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A request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution for conduct disputes on Wikipedia. The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and review previous decisions. The entire process is governed by the arbitration policy. For information about requesting arbitration, and how cases are accepted and dealt with, please see guide to arbitration.

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Rollback consensus

Initiated by Doc^g at 00:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• It appears Jimbo has referred this to ArbCom as well. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

Everyone here

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• ANI
• Wikipedia talk:Non-administrator rollback
• Requests for rollback

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• extended discussion in AN
• AN again
• Discussion on Wikipedia talk:Requests for rollback (various threads)
• Discussion on Wikipedia talk:Non-administrator rollback (various threads)

Statement by Doc

Non admin rollback is a perenial debate, for which there is a long-standing failure to gain an community consensus. A poll Wikipedia:Requests for rollback privileges/Poll was held over many months from January 2006, and having closed at 216 support to 108 oppose (exactly 2:1) was deemed to be without consensus. Another poll Wikipedia:Non-administrator rollback/Poll was opened by proponents of the idea on December 30th 2007. This poll (advertised on AN and ANI and Central discussions) was marked as due to close on January 6th. I discover it on January 4th - and with 48 hours to run - it had only attracted 60 votes, and was deemed to be "succeeding" with c. 49/11. Concerned over the propriety of a short snap poll over the holidays, I tried to persuade the initiators to extend it for a few weeks, when they refused, I took a lot of flack for "spamming" the official mailing list with my concerns. After that it was added to the site notices. The poll, however, was closed on 7/8th January (8 days) with 304 support and 151 oppose (exactly the same % as 2006 - nothing had moved).

Following the second poll, the feature was implemented by a developer on 9 January 2008 as noted at Template:Bug. - Since then, a new process Wikipedia:Requests for rollback has been initiated - and rollback widely granted. I understood that developers were only to turn on functions for wikimedia communities where there was a settled local consensus. As can be seen from the bug report, Ryan Postlethwaite presented 67% as representing an en.wp "consensus" and a dev accepted this (perhaps there were other conversations). Although consensus is more than numbers, this was the same non-consenus ration as have been stable for two years, and we don't even promote admins on 66% never mind begin a whole new policy and process - so how it can be presented and accepted as local consensus is beyond me. Every precedent has required more support that this. And the result is heated debate and a general feeling of community consensus having been manipulated by people determined to get their way.

Rollback is in itself no big deal. However, giving the power to 1400 admins to giveth and taketh away, gives alarming potential for disputes drama and the growth of process, rules and instruction creep. we have seen enough of all of these in 25 hours. Thus this impacts hugely on the project and is a potential sink hole for admin time. So we must not do this lightly on six day polls and a developer's bad judgement.

As this has been done outside of the community's process, there is no remedy other than arbcom or the WMF board. Arbcom does not make policy. The community does that. But the community cannot agree, at this point, whether there is a consensus for this new policy or not. Arbcom's role is to be a mediator where the community cannot agree. Arbcom should NOT decide whether rollback is bad or good. But I am asking them, however, to arbitrate the community dispute as to whether there exists a settled consensus.

Jimbo has already indicated that arbcom do have a roll here: [1] "ArbCom will discuss and vote on the result, and make a formal request to the Wikimedia Foundation about whether it should be turned on or not, and to establish the policy.... ArbCom will of course most likely follow the vote of the community, but I will not require them to do so. They should serve as a "check and balance" in the event something strange happens here, or in case the discussion shows a way forward that the vote itself does not accurately represent.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 21:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)" [reply]

I asking Arbcom to do something less than Jimbo has done. I am asking them merely to arbitrate the dispute as to whether consensus exists.

--Doc^g 00:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

Addition

Jimbo has said "I recommend that people basically do nothing at all here, i.e. please don't go awarding this ability to lots of people in an effort to create "facts on the ground" about how it is used." Unfortunately, that's too late. Within minutes (or hours if my time zones are wrong - but I don't think so) of a dev responding to Ryan Postlethwaith's plea that there was community consensus (2008-01-09 22:53:17 UTC), the other initiator Majorly, moved, a ready-made process out of Ryan's userspace into action 2008-01-09 23:05 and declared it "switched on" - a site bar header invited applicants to the page shortly after.--Doc^g 02:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Question Two arbs are saying that the community should decide this. However, the community DID. We polled (badly and manipulatively) and reached no consensus = status quo remains. A developed overrode our conventions and declared this to be mandate to proceed. What is the redress if not arbcom? How is the community to address this when a large chunk are content that they've got their way - and there cannot be a consensus to reverse it? Do I personally go and lobby a developer to turn it off? I really cannot see how we move forward from here. Discussion will end with the same lack of consensus and the normal lack of consensus option (=do nothing) has been overridden.--Doc^g 09:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I withdraw from this case. The Christmas holiday coup d'etat has been unprecedentely successful in forcing through a major change without consensus. All credit to them - I'd probably have tried the same if I'd wanted something as badly and had as little chance of getting legitimate agreement. But, now we effectively have a new status-quo in this crazy process - and I predict we'll rue the day. However, that's what we've got, and the chances of the community obtaining a *genuine* consensus, which could change this status-quo, are as nil as they always have been. Jimbo's haverings about the WMF board and a new poll make no sense to me, and arbcom are not going to involve themselves in any difficult substantive issues. Maybe they will wag a finger at Ryan Postlewaith at al (a nice, manageable, user conduct issue for them) but what good would that do? Consensus lost here, and that's sad. But, as the victors have repeatedly and rightly implied, the rest of us had best shut up and get over it.--Doc^g 14:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Carcharoth

From what I saw of what happened here, this was largely a poorly-timed (over Christmas) and poorly-planned (no exit strategy) poll. My feeling is that the breakdown in communication occurred when Ryan posted in the bugzilla thread that he personally saw consensus and asked the developers to have a look and judge for themselves ("The poll has now closed with 304 supports and around 150 opposes. I'd say that's consensus, but please take a look."). It seems that the developer then switched the feature on for en-wiki (I believe the feature was already implemented globally with a default 'off' setting and was actually ready to go, unlike last time). However, a little bit of digging and reading around the talk pages would have shown that things were not yet clear. But judging a borderline or otherwise uncertain consensus should not be the role of developers. What should have happened instead was for uninvolved en-wiki bureaucrats to be asked to judge the consensus, and for the result of that judgment to be posted at the bugzilla thread. Ideally, the bureaucrats would have been asked to 'clerk' the poll beforehand, so they could remain uninvolved if needed. I will add that the en-wiki community (writing the English-language encyclopedia) and the community of developers (writing the software) and sysadmins (integrating the software changes) need to make clearer to each other how they communicate on issues like this. Carcharoth (talk) 01:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Response to Gurch (and Nick and Acalamari and anyone else worrying that this is about shutting the process down): The title of the request specifically mentions consensus. I agree with you that for better or for worse we have non-admin rollback, and that it is bedding in quite well, and there is no need to talk about disabling or suspending it. The point here is to find out what should have happened in order to settle the consensus issue, and learn lessons for next time a change like this is proposed (eg. how to improve communications). Carcharoth (talk) 02:07, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Response to Sean William: Thanks for pointing out Ned Scott's draft RfArb. The latest version before he blanked it is here. I agree with what Ned has said concerning issues of user behaviour, and would encourage him to post the statement he was drafting. Carcharoth (talk) 02:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note to self: Other examples of technical processes being implemented, with and without drama. The "Table" namespace. The New Pages patrolled feature. Anonymous page creation disabled (and the nearly-implemented proposal to switch it back on).

Statement by Ultraexactzz

I agree that the questions raised by Doc are significant, and worthy of the Committee's consideration. Where is consensus? Is it a certain percentage? Or, to borrow a metaphor, is it whoever shouts the loudest? I know that every technical change is not approved, or even discussed, by the community - but when are the developers bound to seek (and follow) consensus, and how are their decisions reviewed if they go against consensus? I would argue that, in this case, the Arbcom is the appropriate venue.

I also note for the record that the admins who put together and operate the process at Requests for Rollback have made what appears to be a good faith effort to implement a process for which there was some disagreement. The approval of any number of editors (myself included) to receive rollback tools isn't, in my view, an attempt to short-circuit consensus, but rather an attempt to fairly and reasonably implement a new process. The issues of this case should be limited to the events surrounding the activation of the developer's change, including the process for determining consensus beforehand, and whether such consensus existed (or exists).

-- UltraExactZZ ^Claims ~ Evidence 01:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Gurch

Just when I thought discussion was dying down, Jimbo decided to intervene and now this came up. There is very definitely a community consensus to grant rollback in some form or other, all that is being debated is the workings of the process. The current process is not perfect, of course, but no process is. I think the amount that was achieved in 24 hours was remarkable, especically given that it was achieved despite the bickering of many contributors who did not like the way in which it was implemented. Sure, it could have been introduced a lot more smoothly. But we've got this far... can we please not screw up now? Requests for rollback have already died down after an initial surge. There are already long-establised rules governing the use of rollback that can simply be carried over from administrators; the only thing to settle is the process itself. We as a community can tweak and get consensus for the working of the process in good time on our own, we do not need a committee to babysit us. If the Arbitration Committee decided now to disbale use of the rollback tool, that would in all probablilty be the last time any non-administrator ever saw it. For the good of the project, this really, really isn't a good idea – Gurch 01:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Marlith

The implementation of rollback hit us without anyone knowing about it. I also agree with Gurch on thsi topic. Just as we finished the initial voting we went forth to a short period of discussion about the definition of consensus. Hours later, we discover that it was implemented quite quietly. The problem that caused so much controversy is the vague definition of consensus. Could it be the dictionary definition? Does it mean that one side has more logical and convinicing arguements like this? This controversy has escalated to the point where only the ArbCom can decide. Personally, I believe that RfR should be tweaked into an RfA like process instead of the RFPP like process we have now to prevent users from misusing the tool. Or if we have intelligent discussion the community can come to an agreement. Although rollback allows users to be bitey, I would like to remember that rollback can be taken away from disruptive users and it is also a very good anti vandalisim tool. Also I have seen much bad faith in the arguments against rollback, the problems lie with the users, not with the proposals or everyone who has rollback. Thank you. Marlith ^T/C 01:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A modest proposal by Durova

This just isn't worth the fuss. I respectfully request that the developer who implemented this un-implement it temporarily while the community decides whether/what type of implementation is appropriate, that ArbCom dismiss this case, and that people put their energies into something useful. Durova^Charge! 02:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Halo

I agree with Carcharoth - it was largely a breakdown of communication between the en-Wiki process and the developers. I, for one, firmly believe there wasn't consensus for this change.

In future, there needs to be a better way to decide whether a policy has passed or not, avoiding replying on developer discretion wherever possible simply to make life easier for everyone - the suggestion by Jimbo Wales on Wikipedia:AN#Arbcom to let the ArbCom have the final decision on these sorts of polls and communicate this to developers seems like the best idea going forward. A way of preventing ambiguity over poll results and consensus should be the most important thing to come out of this process - if nothing else than to prevent discouraging developers from making active changes to Wikipedia lest they be controversial, and to prevent future controversial decisions.

However, I can't help but think Ryan Postlethwaite, the original author of WP:RFR, did his very best to muddy the waters and tried to cause as much confusion as possible to push through the policy by implying that there was consensus on Bugzilla bug 12534 while not showing his conflict of interest (or that his opinions on consensus differ from many) and advertising on MediaWiki:watchlist-details prematurely.

Rolling out WP:RFR at the first possible time irrespective of the fact that the policy wasn't ready causing confusion with policy made up on the spot was a bad idea. I believe that these sorts of actions should be strongly discouraged in future, and changes such as this should be done in a more considered manner - even if something is technically possible and enabled that doesn't mean it should be rushed into. -Halo (talk) 02:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Nick

I welcome and strongly support the comments made by Gurch. I would also ask that the Arbitration Committee clarify their powers in relation to technical features. Whilst not strictly relevant, I note that some Arbitrators have been appointed following the recent elections with a level of support comparable to the level of support for the Rollback proposal (both in terms of votes and in terms of percentages). Arbitrators with such a level of support enjoy a clear mandate, and I believe this should also be the case with the Rollback proposal, as such, I cannot do anything but ask the Arbitration Committee to reject the full case, permit users to be given the Rollback permission and direct the community to create suitable policy to govern the process as it has been implemented. Nick (talk) 02:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by MBK004

I received rollback through the process on 10 January. I echo the concerns of Gurch, and urge that a consensus be determined between the administrators granting rollback as suggested by Nick. Regardless, of what is decided, my main concern is what is to happen to the editors who have received rollback if the process is halted. I agree that the process is flawed, and have no doubts that many disagree with how the process was implemented in the first place. I commend the admins who have tried to work in good faith to implement a process to effectively judge if an editor should be given this tool. If the decision is made to stop this process of granting rollback to non-administrators, I would advocate that the editors who already have it (approximately 350+), be allowed to keep the tool, with the knowledge that their actions would be closely monitored, in order to judge if the concerns of the community in the aforementioned polls to determine community consensus have merit or not. This is because the unannounced (to those who have not kept up with the recent events following this process) removal of the tool to the 350+ users with it screams of assuming bad faith in the editors who have rollback. - -MBK₀₀₄ 02:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Alexfusco5

I was an original opposer of this proposal before it was implemented. Now that I have seen how he process is operating my concerns have been addressed. Many of the oppose votes (my included) opposed because of unneeded bureaucracy or dislike of the process. I believe that a new policy needs to be made behind the new feature to assure that the policy has consensus. As was seen by the poll many people supported the idea but opposed the way it worked (i.e. should be carried out bureaucrats, twinkle does the same thing etc.). The solution would probably be to draft a new rollback policy that has consensus from the community (unless the policy was supposed to be implemented by majority) Alexfusco⁵ 02:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Mercury

Everything Gurch said above.

Statement by Sean William

This situation was handled poorly on every level. Once the developers activated the feature, the process immediately began - causing utter chaos. I tried to protect the page so that some discussion could be had, but it was only protected for about 40 minutes when John Reaves unprotected it as "not needed". I feel that it absolutely was needed, and still is. The parties list could be narrowed down easily to a few key players; Ned Scott already tried to do it in a sandbox of his (User:Ned Scott/sandbox4, old revision). Sean William @ 02:30, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Acalamari

I also agree with what Gurch said. As one of the most frequent participants at requests for rollback, I can say that everything has been going fine there, and problems, if/when they have arisen at the place, have been discussed and sorted out. I don't see any reason to close the process down, and I don't see what an arbitration case will achieve apart from waste a load of time for many people. Acalamari 02:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Cobi

I have to echo Gurch, Nick, and MBK004 as well. Furthermore, ClueBot has seen a major performance boost since it was granted rollback. Regardless of the outcome of this request for arbitration, my main concern is those who have received rollback. Especially the anti-vandal bots, because all rollback is for the bots is a more efficient way to do the exact same thing that they do already. I have not seen any misuse of rollback since it has been granted, and to remove it would go clearly against our fundamental principle about assuming good faith. -- Cobi^(t|c|b) 02:51, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ashley Y

From this case I hope to see an improvement of the process by which technical changes are made to the site. I note, for instance, that WP:PWD "passed" by 51 to 22, smaller numbers and proportionally less discussion no doubt due to not being linked on watchlists, yet was not implemented.

People get upset not because things don't happen to go their way, but when they feel the generally agreed rules and customs of the site are not being applied fairly. Upsetting people tends to damage the encyclopedia, but a clear process can mitigate that. —Ashley Y 02:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to Ashley Y

Regarding WP:PWD, it was not implemented due to lack of discussion. The rollback proposal, on the other hand has had tons of it. Majorly (talk) 03:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Lawrence Cohen

Oh, enough already: Wikipedia:Requests for rollback/Vote. Lawrence Cohen 03:04, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Update Please accept this case. An extreme minority has taken to supercede consensus now even on the vote, and have edit warred it out of Wikipedia, primarily administrators. Take this case, please. Please review: this and reconsider. This situation is hopeless, if some ultra minority of admins is going to drive an edit war to even take away the community's voice to decide such things like this, and kill an in-process vote that Jimbo called for. Lawrence Cohen 14:26, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ryan Postlethwaite

I’m not sure really what to say about this, we had what many could consider an RfC on the subject, a proposal and then a vote on the proposal which two thirds of the community said they wanted. What was my role in this? Well, I created the proposal which was discussed, then I created a final proposal which was put to a community vote. After around 450 people had voted on this, someone closed the poll citing discussion (I had nothing to do with the closure of the poll, I unwatchlisted it soon after it was created and I think it was closed by someone who opposed the proposal). A couple of days later, Corvus cornix cited a bug request that had been put forward by an uninvolved party (Note: This was visible to all parties on the talk page of the poll) and I simply responded on the bug, citing that I personally thought there was consensus but asked the developers to take a look at the poll). I had previously created Wikipedia:Requests for rollback and userfied it just in case it was implemented. I was as shocked as anyone when I saw it had been moved out of my userspace and the first request was already up. I think it would have been better for us to have had a few days (at least) warning before implementation so we could have got our policy and procedures up to scratch to stop any resulting mess happening, but this didn’t happen. I hindsight, I think everyones done a fantastic job developing this into a non bureaucratic procedure as we’ve worked in real time to sort out some real problems we had when it first started last night. As with all procedures here, they need time to develop, and I really can’t see how there’ve been any major problems with it so far. This was in no way ideal, we should have had warning, but we’ve made the best of a bad situation, and what the majority of the community wanted. Over the next few weeks I expect us to develop further and unless there’s problems (which no-one has yet been able to cite), I can’t see any real need to change things. Ryan Postlethwaite 03:14, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Mr.Z-man

I too agree with what Gurch says. At this point, most of the drama seems to just be for the sake of drama. Instead of continuing to argue about whether there was a consensus that the poll had a consensus, we should evaluate what has already been done. Is rollback being misused by non-admins on a significant scale (or at all)? Is the lack of a fully agreed upon system actually causing problems (other than people complaining about the lack of a process)? I've been mostly avoiding the discussion on the admins' noticeboard, but have instead been focusing on the discussion and process at WP:RFR and WT:RFR. For all the shouting and panicking elsewhere about how not having a pre-existing policy would be and is a disaster, it seems to be running fairly smoothly. There have been bumps, but for a totally new system, that is to be expected and work at the RFR talk page based on the experiences of people taking part in and observing the actual process is producing helpful results and minimal drama. Would having a fully agreed upon process before this was implemented have helped? Probably. Is it necessary? No. For one, except for important content policies, rules are supposed to be descriptive. How do we describe something that doesn't exist? Was is a total disaster? No, even without rules, people used (*gasp*) common sense and started to form rules based on how things were working. Even if we created rules before it started, unless we got really lucky, we probably would have ended up rewriting most of them once the process started. I'm reminded of when patrolled edits for Special:Newpages was activated (not quite as significant a change, but still quite noticeable). There was minimal on-wiki discussion beforehand, no RFC, no proposal, no straw poll, just a short discussion on the Village Pump. When it was turned on, I drafted up a quick set of rules based on my thoughts and some previous discussion (both public and off-wiki), people agreed with most, asked questions and commented on the talk page, and after a few bumps at the start (some due to it being misconfigured) it proceeded with minimal drama. Even without rules written beforehand and pages of discussion, it went quite well. I imagine that given a few days to iron out some issues, this will go well also. Mr.Z-man 03:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Justin

I want to emphasize a major point here. There are mixed opinions about whether or not WP:RFR is working, and those above me have commented on the various good and bad points. That being said, the real question here is not whether the tool is effective, or if the feature is a good or bad, but whether or not the implementation was made with consensus. I strongly disagree with User:Cobi that removing this tool is a violation of WP:AGF, if it's found that enabling the feature was without consensus in the first place. At this juncture, I believe full protecting WP:RFR and allowing a true consensus to form is the appropriate course of action. I see no reason to remove access to the tool, for those already granted access, unless the community decides to remove it entirely from non-admins (which I sincerely doubt will happen). As an aside, while I did vote in Lawrence Cohen's poll above, I don't think a "straight poll" is going to be any less contentious than the present situation. Justin ^chat 03:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn. Apparently a suggestion by the board chair, was enough for involved admins to make a final decision. This rather contentious debate exemplifies everything that is wrong with Wikipedia, and ArbCom's refusal illustrates why it won't get fixed. Justin ^chat 02:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:TenOfAllTrades

The poll has a number of troubling aspects. Most have been enumerated above, so I will sketch them only briefly here.

• The poll was open for a very short period of time; I count less than nine days from first to last vote.
• The proposal on which people were voting changed substantially over the course of the voting period: [2].
• Even if 67% is taken to be a consensus that non-admin rollback ought to be made available, there appear to be wildly disparate opinions on when and to whom rollback should be granted.

For comparison, I remind the Committee of the last major policy that depended on a vote to assess consensus: the three-revert rule. In that case there was as widely publicized poll, a clear question, and a full two weeks of voting: Wikipedia:Three revert rule enforcement. The 3RR was passed with the support of 85% of the participants in the vote.

Obviously the cat is out of the bag. The configuration that allows admins to grant and revoke rollback has gone live. There's no point to antagonizing the developers by asking them to pull the plug; it's not their fault that we've done a poor job of keeping our house in order. Indeed, I suspect that it will be beneficial to the project to have more (responsible) people with access to rollback. What might be a good idea – and what is a matter that I would very much like to see the Committee consider – is a temporary injunction.

I strongly urge the ArbCom to declare a moratorium on granting rollback bits until the enwiki community can develop something like a stable policy on when and to whom rollback is granted. In the last days, I've seen a great deal of argument and very little agreement on a number of issues.

• Should rollback be granted via private email requests, or only through a public process page?
• How long should the community be allowed to consider or comment on a public request? (Times from fifteen minutes to twenty-four hours have been proposed; rollback requests have been granted within four minutes of their appearance on WP:RFR.)
• Who decides if an editor should have rollback? I've seen one admin refuse a request, only to be immediately overruled by another without any comment or discussion.
• How is rollback withdrawn?
• How are requests logged? Should only successful/unsuccessful requests be recorded? If private requests are permitted, should they be logged to prevent 'admin shopping'?

Right now the de facto policy is being decided not through consensus but by whichever admins decide to deliberate for the shortest amount of time and act with the least prior discussion. Presented with a fait accompli, there is a natural reluctance on the part of dissenting editors to risk the perception of wheel warring. This is not a good way to develop policy. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:19, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Husond

I was very surprised to witness the blitzkrieg implementation of the non-admin rollback proposal. I'm really not convinced that there was a consensus for this change in the first place (it was way too borderline, and one should bear in mind that the support camp naturally attracted many users who, instead of pondering the pros and cons, simply supported because of their own benefit of getting the rollback tool). Anyway, even if we are to determine the outcome as consensual, I think that the amount of opposition should at least justify a slow and very well discussed implementation of non-admin rollback. Which just didn't happen. It was a disappointing process and bad omen for further proposals. Húsönd 04:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by KnowledgeOfSelf

While ArbCom does not make policy, and this RfAb is out of the realm of what ArbCom normally handles, I do believe this is a special case that requires a firm adjudicature from some type of authority. It is very unlikely that true consensus could be reached on this issue without a firm conclusion from such an entity as ArbCom. With that being said, the issue here is not Special:Userrights, it is not the request page either. The issue is the blatant disregard of established practice and community understanding and application of consensus.

Policy or guideline pages should never be implemented in such a scant time period. The fact that a dev enabled this feature does not mean that it was accepted by the community. When I first became aware that requests for rollback were being given I stated, "This sets a substandard precedent, and completely undermines established practice. Consensus is not counting the votes, it is not 2-1, and it is not this."

The real grievance here is the disregard shown to community consensus. A prime example is the issuing of rollback to anti-vandal bots, based on this discussion which lasted just a couple days. Consensus can change, but not in 2 days or 2 weeks for a feature that can cause a ripple effect of this magnitude. I urge ArbCom to accept this case, and be a facilitator of calmness and reason to this very serious issue. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 04:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:B

This is silly. Around 300 people have requested rollback in the time since it went live. Presumably they like the idea of it. 2/3 of the community approved the policy in this form. Of the 1/3 that didn't like it, many of the objections were either flat out wrong (e.g. worrying about admins taking rollback away from each other) or were objections that would also apply to tools like WP:TWINKLE (in other words, no new problems). If someone has a better implementation than the current system, then propose it, but there is nothing good that can come from arbcom reviewing this. --B (talk) 04:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Mbisanz

Well it seems that most if not all of the points of this discussion have been covered. The one thing I'd like to add, is that I personally disagree with the concept of developers judging consensus of userights issues. Meta says "This position [Steward] was created to dissociate rights management from software development [Developer]." While developers must, by nature, flick the switch, a steward or at least a crat should have been the judge of consensus to notify the developers. Thats not to say that any users here acted in bad faith or improperly (or even that the decision to turn it on was wrong), just that in order to avoid the possible appearance of impropriety on anyone's part, a steward or a crat should have made the call publically on the vote (like an RfA or AfD) and then notified the developers, however that is normally done. MBisanz ^talk 06:27, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also note that while all parties who contributed to the original discussion are listed as parties, this RfArb has only been mentioned on AN/I and the 2 Rollback related pages. If accepted I'd strongly urge a bot-notification of everyone who signed the discussion/vote page. MBisanz ^talk 16:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by EconomicsGuy

I understand that this was initiated based on Jimbo's comments about this so no blame to the initiator but Jimbo is way off here. We don't need ArbCom or even Jimbo for that matter to figure this out. What we need is for everyone to stop seeing ghosts and get back to writing the encyclopedia. It's rollback - it's not delete or block. This love of process is a gigantic waste of time and needs to end now. EconomicsGuy (talk) 07:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

Okay I'm getting more worried now. Given how this is going and the fact that the only thing we can agree on is an image of a white cat on the polling page I think we may have to ask ArbCom to act as mediators. Not policy makers, but mediators because clearly we are incapable of doing this ourselves. EconomicsGuy (talk) 13:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

Also, may I just point out to Flonight who accepted this that the current list of involved parties per this request includes some 450 people not counting those who have become involved since? I think the best solution here would be for a group of arbitrators to act as neutral mediators. EconomicsGuy (talk) 14:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn. Apparently pointless now that there is a ban of at least 3 months on voting about this. I don't know where that was decided but apparently it was. So much for transparency. EconomicsGuy (talk) 22:44, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ned Scott

This might sound odd coming from me, since about 24 hours ago I was drafting a proposal for a case, but I'm not sure about taking this to arbcom anymore. Maybe yes, maybe no, but I've been thinking a lot about this in the last day.

It's not a big deal in that it's not life or death, but people need to stop being mean to people who were upset by this. Same goes the other way around, when it applies. It's not ok for people to label such editors as being disruptive, because they have a concern, because they want to talk about it. We should avoid needless drama, but that does not mean rejecting anything that might generate some drama as a byproduct.

The situation should have been dealt with better. We should have waited before promoting users. It didn't happen, and for what it's worth, the world did not explode. Still, we need a way of stopping such stampedes in the future. A lot of people thought it was ok to just jump right on in, and there was no way for someone to put it on hold without being brushed off as being "disruptive".

Still, the way everyone responded, on both sides, was somewhat.. expected/ reasonable, consideration the situations, and how people normally react to such situations (at least for Wikipedia). But I'm still sorry this turned out to be somewhat of a mess. I'm sorry I got mad and that other people got mad. I'm glad that rollback granting itself have gone fairly smoothly despite all this. I feel bad for some of the things I said and did, and I feel bad that situations like this can put some users at odds with other users. I feel bad that this seems unfair to everyone involved in many ways (though there are certain things that could have easily improved the situation).

I find myself agreeing with both Doc glasgow and Ryan Postlethwaite in a lot of what they say on this page. And a lot of other users too. I don't know, and it's almost 5 am and I'm tired. I don't know if I should just walk away from this whole issue, or try to help us improve things for the next time we have a similar issue. I don't even know if I would be of any help, but I'd like to be of some help if I can.

I like just about all of you on this project. I really like our project and I really like working with everyone. Valid concerns or not, for when I was a bonehead, I hope people can forgive me, and I hope I can remember to do the same for others. -- Ned Scott 12:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Second statement by Ned Scott

Yesterday when I posted my view I went directly to the request for arb page, fell asleep, woke back up, finished what I was writing, and went back to sleep. It's now been another 15 hours since then, and I'm still trying to fully catch up with everything that has happened in the last 40 hours.

I wish there was a way to be mad-at/address something without having it become a big commotion, but that's just kind of the nature of Wikipedia. In all honesty, I can't find it in me to be really upset about this anymore. It's not that I should or shouldn't be, but just.. I have a lot of stuff to do, both in real life and on wiki.

The most embarrassing part of this is my own misconception on the rollback feature. I had played a hand in this issue getting all hyped up, and I made an extreme rookie mistake. Had I understood rollback correctly, I would have actually supported it. That's not to say that I wouldn't have had any objections to the resulting situation, but.. lets just say I want to crawl into a little hole. When I realized that my main concern wasn't even related, I blanked my arbcom draft, cursing my apparent addiction to Wikipedia, which had prevented me from watching many awesome giant robot fights that I had planned to view on that day. Sure, I had only myself to blame, but the nature of these things, and how we normally deal with them on Wikipedia puts a lot of us at a disadvantage (in comparison to real-life situations/disputes).

When I first opposed the proposal I figured that it would still pass, and that if it really was a bad idea that we'd find out, and would be able to deal with it at that time. I understand that this has made a second issue, unrelated to the feature itself, but even about that I can't say that I'm that concerned. I think we'll be able to handle it, but it's hard, by the very nature of Wikipedia, to do so in a way that doesn't put us at ends with each other.

We should be more worried about that than the disputes themselves.

We need to figure out how to prevent misconceptions, ways to aid proper perspective, and ways to do this when we're dealing with large groups of people making the decision, using a text based method of communication, where we can shoot first and ask questions later, and where our instincts often betray us. Wikipedia's community is at a sort of critical mass (for a lack of better words), and this is evidence of that. -- Ned Scott 03:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Hiding

There are issues here that need to be examined. WP:CONSENSUS is a fundamental policy and should not be disregarded. When a consensus is disputed that dispute should be settled through dispute resolution, not ignoring the dispute. More than that, there is also a strong statement of principle by Jimmy that Any changes to the software must be gradual and reversible. We need to make sure that any changes contribute positively to the community, as ultimately determined by me, in full consultation with the community consensus. Did we have a full consultation? Were all issues aired properly? Was dispute resolution followed? Was WP:CONSENSUS, the most fundamental resolution policy, followed? Hiding T 12:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC) [reply]

• Further. I just also want to say this. I asked Ryan how to contact the devs and at no point did he mention the bug page. I wanted to point out that whilst there may be consensus that there should be some form of rollback granting, it may be that the current proposal was not the best implementation and that the community needed time to work out the best method. The current method stinks of instruction creep, and it may be that the community could have decided that no granting of the ability to amend user rights needed to be granted to admins. We may have decided that blocking could have been the method to deal with abuses of rollback and that rollback could have been granted to all accounts or to accounts with x amount of edits. There really has been a huge swathe of discussion curtailed here and behaviour does need to be examined at some level. I'm not suggesting Ryan deliberately misled me, but I think the fact that he didn't mention it to me perhaps undercuts his statement somewhat and thus part of the reason for Sam's decline to hear this. If it was an honest oversight, fair enough, but it just feels like enough people were asking for more discussion, for proponents to slow down. It felt like proponents were dismissing that as attempts to kill the issue by filibustering, something that breaches AGF if you ask me. It felt like contrasting opinions were being disregarded by those who wished this to be implemented. Hiding T 18:20, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Withdrawn per statement to that effect from Anthere. Hiding T 22:39, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Slakr

This is my first arb post ever, so please excuse me if it's too lengthy/not addressing the right things/etc, as I normally avoid these kinds of things. :P

I think there are several issues in play here:

• This is a permanent change — I think the pivotal issue here is the fact that we're deciding on something that is going to be a de facto permanent change, but it's been treated with wild disrespect and incorrect protocol for a serious policy change. Sure, we can say that “oh, we can just open another vote to have it removed,” but practically-speaking, even if there was wide abuse, there won't be a snowball's chance in hell of prying +rollbacker from the public's cold, dead hands.

• +rollbacker isn't and won't be easy to remove in cases of abuse — One of the original arguments for adding it in the first place was that it would be easy to remove if it were to be abused. We've already seen that, in only the first few days of the ability being added and granted, people have allegedly abused it. But, when it comes to removing said permission, there tends to be strong favor toward readding it quickly. Whether that will be the case in the future is uncertain, but this doesn't particularly bode well for occurring within only a couple of days of the permission being live. But, because it's a logged permissions change, it it certain to draw the wrath of those involved should they perceive injustice in any form; and, it goes without saying that any negative permissions entries, including +rollbacker, will be a scarlet letter in RfA and other issues of character.

• There have been very bizarre, confusing, atypical, and overall strange occurrences/incidents during the discussion and !voting processes — particularly:
  • Blanking votes here and here is troubling. People who would otherwise think they have casted their vote may not know it/they got wiped away until it's too late. This is extremely troubling, and I don't believe that User:Random832 meant anything by it, but in any vote where that happens, I believe that the poll should immediately closed, the issue dropped, and then reopened a couple weeks later once everyone is back on the same page.
  • Non-neutral images in the header as of this revision is also troubling. There are reasons there aren't pictures strewn about polling booths, and psychological priming has a lot to do with it. Also, notice the caption: “Do you already has rollback?” Which, in my opinion, directly prompts action resembling rally-like behavior.
  • Tacking on bots to a discussion about users and the subsequent hard-closing discussion after only 3 days of being active with atypical reasoning “I'm closing this, because it's already been acted on” ??? I could be wrong, but someone being BOLD in giving bots +rollbacker does not constitute consensus— especially after only 3 days of discussion (presumably because someone assumed it was a vote, which, in that particular case should be highly frowned upon because it involves technical issues that actually do need discussion).
  • A developer ticket being opened unilaterally before consensus was established to enable non-admin rollback. Judging by precedent of Wikipedia:Per-article blocking, if even 84% percent !vote support isn't accepted as clear consensus, then a figure of, around 68% definitely shouldn't be either.
  • During the discussion and straw poll, this and prior revisions had unsourced, OR, opinionated rebuttals to opposition placed well before the poll itself in a highly visible location. As a result, it is likely that people who came to the discussion with opposition were dissuaded from voicing and/or agreeing with fellow opposers, while those who arrived to support were merely reinforced in their support. Granted, this is speculation on my part, but it wouldn't be fair to do the same thing in a polling booth during an election, so I wouldn't expect it to be done here.
  • Inadvertent canvassing using Template:Watchlist — I say inadvertent, because posting a watchlist message to registered users is an issue of conflict of interest, much like posting a rally to a non-notable forum up for deletion is also a conflict of interest. My reasoning here is that there is a fundamental net gain from any editor supporting the ability to receive +rollback who isn't an admin already. As a result, people who wouldn't even be interested in policy changes in the first place or even know what rollback is are suddenly called to action, thereby artificially inflating the vote count, stimulating a false dichotomy, and reaffirming why polls are evil.

In my opinion, I do not believe that any resultant vote will be fully reflective of either consensus or numbers due to the various misconducts in the process itself. I understand that I opposed the change in the first place, but I must affirm that despite that opposition, I'm not here to try to fight against consensus or anything, as might be inferred. Anyone who knows/investigates my history will know I'll always gladly defer to consensus, but in this case, I do not believe that we will have an accurate gauge of consensus for the time being.

I'm not blaming anyone, as they seem to be done in good faith and/or as humor and/or to alleviate confusion; but, in any election/poll, controlling for bias is critical, and when the result might not reflect the true state of things, we need to decide if a recount is necessary, and what preventative measures need to be taken to assure that all procedural elements are lucid.

My opinion? I believe the entire thing should be scrapped'n'archived, waitlisted for about a month, then re-opened for discussion/vote/whatever— only in the interests of letting the dust and confusion settle so that everyone is back on the same page. From there, if a vote, discussion, or whatever is desired, then it should be done and a neutral, uninvolved group should decide what the consensus actually is; because, right now, this whole thing has turned into a zoo— and I'm not using the metaphor lightly. --slakr^\ talk / 14:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by GlassCobra

Like Slakr above me, I have been involved with ArbCom only marginally before now; please forgive me if I’m off-topic. However, I feel too strongly about this to sit on the sidelines.

I am disappointed. So far, two three of our newly elected arbs have decided to reject this case to send it back to the community, when clearly the community is incapable of deciding on its own in this matter; as EconomicsGuy has said, the only thing we can seem to agree on is having a picture of a cat on the vote page, as the vote itself has been blanked several times, and now protected before I could vote. The Arbitration Committee is not suited to the job of deciding on whether policy changes should be implemented; however, in this case, the policy change was implemented without consensus from the community. Even Jimbo seems to want to pawn this off onto someone else. I confess being a little disappointed in Doc glasgow, whose previous statement, before he struck it out, seemed to be along the same lines as my thoughts here. This is not something to merely roll over and take.

To be blunt: this is unacceptable. As much respect as I have for Ryan Postlethwaite, he seems to have some serious misguidings about what exactly consensus is. Consensus is not about straight numbers, not about who gets the most votes, and it certainly is not "who shouts the loudest." This is the premise by which he has declared victory, so to speak, and he is wrong. Ned Scott made some good points in his statement a few above mine; not only were the self-proclaimed "winners" of the rollback proposal being arrogant and rude, they were completely and utterly dismissive of anyone attempting to voice opposition, even as the feature was being implemented; see B’s post above as an example. From the very beginning, this proposal has had problems. As we all know, this is not the first time that non-admin rollback has been discussed. It was clear from the previous discussion that this was not something that could be simply voted on, and especially not in the six days that the proposal went before the proponents declared victory. As some will know, there’s been quite an uproar on the mailing list. So not only was there no consensus for this feature, there was absolutely no discussion on how it should be managed. I urge everyone to go and look at WT:RFR right now and witness the chaos currently underway; everyone voicing their opinions as to how people should be granted rollback, and we have indeed seen the beginnings of some wheel warring over permissions, as predicted. In the meantime, while the bickering continues, editors are being granted this tool left and right, with unknown ramifications. Like TenOfAllTrades and Durova, I strongly urge the ArbCom to declare a moratorium on granting this privilege until the community can develop a stable policy on when and to whom rollback is granted.

I don’t really feel that this proposal is all that much of a good one. If people like Marlith feel that this should be more like an RfA, why not just send these candidates to RfA? These are obviously good, quality editors, otherwise we wouldn’t be granting them rollback (right?). Perhaps a large influx of candidates will help the RfA process to be less of a big deal, as it has become. God knows we can always use more admins to help out around here. To sum up: like Ned Scott, I respect all of you. Like I said on my RfA back in November, these conflicts are absolutely inherent and unavoidable when such a large number of people come from so many different backgrounds to work on something together. I hope we can all work together to arrive at a solution that best serves the project. GlassCobra 15:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Sm8900

Sorry, I don't have any knowledgable details about the very important issue of how the discussion was handled. However, I do agree with all editors above who express any misgivngs about acceptance of and implementation of rollback. who needs it? what does it add, and how does it benefit anyone? but anything with such deep implications for Wikipedia needs to be looked at very, very carefully. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 16:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Blue Tie

I don't believe I saw this vote and I cannot help but wonder why this is a big issue. Why do we need to have this tool? Why does it matter if we do have it? But, if the vote was not handled right and consensus not followed then it should be reversed. So in essence I am in agreement with SM8900--Blue Tie (talk) 17:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Injunction

I support the current Arbitrators who are opting to decline a case on this issue, I agree their involvement is premature. I think this is something the community ought to try working out first. However, judging by the discussion on AN/I and the absurd edit warring at Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback/Vote I would like to request an injunction from ArbCom to frame the proceedings.

My idea is an injunction defining where and for how long discussion ought to proceed. It's unusual, true, but it looks like most of the fighting is over the weight of past discussions and allow new discussion to proceed. So I would suggest defining a discussion period of at least one week, to be restricted to one page at or below Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback. Following this, an open poll to last at least two weeks, also located in the same area. I wouldn't suggest any further definition of the discussion or polling, merely state that at the end of that time ArbCom would issue a statement either recognizing a consensus (for or against) or reopening discussions. Also at that time, ArbCom can reevaluate the need for them to referee the discussions further.

I feel an injunction like this would go a long way to calming the current drama, and refocusing energies into something constructive. --InkSplotch (talk) 17:28, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Tariqabjotu

Frivolous. -- tariqabjotu 20:41, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Grandmasterka

'Frivolous' doesn't begin to describe it. Grandmasterka 08:56, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (1/3/0/0)

• Decline, and (whether the current view is consensus or not) refer it back to community, to choose an approach to generate (or check) a consensus-based decision on the rollback facility. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 03:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Detailed reasons.

Should Arbcom hear it? Setting aside the view of Jimbo Wales (see below), and the question whether the Committee can hear the matter (it can: 1/ policy; 2/ "unusually contentious between admins", 3/ interpersonal dispute, 4/ conduct), there are good general reasons not to. In this case there is a good chance the community will be able to resolve it, itself. Where possible Arbcom should not decide matters over the community's head, but all of us should use the opportunities to better gain understanding of consensus decision-making. This is properly a matter for the community to decide (less controversially?), and Arbcom to then ratify and formally request to the devs as a communal decision. (We may look separately at the mechanics of how it got activated, for future - presumably there should have been formal confirmation or no change?) Arbcom should set a bar for accepting cases. Arbitration policy stipulates that serious consensus building/dispute resolution (as applicable) should have usually been tried first. There's reasons for that, one of which is that ultimately it is more beneficial that the community (ie users in general) makes decisions; Arbcom is not an executive body and should only reluctantly accept a role beyond "last resort for editorial/conduct disputes" (and then only minimally). It is easy to take on new powers, roles and tasks for the best of motives, but my judgement is it would also be for the long term detriment of the community if the Committee moved in the direction of being seen as "solver of all problems". It's too easy for people to become used to passing problems to some perceived authority. The ethos of the Wikipedia approach is that all users in general solve them co-operatively rather than having some group "do it for us". The community is the authority here. If at all possible, the community should be aided to move beyond its own impasses and thereby become more capable. A strong collaborative community is wanted. To underline that the community is indeed capable, a fair number of other cases passed upwards later end up (once the drama is settled) as being addressed communally anyway, proving the community is more than capable and didn't really need arbcom to step in, much of the time (Attack sites NPA edit, WP:SRNC, etc). My personal view. Given further discussion and serious approaches to consensus-seeking (see WP:SRNC for what a 'serious approach' might mean), the only other contentious matter here is trouts all round for the unnecessarily contentiousness. AGF and disagree that hearing such a case would be worth the time taken away from content writing and other activity. Jimbo Wales posted that there should be a community poll and votes, followed by Arbcom discussion with a view to ratifying the outcome and draft policy. He did not say "go to Arbcom immediately". For the reasons above, I'm in agreement with that broad view. Consensus can change. The software facility isn't going anywhere. If we don't agree now, we can re-discuss in 6 months or a year. When the community wishes it, it'll happen. So "no consensus" is not troublesome. There is unlikely to be harm given rediscussion. Approvals are mostly going to be obviously sensible users, rollback abuse is easy to fix and the switch can be removed. Communally consider a moratorium or 24-48 hour approval time for the while. Summary and decline In this case, there is disagreement whether consensus exists. If it does, then a re-test of consensus will affirm it. If not then a retest will be needed to develop consensus. In neither case is the community served by the Committee taking the testing of that view out of the hands of the community at large. Whatever we were to say, there would be loud voices that it was incorrect/improper. This isn't Florida 2000 and Wikipedia works by consensus; my view is if unsure, recheck. Hence decline. If I were to be asked to sum it up, I'd say something like this:- The "non-admin rollback debate" is better discussed in the hands of the community, even if contentious. Consensus sometimes takes work and is gained by overcoming divisions; this is a part of our agreed approach. I feel it's best to return the matter back to the community, and encourage and recommend RFC or some way to genuinely decide what consensus would look like, and how to test it, to supersede the contentious decision-making to date. The community may wish to make a decision concerning granting of rollback in the interim. Although this matter would be within the Committee's purview if it chose, I would strongly decline to take it on, as it is in every way best dealt with as a communal policy decision. FT2 (Talk | email) 03:33, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Decline. FT2 speaks well here. ArbCom can explicitly ratify the community's consensus once that is established; we do so all the time implicitly every time we use a community policy in a case. But I'm not sure why we should, regardless of Jimbo's request; if the decision is a really bad decision, we're not going to be the only ones or the first ones to notice it, and the community's request to the Foundation would hopefully be rejected anyway; and if the decision is a good decision, ArbCom's imprimature is hardly going to make it a better decision (unless there's something odd I don't know about the Foundation's deliberation processes.) If the community likes the idea of ArbCom being some sort of conduit for the rare policy request to the Foundation, I suppose we could do that, but I'm not sure why it should be necessary. I do think the declaration of "consensus" to the developers bears examination, but that's about it. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 08:30, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept to examine user conduct issues related to civility and prematurely declaring consensus in an important issue that effects the entire community. FloNight (talk) 11:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline per FT2. In other circumstances a case based on misconduct through misrepresentation of consensus to a developer might have been worth taking but Ryan Postlethwaite's statement makes it clear that there was no misconduct on his part. Sam Blacketer (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Obiter dictae

Remarks generally on 'policy' cases and consensus The Arbitration committee is not suited to the job of deciding on whether policy changes should be implemented. It seems to me that, with such a diverse community, it is becoming harder and harder to find consensus for anything other than the most obvious change, and this is why there is a dispute over whether to go ahead, and who judges whether consensus has actually been demonstrated. I incline to the view that it is usually obvious whether a consensus has emerged, so that, if there is a dispute about it, then we almost certainly do not have a consensus. If the community is unhappy at decision-making by consensus, then would a consensus emerge on another way? Sam Blacketer (talk) 16:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

---

Waterboarding

Initiated by henrik•talk at 11:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• henrik (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Lawrence Cohen (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Blue Tie (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Neutral Good (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Badagnani (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jehochman (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• OtterSmith (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Shibumi2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Black Kite (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Neon_white (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Ka-Ping Yee (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Walton_One (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• MZMcBride (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Hypnosadist (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Raymond Arritt (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• 68.x.x.x (Various Sprint wireless IPs, usually signing comments as Bob)
• 209.221.240.193 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)
• Remember (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Inertia Tensor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Eleemosynary (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• ArnoldReinhold (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• There has been a large and shifting pool of editors. Please add those that are involved that I have forgotten.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

[3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• RfC: Talk:Waterboarding/Definition
• Fringe theories noticeboard: Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Waterboarding, Wikipedia:Fringe_theories/Noticeboard#Waterboarding_.282.29
• AN and AN/I threads: Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive119#Waterboarding AN discussion, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Neutral_Good, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Last_time_I.27m_doing_this:_Talk:Waterboarding_.28again.29, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive350#Harvard_class_project_disrupting_Wikipedia_via_meatpuppetry_on_articles, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive346#User:BryanFromPalatine_may_be_back, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive345#Please_edit_protected_Waterboarding_article

• (All of these are from December 26 to today, I did not include earlier discussions)

Statement by Henrik

The battle that has been going on is growing beyond the ability of the community to handle. Several admins, myself included, have attempted to bring order to the discussion only to be dragged into the maelstrom. The basic content dispute the question of whether there is a significant dispute that Waterboarding is/is not torture, and what weight that should be given to the various positions. There has has been an unwillingess for the parties to make compromises and talk to each other, and as a result the page has been protected, almost since the begining of november. Multiple warnings and blocks, an RFC, and an attempt at community article probation have failed. There have been cases of sock puppetry, disruptive argumentation, the atmosphere is generally unproductive, and a group of students at Harvard attempting to participate in a Wikipedia debate got bitten. I would welcome ArbCom input on how to move forward, to get this article back to constructive editing.

A followup: Some have suggested mediation should be tried first. If we are dealing with sock puppets of banned users as some have suggested, I believe mediation is unlikely to be successful. Mediation is a voluntary process and requires the good faith of everybody involved. Some posts on the page seem designed to drive other editors apart and provoke confrontation and endless argument, almost in the style of HeadleyDown. This, combined with sockpuppetry, wireless Sprint addresses, strange connections between some of the users (and Free Republic somehow lurking in the shadows). Had I believed we simply had a breakdown in communications, mediation what I would have suggested. henrik•talk 17:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Neutral Good

I am one of the so-called "SPAs" on this account. I openly admit that I have a single purpose: it's called NPOV. The Waterboarding article represents one of the great moral dilemmas of the early 21st Century and it's "In The News," so it is attracting a lot of attention from observers at all points of the political spectrum. The first six words of the article pretend that "waterboarding is torture" is not disputed by anyone, despite the fact that such prominent legal experts as Rudolph Giuliani (former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, possibly the next president of the United States) and Andrew C. McCarthy (former assistant US attorney for SDNY, now director of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism) have said that in some cases, waterboarding may not be torture. The "waterboarding is torture" advocates have gone so far as to extend this pretension to a section header for the section of the article that focuses on the very real dispute, expunging the word "dispute" from that section header. Administrative process has been persistently abused by one side in an attempt to WP:OWN the article; for every sockpuppet accusation that was accurate, there have been at least three resulting in findings of  Unrelated or  Declined, my User Talk page has been blanketed by warnings, and there have been no less than three separate threads started at WP:ANI by the same person. They have violated WP:TE and WP:DE during brief periods of semi-protection, they have an SPA of their own created at the end of October that mysteriously agrees with everything they say, and there have been absolutely zero consequences for them. Someone needs to take action to make the first six words of the article NPOV.

Statement by Black Kite

I came to this article as uninvolved; whilst there are undoubtedly good-faith editors involved in the "not torture" side of the dispute, the majority of the problems are almost certainly caused by an organised campaign of POV-pushing by numerous accounts and IPs (see Talk:Waterboarding#Protection).

Results of my initial investigations are as follows.

Shibumi2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

• Recently confirmed as a sockmaster warring on this article by CU (Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/GooseCreek) and blocked for 2 weeks.
• Account was created on 7 January 2007, one day after User:BryanFromPalatine was blocked for two weeks (and later indefinitely). Note that BryanFromPalatine, as the name suggests, hailed from Palatine, Illinois.
• Both Shibumi2 and BryanFromPalatine share an major interest in the article Free Republic.

209.221.240.193 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

• Previously confirmed by CU as sock of User:BryanFromPalatine, it is the gateway IP from his workplace. Never blocked, however, as there are unrelated edits from this IP, presumably from unrelated employees of the company.

Neutral Good (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

• SPA account created 22/12/2007, This diff [20] after he forgot to log in, reveals an IP address which resolves to Illinois as well.
• Nominated Shibumi2 for adminship (Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Shibumi2, deleted and thus only viewable by admins).
• There is no overlap whatsoever between the editing times of Neutral Good and his known IPs, and Shibumi2 and related Sprint IPs.

Other IPs which supported the "not torture" side of the dispute
68.29.174.61 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

• Supported "not torture" proposal on talk page. Resolves to Sprint, as does Shibumi2.

70.9.150.106 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log)

• Supported "not torture" proposal on talk page. Resolves to Sprint.

68.31.220.221 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) "Bob"

• accused other editors of being POV warriors. Only other edit was related to Free Republic. Resolves to Sprint.

Statement by semi-uninvolved Nescio

Although not named I have been part of the discussion presented above, but have not edited the article AFAIK, and would like to share my thoughts on this. Coming to ArbCom seems premature at this point, as formal mediation would be the logical next step. However, should the case be accepted I think a summary of what has happened is helpful. So, here we go.

There is certainly something amiss on this article, where editors want to state waterboarding is a form of torture. (Clearly, some guidance as to how to interpret and apply WP:ASF, WP:FRINGE, WP:WEIGHT, WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:CON seems to be in order) Opposing that sentence, claiming a widespread dispute, there have been numerous incidents involving sockpuppetry, SPA's, sudden influx of outside contributors, that apparently discussed the matter and reached a position prior to getting involved. (These incidents would be one of the mysteriously coincidental parts of the debate that needs attention clarfying possible sinister motives.) During the debate I noticed that some editors have missed the numerous rebuttals of the there is a dispute-fallacy. Unfortunately they are also unable to find them on the talk-page and the RFC. Still trying to abide by WP:AGF I repost a summary of that discussion here.

1. A 140+ legal experts say it is torture, 4 experts say it is not, 8 are unable/unwilling to make any determination. AFAIK nobody disagrees with this, see RFC for details.
2. The following logic has been advanced as argument for the existence of a "controversy:" confronted with a dissenting expert voice, even if it is just only one lone wolf, we effectively have a dispute. This, of course, is nonsens. If the existence of any opposition could negate consensus among experts they would still be debating the way our earth is shaped, what causes AIDS, is evolution real, did the Holocaust happen, are aliens experimenting on us, et cetera. Clearly that is not the case. Therefore, opposition by a very small group of experts does not a dispute make.
3. Within the US 1/3 think it nis not torture and 2/3 think it is. AFAIK nobody disputes this, see RFC for details.
4. The following logic has been advanced as argument for the existence of a "controversy:" since US public opinion is split 2:1 this evidently constitutes a dispute. Although very interesting and certainly notable public opinion is irrelevant to what experts think on this. Public opinion has brought us such notable and successful concepts as the facts of 9/11, antisemitism, facism, McCarthyism, superstition, quackery, witchhunt, mucoid plaque, holocaust denial, scam, et cetera. Confronted with the evident unreliability the world developed a new concept in an attempt to better explain the world in a more unbiased and unlikely to be manipulated manner. Soon it was discovered this new way of explaining things was far superior than the frequently incorrect gut feeling that was used before. With that knowledge relying on public opinion became a logical fallacy. So, using public opinion as argument is not a valid rebuttal but people keep refusing to answer why public opinion, in determining the legalities involved, is more important than expert opinion.
5. Some argue that determining whether waterboarding meets the legal definition of torture, i.e. UNCAT, is a socio-political question.Clearly somebody does not understand that whenever we have to establish whether an individual violated the law, i.e. tax fraud, rape, murder, torture, et cetera, we do not go out in the street and ask the general public. What I think editors attempt to say is that the possibility of allowing torture under certain circumstances is a socio-political debate. Thinking on it, it is self-evident that a legal determination the US engaged in war crimes, factually correct or not, has political consequences. Hence the lack of international zeal to take up cases invoking universal jurisdiction. Possibly this is what is meant with the socio-political part of the argument.added afterthought Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 18:21, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
6. Then people argue that the sources themselves are wrong, i.e. conflating definitions. Surely everybody is aware that it is not up to us to evaluate and correct sources. Please remember, it is not whether information is correct but can we verify it?
7. Others claim that even if waterboarding is torture the technique used by the CIA is entirely different.Unless we can substantiate this with outside sources it is inadmissable as speculation by a WP-editor.
8. Yet another argument advanced in this debate is that people are unable to define expert in this context. Highly dubious position because if the article were called rape, homicide, tax fraud, et cetera, I wonder if anyone would be unable to think of what constitutes an expert. Surely nobody argues we should ask the general public whether individual X violated any of these examples. The fact we have an activity that could implicate a US administration in authorising war crimes does not alter the legal basis for the question: does waterboarding meet the definition of torture?added this point Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 13:12, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hope this clarifies the reasons why any opposition to it is torture is insufficiently substantiated with WP:RS, WP:FRINGE, WP:WEIGHT, WP:V and common sense in mind. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 13:20, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To be sure, the summary is intended to better understand the content dispute. The question to ArbCom is not to arbitrate that but to explain to us how to interpret and apply WP:ASF, WP:FRINGE, WP:WEIGHT, WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR, WP:CON as it pertains to this article. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 10:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved HiDrNick

I think that this case is premature, and hope that the committee will choose to not hear it at this time. There are some community-based remedies being discussed that, if adopted, would certainly reduce the amount of tendentious editing on the page. Failing that, mediation as a next step would be reasonable.

Statement by Walton One

This is a content dispute, so I expect the ArbCom will turn it down.

I am also not sure why I have been named as a party. I have been involved in a couple of discussions on the talk page in the last two days, but I have not edit-warred. Indeed I have made a grand total of one edit to the article itself - namely this one, which consisted of adding a closing square bracket. Hardly wildly controversial.

I happen to have a viewpoint on the content issue in question which largely coincides with that of Neutral Good, but I have no idea whether he's behaved inappropriately, and I have no further comment to make on this matter. Walton^One 13:01, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to my statement. Having discussed the matter with Henrik, I understand that there are no allegations against me.

I recognise that editors such as Lawrence Cohen, Black Kite, Jehochman et al. are acting in good faith (although I disagree with them about the content issue) and I understand the reasons for bringing this RfArb. However, I think it would be a mistake to view this as primarily a user conduct issue - although I don't doubt that there has been misconduct and disruptive editing involved in this dispute (which can be dealt with using blocks, as per normal procedure) there is still a bona fide content issue here (i.e. whether it is appropriate to say in the lead section "waterboarding is a form of torture"). Blocking the more aggressive editors won't make that issue go away. Walton^One 15:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jehochman

Not merely a content dispute, this is also a case about behavior problems: tendentious editing, frustration of consensus, pushing original research in the form of synthesis and fringe theories, and sock puppetry. The locus of dispute is waterboarding, a contentious political topic.

Unfortunately, I have not yet had any opportunity to edit the article, because it has been constantly protected. I had hope to advance this one to good article or featured article standards. That's why I have stated that I would not use admin powers in this dispute, though I hoped that uninvolved administrators would. [21][22] Many attempts at dispute resolution have failed, and not for lack of effort. Perhaps ArbCom can help. Jehochman ^Talk 19:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Lawrence Cohen

Thanks to Henrik for filing. Jehochman is correct, this is only superficially viewable as a content matter. It's a complete breakdown in understanding of NPOV, and what that means, which has led to intractable arguments, incivility, sockpuppetry, meatpuppetry, vote stacking, external inadvertant disruption of Wikipedia by Harvard law students, multiple attempts by editors and admins to try everything in resolution from handing out flowers with hugs and cookies to practically beating editors with bricks now. Nothing has worked to calm this situation since the time frame of Archive 5, begining November 2007 (please read, to watch the downward beginning with the infamous "Foreign opinion is irrelevant" comment), and the closer it has moved to the beginnings of the American 2008 election cycle. Waterboarding is one of the major political hot potatoes here, along with the Iraq War. I posted this summary (please read it, if possible) last night on ANI. I noted that in the past 24-48 hours, or so, that all Hell finally did break loose on the article, article RFC, and related pages after constantly boiling. Proof that this will probably only get worse without a mandatory, enforced Arbitration article probation is the timing of this all Hell, that I just realized when I sat down to write this statement: this final outbreak of insanity and everyone apparently upping the stakes happened right after and during the Iowa and New Hampshire election primaries here. This article will only get worse between now and November and disrupt Wikipedia unless it's locked down. If the case is not taken, I'm begging you to at the least state you reject the case, but support here standard article probation, and give admins undisputed leeway to take a firm hand with this article and related for at least the next year to guard against disruption. All other mediation attempts have failed. Mediation attempts outside of the standard Mediation groups was attempted, as well as bringing in various people over a prolonged period of time via the Reliable Sources noticeboard, Fringe Theories noticeboard, NPOV talk page, Reliable sources talk page, AN, ANI, and I've lost track of where else. None have been successful.

Update: Black Kite's summary about the fact that a lot of these SPAs look, smell, geolocate and in fact the same same IP address as User:BryanFromPalatine/User:DeanHinnen (plus have edited on Free Republic, his focus), a notorious AC-banned right wing zealot, puppetmaster, and troll, is compelling. I had made that point several times after I first noticed the notes on the 209 IP talk page, and looked into it, but various people had dismissed my concerns under AGF. I don't know if AGF holds up anymore there, seeing now that Illinois is the home of these characters. Please consider this as well. I have found extensive evidence that BryanFromPalatine is back, and want to present it as part of this arbitration. Start here, for evidence of this. Lawrence Cohen 20:08, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Response to User:Blue Tie's sockpuppetry witch-hunt comment: I don't think the problem here is a case of anyone acting out in a fashion as Abigail did, but rather a case of someone using many names, disrupting Wikipedia: "We are mob, for there are so many of us.". Lawrence Cohen 20:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by OtterSmith (htom)

Not an administrator; I think that this may be premature, as the RfC cited above has not been closed (and discussion continues there) and we have not tried either formal mediation or the new rules proposed. However, there is a problem and it may be possible that the ArbCom may be able to help.

There are several many things going on there.

A POV dispute

whether the statement "Waterboarding is torture" is NPOV or POV.

A POV dispute

whether the statement "Waterboarding is a form of torture" is NPOV or POV.

An ownership dispute

those who support the two statements above as NPOV owning the article, or not.

A bullying dispute

people are being "threatened" with CheckUser, ArbCon, blocking, ... and reacting badly to this. (Hint to all -- the way to build trust and good faith is not to issue threats, whether or not deserved.)

A content dispute

what the physical process of waterboarding is. (This is what drew me into the article, I thought the process was poorly described.)

A sources dispute

To my eye, some of the usually reliable sources are confounding waterboarding (whatever that is, it's agreed -- well, it seems to be agreed -- by all that it's not water cure) with water cure. As a result, these sources (to me) cease to be reliable about this topic. This is not about the sources being right or wrong, but that particular citation in the source is confounding two different things, and it would be SYN to claim the confounded citation supported either thing.

A political dispute

Politicians of all stripes have been making claims about waterboarding, hoping for political advantage; within the article, how relevant are their opinions and judgments.

A popular dispute

whether the USA's population's opinion, as polled, is relevant.

Doubtless there are more. There's a huge echo chamber there of "Buzzword is Baaaad!"; to me, it's unencyclopedic.

I fear there will be more, here, as well. htom (talk) 16:24, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by WAS 4.250

The article as it stands is quite good, and we easily could do worse than simply freezing the article til hell freezes over. Both evidence and logic indicate some people are pushing a non-neutral non-evidence-based POV. Everyone agrees waterboarding is part of an interrogation technique. What part? Is it the question? the answer? the reward for cooperating? No, it is obviously a punishment, a threat of pain, an actual pain. How much pain, how big a punishment? How do you measure that? Maybe by how fast it works? 14 seconds is how fast. How much punishment, how severe a punishment needs to be to qualify as torture seems a less relevant a question to some than who is doing what to who. If George Bush authorized something to be done to a terrorist, it obviously is not torture - too good for them if they lived is what it was - can't be torture. Writing neutral encyclopedia articles requires a certain level of emotional distancing. Contributors who show difficulty with doing that need to be told their emotional COI is not helpful to the goals of this WikiMedia project regarding the content of this article, but thanks for trying. WAS 4.250 (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Neon White

I was originally drawn to the article from a debate at the Reliable sources noticeboard.Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#.22Foreign_opinion_is_irrelevant.22 On entering and reading the already much discussed subject, it seemed clear that there was a handful of editors, one a simgle purpose account, trying to centre this article around the recent US controversy and to give it, in my opinion, undue weight in the article in the historical and worldwide context of waterboarding. I believe this is the core issue and some of the other disputes have been used to confuse this point. The consensus has been continually disrupted by editors continual hammering the same personal view points, misrepresenting or misunderstanding policy on NPOV refusing to verify that the dispute represents any more than a small minority of current political views, many of which are vague and non-committal and deserve any more proportion of the weight in the article. It became clear from comments that these were biased editors basing their objections on their own political views to the point of ignoring the balance of sources and the consensus. --neonwhite user page talk 17:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Blue Tie

I will discuss four areas of concern:

A. Article Content disputes

B. Sufficient naming of Arbcom participants

C. Patterns of negative behavior

D. Arbcom case not needed right now

Article Content disputes

There are two issues: 1) NPOV and 2) Poor Definition.

NPOV Policy

I identified the first problem very quickly after getting to the page. The page asserts "Waterboarding is torture", which I originally read uncritically and with acceptance. However, upon review, I noticed that there is a substantial dispute in a wide variety of venues over whether it really is or should be classified as torture. Most people think it is torture, but I discovered that it is far more than just a tiny minority (it is large enough that the majority would not have “consensus” on Wikipedia). Further, some of the folk who dispute that it is torture are very notable.

What does policy say?

1. WP:WEIGHT -- per Jimbo Wales criteria, the minority should be classified as "significant".
2. WP:ASF and per #1 above - the statement "Waterboarding is torture" is "seriously disputed".
3. Again, per WP:ASF something that is seriously disputed is an opinion, not a fact
4. Conclusion: The statement "Waterboarding is torture" is not a fact.

But, the article asserts in the voice of wikipedia that "Waterboarding is torture" without any suggestion or hint that this is not a fact but an opinion. Though later in the article the dispute is discussed, the lead, which should be a good summary of the article content does not mention this dispute. For these reasons, the lead to the article is in violation of WP:NPOV.

Several editors assert that, regardless of policy, the consensus on that page is that the article should read “Wikipedia is torture”. I do not agree that we have consensus on the talk page but even if we did, WP:CON says that consensus on article talk pages cannot usually override project wide consensus on policy.

You are being asked to clarify WP:NPOV and to apply WP:FRINGE to WP:WEIGHT aspect. I do not believe a guideline has the authority to overturn a policy. I also do not believe I have stretched or distorted policy in any way and I believe that the arguments above are simple, obvious applications of normal policy. I feel that if editors were willing to simply abide by policy we would not need to be here.

Definition Problems

This is a subtle, unobvious but pervasive and extremely difficult problem. Rather than clutter this page and continual fixing of this section, I will link to a subpage on my talk page where I will discuss this problem.

Sufficient naming of Arbcom participants

I am not sure how this selection of participants was chosen but some other people have weighed in and they are not included here. Some names come to mind as follows: Lciaccio, Shamulou, Theokrat, Akhilleus and Vhettinger. Another editor has left the page. I am not sure if that means he is not part of this issue but he might be since he left because he felt he was driven from the page by other editors. His name is Randy2063. If the case is about editor behaviors, he should be heard. There may be more who ought to be in this case (if it is a case); thats just the few that I am aware of off the top of my head. I also point out that Raymond Arritt is not really involved except to protect the page. That seems like simple mop handling and not really involvement.

Patterns of negative behavior

I hate this part of arbitration. I hate he said –she said finger pointing. I will not focus on individuals but on general patterns.

Failure to submit to policy As I said above, If editors were willing to simply abide by policy we would not need to be here. I believe some editors are hoping Arbcom will create new policy by re-defining established policy in new ways.

Undue Ownership Concerns that the political debates in the US (which are not very significantly focused on this issue) are driving a need to “protect” the article from NPOV are leading to WP:OWN problems on the article.

Original Research / Synthesis The article contains many instances of Synthesis and much of the argument associated with “Waterboarding is torture” is synthesis of this nature:

Torture involves certain discomforts

Waterboarding may lead to these discomforts

Hence Waterboarding is torture

I believe that to some people this is line of reasoning is so obvious that it should not be called Synthesis and be allowable, but it is pure synthesis exactly as described as unallowable in the OR policy.

Witch hunts for Sockpuppets On this board, editors are being called “proven” sockpuppets and “meat puppets” when in fact, the resulting investigations did not always or completely show that to be so. There is a great deal of paranoia on this matter. If editors would cease from “head counting” and use the weight of arguments for building consensus this would not even be an issue. But fears of vote stacking instead of reasoning through the problems leads to witch hunts. Witch hunts for sock puppets are more destructive to the project these days than sock puppets are. It seems these witch hunts are hurting many people ... the witches, the reverend Parish's and the John Proctors. Recent Durova case is an example. This case also has some embarrassingly paranoid examples as well. (Concerns about SPA -- not a violation of policy -- are also in this whole arena)

A pattern of editor/admins using administrator authority in opposing those who disagree with them

The sockpuppet thing is one part of this but there is more. I do not want to discuss this but if this Arbcom goes forward as a behavior matter, this should be (reluctantly) included.

Arbcom case not needed right now

Maybe we do need it, but perhaps not just yet. There still remains an unclosed RfC. Shouldn't that be handled first? We have not tried mediation, both informal and formal. Shouldn't that be tried second? Wouldn't Arbcom be the last thing to do? I personally am not excited to have to deal with all the evidence stuff and especially "he said she said" finger pointing in Arbcom, so I am hoping that this is not accepted .... yet. But I accept that when all else fails this is the venue.

NOTE: I have attempted to refactor my original comments for brevity and clarity. I failed with regard to brevity. I hope I succeeded in making them more clear. --Blue Tie (talk) 13:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Hypnosadist

Please just let this POV-war end so that the article can be edited to make it better. If that is not possible then protect the article until the end of the US presidential election. ^{(Hypnosadist)} 18:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Remember

There has been a long-term ongoing debate about whether to include the words "waterboarding is torture" in some form in the lead of the article for several months now. There are people that are firmly for this statement and people that are firmly against this statement. Both sides claim to be on the side of NPOV and there seems to be no way that consensus can be reached. People positions have become inflexible,intractable, and adamantine. This has resulted in the article being completely locked for long periods of time. In addition, there has been various sketchy activity by other editors that has confounded the whole process of reaching consensus. I don't know if arbitration is the right place for this, but all other attempts at moving discussion forward between all parties has broken down. Remember (talk) 18:36, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Badagnani

I ask only one thing: that any editor or admin weighing in here first read *all* the discussion archives of the Waterboarding article. This will be a significant investment of time but without doing so the necessary context will not be sufficient to make any substantive decision about the article. I have nothing further to add, as all of what is needed is contained in the discussion archives. I respectfully ask that any editors or admins eventually making any decision regarding this article affirm that they have done so. Badagnani (talk) 19:23, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Chris Bainbridge

I originally got involved after a posting by Lawrence on WP:RSN asking for uninvolved editors to contribute. After watching for a few weeks, I will agree with him that the presence of certain editors is extremely disruptive to the consensus building approach. Almost every posting by a certain editor is designed to drive other editors apart and provoke confrontation and endless argument. The endless contributions from anonymous Sprint wireless IP addresses, the confirmed sockpuppeting from those addresses, Neutral Good's Request for Adminship for the sock-puppeteer, the support of those addresses here etc. I don't know how these editors are connected, but it seems to involve Free Republic somehow. While all of this is going on, any attempt to build consensus will fail, and editors will be driven away from the article.

I also agree that this disruption is completely about American politics. There are absolutely no citations from before 2001 questioning the status of the various waterboarding techniques as a form of torture. The dispute is wholly as a result of its use by the CIA, and those who wish to justify that use. Chris Bainbridge (talk) 20:25, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved MastCell

In response to interminable AN/I threads on the issue, I proposed a solution here which would involve temporarily topic-banning what I viewed to be one of the worst offenders, a single-purpose POV-pushing tendentious agenda account, as a first step. There was some support, but some involved parties objected and things ended up here.

It's a mess. I would prefer to see it handled by the community, via topic bans and informal article probation, but that solution may not have the legitimacy that an ArbCom mandate would have. I don't think this is a job for mediation - there's a likely IP sock of a banned editor heavily involved as well as some agenda-driven SPA's, and they often don't lend themselves particularly well to mediation. I'd urge ArbCom to accept this - it's a clear user-conduct case occurring on top of a content dispute. If the case is rejected, then there needs to be a real, significant community-based intervention. Otherwise we may just as well protect the article indefinitely. MastCell ^Talk 21:42, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved ChrisO

I've not been involved in this dispute or editing this article in any way up to now, but I've reviewed its history in response to its appearance here so that an independent view can be provided. I agree entirely with MastCell's comments above and support a referral to the Arbitration Committee. There is a content dispute here, but the main reason it's not being resolved satisfactorily is because of a number of editors seeking to impose their own particular POV - in some cases through rather obvious sockpuppetry - instead of trying to reach a good-faith consensus. The logjam on this article can best be resolved by tackling the conduct issues that have made the content issues impossible to solve so far. The number of editors involved make it unlikely that individual admins or the community at large can resolve this satisfactorily, so the ArbCom's involvement would seem to be the best way of achieving this goal. -- ChrisO (talk) 22:29, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Sandstein

I recommend that the Committee accept this case, not to address the content dispute, but with a view to providing for conditions under which this article can be productively edited again, such as article probation. I don't know whether there is indeed any sockpuppetry or other concerted disruption going on, but if there is, the Committee is best positioned to authoritatively determine and sanction it. It is not helpful, however, to present the content dispute as a conduct issue by phrasing it in terms of OR, NPOV and assorted other content policy violations. These arguments are just the inevitable consequence of the content dispute and are accordingly unsuited to be addressed through the arbitration process. (My involvement with the article is limited to reviewing a good article nomination in December, and, I think, one or two protected edit requests.) Sandstein (talk) 23:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by involved BQZip01

I was involved in this discussion, but was never informed of ArbCom. Given the sheer volume of the discussion, I really don't mind so much, but I wish I had been notified and no malice is assumed unless proven otherwise (I don't expect that to even be possible). IMHO, the problem resides in individual (not individual users, per se, but moreso individual cited people) views of what constitutes torture. Those opinions are present in individual user interpretations and tend to color the discussion accordingly. That said, the basic technique is what should really be emphasized here, not a legal definition (since laws vary from country to country). That its status is disputed should definitely be included in the article and proclamations of its status as "torture" should be avoided. There are lots of things permitted under the Geneva Conventions that U.S. police cannot do; as an example: keeping prisoners awake for 20 hours of every day allowing only 4 nonconsecutive hours of sleep. Some organizations and governments believe this constitutes torture. It certainly isn't permitted in any state in the US, but (and this is the distinction that continues to be missed) it isn't "torture" under the Geneva Conventions. The same goes for this technique. Labeling it as an interrogation technique is certainly factual. Stating that it is not permitted by DoD personnel is certainly factual, but drawing a conclusion that it is illegal and/or is "torture" is not the job of Wikipedia. United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once proclaimed about porn (rather ineptly IMHO), "I'll know it when I see it." With all due respect to Wikipedians, you aren't the Supreme Court and it is not up to you to decide. That there is controversy regarding a subject needs to be addressed. There should be no absolute proclamations on its status. I truly hope the ArbCom decides to review this and I look forward to their decision. — BQZip01 — ^talk 00:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by involved Inertia Tensor

It doesn't appear all active parties were notified, myself included - I have been heavily involved with this article, though have avoided it recently as in an edit warring environment I have nothing useful to offer. I have tried to keep myself on the talk page only recently so may not have appeared on the radar of the admin requesting Arb. I have also been involved in the warring before (latest series started Halloween) and have no interest in merely participating in a cyclical war - been there, seen that, learnt a few things. This isn't really a content issue as an ongoing see-saw over weight vs undue weight. It has become highly cyclical. Numerous good faith attempts by involved editors on both sides of the dispute have failed, as not all parties have been willing to work to a consensus. Some have not shown flexibility, and others have sat quietly until the article was unlocked and resumed fundamental edits without archiving consensus for the revised versions. There have been multiple RFCs, and these have helped somewhat in archiving consensus , it simply has not been enough. I'm not sure Arb will want to get involved here, however I see no other way to break the cycle as repeated good faith mediations will breakdown as the editor pool shifts over time - as has shown to be the case.

Though others would disagree, I would boil down the dispute as follows:

• Does the possible, and not admitted opinion of someone committing the crime carry enough weight to alter what is widely accepted as torture for a long time, globally.

I believe it does not, and though such possible, but unproven disagreements by the administration are indeed noteworthy, and should continue to be mentioned lower in the article, it does not lend enough weight to overturn global consensus on the issue.

• I have also been concerned by some obfuscation being used where the two following questions are being interchanged when selecting references to back claims that someone of note says it is not torture. (1) So and so says it is/isn't torture Vs. (2) So and so says it is/isn't acceptable in some cases, but not necessarily saying whether it is torture or not.

I request that arbcom offer guidance on WEIGHT vs UNDUE WEIGHT as it applies to this. Inertia Tensor (talk) 07:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ka-Ping Yee

My understanding so far is that ArbCom is for handling misbehaviour rather than settling content disputes, so I will avoid discussing content here (I have already explained my opinions on that matter on the article's talk page and RfC page in some detail).

There has been a lot of counterproductive behaviour surrounding this article, including repeated edit wars and counterproductive comments by many involved parties, some of which have made it difficult for me to continue to assume the good faith of everyone involved. Tensions are high. I believe the actions of administrators have been justified, though I feel the tone of recent responses has sometimes been a bit too harsh — probably brought on by heightened sensitivity after many weeks (months?) of disruption.

The high-bandwidth, strident debate over this single issue of whether the article can say "waterboarding is a form of torture" has consumed vast amounts of time and effort here, sucking all attention and energy away from making other productive progress on the article. I am sure it is frustrating to all involved, and I really hope we can find a way to move past this. I have tried to propose compromises, but have not succeeded. This is my first encounter with a Wikipedia dispute that has been this difficult; I hope that ArbCom can help us, if it is indeed the right body to do so, and I look forward to learning from this process. —Ka-Ping Yee (talk) 09:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SirFozzie

This seems to me to be a good opportunity to apply lessons learned from the Great Irish Famine and "The Troubles" ArbCom cases, and set up a system where tendentious edit warriors can be placed on probation. I made such a suggestion during the most recent ANI discussion,, but there was some question if we needed an ArbCom finding to do so. Looking at the protection log of the article, figuring out the main edit-warriors on either side and putting them on Probation should reduce future concerns. SirFozzie (talk) 15:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement from LCiaccio

As one of the "bitten" Harvard Law students (although not new to Wikipedia, I am entirely new to disputes/RfCs, etc) I am still hesitant to mistep, having been warned that a lack of thorough knowledge of procedures and social norms makes me incompetent to express my views. If this is the case, I apologize. However, since I do have an opinion on the matter and my name has been mentioned, I will give it my best shot.

The more I read the sources linked, the more I am starting to believe that the truth lies somewhere quite close to the line of opinion v. fact. Hence, the closness of the call on content itself has made this a difficult issue to resolve, leading to stalls in the consensus process. From my budding knowledge of WP policies, I do agree that WP:BITE and WP:OWN problems are exacerbating the process; indeed some editors managed to drive me away from voicing my own views until I received an influx of differing opinions.

It does appear to me that the chaotic nature of the talk and comments page is also stalling the process. Several attempts at organizing the sources and clarifying the question have blended into a mess of accusations and other commentary. The former teacher in me wants to believe that a coherent attempt at organization could give us a clearer picture of what we're dealing with, and I suspect the possibility that a few focal voices are making it hard to assess what the weight of consensus really is. However, the future lawyer in me has the cynical suspicion that the current state of disaray might defeat further attempts to clarify and asess the bigger picture. I'm afraid my lack of familiarity with the mediation procedure leaves me unable to weigh in on whether that would help.-Lciaccio (talk) 15:35, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Randy2063 who withdrew from the maelstrom

The dispute wasn't described properly in the beginning. Whereas it's been called "Waterboarding is/is not torture," I think it's really whether "waterboarding is torture" or whether it's "widely considered torture." The distinction seems subtle but it amounts to a political statement.

So, the question really is, should Wikipedia as a matter of policy pick a side in a political and legal matter?

A word on sources: Most of the oft-noted "140+ legal experts" who say it's always torture seem to be ideologues. I see many political views in that list that are not simply moderate-left; they're further from the mainstream than that. While theirs is a notable opinion, it's a biased one. But even if you agree with them, which is perfectly fine with me, it's still an opinion.

I've suggested WP:NPOV#Let the facts speak for themselves numerous times. One would think we could simply describe waterboarding as a process and as a legal issue and then let readers draw their own conclusions. Yet many editors insist that the word "torture" must be used without reservations. The phrase "widely considered" isn't strong enough for them.

This, on an encyclopedia that's not supposed to call Saddam Hussein a bad guy.
-- Randy2063 (talk) 22:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

May I suggest that no matter how this works out, someone should clarify the guidelines in WP:NPOV#Let the facts speak for themselves.

-- Randy2063 (talk) 23:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

Four votes to accept noted. Will open around/just after 10:00, January 13 (UTC) unless four net votes no longer exists. Daniel (talk) 10:06, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (4/0/0/0)

• Accept. Content dispute? Yes. However, the circumstances surrounding this dispute seem a bit of concern to the smooth running of Wikipedia. There are clear signs of a battleground that need to be addressed. There are other issues of sockpuppetry that need to be verified as well. The involvment of a large number of users has made this dispute too hard to be solved via regular channels. Therefore, I see no reason to reject this case. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:49, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept to look primarily at edit warring and related conduct that has prevented this resolving. Whilst we will not judge the actual "answer" for the parties (content issue), we can give guidance of principle on how WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NPOV, and other relevant policies are intended to work and interact, so they can decide the answer for themselves. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 05:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. FloNight (talk) 17:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. bainer (talk) 10:05, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

---

David Howe (claimant to King of Mann)

Initiated by Kingofmann (talk) at 03:26, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• kingofmann (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (Initiating Party)
• Hu12 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Jmlk17 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
• Newguy34 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Heraldic (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Wjhonson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• User_talk:Hu12#Arbitration
• User_talk:Jmlk17#Arbitration
• User_talk:Newguy34#Arbitration
• User_talk:Heraldic#Arbitration
• User_talk:Wjhonson#Arbitration

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

In an attempt to resolve this issue with user Newguy34 and having researched for several hours his edits as well as many others, based on the discussions of several editors on my biography's talk page at Talk:David_Howe_(claimant_to_King_of_Mann) with those attempting to edit to Wikipedia's policies, I do not feel that this issue is easily resolved and it does suggest that there is a group effort to edit to the negative with three of the parties involved as well as other anonymous editors not cited using various USENET groups as a base for orchestrating their efforts. See MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#Unreal_Royal citing user Wjhonson involvement. See Talk:David_Howe_(claimant_to_King_of_Mann)/Archive_2#Celebrity_Friends_and_Royal_Cousins illustrating user Hearldic's participation in a USENET group with a long list of libelous claims against me.

Statement by Kingofmann

I am David Howe, the subject of a Wikipedia Biography.

My initial dispute had to do with the inclusion of a business that I own, that has nothing to do with my notability, on a biography page about me. I requested to Admin Hu12 that he aid me with the removal on his talk page and I cited WP:Blp#Presumption_in_favor_of_privacy as the reason why. I eventually deleted the material I felt violated my privacy and stated why on my talk page. User Newguy34 reverted it twice and that is when I requested page protection which was issued.

In response to what seemed like several editors of my biography page, namely Newguy34, Heraldic, Wjhonson and some anonymous users involvement in what seems to be an orchestrated effort to circumvent WP:BLP and present a negative point of view see MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#Unreal_Royal, Admin Hu12 on his talk page as well as my biography's talk page stated, "The Media bias is evident in many of the sources, which are attributable and doesn't surprise me since its rooted in forms of Cultural biass. The subject of David Howe is no doubt a Political one to many, however lets keep these biases out of the article space." His request has had no effect.

There are numerous examples on the biography's talk page that show the well telegraphed intent of some editors. Just a few are as follows: December 27, 2007, editor Newguy34 was an advocate for the Wikipedia blacklisted site that has since be revised several times to appear less libelous. Talk:David_Howe_(claimant_to_King_of_Mann)/Archive_2#Celebrity_Friends_and_Royal_Cousins Despite the fact the site isn't a reliable third-party source, addressing another editor's objection to the site he stated, "Your bias appears clear, namely to advance Howe's claims. The author of the website is well respected in genealogy circles and has fully cited and referenced his "opinions."" In fact none of these things are true. The author of the site at the bottom of the first page describes himself, as of January 9, 2008, "an accountant with a keen amateur interest in history and genealogy."

Heraldic and Wjhonson advocating for including libelous blacklisted site see MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#unrealroyal.com and then attempting to get it removed from the blacklist See MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#Unreal_Royal. Here it was also revealed that Wjhonson had conspired with the author of the blacklisted site to misuse Wikipedia.

Statement by Wjhonson

When a person has achieved that level of notability that a biography is acceptable, all known facts about the person have an equal chance of being represented. The person, short of pointing out libelous statements, has no special prerogative to exclude certain details. We do not allow this priviledge to Ann Coulter, we do not allow it to Jimmy Wales, we allow it to nobody. It is a red-herring argument that only issues *related* to notability are included. We include a biography based on notability, but once included, each statement does not need to pass notability to be included.

Contrary to the claim that I was involved in "...circumvent[ing] WP:BLP and present[ing] a negative point of view see MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#Unreal_Royal...." I submit that all of my edits have quite plainly adhered to WP:BLP. The issue regarding what I perceive as an out-of-process blacklisting is a seperate issue to this article. That the http: //www.unrealroyal.com site was blacklisted as an "attack site", when IMHO it is a "criticism" site of a *public figure* as the King of Man is most clearly. If the King of Man were not himself a public figure, than pointed criticism might be a valid reason for blacklisting a site which criticizes a Wikipedian. The fact that he is a *public figure* puts him outside that purview and he is then fair-game just as surely as George Bush is himself. We do not blacklist sites critical of Bush, and if Bush became a Wikipedian we would not blacklist sites critical of Bush.

Contary to the assertion that "The author of the website is well respected in genealogy circles and has fully cited and referenced his "opinions."" In fact none of these things are true.", I submit that indeed the author is well-respected in genealogy circles, and his fair-and-even criticism of David Howe is fully cited and referenced.

Contary to the assertion that the site is "...libelous..." is my assertion that it in fact engages in well-reasoned and pointed criticism of a public figure.

Contrary to the assertion that "...Wjhonson had conspired with the author of the blacklisted site to misuse Wikipedia." is my assertion that outside Wikipedia, in particular on the soc.genealogy.medieval newsgroup, I know the author of the website. My agreeing with his perception that his website was unfairly blacklisted, is not a conspiracy.

I want to add here, that should ArbCom take this case, I sincerely hope they will look at the issue of removing the http:// www.unrealroyal.com site from the blacklist. That is the main reason why I am here, in that, when I saw that message I smelled something bad. We use blacklist for repeated spam postings, not for reasoned, albeit pointed criticism sites. Criticism sites should never be blacklisted, criticism is the basis of a free society. I have already tried to get the site removed using the Blacklist removal request, but a certain admin is blocking the request. If ArbCom does not want to address this here, I'd like to know so I can open a new case for this one issue. Thank you. Wjhonson (talk) 02:15, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Newguy34

I am disappointed that this has reached the ArbCom, and am not sure quite where to start in this unfortunate episode.

First, either Mr. Howe is notable as an individual (for which information such as his primary business venture is relevant) or he is notable for only a single event (namely his claim) and the BLP should be merged with another article. I think a BLP of Mr. Howe is unwarranted. As it relates to WP guidelines, a person is generally notable if a) the person has received significant recognized awards or honors, or b) the person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field.

Further, when a person is associated with only one event, such as an unsubstantiated claim to be related to ancient royalty, consideration should be given to the need to create a standalone article on the person. If reliable sources only cover the person in the context of a particular event, then a separate biography may be unwarranted.

And from BLP, if reliable sources only cover the person in the context of a particular event, then a separate biography is unlikely to be warranted. Marginal biographies on people with no independent notability can give undue weight to the events in the context of the individual, create redundancy and additional maintenance overhead, and cause problems for our neutral point of view policy, which is exactly the situation we are facing in this matter. I fail to see how Mr. Howe has achieved any notability other than through this singular claim, and the recent coverage of it. In spite of this, a single user Lazydown has made the majority of edits in support of Mr. Howe's claim, while several editors (including those involved in this arbitration matter) have been consistent in attempting to achieve a balance and neutrality to the article, Lazydown's (and now Howe's) protestations that we are somehow violating NPOV aside. The support for this assertion is contained on the article's talk page and the edit history, and is clear for anyone to read.

As to the information I seek to have included, I believe the inclusion of Mr. Howe's business is relevant information, which is entirely permissible and standard for a BLP. I cited the information from a verifiable, reliable source in accordance with WP policies. The fact that he owns a Glass Doctor franchise in Frederick is a matter of public record and comes from press releases penned by (or authorized by) him. I can not see how it now should be excluded (in its present form) from a biographical article [emphasis added] on claimed grounds of privacy, especially given that it was Mr. Howe who first put this information in the public domain. That Mr. Howe does not like the relevant information he has placed in the public domain being used in a BLP article about himself is insufficient support for its exclusion under privacy concerns.

I attempted to reach consensus with Mr. Howe on the issue (as evidenced on his talk page), but he refuses to discuss the matter further and instead has made a very serious threat of legal action against me (and possibly Wikipedia) see since-blanked entry here. A threat which I take very seriously, and for which I believe he should be admonished and/or otherwise blocked. He has not engaged in dispute resolution. These are indisputable facts, evidenced in various talk pages.

Mr. Howe's assertion that there are several editors involved in "an orchestrated effort to circumvent BLP and present a negative point of view" is a gross misrepresentation of the facts and represents libel. I have never met any of the other editors. My edits have been to retain NPOV after numerous attempts by Lazydown to edit the article in a light most advantageous to Mr. Howe and his claim. Lazydown's edits are typically accompanied by accusations that the editors involved in this arbitration are violating NPOV and other WP policies. I have posted that I believe we are involved in a content dispute. I have attempted to reach consensus on the issue with Lazydown, but he too refuses to discuss the matter. Instead, he posts accusations of a number of us on the talk pages of several administrators, namely Hu12. As such, I believe that Lazydown has not been exhibiting good faith, and am curious why Lazydown is not also a subject of this arbitration action given the inordinate number of edits he has made, and the generally uncivil nature of his numerous edits on talk pages.

I also take strong personal offense to Mr. Howe's implication that the edits of myself and others amount to a "well telegraphed intent" on our part. Again, I have never met the other editors in question, and there is no evidence or factual basis to support this latest assertion. Contrary to Mr. Howe's assertion, I was not an advocate for the now-blacklisted site, but rather sought to understand the objections of Lazydown in that matter. It is important to note that at the time of my posts on the matter, the website in question was not blacklisted. It is also important to note that the criticism of Mr. Howe on the website in question is fully cited and is fully referenced. The occupation of the website author is not relevant to his recognized expertise in the matters the website discusses. I, too, believe the blacklisting of the website is inappropriate and uncalled for.

In summary, I believe this is a very disturbing series of events, filled with red herring arguments, selective adherence to WP policies, inappropriate COI on the part of Howe, and an exercise of bad faith on the part of Howe and user Lazydown. I welcome the consideration of these matters by ArbCom, but as one who believes in the Wikipedia project, I am disappointed that it has come to this. Newguy34 (talk) 06:46, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further to the issue at hand, namely this RfAR, it is confusing to me and others as to why Mr. Howe has sought to remove his wife's full name (Pamela Marie Ahearn) from his BLP. I note that several press releases from his office have been written by a one "Marie Ahearn". I am not sure how the two may be related, but I hope this isn't one of the reasons he has cited privacy concerns over including this information in his BLP, as I believe it would represent a conflict of interest. Newguy34 (talk) 05:33, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Heraldic

Firstly, I should say that I have been on steep learning curve when it comes to the Wikipedia way of doing things. Hopefully I am not repeating any of my earlier procedural errors.

Given the nature of Mr Howe’s claims it is understandable that they would come under considerable scrutiny. I do not think that it is in Wikipedia’s interest to allow the Howe article to be perceived in any way as an endorsement of his claims. To that end I have attempted to provide a balance to the Howe article, clarifying certain broad statements or citing references that reflect that all is not as clear cut as Howe may wish.

With regard to the unrealroyal site; whilst the observations of the author may not meet Wikipedia guidelines (as I now understand), I do believe the factual content is worthy of note. It was for the latter reason I questioned its blacklisting. As for its reinstatement, you will see that I stated that if it was to remain blacklisted it should be for its content not because Wjhonson chose to query the blacklisting. I do not believe that simply disagreeing with an admin is a misuse of Wikipedia.

As part of this arbitration process, I hope that the administrators will also look into the relevant issue of sockpuppets. The dedication shown by users Theisles and Lazydown in the editing the article to reflect Howe’s case and the rigid application of Wiki procedures when it comes to the exclusion of any material that is critical of Howe has given rise to the suspicion that they are either Howe himself or a close associate. The most recent example can be found at Talk:David_Howe_(claimant_to_King_of_Mann)#The_Viscount_Howe_claim .Clarification of their status will go along way to calming things down.

For the record, I am not the owner, author or webmaster of the unrealroyal website. Nor have I had contact with any of the editors here to listed other than through Wikipedia public talk pages.--Heraldic 09:53, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Statement by uninvolved DrKiernan

See also: Wikipedia:Requests for checkuser/Case/Theisles, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive118#King David Isle of Man and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#David Howe (claimant to King of Mann).

David, I'm not quite clear on what you're asking for: do you want the article to be deleted or redirected per Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Articles about people notable only for one event? DrKiernan (talk) 15:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Second Statement by Kingofmann

With all due respect, I am I to understand correctly there is an expectation that I must personally hash this dispute out with each of the other parties involved first in order to try and remedy the problem when I have an urgent need for privacy and protection against a negatively slanted biography before I can bring it to the arbitration committee?

Is this the same expectation of others who are the subjects of a Wikipedia biography?

This process has already been an extreme drain on my time and resources. The editors that I have noted in my original statement share a negative view of me and they have not hidden this in their edits or discussion on my biographies talk page or other related talk pages. I feel that it is part of a larger agenda. I also feel that any extra steps required of me in this process and in this public forum are an invasion of my privacy and is an embarrassment.

Is it really necessary that I, the subject of a Wikipedia biography, be required to do anything more to gain some urgently needed protection from Wikipedia? I really hope that this is not the case.--Kingofmann (talk) 15:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved CarbonLifeForm

This article seems to breach WP:NN, WP:BLP, WP:RS and WP:V. It is pretentious nonsense. I have put it up for afd. - CarbonLifeForm (talk) 17:01, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by almost uninvolved Angusmclellan

When this article was mentioned at WP:BLPN, I had a look at it. My reaction was negative. The article was several sorts of WP:COATRACK: a collection of trivial press mentions, a grab-bag of badly sourced criticisms, a smattering of innuendo. Basically this is a WP:BLP1E where the event in question - the subject's bizarre claims - never got any analysis, and thus a non-event so far as an encyclopedia is concerned. There'd have been no need for the negative aspects to be so poorly referenced had anyone in fact bothered to rebut the claims. Whose fault is this? Don't care. How do we fix it? WP:AFD not WP:RFAR. If the arbcom are minded to consider whether WP:NPOV is more or less important that WP:BLP, I can save some time and trouble. Neutral point of view is a fundamental Wikipedia principle. NPOV is absolute and non-negotiable. What's could usefully be arbitrated here? Angus McLellan (Talk) 19:21, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by involved Lazydown

Today, 1/11/08, User Carbonlifeform, started an articles for deletion page for this BLP Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/David_Howe_(claimant_to_King_of_Mann) and then proceeded to nominate it for deletion. So, I don't know if that quite qualifies as having no involvement. Beyond that, I think his motion was very premature.

Most are recommending it for deletion based on the subject being WP:ONEEVENT or WP:NN. But, all pretenders to a throne as well as all Kings and Queens are notable for only one event and all other things are as a result of their station. HRH Prince Charles of Wales is notable for one thing. I can't imagine deleting his BLP. If this is the grounds for deleting this subjects BLP then it should be applied evenly across the board and not selectively to those lacking popularity and fame.--Lazydown (talk) 23:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved Choess

I feel that I should point out that this is not the first time Wikipedia has dealt with self-promotional claims to noble titles. Examining Talk:Earl of Stirling will show a very similar case, wherein an American claimed a British noble title largely by process of assertion. If I recall correctly, the substance of his argument was that according to some procedure in Scottish law, anyone who asserted themselves to be a peer *was* a peer until their claim was disproven, and that with the elimination of writs of summons for the hereditary peers, there was no authority that could disprove his claim, ergo he was the Earl of Stirling. This seems not dissimilar from Howe's claim, which seems to rest largely upon his having published a notice in the London Gazette without drawing explicit contradiction in that venue from the UK government. The difference in Wikipedia outcomes between the soi-disant Earl of Stirling's case and that of Mr. Howe seems to have been that the former rapidly descended to legal threats and was blocked, whereas the latter's case has been advanced by vigorous wikilawyering and invocation of BLP to suppress criticism of his claims.

While I realize that ArbCom will not impose content remedies, it seems to me that the most sensible solution is to redirect Mr. Howe's page to King of Mann and add a line or two noting his claims, the news coverage, and the fact that he has no particular genealogical standing amongst the many descendants of the Stanley Kings of Mann. I think that's in keeping with the overall historical impact of the claims, and it avoids the lengthy sparring over balance of coverage that's characterized the full-fledged article.

With regards to Mr. Howe's concerns, I think the fundamental problem is really, in a sense, that which we ordinarily label original research. He believes, in essence, that he has made new discoveries about the inheritance of the kingship of Mann which entitles him to it and would, naturally, like Wikipedia to reflect it. However, these discoveries are not yet widely accept it and, hence, subject to criticism, which naturally reflects upon him as well. I would respectfully submit that Wikipedia is here to document generally accepted facts and theories, and is a poor venue for trying to determine the truth or untruth of new hypotheses. The criticism he has encountered is the inevitable result of trying to inject a POV not yet widely endorsed into the encyclopedia, and the best way to deflect it is to avoid covering that POV in depth until it has won wider support. Choess (talk) 04:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (2/0/0/1)

• Abstain for now. Waiting to see other statements (if any) to see if there is genuinely a basis for us to look at this. If accepted, then to look at the conduct of all parties (without prior assumption) and BLP/NPOV/privacy crossover. Possible thoughts why we might:

  1. There may be important BLP issues here that arise in many articles that don't reach request for arbitration, and which would help to clarify.
  2. Unsure if DR has been tried sufficiently, but BLP disputes are rated "serious" more easily than many other kinds of dispute and if the community genuinely cannot solve, giving direction urgently rather than demanding every step of DR may be reasonable.
  3. BLP is a policy which has great weight in "real life", and NPOV has great weight in articles; both are "non-negotiable" in their requirements. So a perceived conflict may need more clarification. BLP v. NPOV v. privacy is an area that merits experienced eyeballs.

For now though, waiting for (and would like to have presented) further statements, ideally including insight by other experienced users, to help identify if this issue actually needs arbcom to accept, or not. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 05:45, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Accept. I think both sides of the dispute can better explain the issues involved in this venue than others. The potential conflict between NPOV and BLP needs to be addressed. FloNight (talk) 17:11, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Accept. The issues arising here that FT2 discusses ought to be considered. --bainer (talk) 10:08, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

---

Principality of Sealand

Initiated by Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk) at 19:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Gene Poole (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Warlordjohncarter (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Gene Poole

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Third Opinion
• RFC
• Notifying Gene Poole of a possible solution and his failure to reply.
• Request for Mediation

Statement by Onecanadasquarebishopsgate

What began as a simple debate eventually became an argumentative dispute that eventually led to the dispute resolution process. I used Third opinion and Request for Comment - but Gene Poole would not cooperate, as can be seen here. After progress was made with the Request for Comment (which Gene Poole did not take part in), Gene Poole returned arguing that Sealand is a micronation. Other editors within the discussion page of Principality of Sealand consider Sealand a micronation, but Gene Poole is the only one that does not cooperate with dispute resolution.

It was clear now that because Gene Poole considers Sealand a micronation and I consider Sealand a sovereign state, there was, and still is, a dispute. But Gene poole became less and less cooperative. After the Third Opinion and Request for Comment, I decided to write on his discussion page (after he thought that I was a sockpuppet):

"On the same day as the above was posted I suggested using a solution that has been used for the past week with success (Note: this solution is to have a similar first pargraph to Empire of Atlantium). Maybe this could solve the problem?"

Gene Poole would not reply and after reminding him of the statement I wrote he deleted the reminders and called them trolling. He then wrote on Legal status of Sealand:

"There is no dispute about Sealand's legal status. A single-purpose editor is currently attempting to insinuate an unreferenced, strong pro-sovereignty position into a range of Sealand-related articles, and this appears to be one of them."

After that the dispute continued here, where he questioned my comprehension of the subject and my linguistic ability. I then decided to use Request for Mediation and placed this notice on his discussion page:

"Rather than continue with this absurd to-and-fro, perhaps you would agree to mediation.

I would like to see this dispute resolved, why not in a NPOV way?"

Gene Poole replied with this on my discussion page:

"The matter has only one possible resolution: you must comply fully and immediately with WP content policies by ceasing to promote a POV that is unsupported by either reliable third party sources or consensus. There is nothing to mediate, and nothing further to discuss."

He has refused to cooperate with dispute resolution, and another user (Cheeser1) is not pleased:

"I am not pleased that this person is not cooperating in dispute resolution."

This dispute needs to be resolved, but the purpose of this statement is for the following to happen:

• Gene Poole needs to cooperate with the dispute resolution process so that a solution can be found.
• Gene Poole needs to stop attacking user's opinions in an argument (particularly the Sealand is a sovereign state opinion), and instead support his own opinions in a debate.
• Gene Poole needs to stop commenting on the contributor.

His history of sockpuppetry and attacking rather than discussing opinions have caused enough problems and this dispute needs to be resolved. Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk) 19:34, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to withdraw my request. Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk) 20:58, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Warlordjohncarter

I remember when the above editor was attempting to demand that Sealand falls within the scope of the Wikipedia:WikiProject European Microstates, despite the fact that that project was never contacted by him to request inclusion in its scope and it does not fall within the project's currently stated scope. He did however demand that it be included as per here. He made similar comments at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Sealand discussion, stating that Sealand falls within the scope of the above project, despite not being mentioned there. He has also made similar categorical statements that Sealand must be at least considered a microstate at Talk:Sealand#Micronation/Microstate. Unfortunately, I have never seen any evidence to support that contention, barring a few passport stamps and a few news articles, and the apparent formal lack of recognition by any countries clearly mitigates against that. I regret to say that the originator of this request seems to me to be a rather absolutist POV pusher. I believe it could reasonably be stated that attempting to introduce statements that Sealand is a microstate based on the scanty evidence available, none of which seems to come from sources which would be considered reliable for these purposes, could be at least possibly reasonably be thought of as vandalism. John Carter (talk) 17:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by uninvolved DrKiernan

Sam is correct that Gene has accused Onecanadasquare of vandalism,[23] but seems to have missed Onecanadasquare calling Gene a troll[24].

Fault on both sides, perhaps? Onecanadasquare's insistence that the Principality of Sealand is a sovereign state, when it quite clearly is not, could count as POV OR fringe theory, and, if the committee accepts this case, you may wish to examine this aspect of the dispute. DrKiernan (talk) 13:31, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jehochman

Individual administrative action should be sufficient to control one or possibly two disruptive editors. There does not appear to be any substantial dispute amongst administrators over how to handle this.

This request for arbitration may be vexatious, given that a request for mediation was filed one day before. Onecanadasquarebishopsgate seems to be forum shopping: [25][26][27][28] I have left messages for both parties to the dispute [29][30] and feel confident that this will be resolved through ordinary process. Please reject the case. Jehochman ^Talk 15:05, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I support the request to withdraw. If the parties would like my help to resolve the dispute, I will be available, or else than can use the initial steps in dispute resolution. It seems like the temperature has been turned down and people are willing to work through the usual processes. Hopefully we will not be back later. Jehochman ^Talk 21:03, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/3/0/1)

• I'm wavering on this at the moment because it's clearly a longrunning problem with editor misbehaviour, but Gene Poole's labelling good faith communications as vandalism or trolling and rejection of mediation is edging him close to the point at which it becomes obvious that he is unable to work with others. In other words, if Gene Poole makes further disruptive edits, an uninvolved admin should consider warning him, and restrict his editing so as to prevent future disruption, with no need to open an arbitration case. Gene Poole may be able to convince me that there is more to be considered but I'm inclined to reject at the moment. Sam Blacketer (talk) 12:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

  It's a moot point as to whether a party seeking arbitration has the ability unilaterally to withdraw, but in this case it's reasonable. Also per Morven below. Sam Blacketer (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Reject for now while attempts to settle the issue through mediation etc. appear to be happening. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 21:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Reject to see if other methods of dispute resolution work. FloNight (talk) 23:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Allow the request to be withdrawn per the filing party's request. Precedent is that a request may be withdrawn by the filing party before acceptance, particularly where no arbitrators have voted to accept and other dispute resolution is being properly sought. In the past, Clerks have removed such withdrawn requests from the page without awaiting action by the Arbitrators, and I believe that this should continue to be the practice, especially where, as here, there appears to be no reasonable possibility that the case would have been accepted at this stage in any event. Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:01, 12 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

---

Extraordinary rendition by the United States

Ccson Ccson (talk) at 20:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• Ccson (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Swatjester (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Swatjester

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Talk:Extraordinary rendition by the United States#World policy council
• Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2008-01-01 Extraordinary rendition by the United States‎
• Wikipedia:RSN#World Policy Council

Statement by Ccson

I have inserted text within the article and cited the World Policy Council as the source for the statements and their opinion. User Swatjester continues to remove the text because he feels the source is unreliable. I have shown the WPC is associated with a university, the WPC seek the advice of experts when needed, and I have consensus from other editors that the source is reliable for their opinion. I attempted cabal mediation, however, the user declined mediation and reverted again.

The opinion presented is the agreement of 9 persons whose background include a Senator, U.S. Ambassadors, U.S. Congressmen, College Presidents, Leaders of Churches and Foundations, and a professor at Ivy league universities.

Each person is highly regarded for their individual opinions and an agreement of the nine should be regarded more highly as a reliable source within wikipedia.

I hope the committee will accept this case and determine that the World Policy Council is a reliable source to cite within Wikipedia.

I wasn't aware that I was "forum shopping". I was following the suggested steps for dispute resolution. I'm surprised that Swatjester says that no time was given to develop this since he refused mediation so I interpreted this action that he didn't want to reach a truce even with the help of a neutral party. His response on the RSN board seems more like a scolding for the editors who decided the WPC was a reliable source. Becauuse Swatjester is an admin, I thought he woud respect the Wikipedia:BRD policy, however, the diffs shows that he restates his objections then reverts. I would also like to note that Swatjester has provided no reliable source for his continuing to revert other than his own personal knowledge of Alpha Phi Alpha and that he lives 3 blocks from Howard University where the World Policy Council was founded and based. I will wait to see if other users post on the RSN and seek the other options suggested such as 3rd opinion and RFC. thanks for your response.--Ccson (talk) 03:19, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kendrick7

Current use of this source fails WP:SOAP because no third party source is given which attests to the WP:Notability of this group's opinion.

This is a content dispute, and premature prior to filing a WP:RFC

Statement by Swatjester

Content dispute. Excessively rapid escalation with no time to develop. Mountain. Molehill. ⇒SWATJester ^{Son of the Defender} 01:37, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

(This area is used for notes by non-recused Clerks.)

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/6/0/0)

• Decline. Arbitration is the last step in dispute resolution. The Arbitration Committee focuses primarily on user conduct disputes and generally does not decide article-content issues, such as whether a given organization's work-product is sufficiently reliable to be used as a source. The filing party acted responsibly by seeking assistance from the Mediation Cabal, but there are other dispute resolution avenues that can be pursued, including seeking a third opinion or filing an article-content request for comment. Please pursue these avenues toward obtaining consensus on the issue raised. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline. This is a fairly routine content dispute and the debate on the reliable sources noticeboard has barely begun. I would advise the filer that, in order to avoid charges of 'forum-shopping', he may want to concentrate on that avenue for the moment. There appears to be no associated editor misconduct. Sam Blacketer (talk) 00:33, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline as it is very premature. Newyorkbrad and Sam clearly explain what should be done, and how. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 03:35, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Reject as well stated by Newyorkbrad and Sam Blacketer. FloNight (talk) 16:03, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline; premature. --jpgordon^∇∆∇∆ 19:27, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline, similar reasoning. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 13:49, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

---

Elvis Presley / Onefortyone

Initiated by Steve Pastor (talk) at 16:09, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Involved parties

• Steve Pastor (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) - (initiating party)
• Rikstar (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Northmeister (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• LaraLove (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Maria202 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Jaye9 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
• Onefortyone (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

Onefortyone[31] Rikstar [32] Northmeister [33] LaraLove [34] Maria202 [35] Jaye9 [36]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Several editors have made heroic attempts to work with OneFortyOne. All editors who have tried to do this have thrown their hands up in frustration, as can be noted by the comments of the editors who have joined in this request.

Statement by Steve Pastor

Comments by the combined editors of the Elvis Presley article should suffice to substantiate the following request

that user OneFortyOne be permanently banned from editing the Elvis Presley article, including the Discussion page. Furthermore I request that OneFortyOne be banned from editing any article with a mention of Elvis Presley, including, but not limited to, the Milton Berle Show, Steve Allen, The Steve Allen Show, Ed Sullivan, and The Ed Sullivan Show articles.

This has been a long term pernicious problem. As Rikstar has written, 141 "knows how to play the edit warring game without getting into obvious trouble, his posts beg to be answered ... and this has been as tiresome as it has been unproductive". It should be noted that 141 brings up the same previously rejected arguments and material over and over again.

OneForty One has been banned previously. You may wish to review the following pages: [37], [38], [39].

The following are remarks are from on the Discussion page of the Elvis Presley article:

Disruptive editing. 141 continues to edit this article unilaterally, making little or no effort to co-operate with others. 141 was asked to leave my last edits for others to consider and comment on. He did not. 141 was asked to justify his accusations of fan bias in later sections on these pages first. He did not, and has gone ahead and made changes. It was explained in detail above that 141's edits regarding guitar playing didn't work and that the citation was incomplete. He reverted the changes I subsequently made and it remains a poor read and poorly cited. 141 has been asked if his intention is to make this an article of GA or FA status: no comment. 141 is refusing to allow any of his precious edits to be removed, inspite of article length, and the good will of others in removing or allowing the removal of their own contributions. Rikstar 12:48, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

We've approached a point where regardless of efforts to include onefortyones edits within the summary style of Wikipedia, and despite concessions to him; this editor continues to spoil any effort to bring improvement to the article so that it may become among the best at Wikipedia and receive feature status. Numerous editors thus far including yourself and tireless Rikstar have improve this article substantially. I would hate to see it all ruined by one editor who is not getting the point of our efforts nor Wikipedia WP:Point. It is time this matter is resolved by outside parties. --Northmeister 01:18, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

This article has been degraded enough. Too much time and hard work has gone to waste. This article has great potential to be an FA. Currently, it can't even keep GA. It's time to fix the issues that ail this article. Lara❤Love 17:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

It pains me to see what one user, 141, has done to this article. I watched many others work very hard on getting it to FA status. Maria202 (talk) 15:34, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

So much of the "current controversy" occurs because one particular user (guess) keeps trying to own this article, and the Talk Page. I'm in favor of taking it to arbitration, or even having him banned for his behavior in and about this article and Talk. It's a shame that this user has made such a mess of this page with his obsessive blather that the page is sinking into a swamp of user despair. Hoserjoe (talk) 00:22, 26 December 2007 (UTC) To Steve Pastor add me to your list, please.--Jaye9 (talk) 15:04, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I will add my own comments:

If I thought it would make a difference to 141, I would go through the archeives and repeat the arguments that have been made by other editors as to why this material does not belong in this article. Since 141 has been unable or unwilling to understand, or accept any other viewpoints on this subject, that exercise would be pointless. Steve Pastor (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Rikstar has by far put the most effort into this article, and provided these additional comments.

I posted my worries about improving the Elvis article on Dec. 8, 2006 - my comment is still in the summary of FA/GA submissions. My concerns actually referred to the involvement of one user, Onefortyone, though I did not mention him by name. His history already indicated that he had an alarming and persistent preoccupation with negative and sexually biased material, something not reflected in other encyclopedic articles. I noted he had at times been banned/committed violations.

By May, 2007, I was being actively encouraged by user Northmeister to edit (he has since given up) because of other editors' concerns about the state of the article; the lack of progress seemed tied to article length, trivia, fan bias, structure and to 141's continued involvement. In the last 6 months, I have tried to improve the article but I have felt regularly frustrated by 141's talk, edits, reverts, ignoring consensus and general tactics that lead me to seriously believe he has some kind of agenda to be disruptive and/or to have his POV included at any cost. His posting of a list of miswritten lyrics implying Presley was gay was as perplexing as it was disturbing. Responding to his claims, new submissions, etc. has taken up more time and effort than with any other user, and the payback has been negligible.

141 is shrewd: he knows how to play the edit warring game without getting into obvious trouble, his posts beg to be answered if only not to give his claims undue weight, and this has been as tiresome as it has been unproductive. I hope that my own posts on the talk pages will give sufficient details about the specific objections I and others have had to 141's editing behavior, and that they will be seen as fair and as objective as possible. It should be noted however that the frustration over many hours of discussion/arguing with 141 alone has pushed me to the point where I have felt physically repelled at the thought of doing any more editing, period. I have stretched my patience to its limit trying to negotiate with/accommodate/tolerate 141, to ignore his rehashing of stale tactics/arguments. However, the evidence is there, I think, that this and other articles will never improve as they should with his continued involvement. I also believe he has scared off too many people who could help make this a featured article. And I may well be another casuality. Rikstar (talk) 21:53, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Additional statement by Onefortyone concerning false claims by Steve Pastor

Here are some false claims made by Steve Pastor in his statement above:

• "141 continues to edit this article unilaterally, making little or no effort to co-operate with others."

This is not true, as the discussion page shows and my efforts in order to shorten longer versions of specific paragraphs previously written by me prove. See [40], [41]. See also [42]and [43], [44], [45]. However, if some users removed entire, well-sourced paragraphs, I did not agree, which I hope is understandable. In these cases I tried to reinclude the deleted material in the original form or, alternatively, in revised, abridged form. It should be noted that others also reverted such edits. See [46], [47], [48], [49].

• "141 was asked to justify his accusations of fan bias in later sections on these pages first. He did not..."

I did. See [50], [51], [52], [53], etc.

• "It was explained in detail above that 141's edits regarding guitar playing didn't work and that the citation was incomplete. He reverted the changes I subsequently made and it remains a poor read and poorly cited."

For my response, see [54], where I have demonstrated that Steve Pastor's edits regarding guitar playing "suggests that Elvis's music was accepted from the beginning by the majority of listeners. But this isn't true," as the sources I have provided show. The said passage has been reworded by me and Rikstar several weeks ago and it is now a good read.

• "141 has been asked if his intention is to make this an article of GA or FA status: no comment."

This is also a false claim. For my statements that I am willing to help to make Elvis Presley an article of GA or FA status, see [55], [56], [57].

• 141 is refusing to allow any of his precious edits to be removed.

This is not true. For example, when Rikstar shortened this section, I did not revert it to the previous, much longer version written by me. In many other cases, I accepted edits by others, as the contribution history of the Elvis article clearly shows.

So much for Steve Pastor's false claims.

Statement by Onefortyone

It's interesting that User:Steve Pastor requests a ban in view of his biased removals of well-sourced, critical information and inclusion of fan-oriented material in Elvis-related articles.

To my mind, the whole thing is simply a content dispute concerning Elvis-related topics. Pastor seems to be primarily interested in removing critical information and including material mentioning "that some of Elvis's greatest assets were his youth and good looks." And he adds, "I have several sources (my favorite is a BB King statement, which can be seen on dvd) that he tought Elvis would be popular whether he could sing or not." See [58].

It should be further noted that most editors who have joined in Steve Pastor's request are acknowledged fans of Elvis Presley.

• Northmeister says on his user page, "I've been a lifelong fan of Elvis Presley even though he passed away in my very early years." See [59].
• LaraLove says, "I am an Elvis fan, but of his music and look, not so much his life and how he lived it." See [60].
• Jaye9 says, "Oh by the way 141, I am an Elvis Fan..." See [61]. This could suggest that they may be interested in excluding more critical material from the Elvis article.

See also these four edits by Pastor of May 2007: [62], [63], [64], [65]. Furthermore, which contributions to The Ed Sullivan Show are more encyclopedic? This one and this one by Steve Pastor or that one and that one by Onefortyone?

In the past, User:Steve Pastor repeatedly removed content he didn't like from the Elvis page. See [66], [67], [68], [69], [70], [71], [72], [73], [74], [75], [76], [77], [78], etc. etc.

What is more, Steve Pastor frequently includes references to specific fan sites and DVDs in Wikipedia articles. See [79], [80], [81], [82], [83], [84], [85], [86], [87], [88], [89], [90], [91]. Other users had also a suspicion that the hyperlinks Steve Pastor prefers seem "designed primarily to sell CDs." See [92], [93]. This inclusion of references to Elvis fan sites, DVDs etc., which is not in line with Wikipedia policies, may indicate that Pastor is part of an Elvis fan group and may therefore be an editor who has a conflict of interest.

Concerning the well-sourced material I have used for my contributions, Steve Pastor writes:

• I think we need to keep in mind that many of the people who wrote about Elvis were writing books. Much of what they write is opinion and doesn't need to be repeated here. See [94].
• We no longer have to rely on second hand accounts of many things. We also no longer have to rely on someone elses account of what the music sounds like with the availablity of samples. See [95]

Third-party users seem to agree with my edits:

• "The article seems a bit too fan influenced. I wish that some of the input by Onefortyone (biased though he may or may not be) got more air time. Elvis was wonderful, but an encyclopedia article, especially a wikipedia article should be brutally honest." See [96].
• "Elvis was a controversial figure. His sexuality, drug taking, divorce, eating disorders etc etc all attract differing points of view. To some he was a god; to others a fat bloke who died on the toilet. For many aspects of his life there is no definitive answer. ... To attempt to compromise, this article needs to show both sides with suitable references and let the reader decide." See [97].
• "Onefortyone presents well documented information on a lot of negative aspects of Elvis` life and it gets continually edited out. Let the truth be heard, you inane fanboys." See [98].

Here are some other commentaries concerning my contributions:

• ... If the Presley article is so POV and controlled by biased Elvis fans as you claim, then feel free to make all the edits you like. They seem to wasted just appearing on the talk page. You are obviously intelligent, erudite and can write excellent prose that is unimpeachably cited. Other people are freely editing the article, so why don't you? See [99]
• I like your recent compromise. It shows we can work together and that you understand my concerns. I moved the later material to 1968 comeback to fit better in the article. In this way we can work towards your concerns. See [100]
• A Resilient Barnstar for learning and improving from criticisms, and not letting mistakes or blunders impede your growth as Wikipedian. I'm really impressed. See [101]

As far as I can see, I am the only editor who frequently cites his sources, among them mainstream Elvis biographies, essays by reputed Elvis experts, books by people who knew Elvis and peer-reviewed studies published by university presses. For the many sources I have used for my contributions, see [102].

Significantly, my opponents now endeavor to remove exactly the same sourced information that my former opponents had removed, who are banned by former arbcom decisions. To my mind, Steve Pastor and some new sockpuppets of Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabbadoo are still edit warring with me, as multiple hardbanned User:Ted Wilkes alias User:DW and banned User:Lochdale did in the past. Onefortyone (talk) 22:56, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to Jehochman

You have claimed, "Onefortyone appears to have been in persistent conflict since at least May 2007..." and "I believe Onefortyone has significantly impeded development of the article, based on the statements of involved parties." If you look at the contribution history, you will find that I didn't touch the Elvis article between May 19 and August 27, 2007. As there was a permanent edit war in the past, I didn't revert any removals by other users for months in order to show good faith. This means that there was plenty of time for my opponents to develop the article, and they changed a lot. However, there was a discussion on the talk page, as my opponents frequently removed sourced content that was not in line with their personal opinion. In August, Rikstar said on the talk page, "...feel free to make all the edits you like. They seem to wasted just appearing on the talk page. You are obviously intelligent, erudite and can write excellent prose that is unimpeachably cited. Other people are freely editing the article, so why don't you?" See [103]. So I returned. The edit war started again with this edit by Northmeister, who, as usual, removed well-sourced information from the article page. Furthermore, if you look at the Elvis article in its present state from a neutral point of view, is it really such a mess as my opponents claim? Onefortyone (talk) 01:06, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reply to LaraLove

I think I have shown on the talk page that the claims by Jaye9, perhaps a newly created sockpuppet of one of my former opponents (see his contribution history), are unjustified. Jaye9 even made false claims concerning Elvis's father, Vernon, and his stepmother, Dee Presley, on the talk page similar to the claims made by banned user Lochdale, who even added this false information to the Elvis article. See [104] and my reply here. Onefortyone (talk) 01:14, 9 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Jehochman

I direct the Committee's attention to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive249#Still an unresolved problem. I am concerned that the current remedies against Onefortyone may be entirely insufficient to deal with the level of disruption that seems to be going on. I urge the committee to accept this matter for review to help resolve a long running controversy that the community has been unable to handle. Onefortyone appears to have been in persistent conflict since at least May 2007 and probably much longer. I remain concerned about the possibility of disruptive sock puppetry, and of false allegations against other editors. Jehochman ^Talk 23:18, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I do not feel comfortable applying the existing probation remedy because it is too narrowly written. I believe Onefortyone has significantly impeded development of the article, based on the statements of involved parties. Additionally, Sam Blacketer has stated that he thinks Onefortyone's editing has been acceptable. It seems that there is a conflict amongst administrators how to handle this problem. The status quo since at least May 2007 has been paralysis resulting in valued contributors becoming frustrated to the point that they abandon the article. I think an expedited review of editing since the last case and a decision to remove, alter, or sustain the existing remedy would be helpful. Jehochman ^Talk 22:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by LaraLove

In the months I have been working on this article, I have found Onefortyone to be a consistent obstacle in article improvement. My involvement started after the article was improperly promoted to GA status in August 2007. It's my opinion that every attempt to bring this article to GA standards is halted by Onefortyone. Evidence has been shown on Talk:Elvis Presley that brings Onefortyone's sourced additions into question, as it appears as though he has selectively pulled information in order to push his preferred POV. He refuses to allow information to be removed in order to bring the article down to a manageable, readable length, which is why his latest additions remain. I created Wikipedia:WikiProject Elvis Presley in hopes of being able to get more attention on the article, however, it's no further along now than it was when it began a month and a half ago. Something has to change in this situation because no progress is being made and every other editor that consistently works on this article is ready to give up, which is not in the best interest of the project. Lara❤Love 18:12, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Egghead06

There is so much about the life of Elvis that is unknown. Since his death much rumour and gossip have grown-up around the man. How can anyone give a definitive view? They can't! What they can do is offer data which differs from the norm. As long as this is given with good references this can only help to provide a fuller picture. How can you ban someone who does that? There appears to be a drive here to only have one view point - put them all as long as they are referenced and let the reader decide. There also appears to be a drive to keep the article short so as to acheive some internal star or pat-on-the back. Brevity and accuracy do not always go hand-in-hand. This is not an encyclopedia for goldfish. Surely people can keep their span of attention long enough to grasp all the possibilities. This user may not toe the line but banning is too heavy handed. --Egghead06 (talk) 08:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

There appear to be two reports in the enforcement archives, see first and second and the enforcement log. Thatcher 17:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators' opinion on hearing this matter (0/2/0/4)

• The situation is troubling, but I am not certain that a new case is necessary. It appears that the problem could be addressed through enforcement of the existing remedies through a report to Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement. That page is used where an editor fails to abide by a rule in a prior arbitration case(s) and enforcement of remedies under the prior ruling are sufficient to resolve the issue. Could the parties kindly address whether the problem could be addressed more efficiently in this way. If arbitration enforcement is insufficient to address the problem then I lean toward acceptance, subject to Onefortyone's statement and possibly as a Review of editing since the prior decisions rather than a whole new case. Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:01, 7 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline. Onefortyone is a restrained editor of the actual article on Elvis Presley and his more recent additions appear to be reliably sourced and have stayed in the article. While the talk page can get heated at times, I am very reluctant to sanction an editor merely because they happen to be in a minority. Discussion and debate is working. The current sanctions are in my view sufficient. Sam Blacketer (talk) 11:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Decline for now as per Newyorkbrad. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 17:47, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• I do not want to reject a case that can not be handled by past remedies or the community, but I do not see evidence for a case now. I need to see more specific evidence that we need to be involved before I can accept. FloNight (talk) 18:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• I would rather have a motion on a previous case than open a whole new case about essentially the same issues. I would like to see evidence of occasions where 141 has been disruptive in ways that are not covered by the existing sanctions from previous cases, and suggestions for ways those sanctions could be improved to better handle the situation. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 20:57, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Would rather see this re-presented as an update to the previous case, in light of subsequent events, than a completely new one. That said, before doing so, clarity and outside views would be helpful to all. Is there evidence it really can't be dealt with by conduct/content views from the community (possibly backed by uninvolved admins), and use of past remedies?

• Conduct issues - The above describe many attempts to discuss/negotiate/seek consensus, but not any attempts to apply usual admin measures if there is a breach of usual editorial standards (including WP:CONSENSUS) or other forms of disruptive editing by any party. If theres a real problem, then a quick solution might be to seek conduct RFC and present the conduct problem, and state the consensus or remedy that is hoped the community will endorse (note, RFC may look at the conduct of all). And/or if necessary ask at ANI for uninvolved eyeballs and admin involvement.
• Content disagreements - Additionally is there a genuine case that regardless of interpersonal issues some significant viewpoint is being unduly marginalized or emphasized? Ask that at RFC too.

Arbcomus non necesse. If RFC or ANI or other community-based means fail, and the dispute is still damaging, that's usually when to revisit it here for arbitrated remedies. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 14:09, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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Place requests for clarification on matters related to past Arbitration cases in this section. If the case is ongoing, please use the relevant talk page. Requests for enforcement of past cases should be made at Arbitration enforcement. Requests to clarify general Arbitration matters should be made on the Talk page. Place new requests at the top.

Scope of previous ruling

In a previous ruling it was decided that a given editor, User:Ferrylodge, would be subject to an indefinite restriction regarding articles relating to pregnancy and abortion here. There has been recent discussion here regarding whether that restriction would apply to articles in the broader "political" sphere as well, specifically regarding a current presidential candidate. Would the previous restriction apply in this case or not? John Carter (talk) 19:34, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Generally Arbitration decisions mean what they say. Obviously this does not immunize the editor against administrative action that might be taken for disruptive editing of other articles, but such action has to be justified according to the usual standards and means for dealing with disruption. You may wish to ask Arbcom for a modification or extension of the prior case. Thatcher 19:50, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To ban or not to ban

There's been an incident following a recently closed Arb case :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Arbitration_enforcement#User:Tenebrae

The party received a warning, but for future considerations, would such an incident be subject to temporary banning under Remedy 3?

Disruptive editing 3) Any uninvolved administrator may ban Skyelarke or Tenebrae from editing John Buscema or any related article or page for a reasonable period of time, either before or after three months have expired, if either engages in any form of disruptive editing, edit-warring, or editing against an established consensus.

--Skyelarke (talk) 16:07, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An uninvolved administrator may ban either participant in the case from any article or page related to John Buscema for the reasons stated. The words "or page" were added to the remedy to make it clear that talk pages are included. Talk pages are for discussion, even for expressing disagreement with other editors, so banning someone from a talkpage normally should not be necessary, but if there is disruption from either party it can be done in the discretion of the administrator handling arbitration enforcement. I will add that I am very, very disappointed to see the two of you sniping at each other again so soon after the case was resolved. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:13, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanky for reply, Newyorkbrad - Hopefully, it's an isolated impulsive reaction following case closure - things should hopefully cool down once parties have taken the time to review and integrate the arbcom case decision a little better.

Thanks also, for your double-duty efforts (clerk and arbitrator) on the case, and best of luck with your new arbitration appointment.

Cheers,

--Skyelarke (talk) 16:32, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Admin actions don't generally start with the most severe remedy, and blocks don't normally start at the longest length. It's normally the other way around; the exceptions are things like vandal only accounts. In this case there was also the issue of what the arb case applied to. — Rlevse • Talk • 17:16, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Motions