope or approach; please explain further if you think so. Dmcdevit·t 03:38, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No, the page move - is that a scope change? --Rschen7754 (T C) 03:57, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the page move. In the first Highways case, the issue was a dispute over preferred terminology between "Roads" and "Highways." Is that also an issue in the current case? If so, then the move should be reverted. If you can point to a section of the evidence page or parties' statements showing that terminology is once again part of the dispute, that would help. If no other admin picks up on this, I will come back to it tonight. Thatcher 13:15, 25 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeesh that's a lot of moves. The moves definitely expands the scope of the Pennsylvania Wikiproject, (as does this series of edits, as "roads" is a larger set that includes "State highways" as a subset. If you want to get technical about the language, the injunction prohibits change the scope of USRD or of adding disputed cases to USRD or its subprojects, but does not prohibit changing the scope of the subprojects. This seems nonsensical to me. If there is a dispute about whether a certain stretch of pavement should be included in a "Highways" project, surely renaming the project to "Roads" completely changing the playing field of the dispute. On the other hand, no one else has edited the PASH in almost 3 months, so there is hardly an active dispute about the scope of the PA project. Does this intersect in some way with USRD so that the moves have a more significant impact than it appears? Thatcher 04:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Including articles in a subproject also includes them into USRD's assessment categories, as articles are tagged for a subproject by using the USRD template with a state parameter. —Scott5114↗ [EXACT CHANGE ONLY] 02:54, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but this wasn't adding or removing roads, it was changing the name of the PA subproject from "Highways" to "Roads". I'm unclear on what should be done but there have been no strong objections noted here, and since the project was dead for months any objections will likely come from non-PA editors who have not been working on PA highways/roads articles. So I think I'll let this one slide with the option to reopen later if needed. Thatcher 02:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved requests

These issues have been resolved, and will be automatically archived after three days. Do not post in this section. Add new reports to the top section of the page. If you wish to continue a discussion that has been marked as resolved, please contact the administrator who marked it closed.