Requests for arbitration

Initiated by Boing! said Zebedee (talk) at 10:19, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• Boing! said Zebedee (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA), filing party
• Michael Hardy (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• MjolnirPants (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• NeilN (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• M. A. Bruhn (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• diff of notification Michael Hardy
• diff of notification MjolnirPants
• diff of notification NeilN
• diff of notification M. A. Bruhn

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Responses at ANI here (permalink)
• Follow up at ANI here (permalink)
• Discussion at User talk:Michael Hardy#August 2016
• My block at User talk:Michael Hardy#August 2016 2 (I unblocked on developing ANI consensus)
• Discussion at User talk:Michael Hardy#Would you be willing to request a voluntary desysop?
• Concern shown at User talk:Michael Hardy#Color me puzzled
• Discussion at User talk:Michael Hardy#Drop the stick
• My response at User talk:Boing! said Zebedee#Respectful discourse

Statement by Boing! said Zebedee

This all started as a dispute over the article Ancestral health created by User:Michael Hardy, in which User:MjolnirPants was, I think, a little snippy at worst - see User talk:MjolnirPants#Ancestral health. Michael Hardy then, in my view, went overboard in response. Rather than simply dealing with PROD or CSD nominations in the normal way, he posted a complaint about MjolnirPants at ANI (linked above), which was closed as inappropriate. He then posted a gem at User talk:MjolnirPants#I apologize for doubting your infallibility.

At User talk:Michael Hardy#August 2016, User:NeilN tried to calm things, only for Michael Hardy to make clearly false claims about what MjolnirPants had said, calling him "a hard-core bully". I blocked for 31 hours for the personal attacks, but unblocked with a suitable block log reason when a consensus was developing that a block was excessive.

You can see from the above links that Michael Hardy is not listening to the large number of people advising him to drop the stick, and yesterday he repeated his accusations of bullying here. He then went on to make another complaint about MjolnirPants at ANI here, which was quickly closed. NeilN has warned him that a block will come if he doesn't stop, at User talk:Michael Hardy#Please read.

User:M. A. Bruhn has uncovered a list of previous problems going back over the years, which apparently include wheel warring and outing (I'd forgotten, but I redacted the outing) - diff.

Michael is an old-school admin who was appointed after this RFA. He has not kept up with required standards of admin behaviour, as he admitted at User talk:Michael Hardy#Drop the stick - "However, I've never attempted to keep up with policies not related to my regular activities".

I don't know if ArbCom will consider a desysop of an admin without recent abuse of the tools, but I think the links above show a serious failure to follow WP:ADMINCOND and indicate someone who really should not be an admin. Over to you for your thoughts, and perhaps any other path of action that you might feel is appropriate.

• Just a comment on User:Bbb23's suggestion that "I don't think is a case about an administrator, but rather a case about an editor who happens to be an administrator". I can appreciate that. But I'd also suggest that this kind of aggressive overreaction can be significantly more intimidating when it comes from someone who is seen to be an admin. Fortunately, MjolnirPants doesn't seem to be easily intimidated, but there are many who would be. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 19:28, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• @Michael Hardy: Please provide diffs to support your accusations that MjolnirPants...

1. ordered you not to express disagreement with something he said or to post reasons for that disagreement,
2. ordered you not to ask him questions to clarify something he said,
3. said at length that it was abusive for you to dispute anything he said and he would absolutely not tolerate disagreement with him,
4. told you it was abusive for you to ask about the alleged duplication.

I have seen statements from MjolnirPants of the form "If you do/don't do A, I will do B", but that is not the equivalent of "I order you to do/not do A'". Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 20:52, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Michael Hardy

I have never before encountered any user ordering me not to express disagreement with something he said or to post reasons for that disagreement, nor ordering me not to ask him questions to clarify something he said. He had stated that some pages I linked to existed only for the purpose of selling something. I responded that I could find nothing on those pages that appeared to attempt to sell something. He said at length that it was abusive for me to dispute anything he said and he would absolutely not tolerate disagreement with him. He also said an article I created was a duplicate of another article, but made no attempt to say which other article. So I asked which one. He was immensely angered by that question and told me it was abusive for me to ask about that.

Ordering another user not to disagree with one's statement and also not to ask for a clarification should be considered inconsistent with the way Wikipedia should function. One seeks consensus by discussing things. Respectful disagreement (saying that the linked page shows no sign of trying to sell anything) and a respectful request for clarification (asking which page he thought was duplicated) are an essential part of the process of discussion whose goal is consensus. This user presumed to order me not to do those things, and said such behavior on my part was intolerable.

Later that user said that I was posting those comments instead of improving the article. That is nonsense. I stated at the moment of creating the article that it is a stub; that in itself expresses an intention to improve it. That my comments were posted chronologically before my next edits to the article does not mean they were done instead of doing further work on the article.

Among comments on this episode I find at least two people suggested I resign as an administrator. The first notice I had of that was a question on my talk page: whether I would consider resigning as an administrator. I responded by asking what purpose this suggestion was to serve. That is a natural thing to wonder about that, and that user then expressed immense anger that I didn't answer his question. I'm really surprised at that behavior. I don't owe answers to such questions to every random stranger who comes along; the nature of the question itself suggests some justification should be offered; it was reasonable for me to request a complete statement of the proposal before deciding whether to answer the question or not. This present paragraph may seem to be on a different topic, but a certain commonality between this behavior and that in the previous paragraph makes me wonder if they might both be part of a common general trend among some Wikipedians: Both feel entitled to give orders and not to be questioned or argued with. Both users were profoundly rude and unbelievably arrogant.

This statement is composed in some haste; I may add to it later.

Robert McClenon quotes me as writing : "I forbid anyone to disagree with me!". That is an out-of-context quote if ever there was one. I was in fact objecting to the idea that one user should forbid another to disagree with them. MjolnirPants and at least one other user told me that I was forbidden to express disagreement with them. That is what I called bullying. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MjolnirPants

For starters, I have posted my own summary of the dispute between me and Michael here. B!sZ, NeilN and Linguist have had their say, and I have little substantial to add to that, beyond conveying what my own experience has been.

After tagging the article for speedy and logging off for the night, I came to WP the next morning to look something up, only to find 14 notifications, including of an email Michael sent me. (The contents of that email are substantially the same as what he posted here). After wrapping my head around all of that, I wrote up my version of events. Initially I thought to post it at the AN/I thread, but since the thread had ceased to be about our disagreement and become about Michael's reaction, I elected to write it on my talk page and post a link to it, there. However, after it became clear that Michael was pushing forward with his accusations against me, I decided not to fan the flames, so to speak, and occupied my time on wiki elsewhere. Since then, I've received ten more notifications over this, the vast majority of which were Michael editing my user talk page.

Clearly, something needs to be done. Throughout this affair (and, apparently in several prior instances) Michael has demonstrated what appears to be a near-complete lack of those social skills necessary to collaborate with others on a project like this, especially in the position of being an admin. I agree 100% that his status as an admin should be revoked at this point. While he has yet to do any damage with his admin tools, the longer this goes on, the more I'm convinced that will become a question of when, not if. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:43, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I just want to respond to one thing that Michael has been repeating over and over again, because it seems to strike at the heart of this issue. He claimed I "forbade" him from disagreeing with me. In fact, I explicitly told him I would be happy to continue arguing with him about the article even after I hatted it for speedy deletion. Just to be clear, I told him one thing, and he has been repeatedly claiming that I said the exact opposite, in the face of multiple people correcting him. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 22:38, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by NeilN

Please see this exchange. This whole matter has been blown way out of proportion by Michael Hardy. The first ANI thread shows he does not understand how deletion tagging works. Copying from my close, "Absolutely does not belong at ANI. Editors can tag articles at any time if they feel, using good faith, the article should be deleted. The reviewing admin will take into account objections on the article's talk page." An editor saying they will tag an article if improvements aren't made and then tagging the article when they feel the other editor wishes to argue/discuss rather than improve the article is a valid action. It may be hasty or based on an incorrect perception but it is not "ordering far more experienced users not to express disagreements with you." [1]

The opening of a second ANI thread, after discussion on multiple pages and a brief block, shows a clear lack of judgment, far below what is expected from an adminstrator. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 13:47, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by M. A. Bruhn

I'd like to start off by saying that I originally had no intention of getting involved in the dispute in ANI as I felt that for the most part comments being added were just unnecessarily escalating a situation that should die down on its own. Looking through ANI logs though I saw unresolved discussions perennially brought up about removing the admin status of MH, commonly rehashing the same points presented here. With this in mind I felt it would be good to lay everything out and have a discussion about this in hopes to end this topic from being brought up again. With that said I'll go ahead and transcribe my summary from ANI below:

2005 - MH is rebuked for protecting page that they are engaged in an editing dispute over

2007 - MH starts an ANI discussion complaining of two admins who deleted an article whose AfD they closed (6 delete vs. 1 keep by MH) who he states "appear very very hostile to Wikipedia's conventional norms and procedures". MH is subsequently pointed out to have been wheelwarring against three other admins on this page's deletion. MH argues that the AfD was not an umambiguous vote for deletion since notices where not posted in places like the math wikiproject, and additionally states "Most people who spend all their time on AfD are bad people."

2008 - MH is subject of ANI discussion about stalking after leaving an unprompted antagonistic and demeaning essay on someone's talkpage regarding a dispute between them which occurred over two years prior. MH makes comments such as "I don't think that user should be forever excused from having to be reminded of that episode before that question is answered.", justifies his calling someone "mentally challenged" by saying "I was defending the victim against the bully when I wrote that second word, and I confidently stand by the word "liar"". Also "I was not insulting him; I was accusing him."

2009 - MH is subject of ANI topic for calling another users comments "bullshit" multiple times, and wheelwarring with two other admins even leaving an edit summary while reverting the first admin reading "his deletion looks like another attempt of speedy deleters to look as if they lack common sense."

2012 - MH has comment redacted (by none other than Boing! said Zebedee) for outing violation

His interactions with other editors have been troubling given the non-admin/admin framework that they have occurred under. This is most egregious in the case where he returned to a users talkpage two years following a dispute for no apparent reason other to mock and antagonize them. A lack of admins has been brought up to justify not removing his status, but a concern that has not been mentioned is the dwindling supply of new users and loss of long-term editors. This comment by a user in conclusion to the harassment episode expresses the type of discouragement that a negative admin/non-admin interaction can lead to, and which I fear could happen again if MH retains their admin status. I'd like to note that the editor who posted that had been active for 2 years and had a clean block log, and that they retired from editing seven months later. While we cannot determine if that encounter had any ultimate influence in them leaving the possibility that it could have is concerning.

From what others have said it does not appear MH retaining their admin status is significantly mitigating the effects of the admin shortage as their admin actions appear to be few and mostly centered around their own editing. I believe if their admin status is lost then the page mover user right should be automatically granted given that 1) they appear knowledgeable about article naming conventions, 2) actions associated with page moving appear to make up the bulk of his current usage of admin tools, and 3) I don't think an editor who is so experienced and otherwise in good standing with the community should have to go through the application process for such rights following what I imagine to be an already taxing episode. In my opinion loss of their admin status, either through them voluntarily relinquishing it or from being desyoped, and replacement with the page mover user right is the best way to address the concerns raised with their interactions with other editors and mitigate future disputes while not inhibiting their otherwise excellent editing contributions. M. A. Bruhn (talk) 20:17, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Linguist111

I would be in favour of a desysoping, if this is feasible. I haven't looked too closely into the MjolnirPants-Michael Hardy dispute, but what I did see was that the latter wasn't innocent of personal attacks, as Boing! said Zebedee stated above. I respect that he may feel he was being bullied, but his inability to drop the stick, bringing disputes to the wrong place, and being on the receiving end of blocks and speedy boomerang requests clearly show he isn't fit for his position as a admin. Also worrying is that while this dispute is going on, he has access to the admin tools, which, although he hasn't used them in years, does risk bigger problems. Linguist 111 ^{Who, me?} Who? Me 14:37, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Davey2010

Admins are expected to lead by example and are expected to deal with disputes etc themselves, The constant bickering, not dropping the stick and ANI threads by this Admin is rather unbelievable and quite honestly it gives me no confidence in this admin at all, Personally I think they should be desysopped and at the correct time they can perhaps retry RFA although that probably won't be for a very long time. –Davey2010^Talk 16:29, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Robert McClenon

This is a strange and unfortunate case. To open, I should acknowledge that I had a sort of run-in with User:MjolnirPants some months ago, in which I started to moderate a dispute at the dispute resolution noticeboard, and MjolnirPants disagreed with my moderation approach. However, they subsequently said that they were willing to put that behind us. I have since seen that MjolnirPants can be stubborn or 'snappish', but not to the point of being disruptive. I have had no previous dealings with User:Michael Hardy. I see that they raised the issue of whether MjolnirPants was engaged in bullying. I don’t see any clear case of bullying. I don’t see any bullying by MjolnirPants, and I do see that the claim to that effect was treated as a personal attack resulting in a block. However, I do see that a case can be made that the conduct of Michael Hardy, including "I forbid anyone to disagree with me!", is bullying, especially when the editor has access to the block button, even if they never use it.

We have too much difficulty in getting new admins. RFA has become a trial by ordeal, partly because some editors start off with the assumption that admin abuse is widespread and that it is important to be hostile to admins and would-be admins. We certainly don’t need admins who don’t try to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I think that there is actual impropriety here, but there certainly is the appearance of impropriety.I think that there is actual impropriety here. There is definitely at least the appearance of impropriety. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:42, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying that Michael Hardy should be desysopped. I am saying that the ArbCom, which is the only review for English Wikipedia administrators, should review his fitness to be an administrator. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Bbb23

I didn't take any substantive role in the ANI discussion. I commented only because I was amused at what RfA was like back in 2003. I don't think is a case about an administrator, but rather a case about an editor who happens to be an administrator. IIRC, Michael said at his brief RfA that he didn't really see why he should become an administrator, and his history, particularly in the last several years, has underscored that remark. Michael hasn't blocked anyone since 2010. He made one unblock in 2012. His only page deletions appear to be focused on making his own editing easier. He protected one page, not an article, in 2005. I understand an administrator may act in his capacity as an administrator even without the use of tools, but still it doesn't appear that the tools are of any significant importance to him. Frankly, it seems a bit much to desysop him based on this incident, although it never helps when an editor appears to have no insight into his own conduct. Again, depending on his statement, my recommendation would be an admonishment by motion.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:07, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am disappointed in Michael's statement and withdraw my recommendation. As is too often the case, Michael has only dug himself into a deeper hole.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Dane2007

My involvement in the ANI and surrounding events began when I was monitoring the recent changes log and stumbled across Ancestral health. I disagreed with the CSD nomination and removed it/commented why on the talk page of the article and Michael's talk page. It was there that I became aware of the ANI discussion and the back and forth on user talk pages. I attempted to help the situation as best as I could and noticed that Michael had made some very sarcastic remarks on User talk:Tarage, which I initially mistook as a personal attack and gave a Level 1 warning to Michael for. Previously, I had given a similar warning to Tarage due to comments he had placed on Michaels page. I continued to monitor the page and the exchange between NeilN and Michael and there seemed to be a disconnect from what Michael thought happened and what actually happened, as NeilN pointed out. I do believe that a desysop would be in order as Michael has demonstrated that he does not use the tools and is disconnected from several wikipedia policies (WP:V, WP:ADMINCOND, WP:DRN, WP:DROPTHESTICK). Dane2007 (talk) 21:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Patient Zero

Having looked into the evidence as well as the AN/I threads and user talk pages involved, I have come to the conclusion that this "old school" administrator should have the tools revoked. This user has exhibited behaviours which fall significantly below the expectations for someone with these tools. I also highly suggest that Mr. Hardy read all of the policies and guidelines should he choose to edit again, as this revelation was indeed appalling in my opinion. Zero^talk 19:14, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Tarage

I was going to let this whole thing drop since it appeared that cooler heads were going to deal with it, but my name has been brought up, so I thought I would give my two cents. The issue is that User:Michael Hardy has a fundamental lack of knowledge about how Wikipedia works, which is concerning given the fact that they have edited for so long and have administrative powers. He continues to misunderstand that User:MjolnirPants was trying to do him a favor by NOT immediately tagging the article in question, and instead, yes, instead, decided to argue with him instead of accepting this favor and trying to work with him. On top of that, he has a gross misunderstanding about what reliable sources mean. He seems to be running under the incorrect idea that "independent reliable sources" are "reliable sources that can think independently", as he stated on his own talk page. Given all of this behavior, including refusing to back down from making personal attacks that he has been told time and again are incorrect, I feel it would be inappropriate to just let this situation go. Letting a person keep a loaded gun they found on the street just because they haven't shot anyone is not a healthy idea. --Tarage (talk) 22:32, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by {Non-party}

Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should address why or why not the Committee should accept the case request or provide additional information.

Clerk notes

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

User:Michael Hardy: Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter <2/0/0/0>

Vote key: (Accept/decline/recuse/other)

• accept Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:10, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 21:43, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]