Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests
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.
To request enforcement of previous Arbitration decisions or discretionary sanctions, please do not open a new Arbitration case. Instead, please submit your request to /Requests/Enforcement.
This page transcludes from /Case, /Clarification and Amendment, /Motions, and /Enforcement.
Please make your request in the appropriate section:
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Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.
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| Request name | Motions | Case | Posted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clarification request: Investigation request regarding Arbitration Committee evidentiary procedure | none | none | 5 May 2025 |
| Clarification request: Russo-Ukrainian War AN discussion | none | (orig. case) | 8 May 2025 |
| Arbitration enforcement request referral: Indian military history | none | (orig. case) | 8 May 2025 |
| Motion name | Date posted |
|---|---|
| Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 | 26 April 2025 |
About this page Use this section to request the committee open an arbitration case. To be accepted, an arbitration request needs 4 net votes to "accept" (or a majority). Arbitration is a last resort. WP:DR lists the other, escalating processes that should be used before arbitration. The committee will decline premature requests. Requests may be referred to as "case requests" or "RFARs"; once opened, they become "cases". Before requesting arbitration, read the arbitration guide to case requests. Then click the button below. Complete the instructions quickly; requests incomplete for over an hour may be removed. Consider preparing the request in your userspace. To request enforcement of an existing arbitration ruling, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement. To clarify or change an existing arbitration ruling, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment.
Guidance on participation and word limits Unlike many venues on Wikipedia, ArbCom imposes word limits. Please observe the below notes on complying with word limits.
General guidance
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Use this section to request clarification or amendment of a closed Arbitration Committee case or decision.
- Requests for clarification are used to ask for further guidance or clarification about an existing completed Arbitration Committee case or decision.
- Requests for amendment are used to ask for an amendment or extension of existing sanctions (for instance, because the sanctions are ineffective, contain a loophole, or no longer cover a sufficiently wide topic); or appeal for the removal of sanctions (including bans).
Submitting a request: (you must use this format!)
- Choose one of the following options and open the page in a new tab or window:
- Click here to file a request for clarification of an arbitration decision or procedure.
- Click here to file a request for amendment of an arbitration decision or procedure (including an arbitration enforcement action issued by an administrator, such as a contentious topics restriction).
- Click here to file a referral from AE requesting enforcement of a decision.
- Click here to file a referral from AE appealing an arbitration enforcement action.
- Save your request and check that it looks how you think it should and says what you intended.
- If your request will affect or involve other users (including any users you have named as parties), you must notify these editors of your submission; you can use
{{subst:Arbitration CA notice|SECTIONTITLE}}to do this. - Add the diffs of the talk page notifications under the applicable header of the request.
Please do not submit your request until it is ready for consideration; this is not a space for drafts, and incremental additions to a submission are disruptive.
Guidance on participation and word limits
Unlike many venues on Wikipedia, ArbCom imposes word limits. Please observe the below notes on complying with word limits.
- Motivation. Word limits are imposed to promote clarity and focus on the issues at hand and to ensure that arbitrators are able to fully take in submissions. Arbitrators must read a large volume of information across many matters in the course of their service on the Committee, so submissions that exceed word limits may be disregarded. For the sake of fairness and to discourage gamesmanship (i.e., to disincentivize "asking forgiveness rather than permission"), word limits are actively enforced.
- In general. Most submissions to the Arbitration Committee (including statements in arbitration case requests and ARCAs and evidence submissions in arbitration cases) are limited to 500 words, plus 50 diffs. During the evidence phase of an accepted case, named parties are granted an automatic extension to 1000 words plus 100 diffs.
- Sectioned discussion. To facilitate review by arbitrators, you should edit only in your own section. Address your submission to arbitrators, not to other participants. If you wish to rebut, clarify, or otherwise refer to another submission for the benefit of arbitrators, you may do so within your own section. (More information.)
- Requesting an extension. You may request a word limit extension in your submission itself (using the {{@ArbComClerks}} template) or by emailing clerks-l
lists.wikimedia.org. In your request, you should briefly (in 1–2 sentences) include (a) why you need additional words and (b) a broad outline of what you hope to discuss in your extended submission. The Committee endeavors to act upon extension requests promptly and aims to offer flexibility where warranted.
- Members of the Committee may also grant extensions when they ask direct questions to facilitate answers to those questions.
- Refactoring statements. You should write carefully and concisely from the start. It is impermissible to rewrite a statement to shorten it after a significant amount of time has passed or after anyone has responded to it (see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines § Editing own comments), so it is often advisable to submit a brief initial statement to leave room to respond to other users if the need arises.
- Sign submissions. In order for arbitrators and other participants to understand the order of submissions, sign your submission and each addition (using
~~~~). - Word limit violations. Submissions that exceed the word limit will generally be "hatted" (collapsed), and arbitrators may opt not to consider them.
- Counting words. Words are counted on the rendered text (not wikitext) of the statement (i.e., the number of words that you would see by copy-pasting the page section containing your statement into a text editor or word count tool). This internal gadget may also be helpful.
- Sanctions. Please note that members and clerks of the Committee may impose appropriate sanctions when necessary to promote the effective functioning of the arbitration process.
General guidance
- Arbitrators and clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment.
- Requests from blocked or banned users should be made by e-mail directly to the Arbitration Committee.
- Only arbitrators and clerks may remove requests from this page. Do not remove a request or any statements or comments unless you are in either of these groups.
- Archived clarification and amendment requests are logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Clarification and Amendment requests. Numerous legacy and current shortcuts can be used to more quickly reach this page:
Clarification request: Investigation request regarding Arbitration Committee evidentiary procedure
| Questions asked by the initiator have been answered, at some length and repetition, by individual members of the Committee. Processes adopted late last year by motion have been re-outlined. This has run its course. Daniel (talk) 21:03, 5 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Initiated by Allthemilescombined1 at 11:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request Statement by Allthemilescombined1ArbCom is the “Supreme Court” of Wikipedia and serves as the ultimate authority on maintaining the integrity of the Wikipedia project. I have noticed ‘ownership’ of the I/P area by a small group of editors, and I have encountered incivility, POV pushing, tag-teaming and aspersions in the space. I have been following reports about Wikipedia in Pirate Wires and the Jewish Journal further reporting upon troubling behavior, including widespread canvassing. The Wikipedia community can only address these concerns if there is sustained trust in the platform’s governance. In response to the March 20 Jewish Journal piece on the “Tech For Palestine” editing Discord, CaptainEek stated on March 22 that the Arbitration Committee did not receive the “expanded dossier” at the center of the JJ article. On April 23, the JJ article was updated in response to CaptainEek's denial of receiving the “expanded dossier” (which appears at the bottom of the article linked above as well as on the journalist's twitter). The updated article indicates that the “expanded dossier” was in fact submitted to ArbCom twice on 9/8/24. As far as I can tell, ArbCom, while taking efforts to re-review the case in light of the update to the JJ article, has yet to clarify as to how important submitted evidence was missed, ignored, forgotten about, buried, or otherwise. Given that there is zero transparency as to the private proceedings of the committee, this is a complete violation of trust between editors and Arbitrators. How are we to trust that sensitive evidence is being handled appropriately, if such a major miss like this can happen? Furthermore, why would a veteran ArbCom member respond dismissively on a noticeboard before checking their email for correspondence relating to the evidence in question? This does not instill any confidence that the private ArbCom procedures are being conducted appropriately. As a member of the Wikipedia community, I am requesting a transparent, independent investigation be assembled as to the conduct and procedure of ArbCom on this matter. Just a few of the questions that I want answered:
I am aware of no procedure in place for the Arbitration Committee to be itself investigated. I am requesting that any ArbCom members who were active during the period in question recuse themselves from this proceeding, and only those most recently elected (which took place after this evidence was submitted) to make recommendations on this matter.
Statement by CaptainEekMoved to my own section: Seeing as Aoidh has also recused, then I will also recuse.
Statement by HuldraFor a perspective: according to the dossier itself: "The current conservative edit impact estimate for the group (based on available evidence) is 260 edits on 114 articles.(p. 3 (out of 244)) (bolding in the original). I can make more edits in a day. Also, from what I could see, it was mostly adding "fluff": celebrity X, Y or Z "supporting Gaza ceasefire", etc. Huldra (talk) 23:34, 30 April 2025 (UTC) Statement by Sean.hoylandHuldra cited page 3. The page covers the Feb and Sept, 2024 period.
From this we can say a few things
And I'll add this.
Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:19, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Chess, for me, success or failure depends on things like compliance, completeness etc., all emergent properties well beyond the control of ArbCom or individual editors. Success can take years to emerge. For me, success or failure has no dependency on how partisan actors see things. They are unreliable narrators. There are misalignments between their value systems and Wikipedia's. Their stories about Wikipedia willfully misinform and mislead. It doesn't seem to make the topic area better. A real problem, for me, is that doing the thing that is prohibited by the universal code of conduct, "manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view", is what many of us do without even trying, naturally, in good faith, without any malicious intent or conscious manipulation, and it can take a long time for content to meander its way to somewhere resembling compliance with the important policies, too long for impatient partisans. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by AoidhI'll recuse. The basis of this request is that Statement by ChessWould the committee consider distinguishing between action taken on anonymous sources and confidential sources? In this case, "anonymous" means unknown to the committee, while "confidential" means known to the committee, but not disclosed. And re: Sean.Hoyland, Statement by FortunateSonsHello, I may be able to answer some of those questions, as I’m not bound by the same confidentiality rules as ArbCom. I would also like to note that I fully understand that the Arbs receive many reports of varying quality and that steps have already been taken to address the pace at which action is taken, so this is primarily descriptive, not accusatory. Having said that, my own report of this issue contains 18 screenshots from their discord, the names of the most relevant editors, and a link to their on-Wiki collaboration space. I received confirmation of receipt on Jun 30, 2024, then requested an update on August 31, to which I received a response (on September 3) stating that no further information was needed at this time and that there was no news. I requested an update on November 1, which was not replied to. Between confirming reception and her block on Dec 9, User:Ïvana made more than 1000 edits, including to sensitive articles. The email from which the report was made is linked to my account and would be verifiable to ArbCom, as I have forwarded canvassing emails to them before. As such, I don’t think that this was an issue of „anonymous/confidential“. I also can’t speak to whether or not what I provided was sufficient to take action, and required a second attempt to reformat the attachment to my email with the help of an arbitrator, for what that’s worth. I waive my confidentiality to the degree that is required to confirm that all statements made above are accurate and complete. FortunateSons (talk) 13:45, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by AquillionI strenuously disagree with Chess' statement above that Statement by {other-editor}Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information. Investigation request regarding Arbitration Committee evidentiary procedure: Clerk notes
Investigation request regarding Arbitration Committee evidentiary procedure: Arbitrator views and discussion
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Clarification request: Russo-Ukrainian War AN discussion
| We received a report of off-wiki canvassing that fell below the threshold of evidence that we consider to be actionable. Some editors were named as being possibly canvassed but there was no credible evidence that any specific editors were canvassed. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:25, 8 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Initiated by Simonm223 at 17:33, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request Statement by Simonm223Recently TurboSuperA+ stated that they believed canvassing had occurred in relation to an RfC at Azov Brigade. When questioned regarding this canvassing they said they had off-wiki evidence which they could not disclose due to WP:OUTING but that they had sent to the arbitration email address. This has led to the following AN/I dispute: [3]. In order to ascertain an appropriate course of action, while respecting required arbitrator confidentiality, there are two questions: Did TurboSuperA+ send evidence of off-wiki canvassing and was that evidence reasonable. Please note I don't mean actionable here - the question is rather whether it would have been reasonable for them, in possession of the evidence, to believe it to be evidence of canvassing? Statement by TurboSuperA+
Statement by Helpful CatThanks to Simonm223 for opening this. If possible, I would add a third question: did the evidence point to any specific users who had been canvassed with enough credibility to publicly accuse them, as opposed to general evidence that canvassing was happening? For completeness' sake, I'll repeat what I said elsewhere: I found out about the RFC via WT:UKRAINE where TurboSuperA+ cross-posted it. This page was on my watchlist because I have edited it before. No one ever canvassed or contacted me about the RFC, either on- or off-wiki (in fact, I have never received any off-wiki communications from editors about Wikipedia). Therefore, I was shocked to see my good-faith response tagged with Template:Canvassed without comment or justification, especially by a user I had recently been in a dispute with. Helpful Cat🐈(talk) 18:01, 7 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by ChessTemplates that tag editor misconduct before the editor is "found guilty" of such misconduct are a bad idea. I successfully nominated Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2025 April 26#Template:SPI-notice for deletion because I got warned for using it for its intended purpose of tagging unconfirmed sockpuppets, so there is some community consensus on this point. In that case, it didn't matter whether I also submitted evidence to the Arbitration Committee because the issue was whether it was appropriate to tag editors that haven't been blocked yet. An arb has more recently told me it's not OK to make accusations onwiki in reference to offwiki evidence, even if the onwiki accusation is properly supported by public offwiki evidence (specifically, a Tweet+public Telegram announcement).[4] So, even if ArbCom says the accusations were substantiated, my understanding is that they weren't acceptable to make at that discussion. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 01:02, 8 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by {other-editor}Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information. Russo-Ukrainian War AN discussion: Clerk notes
Russo-Ukrainian War AN discussion: Arbitrator views and discussion
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Arbitration enforcement request referral: Indian military history
Initiated by Tamzin at 14:31, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- Arbitration enforcement thread
- Dympies
- Reason for referral
- AE has in the past three months considered at least 13 threads regarding pre-Raj Indian military history, often with caste implications, featuring the same revolving cast of participants. These have become increasingly difficult to resolve.
List of any users involved or directly affected, and confirmation that all are aware of the request:
- Tamzin (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) (initiator)
- Capitals00 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (filing party at AE)
- Dympies (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) (User against whom enforcement was requested at AE)
- AlvaKedak (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Ekdalian (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Akshaypatill (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Chronos.Zx (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- HerakliosJulianus (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Maniacal ! Paradoxical (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Abhishek0831996 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Koshuri Sultan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- RevolutionaryPatriot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- PadFoot2008 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Hu741f4 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Extorc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
- Ivanvector (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
- Bishonen (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
- Abecedare (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
- Capitals00
- Dympies
- AlvaKedak
- Ekdalian
- Akshaypatill
- Chronos.Zx
- HerakliosJulianus
- Maniacal ! Paradoxical
- Abhishek0831996
- Koshuri Sultan
- RevolutionaryPatriot
- PadFoot2008
- Hu741f4
- Extorc
- Ivanvector
- Bishonen
- Abecedare
Statement by Tamzin
The military history of pre-Raj India has increasingly become a flashpoint for disputes on-wiki, correlating with contemporary Indian political disputes. This has come in two principal varieties: the historiography of established figures like Sambhaji and Shivaji, and military actions of questionable historicity such as the alleged Sikh–Wahhabi War. In many cases this correlates with caste, religious, and ethnic tensions, especially in disputes over the Deccan wars. Below I have included the 13 (that I could find) threads in the past 3 months concerning this topic area.
I have selected parties (whose names are boldfaced in the table) based on having been sanctioned or warned or having participated in multiple threads in a potentially partisan manner. That's not to say that I think all of these editors have necessarily engaged in misconduct. Nor is it to say that no other parties should be added; Srijanx22 and LeónGonsalvesofGoa both come to mind as potential parties.
| Date | Subject | Filer | Other involved participants | Closing/imposing admin | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-02-09 | Ekdalian | Chronos.Zx [NXcrypto] | Orientls, LukeEmily, Capitals00 | Seraphimblade | Ekdalian warned for PAs and canvassing |
| 2025-02-10 | PerspicazHistorian | Dympies | Vanamonde | Guerillero | PerspicazHistorian indeffed as a non-AE action |
| 2025-03-01 | Adamantine123 | Capitals00 | Vanamonde, Rosguill | Tamzin | Adamantine123 indeffed as a non-AE action |
| 2025-03-03 | Big fan of the Mughals | AlvaKedak | none | Abecedare | Big fan of the Mughals indeffed as a non-AE action |
| 2025-03-04 | RevolutionaryPatriot | Capitals00 | none | Valereee | RevolutionaryPatriot p-blocked from mainspace as a non-AE action (since unblocked) |
| 2025-03-28 | Hu741f4 | AlvaKedak | Koshuri Sultan, Capitals00 | Valereee | Hu741f4, AlvaKedak, and Koshuri Sultan advised to go slow in CTOPs |
| 2025-04-02 | AlvaKedak | Extorc | none | Tamzin | No action |
| 2025-04-05 | Akshaypatill | Abhishek0831996 | Koshuri Sultan, LukeEmily, Fowler&fowler, Ratnahastin | Rosguill | Logged warnings: Akshaypatill for edit warring; Capitals00, Abhishek0831996 and Koshuri Sultan for failure to AGF; Abhishek0831996 furthermore for frivolous complaints and word limit violations. |
| 2025-04-08 | ImperialAficionado | Mr.Hanes | AlvaKedak, Vanamonde, Extorc | SilverLocust | Archived unclosed after subject's retirement |
| 2025-04-20 | Dympies | Malik Al-Hind | Chronos.Zx [NXcrypto], Ekdalian, Sitush, LeónGonsalvesofGoa, HerakliosJulianus, IAmAtHome, LukeEmily, Capitals00 | Valereee | Procedural close to allow refiling by a non-sock |
| 2025-05-08 | Dympies | unilateral sanction | Bishonen | IPA TBAN for Dympies | |
| 2025-05-08 | Dympies | Capitals00 | AlvaKedak, Ivanvector, AirshipJungleman29, Kowal2701, Ekdalian, Akshaypatill, Abecedare | Tamzin | This ARCA referral |
| 2025-05-08 | PadFoot2008 | Srimant ROSHAN | Kowal2701, Shakakarta, Dympies, AlvaKedak, Mithilanchalputra7 | Tamzin | PadFoot2008 TBANned |
| 2025-05-08 | Srijanx22 | HerakliosJulianus | Maniacal ! Paradoxical | Tamzin | Maniacal ! Paradoxical TBANned |
Parties' sanction history (excluding sanctions mentioned above)
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I'll note that three of the proposed parties are already TBANned. My reading of WP:BANEX #2 would include this process, but to avoid any doubt, I have included an exception in PadFoot and Maniacal's TBANs. It may be worth doing the same for Dympies.
I've also added as parties three admins whose comments, at the most recent AE thread and at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Yoonadue/Archive § 19 April 2025, were key in making the case that the status quo in this topic area is untenable. Of particular salience is Ivanvector's comment:
Block everyone. There is no point wasting our time reviewing the complaints and counter-complaints here because no matter what happens, someone will file a new report in a few days with slightly different complaints or a slightly different group of editors involved, or maybe they'll try SPI again instead, or they'll try some other board to eliminate their enemies. It just goes on and on forever here. There comes a point, and in this topic the point is long since past, where we need to stop letting ourselves be used for these games and just start kicking the tendentious editors out. Blocking everyone involved is the best way forward for Wikipedia.
Finally, a courtesy ping to all other participants in the AE thread: @AirshipJungleman29, Kowal2701, Asilvering, Valereee, Black Kite, Voorts, and Rosguill. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 16:13, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Ekdalian: You are included because you were warned in [5] and participated in [6] and [7]. Inclusion in the party list does not mean you necessarily did something wrong (beyond what you've already been warned for), just that you have been involved in the dispute that is being referred here. If you would like to comment (which you don't have to), it's less a matter of defending yourself, and more a matter of your thoughts on the state of the topic area. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 16:39, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Capitals00
Yes a new craze of Maratha history has emerged among the masses in the recent months since the release of the historically misleading movie, Chhaava, however, admins will have to be cautious about judging the edits if they represent the history correctly or if they are simply ideologically motivated.
Some concerns were raised about poor AfD performance with regards to some of the users, but this is not the first time we have faced this problem. Mass topic bans over AfDs have happened before too on ANI and some of the users (including myself) had participated there.[8]
That said, I don't see what is there for Arbcom to suggest here. They have imposed AC/DS regime, which is more than enough to deal with any of these issues. Capitals00 (talk) 16:37, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Dympies
Statement by AlvaKedak
Statement by Ekdalian
Honestly speaking, I don't understand why my name figures in the list! I have neither filed any report at WP:AE nor initiated any SPI in the recent past! It would be great if the filer can explain my role in this case, so that I can actually respond or defend myself. Best Regards. Ekdalian (talk) 16:29, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks Tamzin for the clarification. I am really thankful to you for filling this report, and I sincerely believe that action will be taken against those involved in the offences clearly mentioned above by you! I had mentioned earlier about POV-pushing by Dympies both at ANI and AE, and admin Bishonen has very recently topic banned Dympies after more such evidence was presented by an uninvolved editor on her talk page! Best Regards. Ekdalian (talk) 16:56, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Akshaypatill
Statement by Chronos.Zx
Statement by HerakliosJulianus
Statement by Maniacal ! Paradoxical
Statement by Abhishek0831996
Statement by Koshuri Sultan
Statement by RevolutionaryPatriot
Statement by PadFoot2008
Statement by Hu741f4
Statement by Extorc
I witnessed the exemplary clerking by Tamzin at AE and I think if admins maintain such a pace, there would be no need for an arbcom case. Today, 3 editors were sanctioned for reports that were languishing for over a month. The ARBIPA sanction regime already covers this topic area, and I don't think it would warrant a separate ARBCOM case involving so many parties for what is only a subset of the topic area that witnesses disruptive editing.|Abecedare's second approach [9] would be better suited to deal with the area.
"The other approach would be to simply judge each individual report of misconduct individually, and apply (potentially boomerang) sanctions without worrying about whether sanctioning editor A indirectly "rewards" members of their rival groups, as long as the sanction is merited. That way we are not giving problematic conduct a free pass just because other editors are guilty too
." >>> Extorc.talk 18:04, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Ivanvector
Statement by Bishonen
Statement by Abecedare
Statement by asilvering (non-party)
Extremely grateful to Tamzin for doing the work of referring this. Bringing forward my comment from the most recent AE thread: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ahluwalia–Ramgarhia War is a prime example. It's become effectively impossible to trust most !votes in this topic area because of issues of competence, partisanship, or both.
-- asilvering (talk) 16:34, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Vanamonde
I urge ARBCOM to look into this. As with previous iterations of this conflict featuring massive tag-teaming and probable off-wiki coordination, there is unquestionably bad behavior that individual admins could sanction: but several of my colleagues are hesitant to do so, for not wanting to reward tag-teaming, hesitation about who is behaving worse vs who is better at gaming our system, and possibly hesitation about the blowback from other editors when sanctioning one. It is my view that a mass TBAN is going to be the minimum needed, but it is beyond the capacity of AE to determine the limits of such a sanction. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:37, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- Speaking partly in response to Rosguill below, I do think the AE threads underestimate the severity of this dispute: there have been interminable SPIs, several AfDs, and some AN/ANI threads involving many of these parties: 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6 (noting that in the last few I'm referring to the nature of the editors' participation, rather than its existence). Vanamonde93 (talk) 18:07, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by CoffeeCrumbs (non-party)
I also urge ARBCOM to dig into this issue, as I believe the community is at its wits' end when trying to deal with this area. My feelings are similar to Ivanvector's, and many ANI discussions about the issues become too complex quickly with dueling charges and accusations, and it's causing experienced editors and admins to nope out of the whole thing, understandably. Discussions like this [10] have shown little holes of revolving any of the fundamental issues with warring cliques. The escalation of conflict in that part of the world is likely to make things worse here, not better. ARBCOM is the only party with the jurisdiction to make sense of this mess. While I am not a named party, in the interest of full disclosure, I've been involved in a few of the conversations about these issues. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 17:07, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Rosguill
I think I may be the one somewhat-dissenting admin in that I'm not sure we're really at wit's end at AE, just a bit backlogged. Several parties have received topic-bans today alone, and we've also handed out several warnings that should make further enforcement much more straightforward. Ironically, Tamzin herself has to a point resolved our backlog today by actioning several threads that had been languishing. Speaking for myself, I am hesitant to take action in many cases because I am generally hesitant to take action unilaterally except when there is a clear-as-day policy violation. I think it's easy to get tunnel-vision when reviewing POV wars and greatly appreciate other admins' input on AE cases. Low traffic from admins and making space for right of rebuttal means that these discussions can end up hanging open even when we have a pretty clear outcome, but I don't know that the situation is quite like the muddied-waters mutual breakdown of good faith editing or that we have evidence of off-wiki coordination such that have required other ARBCOM cases.
As a final note, I have been less aware of the issue concerning vote-brigading at AfD as described by asilvering, as this has not been a central component of cases I've examined at AE, and thus may be underestimating the severity over there. If possible, I think the opinion of admins that are heavily active in closing AfDs would be appreciated. signed, Rosguill talk 17:26, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by {other-editor}
Other editors are free to make relevant comments on this request as necessary. Comments here should opine whether and how the Committee should clarify or amend the decision or provide additional information.
Indian military history (AE referral): Clerk notes
- This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
Indian military history (AE referral): Arbitrator views and discussion
- Having first hand experience with repeated reports on matters too complicated to handle at AE , and with a consensus of admins referring, I see this as our responsibility. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:18, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- I am considering recusal; I am a top contributor on Sambhaji, as I tried to help improve the page when the issue first arose. I'll recuse if folks think I should. Otherwise, I have made only limited edits to the military side of IPA, Battle of Ichogil Bund is the only one that comes to mind. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 18:02, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
 | This section can be used by arbitrators to propose motions not related to any existing case or request. Motions are archived at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Motions. Only arbitrators may propose or vote on motions on this page. You may visit WP:ARC or WP:ARCA for potential alternatives. You can make comments in the sections called "community discussion" or in some cases only in your own section. Arbitrators or clerks may summarily remove or refactor any comment. |
Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2
As part of our recent investigation into off-wiki misconduct, we had been made aware of Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Smallangryplanet/Archive#11_April_2025. Two of the alleged socks of Smallangryplanet have now been ArbCom blocked. However, our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct by Smallangryplanet or Lf8u2. Given the public SPI, which constitutes the extent of the evidence we are currently aware of, the Committee has opted to hear these motions in public. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 05:08, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2: Clerk notes
- This area is used for notes by the clerks (including clerk recusals).
Motion: Smallangryplanet topic banned
For violations of WP:NPOV, likely violations of Wikipedia's policies on Wikipedia:Canvassing and off-wiki coordination, and per Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list#Presumption of coordination,[a] Smallangryplanet (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from the Arab/Israel conflict, broadly construed.
- ^
When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions
Support:
- If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable. As well as the SPI, there's situations where one can't decide which of the responses is an editor banned for off-wiki coordination or an editor that consistently supports one side of a conflict, e.g.[11]
Strongly support Tel al-Sultan massacre, Rafah massacre, or Tent Massacre, with a preference for Tent Massacre as that is what RS are calling it.
Support massacre with no preference for the rest (I've seen the place being referred to as Rafah more often, but haven't done a proper analysis so maybe that's just my impression). Per nom and other comments, there's not a lack of RS using the term.
Strong support for massacre in the title, with a preference for "Rafah Tent Massacre". I concur with @Makeandtoss, @Abo Yemen et al. that the term 'massacre' is employed by reputable sources
We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV, and thatWhen a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions
. We know there is off-wiki coordination, we want the topic area to be better, and we say that CTOPs/AE allow admins to take these actions, so let's show them we mean it. We can't expect an admin or four to stick their necks out if we're not willing to. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2025 (UTC)- To clarify, per my response below, simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- As per my comments internally last month, I agree with SFR's comments here as to how to weigh the collection of evidence as a whole against the relevant outcomes. My views around this were strengthened with the recent action we took against two other editors. The discussion below, while very extensive and worthy of careful consideration, has not dissuaded me from this position. Daniel (talk) 03:33, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- I find myself answering Eek's question in the discussion below with "yes". Primefac (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- While the private evidence we have received does not directly and unambiguously show that these two editors have engaged in off-wiki coordination, it does show a pattern and timing that, when combined with their activity on-wiki, shows that they highly likely to have engaged in off-wiki coordination. Enough is enough. - Aoidh (talk) 22:39, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Having strong views on the conflict is fine, of course, but editing in a consistently-slanted way is not. If you can guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on, they are bringing little value to such discussions. Combining that with circumstantial evidence of coordination is enough to land here. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:16, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Oppose:
- I guess I'll say at the outset that if these motions pass, I won't be losing any sleep over the fact that Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 will be topic-banned from ARBPIA. Like Elli, I'm not exactly convinced that they're contributors devoted to constructing a neutral encyclopedia, and were I looking at their records as an individual admin, I could definitely see a battleground-based case for a balanced editing restriction or a topic ban. But that's not the case that was made here, and as a result, the hurdles that due process demands of a fair system haven't been cleared. In particular, I take strong issue with the case made by some in the support section above:
In other words, it doesn't really matter if the evidence on the off-wiki coordination charges aren't ironclad, because we know that there's off-wiki coordination out there somewhere, these people look suspicious, and it's probably for the best that they get topic-banned anyway, so let's skip the boring paperwork. That argument deprives Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 of the chance to actually defend themselves against the charges they're up against a topic ban for. Two arbitrators have decided that the editing history of these two editors renders them partisans who are not in this topic area to edit constructively, an assertion that has been at all litigated here at ARM or in private. No concrete evidence is presented in support of it. It's somewhat based on the fact that the selected sample of votes shown here consistently align with a certain point of view, which is not the same thing as proving that those editors prioritize their ideology over policy and guideline. Also, as long as we're talking about partisanship, there's the other elephant in the room: the filer of that SPI happens to be on the opposite side of the aisle of the four people they're gunning for. I wish editors in this area were willing to police people they agree with ideologically, but it basically never happens, which contributes a lot to the feeling that there are two entrenched camps attempting to break each other by any means necessary. Aoidh and others do argue in the support section that the off-wiki coordination case is, in and of itself, compelling enough for a topic ban. I respect that argument, but looking at the facts of the case here, I don't agree with the conclusion. Yes, we know SAP, Lf8u2, GeoColdWater, and Isoceles-sai all started increasing their participation around the same time Tech4Palestine was born, but there's a pretty reasonable case that that's just a coincidence given that Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 were not, to our knowledge, part of T4P. Yes, we know that Isoceles-sai, GeoColdWater, and Lf8u2 voted in a lot of the same discussions that Smallangryplanet (the most experienced of the four here) did, but some of the evidence doesn't hold up here – the most plausible coordination fact-pattern would be that the three less experienced editors were taking cues from SAP, but SAP cast a decent number of their votes after the less experienced editors. Also, there would have to be some unknown server that links all four of these editors that started around the same time as T4P, so while it's tough to dismiss this as a coincidence – the overlap does seem higher than what I'd expect, even for PIA – the fact pattern for it being not being a coincidence also feels bizarre. The wording of the votes in question don't at all look similar to me, aside from the fact that they're all supporting the same thing. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if they were all coordinating, but there's just not enough to go on. Partisanship is something ArbCom should be stamping out. If we had made this case about how these editors' (and others'!) activities put ideological interests above the integrity of the encyclopedia, we'd be setting a wonderful example for AE admins and the community on how to draw lines of clearly unacceptable conduct. Instead, frustratingly, the sloppiness of the argument not only prevents me from voting in favor of something that I think is probably net positive in and of itself, but that it hampers ArbCom in doing exactly what many supporting arbitrators would like it to do, which is to lay out a clear, consistent philosophy of partisan editing that AE admins can rely on in making controversial decisions. Circumstantial evidence about one charge plus unsubstantiated assertions about another does not equal a slam-dunk case, and I think that the precedents we're setting here about what constitutes improper editing and standards of evidence are out of step with what the community expects from us as a methodical, deliberative, and reasoned body. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:31, 5 May 2025 (UTC)ScottishFinnishRadish: If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable.
Elli: Having strong views on the conflict is fine, of course, but editing in a consistently-slanted way is not. If you can guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on, they are bringing little value to such discussions. Combining that with circumstantial evidence of coordination is enough to land here.
Abstain:
Arbitrator views and discussions
Motion: Lf8u2 topic banned
For violations of WP:NPOV, likely violations of Wikipedia's policies on Wikipedia:Canvassing and off-wiki coordination, and per Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Eastern European mailing list#Presumption of coordination,[a] Lf8u2 (talk · contribs) is indefinitely topic-banned from the Arab/Israel conflict, broadly construed.
- ^
When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions
Support:
- If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves. With the crossover with editors we know are coordinating I think a topic ban is reasonable. As well as the SPI, there's situations where one can't decide which of the responses is an editor banned for off-wiki coordination or an editor that consistently supports one side of a conflict, e.g.[12]
Strongly support Tel al-Sultan massacre, Rafah massacre, or Tent Massacre, with a preference for Tent Massacre as that is what RS are calling it.
Support massacre with no preference for the rest (I've seen the place being referred to as Rafah more often, but haven't done a proper analysis so maybe that's just my impression). Per nom and other comments, there's not a lack of RS using the term.
Strong support for massacre in the title, with a preference for "Rafah Tent Massacre". I concur with @Makeandtoss, @Abo Yemen et al. that the term 'massacre' is employed by reputable sources
We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV, and thatWhen a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions
. We know there is off-wiki coordination, we want the topic area to be better, and we say that CTOPs/AE allow admins to take these actions, so let's show them we mean it. We can't expect an admin or four to stick their necks out if we're not willing to. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:04, 26 April 2025 (UTC)- To clarify, per my response below, simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 10:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- Per commentary above. Daniel (talk) 03:34, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- I find myself answering Eek's question in the discussion below with "yes". Primefac (talk) 13:07, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Per my comment above. - Aoidh (talk) 22:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Per above. Elli (talk | contribs) 01:17, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Oppose:
- I ain't writing all of that a second time, see above :) theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 05:32, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Abstain:
Arbitrator views and discussions
- I don't at all agree that consistently editing in support of one side is a violation of NPOV if the individual edits aren't NPOV violations. What if someone consistently focuses on articles that are skewed towards one POV when the consensus of reliable sources supports another? I think it would be inconsistent with NPOV and WP:VOLUNTEER to require that someone include false balance in their editing. Misinterpreting sources due to carelessness is an issue; misinterpreting sources in ways that emphasize or advance one POV is unacceptable. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 02:59, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- SFR does say elsewhere that
Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine.
I do agree with that, and wish it was clearer in their vote above. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 03:03, 28 April 2025 (UTC)- @MarioGom: Picking the brain of an expert here :) you were the patrolling clerk at the original SPI thread, where you closed for lack of evidence:
When evaluating sockpuppetry and meatpuppetry at SPI, we have to decide whether strength of evidence raises above the expected background noise of each signal in certain topics. That background noise here is very high. That's usually the case for overlaps in broad contentious topics.
- In light of the fact that two of the editors in the report have now been ArbCom banned for off-wiki coordination, would you say your analysis has changed significantly? On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana. On the other hand, the high overlap with people who were weighing in mostly on discussions that were targets of off-wiki coordination is somewhat suspicious. Do you think the new evidence changes the calculations here? theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 16:48, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- @MarioGom: Picking the brain of an expert here :) you were the patrolling clerk at the original SPI thread, where you closed for lack of evidence:
- SFR does say elsewhere that
- As I understand it, the question before us is: based on circumstantial evidence of collusion of Lf8u2 & Smallangryplanet with Isoceles-Sai & GeoColdwater, and concrete evidence of off-wiki misconduct by Isoceles-Sai and GeoColdwater, is that circumstantial connection enough for us to assume that Lf8u2 and Smallangryplanet were also involved in off-wiki misconduct, such that a topic ban is warranted? These motions were originally proposed in private, but given that we found no private evidence of misconduct, I suggested that it would be more transparent for us to handle the matter in public. CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 05:56, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Smallangryplanet
Like @Lf8u2 I am...confused as to why this motion was brought when it has already been stated that there is no evidence that we were part of any coordination, and this is why the SPI case was closed as well. If there was to be any follow up on that case I frankly would have expected a case to be brought against the user who falsely accused myself and Lf8u2 of rather extreme things without evidence...
I’m not sure how to give evidence proving something that doesn’t exist and I will again point to my reponse to @Chess, and add that any overlap between myself and the three other editors – who, if we're being honest, appeared to be randomly chosen since there is the same degree if not higher of overlap between myself, them and others as @VR pointed out – is entirely incidental.
Additionally on a more abstract policy point I continue to believe that it is not a violation of any rules to agree with people in a shared area of interest in a talk page discussion. I don’t know why other users were banned, and I think there is a distinction between inappropriate POV pushing and articulating well sourced information in pursuit of consensus, as I have consistently done. I also think it potentially creates a dangerous and easily-abused standard to suggest that finding consensus with other editors is somehow de-facto suspicious. On a purely personal note I should add that this case has been filed during a two week period in which I’m not able to edit Wikipedia very often, so responses may be sporadic until next week/early May and I ask for some patience. Thank you. Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:05, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- Okay, hello. I've found some time to look at the discussion, and there's nothing but speculative and very weak misrepresentations of data points that, as @Zero0000 noted, appear significant only if one accepts the assumption of guilt for the initial – and crucially, disproven (as written by SPI admin) – charge. Then I read something @Theleekycauldron raised which I am not sure even they fully grasped the significance of, and realised the situation is even more egregious than I initially thought, namely:
On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana.
- The motion and the entire case by @Chess is self-referentially incoherent, and the stronger he appears to make it based on arbitrarily assembled (and misrepresented) data points – the more it is proven to be so.
- Let me explain: Two of the editors who were part of the original SPI case, @Isoceles-sai and @GeoColdWater, have now been banned based on evidence provided to Arbcom proving their membership of an off-site canvassing and coordination group. The same evidence was found not to exist for the editors this motion is about, yours truly and @Lf8u2, even though it was alleged that we are all part of the same coordination group.
- Again and again and again and again, I have to point out that this is self-contradictory. If we are all part of the same coordination group, the same evidence would by necessity exist for all of us. That's the entire point of the accusation against us, that we are all part of the same coordination group. The same applies to our alleged membership of the "T4P" group, for which also no evidence has been presented, just more of the same idle speculation based on data points regarding overlap and timing that only have any significance if our guilt is assumed, and @Zero0000 has shown that those data points were misleadingly presented to create the appearance of significance while in fact they are entirely ordinary for any active editor editing in any CTOP where editors align with the same general perspective. Whew.
- So. Every data point assembled as evidence of coordination on our part with the banned editors or one another is purely arbitrary speculation based on the presumption of membership of a group that was conclusively disproven when these coordination efforts were exposed as we were shown to not be part of the group in question!
- This means that the overlaps and other data points assembled as proof of coordination in fact disprove Chess' allegations, since if there were such a thing it would have shown up in the same batch of incontrovertible evidence for the T4P bans and the recent bans of the two other editors. @Chess has masterfully made the case for why there isn't coordination by myself and Lf8u2 despite the non-significant overlaps and other data points, and in a frankly delightful and simultaneously very frustrating irony the more data points he assembles the more he proves our innocence of his own charge.
- I want to again thank @Theleekycauldron for raising this crucially important point that definitively exonerates myself and @Lf8u2 from the frivolous charge against us:
On the one hand, it'd be odd for Isoceles-sai and Geocoldwater to be on two separate off-wiki coordination venues together, one of which we don't know about and has SAP and Lf8u2, the other of which we do know about and has Ivana.
- ...to which I've gotta say: Yes, exactly! This point exonerates both myself and LF8u2. Both coordination groups were uncovered with actual direct evidence, the latest two just recently, so if we had been part of it all along as is alleged, the same would be true of us!
- I suspect the folks at Arbcom are aware of the fundamentally contradictory nature of the allegation(s) against us, and so they are requesting a topic-ban instead of a site-wide ban, which as far as I can tell is the historically appropriate sanction for the allegation of off-site canvassing and coordination. It seems like the admins not only know there is no evidence for any misconduct as they have stated in the motion, but also that the evidence that was found conclusively disproves it (as I explained), so they downgraded the potential sanction to make it seem more palatable. I argue that the appropriate response when something is conclusively disproven is to not to bring motions against editors to have them sanctioned at all, rather than to try to appease the accuser by proposing a downgraded version of a sanction!
- Turning back to Chess now, all this makes what happened with the original SPI case all the more outrageous. Based on the facts we can all verify, not idle speculation, we know or at least can assume that Chess had evidence of off-site coordination on the part of the two now banned editors, and instead of bringing it to Arbcom directly so they could take the appropriate action, he decided to cast aspersions with a guilt by association SPI case and extend it to myself and Lf8u2.
- Also, after @Zero0000's probing of his ever-shifting allegations and exposure of the misrepresented data points to create the appearance of significance, Chess let the truth slip:
I'm sorry that we don't have a detailed confession made in a publicly accessible Discord server that several newspaper articles spent months reporting on. Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 have better opsec than that.
- This only confirms the self-referentially incoherent and just plain contradictory nature of his own charge, and that he was aware of it yet still persisted in making what he must have known was a false charge against us, for if we were part of the same coordination group our op-sec would be identical. He had hoped no one would notice this, but thankfully Theleekycauldron did.
- Why did Chess, who it seems had actual evidence of off-site coordination on the part of Isoceles-sai and GeoColdWater that was supplied to Arbcom and led to their ban, knowing full well that it excluded myself and Lf8u2, decide to ignore that fact and instead make a case that implicated us?
- What appears to have happened is that Chess found the evidence of coordination on the part of the two now banned editors and opted to use them as a weapon to go after myself and Lf8u2 by using what he knew were misrepresented data points, and having implicated us, he could extend the net ever farther and wider. He pursued all this despite knowing full well that the evidence he had proving the two now banned editors were part of a coordination effort excluded us, thereby proving that we were in fact not part of the alleged collaboration group.
- I noted in my reply to the SPI case, and others like @Parabolist have noted it here as well, that Chess has a history of making frivolous accusations against editors in this CTOP who are, as he says,
Pro-Palestinian
. The insistence on all of us being members of a group called T4P – which, conveniently, those of us who aren't cannot ever disprove to his liking as it is based entirely on speculative inference from misrepresented overlaps – is a useful tool for proposing and expanding an ever-larger and sinister network, where anyone who disagrees with Chess is defacto a malicious entity. This is certainly the attempt being made here, now. - This is again truly outrageous behaviour, and it's only getting worse the more @Chess assembles selective data points and draws inaccurate or spurious conclusions between them, using the ghosts of previously banned editors to imply that editors who find consensus in a particular CTOP must be coordinating because if they weren't...well, why would anyone have these opinions otherwise? NPOV dispute makes it clear that these kinds of accusations are a last resort, and I will once again say that it creates an extremely dangerous precedent to suggest that consistently disagreeing with someone, or several someones, should seemingly automatically trigger accusations of misbehaviour. I will be extremely vague to avoid OUTING myself here but in my off-wiki life I work in a sometimes contentious role where I am often having to work things through with my colleagues, and when some of us agree and some of us disagree, this is seen as normal and indeed beneficial to the task at hand, since it produces better results because, as on Wikipedia, we need to investigate our own preconceptions and other sources and come to a satisfactory consensus to move forward. Sometimes we emerge from these discussions believing more strongly in our original proposition, sometimes our notions change.
- (Apologies for possibly overstepping various word count limits - I had a small period of time in which to respond to a sprawling conversation. I should be more normally around later this upcoming week, and once again ask for and appreciate your patience. Please let me know if you have any questions and if there is anything I can expand upon.) Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:39, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'm mostly back online now and continually astonished by what is happening in this case. SFR's latest reply to VR sets up a new standard for why a topic-ban is justified in our case (but apparently not others): If you participate in Talk for a page but haven't edited the page itself, that warrants a t-ban. He provides the Nuseirat rescue and massacre page as a case study for this policy.
- Well. Alright. Let's have a look. A quick check reveals at least the following editors who supported the current RM on that page's talk without making a single edit to the page itself:
- - Chess
- - WatkynBassett
- - Reenem
- - FortunateSons
- - HeloPait
- - Chicdat
- - MaskedSinger
- This list includes very active editors in the CTOP for whom you can easily, as Elli says,
guess with ~100% accuracy how someone will land in a discussion based solely on which "side" they are on
. We can ignore the existence of RfC lists, wikiprojects, and other aggregators that deliberately function to drive editors towards these processes, because of mysterious reasons. Should we place a warning on Wikiproject Palestine's page that if anyone wants to respond to requests in the topic area they had better make sure to edit the page beforehand, otherwise they'll be hauled up into AE or arbcom and summarily topic banned? - At this point I think it's incumbent on arbcom to just say that you're conducting a witch-hunt against specific editors because of how we align with a perspective in this subject area that you don't like, and that you're now facing extreme pressure over from external forces – including the Trump administration! – to clamp down on. Neither my nor Lf8u2's statements seem to be making a dent in the discussion, and we haven't been asked any questions by anyone involved, simply presumed to be guilty of meatpuppeting even though the evidence itself conclusively disproved the allegations. How could I not assume that external pressure is a factor here? I would appreciate it if the editors involved would just say so.
- It would be better than having this farce where admins are not even bothering to engage with community input – that is entirely against a ban – based on this absurd "POV-pushing/advocacy" standard that's being selectively and arbitrarily applied, and which even Chess (who made the original SPI case) doesn't believe is legitimate. Smallangryplanet (talk) 13:11, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- @FortunateSons: to be clear these aren't my standards, they're the ones being used by certain administrators to justify a groundless t-ban, but I don't think your behaviour on that page comes off looking any better per those (admittedly absurd!) standards. In the post you cite, you expressed worry about inclusion of a "Pro-Palestinian" source, the Euro-Med Monitor, that accused Israeli forces of attacking a civilian family with no mention of the hostages being involved to justify it. Once that content was added justifying the attack on the basis, you raised no objections. That's perfectly fine of course and you likely had good policy-backed reasons for it, but we could have guessed it with ~100% accuracy. Your only other brief two-line edit was in the ongoing RM arguing for removal of massacre, using similar wording as the others backing the "pro-Israeli" position. Personally of course I do not think your edits mean you should be brought up on charges, so to speak, but I'm using it as an example of how absurd this supposed indicator of suspiciousness / meatpuppetry is, and how it is being selectively applied.
- Again, most of the others backing the current RM only have one-liners with similarly written !vote supports – as SFR cited for the now-banned geo and isoceles as reasons for suspicion, extending same to the editors in this case, even though both Lf8u2 and myself have significantly contributed to multiple discussions, exactly how SFR said was a positive indicator for VR and cited as a reason for being "good faith" and having no need to worry about being brought up on charges – but for us that's not a relevant factor worth mentioning as long as SFR throws in a "healthy dollop" of the disproven case tied to the now-banned editors.
- Also...the list of editors I posted above is incomplete. I didn't include all the editors who participated in the prior RMs/RfCs with zero edits on both the pro-Israel/pro-Pal sides where we can easily have a ~100% accurate guess-rate for where they end up in votes. We all know the names, and we all know what the results will be when the same standards are applied to other articles in the CTOP.
- That's just how this and I suspect every other CTOP works, but not by SFR and Elli's standards, which are solely being used to target specific editors and justified by appealing to a "healthy dollop" of, again, an admittedly disproven coordination allegation.
- VR's point about intentional framing of editors by misdirection is actually a very good one and it seems like SFR hasn't grasped that he's enabled malicious bad faith actors to take advantage of it by setting up these ludicrously arbitrary standards for a ban. We know the two now-banned editors were involved in a coordination effort and the evidence against them conclusively proved that Lf8u2 and myself are not, yet now SFR and the other admins backing this motion have established the following as a standard for banning an editor in this CTOP: Engage in off-site coordination, make sure to leave a paper-trail, edit in agreement with your targeted editor(s), get a high degree of overlap, use similar language, then have the coordination "leaked" to ArbCom and get someone to tie it to the targeted editor(s) in a frivolous (SPI) case.
- Boom, voila, you have the exact same fact-pattern being used to justify the ban against us...and you don't even have to go that far, just keep up the "meatpuppeting" behaviour with your target per the SFR standard and they can be implicated as being part of a POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc" and subject to a ban.
- ...all of this is to say that this is why you don't make frivolous motions to ban editors when the evidence has exonerated them. The consequences of what is being done here will be far-reaching; more than any of the admins themselves seem to be able to grasp. Smallangryplanet (talk) 19:04, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- @FortunateSons, yes, let's let not re-litigate the Nuseirat case here, but I just want to make the point that very experienced editors have expressed support on both sides not just in this RM but also previous ones, and they're both legitimate positions. SFR or any other member of ArbCom wading into it with their own judgment as to which is the genuinely "neutral" and policy-compliant view – which of course happens to be the one aligned with the "pro-Israeli" position – and then using that as the standard to render anyone who disagrees with it suspicious and liable to be banned, is outrageous and oversteps the bounds of what we expect from an active admin in the CTOP they're supposed to be neutrally admin-ing. I repeat, this motion did not arise out of any concerns with our edits being POV-pushy/advocacy, that's an AE matter. It arose out of a coordination claim that was proven to be false by the presented evidence. So all of this is beside the point...
- Also, entirely agree with the creation of clear universally applied standards, and of course will also happily abide by them, and yes, definitely will keep any follow-ups to just the essentials! I should also re-iterate that I'm not accusing you (or any of the other editors I mentioned) of anything at all – I'm trying to explain why this new standard for suspicion doesn't make sense. After all, I'm still unclear on what exactly these standards are. Is merely sharing the same position as someone else considered proof of canvassing? Or is it about participating in a certain number of discussions? If voting the same way as a now-banned editor is enough to justify topic bans, what about those who consistently vote in the same discussions and share the same views as previously banned sockpuppets? Will SFR consider topic bans for everyone who agrees with them?
- My !votes have always been based on policy and supported by sources. You may disagree with how I interpret those policies, but I genuinely try to apply them in good faith. Reducing my participation to a simple "support/oppose" !vote, as if I'm blindly following a group, is both insulting and dismissive of the effort I put into volunteering here.
- @Chess
I asked this before, but can you provide a discussion in which you and Lf8u2 disagreed?
I already answered this: Overlaps and agreements in this CTOP by active editors who align with a general perspective are not a legitimate basis to cast suspicion on editors, let along justifying a ban for them, as by that metric you and every other active editor in the field are equally "guilty". Can you provide a discussion in which you and Andrevan disagreed? Or BilledMamammal? Alaexis? Even if you can find one or two for yourself, it's going to be in the 95 to 100% range of agreement, and yes for many it is 100%. We all know the active editors on that side, we all know this to be true, and we all know they don't have motions against them to have them banned on that basis. Also, if you actually look at the content of our argumentation, as in the Nuseirat case, Lf8u2's is substantially different than mine, and as I noted other editors who backed the RM with just one-liners expressing support using the same language as others are on much weaker grounds per this (irrelevant) standard that you also agreed is not a legitimate basis for justifying a ban. - Also VR's point helpfully made me realise this, too; as with the "off-site coordination" case it is intrinsically incoherent and self-contradictory, for if anything it adds additional proof that we are not part of a POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc", whatever that means. If we were we would have contrived disagreements like the Icewich/Galamore sock/meatpuppets do and would, I assume, be standard practice for any experienced editors engaged in such activity while looking to avoid scrutiny. The very fact that we didn't by itself proves our agreements were genuine, and not contrived (the same goes for those on the other side!). Just as with the original case that was proven to be false by the presented evidence, here too my point applies:
in a frankly delightful and simultaneously very frustrating irony the more data points he assembles the more he proves our innocence of his own charge.
- These are all very important points clarified by community input, and being ignored by SFR and the other admins who opted to cite this incoherent and self-contradictory POV-pushing/advocacy "bloc" claim as the justification for our ban – with a "healthy dollop" of the admitted to be disproven SPI case that exonerates us.
- If you want to make us the sacrificial lambs for an arbitrary set of loosely defined rules and brand us as dishonest editors canvassing for a secret group, then by all means, go ahead. I'm sure some media outlets and advocacy groups will have a field day. It feels pointless to even write this, since no one voting seems to be engaging with my comments. Maybe once we're topic banned and people start weaponising this new standard, it will finally become clear that this was a mistake. Smallangryplanet (talk) 12:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Lf8u2
I remain perplexed as to why this motion was brought against me, particularly given the confirmed finding that no evidence was discovered to support the accusation of coordination and sockpuppetry in my case. As no evidence exists, I do not know on what basis a case proceeds, nor exactly what I am expected to say concerning something that is patently false except to reiterate that it is.
At this juncture, there is one point I feel compelled to address. @ScottishFinnishRadish extended beyond the initial SPI case which found no evidence of misconduct on my part and introduced an additional justification for supporting a topic ban, namely: If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what, we should be willing to do it ourselves.
Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. The evidence for these two editors is circumstantial and involves a judgement call. After considering the evidence and the factors I mentioned, as well as the Arbcom precedent noted in the motion, in my judgement there is enough likelihood that they were involved in the off-wiki coordination that I'm comfortable with a topic ban.
I must underscore that this POV-pushing in supposed violation of NPOV reasoning is unrelated to the initial now disproven accusation of coordination and sockpuppetry; thus, I am unclear as to why @ScottishFinnishRadish cited it as grounds for supporting a topic ban originating in that disproven claim. I am entirely in agreement with @Sp, I also have problems with the "our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct" but still bringing these motions forth. If there were real problems, a case should have been brought forth and/or an WP:AE
Moreover, I do not know how one can determine whether a position "benefits the Palestinian point of view" and is therefore suspicious when the argumentation provided for it is based on RS and policy, as is the case with my edits and votes. As pointed out by @Zero0000, subjective characterization of positions benefitting a Palestinian or Israeli point of view or the Israeli can only be demonstrated via objective criteria, such as misrepresenting RS and making policy-violating edits to push a particular POV. Instead there is only an appeal to the disproven SPI coordination sockpuppetry case. In regards to the cited previous RfC regarding Nuseirat and the use of the term "massacre," it was noted that I supported the use of that term. However, I have presented extensive argumentation grounded in RS and NPOV principles, which was not referenced. Furthermore, my arguments were distinct from those of other editors active in the RfC, and I consistently strive to offer a unique perspective in discussions.
The standard @ScottishFinnishRadish is applying to me to justify a topic ban appears particularly curious to those familiar with the subject area, or any subject area as noted by @Sp. Numerous editors engage exclusively in edits and votes that could be characterized as "benefitting an Israeli point of view," many of whom became notably active after October 7, often cast brief, one- or two-line votes supporting the Israeli perspective, employ similar verbiage, while participating in discussions that have been the subject of documented off-site coordination and sockpuppetry (as @Smallangryplanet demonstrated regarding the Nuseirat RfC, and this also applies to others). Moreover, the degree of overlap among these editors is the same or greater than what has been demonstrated in my case. As @Sp observed, this is entirely to be expected given the nature of how subject areas work. Active editors in them tend to overlap and align when they share general perspectives.
Nevertheless, no editor has been banned, nor has any case been initiated against them for engaging in the behaviors @ScottishFinnishRadish now cites as justification for supporting a topic ban in my case.
I share @Sp's grave concerns with @ScottishFinnishRadish's behavior, and I shall extend that to @Chess, the editor who made the initial accusation against me that was found to be without evidence. I do not know why they have not been reprimanded or sanctioned for doing so, and instead a motion was made against me.
If it is to become standard practice to question or sanction editors based on such criteria, then it is essential to establish a clear, uniformly applicable policy outlining these expectations. Furthermore, precise definitions of what constitutes "benefitting a Palestinian or Israeli point of view" must be articulated, rather than relying on subjective assessments by individual administrators. Then apply it consistently to everyone who meets these criteria.
I must reiterate: none of these alleged POV-pushing arguments pertain to the initial, proven-to-be-unsubstantiated accusation of coordination brought against me in the SPI case. Consequently, I remain at a loss as to why a motion was initiated against me when it has been demonstrated that no evidence supports the initial charge.
Should the administrators require any further information or clarification from my side, I would be pleased to provide it. Thank you all for your attention to this matter. Lf8u2 (talk) 06:39, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Chess states:
I dug through most of Lf8u2's talk !votes before filing the SPI. The most obvious behavioural trait is !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine.
The largest inconsistency with policy is when adding "massacre" to article titles. WP:NCENPOV says "massacre" is appropriate if it is part of the WP:COMMONNAME or a "generally accepted word used to identify the event". However, editors in this cluster will !vote to add "massacre" based on only a few reliable sources.
- So, @Chess disagrees with my talk page contributions and !votes, which once more I must reiterate are always based in RS and policy and I always endeavor to make insighftul. Chess disagrees specifically with my support for the addition of "massacre" in the Nuseirat case, even though I presented detailed argumentation for it which are entirely in line with the RS standard and policy, as observed by @Thryduulf.
- If it is considered sufficient to bring a case against me on such a basis, then it must logically follow that cases should also be brought against virtually every other active editor in this subject area since the alleged "behavioural traits" are neither unique nor policy-violating.
- We must begin with bringing a case against all those who agree with my position in the Nuseirat case to include the use of "massacre": @M.Bitton, @Rainsage, @Skitash, @Cdjp1, @Genabab, @Raskolnikov.Rev. We must also look at the previous RfCs for anyone who supported the same position, and also support a ban on them.
- And those who believe like me that supporting the use of "massacre" in other instances where @Chess believes it is a violation of WP:NCENPOV must also be banned per the same logic. This includes the editors in this ongoing RfC where Chess has proposed the removal of "massacre" citing the same rule: @Darouet, @The Great Mule of Eupatoria.
- We must also find the percentages of overlap between editors in votes and ban them if they are at the same level if not higher than @Chess pointed out in my case.
- I can keep going, but I hope the point is made. @Chess wants to apply a standard to me that will result in the banning of most if not all editors in this and other subject areas if it were to be applied equally to all.
- If @Chess brought a case against me or anyone else in AE on these grounds, it would be dismissed out of hand for being a frivolous content dispute case, and I assume a sanction would also be imposed.
- Instead, @Chess elected to link me to three other editors as part of an unfounded and evidence-free allegation of coordination and sockpuppetry, and it was found to be without evidence.
- Thus, I must once again question why I am the subject of a motion, rather than the editor who made baseless accusations that were found to be unsupported by evidence, and who is now attempting to retroactively recast the matter as a content dispute — one that could equally be applied to many if not most other editors active in this and other subject areas. Lf8u2 (talk) 07:24, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Community discussion
- There's one question I have about ScottishFinnishRadish's vote:
We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV
:- One of the things I should do as a good faith editor to show I am not violating WP:NPOV is to !vote in ways that don't help my particular side but is still consistent with my interpretation of the rules.
- In this particular case, the fact that 100% of Lf8u2's 16 !votes (out of 17 !votes to all talk pages) relating to the Palestine-Israel conflict benefitted a Palestinian point of view indicated a violation of WP:NPOV.
- This would be true even if every individual !vote had a consistent interpretation of our policies.
- If the pattern of Lf8u2 exclusively supporting Palestinian viewpoints didn't exist, would you have voted differently? Or were there other considerations? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:35, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
- There are a number of things that informed my vote in this situation. Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. The evidence for these two editors is circumstantial and involves a judgement call. After considering the evidence and the factors I mentioned, as well as the Arbcom precedent noted in the motion, in my judgement there is enough likelihood that they were involved in the off-wiki coordination that I'm comfortable with a topic ban. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
- @ScottishFinnishRadish: The difficulty here is that you're trying to set an example for WP:Arbitration Enforcement, but I don't think you're showing a generalizable example here for a topic ban because it's so fact-specific.
- I think Smallangryplanet is extremely suspicious (I reported them, after all) because there's 3 accounts found by ArbCom to engage in offwiki canvassing and also spent most of their time supporting Smallangryplanet (CoolAndUniqueUsername who I reported at AE, later EC-revoked, Isoceles-sai , and GeoColdWater). Lf8u2 has the same behavioural traits as well. But it's unclear what general lessons you want administrators at AE to take from this. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:47, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- I forgot to mention this at the SPI, but the the Tech 4 Palestine Discord introduced Ivana as the "resident Wikipedia expert" in April of 2024.[13] Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Isoceles-sai, and GeoColdWater all have activity changes in that month or the month immediately after.
- Smallangryplanet went from 10 edits in April of 2024 to 117 in May of 2024.[14] May 2024 was also the month Smallangryplanet made their first talk page !vote.[15][16] This was to the same discussion as Ivana at Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel
- Lf8u2 made their first contribution to a talk page in May of 2024 to Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.[17][18] This was reverted, but they came back to !vote for real on the same article the next month.[19]
- Isoceles-sai created their account in April of 2024.[20]
- GeoColdWater went from 4 edits in March of 2024 to 24 edits in April of 2024.[21]
- In response to Lf8u2's point that my logic is applicable to other editors: I'm aware. Most of the editors Lf8u2 listed have long histories before the October 7 attacks. However, some of the editors mentioned do share behavioural characteristics with Lf8u2. I only picked the strongest for the initial SPI report, though. I'll pick the second editor Lf8u2 mentioned because I don't want to look through all of M.Bitton's talk page contributions. Rainsage began editing in April of 2024, then their first three !votes were to agree with Lf8u2, Ivana, and Smallangryplanet.
- Rainsage began editing in April of 2024
- There are a number of things that informed my vote in this situation. Simply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction, and absent other factors is generally fine. In this situation there is a lot more to look at. We have editors that have become active or resumed activity after the current escalation in the conflict, edit in support of one side of the conflict, take part in discussions that have been the target of off-wiki coordination, !vote in-line with and with similar verbiage to editors banned for off-wiki coordination, and since their return to editing have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict. The evidence for these two editors is circumstantial and involves a judgement call. After considering the evidence and the factors I mentioned, as well as the Arbcom precedent noted in the motion, in my judgement there is enough likelihood that they were involved in the off-wiki coordination that I'm comfortable with a topic ban. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
Analysis of Rainsage's !votes
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- There's more but I got bored and they continue sinking Rainsage's overlap percentage. It's kind of suspicious that Rainsage started at the same time as the T4P Discord and !voted the same way, but they don't have the same 10-month long !voting pattern overlap Lf8u2/Smallangryplanet do in which they mostly support each other and do not generally !vote outside of helping each other out.
- If Rainsage at some point was in T4P, they probably left a while ago, and stopped performing tasks for the group before it was exposed. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:52, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Smallangryplanet:
we haven't been asked any questions by anyone involved
I asked this before, but can you provide a discussion in which you and Lf8u2 disagreed? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- I have grave concerns with SFR's statement about banning someone for holding a specific POV and supporting it via !votes. I can name 20-30 editors in a number of areas that do just that, including in CTOPs. Yet these two are being singled out. I also have problems with the
"our investigation did not reveal direct evidence of off-wiki misconduct"
but still bringing these motions forth. If there were real problems, a case should have been brought forth and/or an WP:AE. spryde | talk 16:11, 27 April 2025 (UTC) - Aghast that this is apparently solely based on having a specific, consistent point of view. If no misconduct was discovered, what the fuck are we doing here? Human beings have consistent beliefs. Parabolist (talk) 19:13, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
- A lot of factors apparently affected SFR's vote, so much so that his second comment hardly even resembles his first. Is this a MEAT issue, or is this an NPOV issue? Going from
If we expect single admins, or the three or four admins that work AE, to topic ban people for NPOV sticking to one side no matter what,
tosimply supporting one side of a conflict isn't nearly sufficient for a sanction,
isn't a clarification, it's a pivot. No evidence of collusion or canvassing is presented, only evidence of the (now not an issue, apparently) "NPOV" issues. If this motion is purely vibes based, say it outright. Otherwise, present real evidence. Parabolist (talk) 05:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)- @Parabolist: It's always been a WP:MEAT issue (the discussion got sidetracked), as the person who originally started the SPI thread at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Smallangryplanet. I've dug through all of Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, and now Raskolnikov.Rev's !votes to talkspace. The important thing is all of these editors started spiking in their activity after April 2024 (when Tech 4 Palestine started) and 70%+ of all of their !votes anywhere in Talkspace agree with Smallangryplanet, who doesn't have that many !votes. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:36, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Chess: I'm very aware of your obsession with the Tech4Palestine case, and the multiple times it has caused you to try to coyly OUT editors in public forums instead of submitting evidence to Arbcom. Your dogged pursuit of those editors is causing you to see patterns here that are simply explained by the fact that the situation in Gaza (and the associated media coverage) drew many people to (or back to) wiki articles. You need distance from this. Parabolist (talk) 07:23, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Parabolist: It's always been a WP:MEAT issue (the discussion got sidetracked), as the person who originally started the SPI thread at WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Smallangryplanet. I've dug through all of Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, and now Raskolnikov.Rev's !votes to talkspace. The important thing is all of these editors started spiking in their activity after April 2024 (when Tech 4 Palestine started) and 70%+ of all of their !votes anywhere in Talkspace agree with Smallangryplanet, who doesn't have that many !votes. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:36, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- What was the point of making this public, if none of the arbs are going to bother engaging with any of the commentary? Oh great, your votes are based on private evidence. We found no miscounduct but the vibes are bad, and these posters were consistent with their views. NPOV is found by voting the opposite way you think is correct every now and then, just to seem impartial. Here's some incredibly reasonable RFC votes as evidence. Genuinely embarassing, and describing articles on an active genocide (and massacres!) as having teams is disgusting. For shame. Parabolist (talk) 03:21, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Parabolist: I agree, honestly. It's unclear what the principles are that ArbCom wants the enforcing administrators to extract. Did any of the evidence I presented actually convince the arbs? What was or wasn't helpful? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:53, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- As a general comment, I think it's better to dispense with the 'have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict' way of thinking about editors. The portion of edits in the topic area doesn't seem to tell me anything useful because it has nothing to say about the edits themselves, which is supposed to be what matters. We already know that ban evading actors active in PIA only make, on average, about a fifth of their revisions in the topic area. Even the Wikipedia account possibly used by zei_squirrel didn't have a large portion of their edits in the topic area. The monthly max was around 10%, but it was normally much less. I should caveat this by saying that although I've been told an account name, and it's plausible-ish, I've not been able to validate it and I've not seen the evidentiary basis for the claim. I don't know if any of the media sources have published an account name with evidence to support the claim. Maybe Chess knows. If they have, don't link it here, but I would be interested the article. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:55, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: I would be surprised if Zei_Squirrel got to WP:500/30 because it appears to me she did little work, delegated to others, and took credit because she's a well-known influencer in the pro-Palestinian community. I'm unaware of any Wikipedia account linked to her.
- You're right that "edits made in the conflict area" aren't a useful signal. The best signal is a lack of disagreement on anything, because of strong peer pressure from the outside group and consensus being made offwiki. This was present at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/WikiProject Tropical Cyclones, in which even minor disagreement over which photos to choose were not tolerated.
- A Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:19, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- As a general comment, I think it's better to dispense with the 'have made a large portion of their edits about the conflict' way of thinking about editors. The portion of edits in the topic area doesn't seem to tell me anything useful because it has nothing to say about the edits themselves, which is supposed to be what matters. We already know that ban evading actors active in PIA only make, on average, about a fifth of their revisions in the topic area. Even the Wikipedia account possibly used by zei_squirrel didn't have a large portion of their edits in the topic area. The monthly max was around 10%, but it was normally much less. I should caveat this by saying that although I've been told an account name, and it's plausible-ish, I've not been able to validate it and I've not seen the evidentiary basis for the claim. I don't know if any of the media sources have published an account name with evidence to support the claim. Maybe Chess knows. If they have, don't link it here, but I would be interested the article. Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:55, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Parabolist: I agree, honestly. It's unclear what the principles are that ArbCom wants the enforcing administrators to extract. Did any of the evidence I presented actually convince the arbs? What was or wasn't helpful? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:53, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- A lot of factors apparently affected SFR's vote, so much so that his second comment hardly even resembles his first. Is this a MEAT issue, or is this an NPOV issue? Going from
- I am intentionally not commenting on these two particular editors and I haven't looked at their contributions. I just want to address this:
"We consistently say that editing in support of one side of a conflict is a violation of NPOV."
NPOV is a requirement of the content of articles; WP:NPOV doesn't even mention talk pages in this context. In contentious topics, NPOV is achieved by means of negotiation between editors with different POVs. It is hardly ever achieved through editors sometimes supporting one side and sometimes supporting the other. To first approximation, the latter type of editor doesn't exist. Violations of editorial standards arise when an editor refuses to compromise, refuses to discuss, misrepresents sources, edits against consensus, etc. etc., not just by virtue of having a POV. Expressing an opinion and then accepting the consensus is not an NPOV violation even if this is repeated multiple times. Zerotalk 02:34, 28 April 2025 (UTC)- Editing consistently on one side of an issue could also be a way of ensuring articles meet NPOV. For example, K.e.coffman was noted for fixing a lot of existing bias in Wikipedia articles, but that was because she was consistently editing them to be neutral instead of pro-German. Seems too close to arbitrators interfering in content decisions, which they supposedly refuse to do. (t · c) buidhe 03:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Buidhe: I would recommend looking at the SPI evidence and the diffs I've presented. The suspicious factor is they all started editing when Tech 4 Palestine started and most of their !votes on all of Wikipedia are in agreement with Smallangryplanet. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- If so that's a problem unrelated to whether their edits could be construed as supporting one side of an issue. (t · c) buidhe 04:46, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Buidhe: I would recommend looking at the SPI evidence and the diffs I've presented. The suspicious factor is they all started editing when Tech 4 Palestine started and most of their !votes on all of Wikipedia are in agreement with Smallangryplanet. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Editing consistently on one side of an issue could also be a way of ensuring articles meet NPOV. For example, K.e.coffman was noted for fixing a lot of existing bias in Wikipedia articles, but that was because she was consistently editing them to be neutral instead of pro-German. Seems too close to arbitrators interfering in content decisions, which they supposedly refuse to do. (t · c) buidhe 03:44, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Question - Which of Smallangryplanet's and Lf8u2's !votes are true statements/consistent with policy, which statements are false statements/inconsistent with policy, and which are somewhere in between? Who "benefits" does not strike me as a valid metric because our decision procedures don't care who benefits. Timecards for accounts named in the SPI case are available here. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: I dug through most of Lf8u2's talk !votes before filing the SPI. The most obvious behavioural trait is !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine.
- The largest inconsistency with policy is when adding "massacre" to article titles. WP:NCENPOV says "massacre" is appropriate if it is part of the WP:COMMONNAME or a "generally accepted word used to identify the event". However, editors in this cluster will !vote to add "massacre" based on only a few reliable sources. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:08, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- Without commenting on this specific case (because I haven't looked at the details), if multiple reliable sources independent of each other use the term "massacre" in relation to the event, is that not evidence of it being a "common name for the event" and/or "a generally accepted word used to identify the event"? Certainly it's almost always going to be good enough for there to be a redirect at that title. Thryduulf (talk) 04:43, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think !voting the same way in requested moves in Israel-Palestine is a useful signal. I'm lazy so I have only extracted strings for 3 of the discussions involving these 2 accounts cited in the SPI. There are many !votes and the choice is pretty much binary, so I have a hard time convincing myself that correlations between these 2 particular accounts' !votes are significant.
- Without commenting on this specific case (because I haven't looked at the details), if multiple reliable sources independent of each other use the term "massacre" in relation to the event, is that not evidence of it being a "common name for the event" and/or "a generally accepted word used to identify the event"? Certainly it's almost always going to be good enough for there to be a redirect at that title. Thryduulf (talk) 04:43, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Extended content
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Talk:Sexual and gender-based violence in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel/Archive 4 - Requested move 4 June 2024
:'''support''' - See [[WP:PRECISION]] for
:'''oppose''' -- both mean quite differen
:'''Support''' - even to the extent that
:'''Oppose'''. While I appreciate the mor
:<s>'''Support''' The page even documents
*'''Oppose''' for now, as this article is
*'''Support''' per nom. There's very litt
:*'''Oppose''' per the arguments regardin
*'''Support'''. The current title is pend
*'''Support''' to avoid [[WP:OVERPRECISIO
*'''Oppose''' for the same reasons as For
*'''Oppose''' - Sexual and Gender Based V
*'''Oppose''' per FortunateSons, Ïvana, L
:'''Oppose''' I agree with what Fortunate
:'''Initial support but''' with adding "a
:'''Support:''' per [[WP:CONCISE]] and pr
:'''Oppose'''. [[SGBV|Sexual and gender-b
:'''Oppose''' It's important to match the
'''Oppose'''. The title "Sexual and gende
'''Oppose'''. The term Sexual and Gender-
Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre/Archive 2 - Proposed merge of Nuseirat refugee camp massacre into 2024 Nuseirat rescue operation
:'''Support''': UN sources which I need
*'''Oppose''' – This article is re
:'''Support:''' Merge the articles into
:'''Oppose''' – Responding to orig
:'''Support''' This is precisely what I
:'''Support''' — Many sources note the e
:'''Strong oppose''' I agree that there
:'''Oppose'''. What was the purpose of t
:'''Oppose''', The main topic here is, o
:'''Strong support''' Clearly, the rescu
:Support merging, but '''weak oppose'''
*'''Oppose''' per [[WP:NCENPOV]], POV im
*'''Weak support''', although a title li
*'''Support''', although I agree with th
*I '''agree''' because there was no mass
*I '''agree''' for reasons I provided on
*'''oppose'''. For the same reason i sta
*<s>'''Wait'''</s> Until things are clea
*'''Agree''' The articles should be merg
* '''Oppose''', there is widespread refe
::I strongly '''agree''' that there shou
*'''Support''' merging the articles and
*'''Oppose''' and agree with Dylanvt. Th
*'''Agree '''- most of the killings were
* '''Support''': It is the same operatio
*'''Agree '''- This article is an embarr
*'''Support'''. This is an obvious [[WP:
*'''Oppose''', or '''support''' merging
*'''Support''' merger of the article on
*'''Support''' merge. The latter is part
*'''Support''' merger of two articles ''
*'''Oppose''' merge. With over 274 death
*'''Support''', in my opinion this is a
* '''Oppose''' per Dylanvt, the massacre
* '''Support''' per IOHANNVSVERVS and Ti
*'''Oppose''' per Dylanvt an others. Whi
*:::That's what I suggested... see my pr
*'''Support''' merging. The events are i
* '''Support''' The main event here is t
*'''Support''', per [[WP:POVFORK]]. [[Us
* '''Support'''. Both pages describe the
:'''Support'''. [[User:KronosAlight|Kron
* '''Oppose''' per Dylanvt. See {{Cite w
* '''Wait''' until more information is r
*'''Oppose/wait''': The information is s
*'''Agree''' per [[WP:POVFORK]]. As of n
*'''Support'''. [[User:MarshallBagramyan
*'''Support''' We're talking events that
*'''Strongly oppose''': the massacre tha
*'''Strongly oppose.''' We have an artic
*:'''Support'''. The massacre was an asp
*'''Support:''' They both cover the same
*:'''Support''' of a merger under a new
*'''Strongly oppose''': The sheer number
*'''Support merge into this article''':
:'''Oppose''': The hostage rescue has go
:'''Support''' per [[WP:POVFORK]] and [[
*'''Support:''' one event happened becau
*'''Support''': seems like a sort of acc
*'''Support''' merging under a neutral t
*'''Oppose''': I think both articles pas
*'''Support to a neutral title''', such
* '''Support''' since this is a clear ca
* '''OPPOSE merge''' - keeping it as two
* '''Support''' {{tq|since this is a cle
*'''Strongly Oppose/ disagree''' I concu
* '''Support''' – The idea that it
:'''Weak support but keep the massacre w
: '''Conditionally oppose'''. I'm not su
:'''Support''' merge, also per {{ping|Dy
:'''Support''' merge. These are POV fork
:'''Strongly oppose''': As stated earlie
:'''Support''' The two articles overlap
*'''Support''' Per @[[User:KronosAlight|
*'''Obvious support''' as there is absol
*'''Strong oppose''', and I rarely use t
*'''Agree''' - POV fork [[User:Bluethric
Talk:Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion/Archive 21 - RFC on inclusion of Forensic Architecture in lede
* '''Oppose'''. Reliable sources are in
* '''Support''' Forensic Architecture i
*'''Oppose'''. The bottom line on this
* '''Support'''. For the reasons @[[Use
*'''Support''' - I do not find this mat
*'''Oppose''' The problem is not just t
* '''Oppose'''. Forensic Architecture i
* '''Support''' - this has already been
*'''Support''' - and all the complaints
*{{s|'''Support''' - We have [[Talk:Al-
*'''Support''' - Agree with Nableezy's
*'''Oppose'''. Lacks weight and reputat
:'''Strong support''' The False Balance
::I'm also in '''support''' for this re
* '''Oppose'''. In their reports publis
*'''Oppose''' following the views of Bi
*'''Oppose BUT''' The entire sentence
*'''Support''' I by in large agree with
*'''Oppose'''. The current wording impl
*'''Strong support.''' It's unhelpful t
*'''Support leaving in lede''' Having t
|
- Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: Any chance you can share the script you're using to calculate? I am getting tired of manually counting people. Also, this isn't "requested moves in Israel-Palestine", my percentages are based on all !votes. The big signal is that it's very suspicious a bunch of editors decide to start !voting or editing from April-May 2024 when the Tech 4 Palestine server was starting, then a bunch of them !vote to support Smallangryplanet, who also started editing in May 2024. Especially when Smallangryplanet has only !voted probably around 20 times ever. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:25, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- I haven't done any !vote calculations. I don't have anything that counts !votes or even reliably extracts the data. This is the first time I've actually looked at extracting data from discussions that involve !votes. Having looked at a few move discussions to see how feasible it is to pull the !vote, account and comment information from diffs or the wikitext, rather than the quick botch job I did the other day, their unstructured, non-standardized, free-wheeling nature makes it a bit tricky not to miss things e.g. like unsigned !votes. I assume someone has already written something to do this, but I don't know where it would be. Anyway, here's an only-superficially-tested, possibly-quite-brittle attempt at extracting data into a list of dictionaries. Not sure whether that will help at all. Sean.hoyland (talk) 18:03, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland: Any chance you can share the script you're using to calculate? I am getting tired of manually counting people. Also, this isn't "requested moves in Israel-Palestine", my percentages are based on all !votes. The big signal is that it's very suspicious a bunch of editors decide to start !voting or editing from April-May 2024 when the Tech 4 Palestine server was starting, then a bunch of them !vote to support Smallangryplanet, who also started editing in May 2024. Especially when Smallangryplanet has only !voted probably around 20 times ever. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:25, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Sean.hoyland (talk) 11:04, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
Extended content
|
|---|
def get_votes(user_agent, host, page_title, section):
site = mwclient.Site(host=host, clients_useragent=user_agent)
page = site.pages[page_title]
lines = page.text(section=section, cache=False).splitlines()
# Requires '''bold !vote'''. Votes like Option '''3''' will not be matched.
pattern_vote = re.compile(
r"'''[^']*?\b(disagree\w*|agree\w*|support\w*|oppos\w*|wait\w*|renam\w*|option\w*)\b[^']*?'''",
re.IGNORECASE,
)
# - Sometimes signatures only include link to user, sometime only to talk.
# - Need to avoid false positives where 'per user X' lacks an @ prefix
# e.g. :'''Option 1''' per [[User:something|something]].
# - Will miss signatures that don't use UTC timestamp.
pattern_user = re.compile(
r"(?<!@)\[\[(?:User(?:[ _]talk)?):([^|]+)\|.*\(UTC\)\s*$",
re.IGNORECASE | re.MULTILINE
)
results = []
in_vote_section = False
for line in lines:
vote_match = pattern_vote.search(line)
# Only extract votes near the beginning of a line to avoid cases
# where an editor quotes another editor's vote in their comment.
# Need to handle situations where vote and signature are on separate lines.
if vote_match and vote_match.start() <= 20:
vote = vote_match.group(0) # 0 to get entire bold string, 1 to get search term
comment = []
in_vote_section = True
if in_vote_section:
comment.append(line)
actor_match = pattern_user.findall(line)
if actor_match:
actor = actor_match[-1]
results.append({
'actor': actor,
'vote': vote,
'comment': '\n'.join(comment)
})
in_vote_section = False
else: # not on a line with an !vote
continue
return results
# config = dict(
# user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
# host='en.wikipedia.org',
# page_title = 'Talk:Nuseirat_rescue_and_massacre/Archive_2',
# section = 11,
# )
# config = dict(
# user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
# host='en.wikipedia.org',
# page_title = 'Talk:2023 Israeli–Palestinian prisoner exchange',
# section = 8,
# )
config = dict(
user_agent = 'Test (Sean.hoyland)',
host='en.wikipedia.org',
page_title = 'Talk:Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip/Archive 1',
section = 32,
)
results = get_votes(**config)
|
- @Thryduulf: You can look at (but don't touch) Talk:Rafah paramedic massacre if you want an example of !voting rationales that ignore WP:NCENPOV. Two of the editors Lf8u2 cites as being bannable are present at that discussion. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- I wonder what is required to help this seed grow and whether ArbCom can help. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:17, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
- You can also look (but don't touch) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Kissufim_massacre#Requested_move_24_April_2025 if you want another example of !voting rationales that ignore WP:NCENPOV. But those editors are advocating a pro-Israeli POV, which seems to explain why Chess is not that bothered by them. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Raskolnikov.Rev:
But those editors are advocating a pro-Israeli POV, which seems to explain why Chess is not that bothered by them.
You're aware that I started that requested move, right? I am the person that proposed removing "massacre" from the title of that article. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)- Yes, I know you did. That's why I linked it. But your behavioral traits don't match with the claimed violation of WP:NCENPOV regarding Nuseirat. You haven't bothered to reply to any of the pro-Israeli voters and their one-liners, while you did do so in the other case, and you cited the Paramedic RM for examples of policy-violating voting rationales instead of that one. And as the vote is currently going it's set to have about the same result as the Nuseirat one, no consensus for removal. So if this is indeed a very serious violation of Wiki policy that warrants suspicion and action, it doesn't only apply to one side. Also I agree with @Sean.hoyland on working on that MOS. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:06, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Are we discussing whether one editor, against whom no allegations of problemtic editing have been raised, is apparently "bothered" equally enough by NCENPOV-violating votes across two discussions? Who cares? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:11, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I know you did. That's why I linked it. But your behavioral traits don't match with the claimed violation of WP:NCENPOV regarding Nuseirat. You haven't bothered to reply to any of the pro-Israeli voters and their one-liners, while you did do so in the other case, and you cited the Paramedic RM for examples of policy-violating voting rationales instead of that one. And as the vote is currently going it's set to have about the same result as the Nuseirat one, no consensus for removal. So if this is indeed a very serious violation of Wiki policy that warrants suspicion and action, it doesn't only apply to one side. Also I agree with @Sean.hoyland on working on that MOS. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:06, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Raskolnikov.Rev:
- @Thryduulf: You can look at (but don't touch) Talk:Rafah paramedic massacre if you want an example of !voting rationales that ignore WP:NCENPOV. Two of the editors Lf8u2 cites as being bannable are present at that discussion. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:49, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- Hold on let me get this straight. Chess made a case accusing Smallangryplanet of running three accounts as meat puppets while citing as evidence overlapping percentages, this was closed for lack of evidence as it obviously and clearly means nothing given the much higher level of overlap with other editors who are active in that topic. CaptainEek says Chess failed to provide any other evidence for this very serious allegation against smallangryplanet and lf8u2, instead only offering off-site evidence that led to two other editors being banned, and a case was remade against smallangryplanet and lf8u2 based on the originally dismissed claim of coordination even though CaptainEek confirms it was found to be without proof?
- What exactly are we doing here?
- Why is a case being brought against two editors who were falsely accused of running or coordinating with other accounts instead of against the editor who made the false accusation and apparently has a history of doing so based on what smallangry said in the original response?
- And I want to join smallangry in asking: If Chess had added two, three, four, five, ten more editors in his original case to tie to the two now banned ones based on overlapping percentages that were as high if not higher, would they all be in the same motion now? He has already extended the insinuation of guilt to M. Bitton and Rainsage.
- Chess, can you please provide a full list of all the editors you are convinced are part of this coordination ring so that we can all assess just exactly how far-reaching your desire to ban editors extends? It seems like you want to cast suspicion on most if not all active editors in the Israel-Palestine topic you consider to be "pro-Palestinian". Curiously not a single pro-Israeli editor is among them. That's very strange given your own editing history that's definitely not pushing a particular POV on this topic. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:32, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
- Raskolnikov.Rev, could you clarify if the last sentence is ironic and means that Chess is pushing a particular point of view about the Arab-Israeli conflict? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
- No it is not ironic. I frankly have no idea if Chess is pushing a particular POV about the Arab-Israeli conflict except per the cited metrics in this motion because I don't believe that can be determined by them, like overlap in binary talk votes and generally agreeing with a particular POV. By those metrics I suspect Chess and most editors including myself are "pushing a particular point of view". As @Parabolist said "Human beings have consistent beliefs." But that's not relevant. Actually pushing a particular POV should be determined by the criteria of WP:NPOV, like stating opinions as facts, misrepresenting sources, asserting seriously contested assertions as facts, etc. And I have not seen that being shown for the editors in this motion, nor Chess. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 07:02, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- To clarify, I didn't insinuate M.Bitton or Rainsage are guilty of anything. In fact, I've explicitly said they are not guilty, because if you look at the totality of all of Rainsage's !votes, most of them do not overlap with Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Ivana, GeoColdWater, etc, despite the majority of Rainsage's !votes being on Palestine-Israel topics. Likewise, M.Bitton has edited for years prior to Tech 4 Palestine, unlike Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2 who only began !voting in May 2024, the month after Ivana began running the T4P Discord.
- There are 5 main traits I can see:
- Started !voting on talk pages after April 2024.
- Overlap in !voting with editors we know, based on direct evidence, to be involved in the Tech 4 Palestine Discord.
- A lack of !votes that don't overlap
- 70% of all !votes by the affected editors overlap.
- Shared POV.
- Pro-Palestinian.
- A focus on requested moves.
- Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:14, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
- Raskolnikov.Rev, could you clarify if the last sentence is ironic and means that Chess is pushing a particular point of view about the Arab-Israeli conflict? ~ ToBeFree (talk) 21:28, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
 Clerk note: @Chess and Zero0000: That's quite enough of this. While word limits and sectioned discussion haven't been imposed here, that doesn't make TL;DR-posting or extended back-and-forth helpful. – JensonSL (SilverLocust) 07:39, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
| ||
|---|---|---|
| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. | ||
|
- The only reason I even know about this motion is because I was pinged into it by @Lf8u2, and just because I decided to point out that bringing a case while admins admit there is no evidence against the accused is astonishing to me, I'm now being roped into it too with blatant misrepresentations of my contribution history. You claim to have found a new golden nugget for your conspiracy and to involve me in it: "Somehow have never disagreed with each other during any of those processes". Your claim that I have never disagreed with these editors, "even on minor issues", is false. It also reduces all my talk contributions and arguments to a binary support/oppose to create the appearance of sameness. While for @Vice regent you pointed out variations like "You disagreed on the length of a moratorium on the Zionism article", for me you left out that I for example did not support the moratorium proposed by @Smallangryplanet in the Nuseirat case. And that's after insinuating that my mere presence here was evidence of malfeasance because you hadn't bothered to read the statement where I was pinged. As @Zero0000 has also shown, you are now just blatantly misrepresenting editing histories to cast aspersions against editors.
- Even if I had never disagreed in a binary vote with these or any other editors, it would mean nothing. I am not going to artificially feign disagreement with a position or contributor when I don't have any basis to do so in Wiki policy and the sources. That by itself is against policy as @Theleekycauldron said, and the fact that you are trying to impose that as a standard everyone must uphold or they'd be looked upon with suspicion is troubling. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
Your claim that I have never disagreed with these editors, "even on minor issues", is false.
You've linked an edit request in which you disagreed with Smallangryplanet, but the WP:CANVASSING only happened for structured discussions (RMs, RfCs, etc) because those are where !votes = wins.- The moratorium in the Nuseirat case was proposed after you !voted. You didn't take a position on the moratorium there. Vice regent actually proposed a different option at the requested move.
- I'm also not asking you to feign disagreement. I'm pointing out, that in the structured discussions at which WP:CANVASSING is an issue, you didn't find any reasons to disagree with Smallangryplanet, Lf8u2, Ivana, GeoColdWater, or Isoceles-sai. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:32, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- What are you talking about? An edit request that was refused by Smallangryplanet was accepted by me and I actually made the edit. That is a "win", as the content appeared on the page. It is a much more significant "win" than a mere binary vote agreement, and you are just pretending like it's totally meaningless even though it goes against the very argument you made for why it proves I am part of some coordinating ring: "If a group of editors never, ever disagrees onwiki, it a strong signal that they're communicating offwiki and achieving consensus there before implementing it on articles."
- Your point regarding Nuseirat also makes no sense per your own baseless allegation of a conspiracy, as it wouldn't matter when the moratorium request was posted if it had been coordinated. I would have supported it regardless, and I explicitly didn't at any point. In fact, I didn't even endorse the claim that was raised about canvassing. Again, you said we never had any disagreements, not even minor ones in talks and votes, and that is just blatantly false.
- You are shifting goal-posts now because you were caught misrepresenting my edit history. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 21:51, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Raskolnikov.Rev: These are all fair points, actually. You can see above that in response to Zero0000 pointing out the possible Zei_Squirrel connection, I revised the start date to May 20th, the date Zei_Squirrel joined Tech 4 Palestine. That means you don't really fit the pattern anymore, especially since you've actually provided an example of disagreement. You've convinced me.
- Still waiting on Smallangryplanet and Lf8u2, though. I will redo the !vote overlap analysis for them. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:02, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
Arbitrary break
Not sure if there's a word limit here but please be mindful of bludgeoning in this discussion. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 17:52, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- Chess, i'm counting at least 3000 words of the 6,200 words here from you, including at least 14 out of 44 replies. Gathering and presenting evidence is important, but this is already miles past the 1000 word limit [86]. Can you at least ask an arb for permission if you plan to post more?
- @arbs, if we are dealing with a PIA5.5 type scenario, can we have a structured place to put evidence? if not a pia5.5, then can we enforce word limits? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 20:00, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Bluethricecreamman: I'm going to hat the extended diffs. I don't believe there's a diff/word limit at community discussion on Arbitration motions, though perhaps there should be (WP:ARCA now has one). Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:28, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
Clerk note: Originally replied inline to theleekycauldron's question. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they) 21:14, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Maybe. I see a lot of details in this discussion that were unknown to me before, such as the Tech4Palestine creation date and any activity spike correlation, the list of users who were known to be coordinating off-wiki, etc.
- I still maintain what I said before: ratios for vote overlap or vote agreement are only relevant if they are significantly above the probability of 2 users who do not coordinate to have the same ratio. This is very hard to model, so we usually go with heuristics. When coordination happens in very niche topics with less than a dozen editors participating in 10 years, it stands out very quickly. When it happens in a highly polarized topic that is in the news, there are things that look like coordination when it is not.
- Israel-Palestine conflict is not even so special. It happens with Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict, various ethnic conflicts related to Kurds, American politics, etc. If you ask any SPI clerk why these cases often take more than 1 month to resolve at SPI, I'm sure anyone will provide a similar answer. It's just not so simple to tell what's the significant signal level for sockpuppetry or meatpuppetry.
- My assessment of this case is roughly as follows: it is plausible that Lf8u2 and GeoColdWater are the same person, it would be plausible but unlikely that Isoceles-sai and Smallangryplanet are the same person, it is implausible that Lf8u2/GeoColdWater and Isoceles-sai/Smallangryplanet are the same person, it is plausible that all of them are coordinating off-wiki.
- Now we know some of them were indeed coordinating off-wiki, does this mean that all of them were doing so? Maybe or maybe not. Chess has provided some new hints, such as a possible activity increase when T4P started. So my question to Arbs here would be: if you are considering taking further action here, what are the specific bits of evidence available now that are enough indicative of meatpuppetry? This should be a set of behavioral traits that, when applied, does not lead to a catch-all group. You may consider a sanity test: how does this evidence compare against some established users you strongly believe are not involved in this coordination? MarioGom (talk) 18:48, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'm sorry for the long non-answer, but I really have no conclusive assessment here. MarioGom (talk) 18:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Some data. Page intersection data across all projects are available for...
- 'Lf8u2 (ref_actor) vs (other_actors) GeoColdWater' here at Test L
- 'Smallangryplanet (ref_actor) vs (other_actors) Isoceles-sai' here at Test M
- For comparison, the other end of the cross-project page intersection spectrum, see the data at Test K, a non-disruptive unreported ban evasion candidate whose average monthly activity level within the PIA topic area is ~16 revisions - too low for me to care given the absence of disruption.
- For convenience, I'll note again, timecards are available here Sean.hoyland (talk) 09:15, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Can you explain what edit percentage and actor percentage mean? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- They're the ref_actor or other_actor(s) value for a page over the total value for the page, for revision counts and actor counts. Here are the calculations.
# Add percentage columns. # Note no rounding used here. Rounding to 2 decimal places is done for wikitable. df["ref_actor page edit percentage"] = ( 100 * df["editcount ref_actor"] / df["page_rev_count"] ) df["other_actors page edit percentage"] = ( 100 * df["editcount other_actors"] / df["page_rev_count"] ) df["ref_actor page actor percentage"] = 100 * 1 / df["page_actor_count"] df["other_actors page actor percentage"] = ( 100 * df["actorcount other_actors"] / df["page_actor_count"] )
- Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:23, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Maybe some background would help. The Editor Interaction Analyser output doesn't tell me anything about the improbability or significance of an intersection. Intersections are obviously more improbable/surprising and therefore probably more significant on pages with low edit counts, low actor counts, low page views, low watcher counts (blanks mean less than 30 watchers - they aren't logged for some mysterious reason). Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:38, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
low watcher counts (blanks mean less than 30 watchers - they aren't logged for some mysterious reason)
I believe this is so that bad actors cannot tell which pages are completely unwatched. Thryduulf (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2025 (UTC)- Ah thanks. That makes sense, although attracting bad actors to certain pages with fake zero watcher counts could be interesting, like green lights on squid boats. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:11, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Can you explain what edit percentage and actor percentage mean? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 06:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Some data. Page intersection data across all projects are available for...
- Seeing some of the comments here, I'd like to express my support for broader measures against long-term POV pushing. If someone supports calling acts massacres if done by Nation A, but never if done by Nation B, then that person is here to push a point of view, not to build an encyclopedia. If someone continuously votes to keep any article that makes Nation A look bad but to delete any that makes Nation B look bad, then we have sufficient evidence that the person is not acting in good faith. If someone is gung-ho for tbanning these two but circles the wagons when it's their side, or vice versa, the best case scenario is seeing them here next. If other POV-pushing editors come to mind, then please, for the sake of the project, gather diffs and file a report at AE. This isn't just about PIA either; several CTOPs have this problem. Theleekycauldron's concern about procedure has merit and I'd prefer if the other arbs would respond to it more directly, but that doesn't change the fact that obvious, rampant WP:ADVOCACY editing is frequently dismissed as "editors are allowed to have opinions". This is going to get worse until we accept that editors who cannot separate their beliefs from their editing are disruptive to the project. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 05:46, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- I agree that double standards should be considered actionable indication of POV pushing. Excuse me if I missed it but do we have diffs showing double standards from these editors? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 13:07, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- I used to be quite sympathetic to this view. Now I think it wouldn't work in practice or would have unintended consequences. It would certainly be weaponized, but that issue already exists, as you note. As long as there is a spectrum of reporting and people have source preferences, social media feeds etc. and can choose which part of the spectrum they sample for a particular event or a topic, there's going to be structure and coherence in voting patterns. People can choose to be a prosecutor or a defense attorney. We need both. I have more confidence in the individual undirected rules-based actions of countless individual editors over time, slowly nudging things in the right direction, than I have in heavy-handed top-down approaches that focus on individuals rather than tweaking the rules. I think the size and diversity of the editor population and the sourcing rules are much more important than the bias of individual editors. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- obviously, there is no way to measure the full impact of all socking operations, or off-wiki campaigns, but your research found the identified accounts only made up a minuscule number of the edits in the PIA conflict space, right? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I tried to compare deception rates in PIA vs Wikipedia in general (1 million articles) here and found that identified liar-liar-pants-on-fire accounts only made up a minuscule number of between ~ 6 to 8% of all revisions in the topic area. So, no problem, just keep filtering out editors that aren't employing deception or disguising their bias and it should be fine. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- 🤓 the nerd part of me has multiple questions now.🤓 is there anyway to see how effective a sock/extreme POV account is compared to the average editor? i.e. what is the rate that these bad accounts get their way on an RFC vs the average editor? if baddies are much less effective than good-faith, that paints a much different picture than if a baddie is much more effective than good-faith.
- obviously much harder to answer. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:50, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- There are so many interesting unanswered questions about the topic area and not enough time to look at it. I would like to know how much of each article was written by ban evading actors using the WikiWho service without getting blocked for annoying the servers. I'm also interested in the impact of ban evading actors on things involving !votes and noticeboard discussions. But part of me thinks there should be an amnesty for ban evading actors or some easier way back because we can't stop them and when you can't prevent blocked editors from returning, everything else is theater. As for off-wiki campaigns, I don't understand why they are off-wiki when there is already an on-wiki solution, the wikiproject, where people are allowed to openly collaborate to improve the encyclopedia. Do these groups think they are improving the encyclopedia? Yes. So, they can do it out in the open like everyone else. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland:
I don't understand why they are off-wiki when there is already an on-wiki solution, the wikiproject, where people are allowed to openly collaborate to improve the encyclopedia. Do these groups think they are improving the encyclopedia?
- It may be helpful to look at real-life geopolitical conflict resolution scholarship about why various "spoilers" opt out of a peace consensus.[87] Foreign Affairs summarizes the three types nicely:[88]
Civil wars can yield three types of disgruntled local parties, or "spoilers," who can derail peace processes. "Limited spoilers" are simply suspicious of promises made by the peace brokers and demand additional guarantees that they will be treated fairly; "greedy spoilers" seek to take all they can get from the postwar reconstruction, even beyond the point of diminishing returns; and "total spoilers," feeling they have no stake in the peace, will try to make it fail at all costs.
- The solutions differ for each group. Summarizing:
- We need to push total spoilers off the encyclopedia with the help of ArbCom and Arbitration Enforcement. They view Wikipedia as a battle to the death and are incompatible with a consensus that doesn't result in their total control.
- We need to constrain greedy spoilers with policy, since they will yield to consensus and they only try to "get more" for their side opportunistically.
- We need to pull limited spoilers into making the topic area better, since they will be loyal towards the overall peace project if their goals are accommodated.
- WP:ARBPIA5 lumped greedy and total spoilers together, using an all-out coercive approach for both. This is a mistake, because our coercive capacity is limited as a volunteer editing project and bans impose an ongoing cost due to sockpuppetry/meatpuppetry.
- A better alternative for greedy spoilers is mild coercion and socialization to the rules of Wikipedia.[89] A widespread issue in the area is an editor arguing an event should be called a "massacre" because of their personal beliefs that the event was bad. This usually turns into a WP:NOTFORUM violation that inflates wordcount and prevents consensus. We need to empower editors to go to WP:AE for a quick informal warning/hatting remarks. This combines socialization to our community norms with mild coercion.
- The flipside of this is that we also need to focus on inducement (addressing concerns) for limited spoilers. Draft:Manual of Style/Israel- and Palestine-related articles is an attempt at that. There are very real concerns from pro-Palestinian editors that the term "massacre" is unfairly applied to the killings of Israelis but not Palestinians. This is a concern that is based on WP:NPOV. The inducement here is a talk page where systemic issues can be visibly discussed onwiki, and I believe it would be effective because shows that following WP:NPOV is beneficial.
- art+feminism sponsors the creation of articles about Palestinian culture to combat ongoing cultural erasure without violating WP:ECR or treating being "pro-Palestinian" as a zero-sum game.[90] Editors go off-wiki to socialize and receive recognition in an unstructured and informal environment. WikiProject Palestine needs a Discord server or channel where the WP:CANVASSING policy is enforced that new editors who are incentivized by the ongoing war can join. That diverts editors who would participate in offwiki canvassing operations. Many of the editors in Tech 4 Palestine (e.g. Samisawtak) indicated an interest in operating legitimately with an onwiki presence, so it may be flawed to treat them as total spoilers.
- I'm less familiar with pro-Israel editors and influence operations, except they are dominated by a few editors with organized sockpuppet campaigns that are long past the point of no return. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:30, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Sean.hoyland:
- There are so many interesting unanswered questions about the topic area and not enough time to look at it. I would like to know how much of each article was written by ban evading actors using the WikiWho service without getting blocked for annoying the servers. I'm also interested in the impact of ban evading actors on things involving !votes and noticeboard discussions. But part of me thinks there should be an amnesty for ban evading actors or some easier way back because we can't stop them and when you can't prevent blocked editors from returning, everything else is theater. As for off-wiki campaigns, I don't understand why they are off-wiki when there is already an on-wiki solution, the wikiproject, where people are allowed to openly collaborate to improve the encyclopedia. Do these groups think they are improving the encyclopedia? Yes. So, they can do it out in the open like everyone else. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Yes, I tried to compare deception rates in PIA vs Wikipedia in general (1 million articles) here and found that identified liar-liar-pants-on-fire accounts only made up a minuscule number of between ~ 6 to 8% of all revisions in the topic area. So, no problem, just keep filtering out editors that aren't employing deception or disguising their bias and it should be fine. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:42, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- obviously, there is no way to measure the full impact of all socking operations, or off-wiki campaigns, but your research found the identified accounts only made up a minuscule number of the edits in the PIA conflict space, right? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:24, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Question for ScottishFinnishRadish. Someone going through my history could easily predict how I'll !vote on the next move discussion (same can be said for Chess etc). So could a bad actor not simply pretend to be my meat and get me tbanned by arbcom? In the WP:ARBIRP I do recall one sock/meat who, for some time, !voted in the opposing camp as their master.VR (Please ping on reply) 03:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- I don't think they could, actually, other than to say you're really quite likely to push for more neutral article titles. For instance, at Talk:Nuseirat rescue and massacre#Requested move 6 March 2025 you didn't support the massacre language, or at Talk:Beit Rima raid#Requested move 6 January 2024, and many others. You're not voting as part of a bloc, generally not using very similar language, not only getting involved with pages specifically for RMs/RFCs, actually editing the articles. It looks, to me, like you're a good faith editor involved in the topic area that's trying to improve articles and follow NPOV.
- Using the Nuseirat rescue and massacre example we have you contributing to multiple discussions and actually editing the article. We have GeoColdWater with no edits to the article and a single edit to the talk page supporting per Lf8u2. Lf8u2 has no edits to the article and essentially single edits just to three merge and move discussions. Smallangryplanet also has no edits to the article and only took part in the same discussions as Lf8u2. Isoceles-sai also has no edits to the article and only took part in a move discussion. This is where
When a group of editors consistently and repeatedly participate in the same discussions to support the same point of view — especially when many or most of the members of that group had little or no prior participation in the underlying dispute — it is reasonable to presume that they could be coordinating their actions
comes in. Mix in a healthy dollop of knowing that some of those editors were engaging in off-wiki coordination, and that brings me to support topic bans. - So no, I don't think you're at any particular risk of being topic banned, and hordes of meatpuppets seeking policy compliant, neutral article titles would be an interesting change of pace. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 11:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- I'm pro-Palestinian now at requested moves according to WikiBias.[91] Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:54, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Smallangryplanet, I‘m probably not the best argument in this case, considering I contributed to a non-vote talk page discussion last year. Ironically, and that of course depends on who you ask, this contribution is closer to being pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, considering I’m arguing that the sourcing at the time was insufficient to include what now looks like this:
The IDF stated that, at the time of the rescue, the three male hostages were being held in the family home of Ahmed Al-Jamal, a physician. His son Abdullah Al-Jamal, a freelance journalist, was also in the household. Ramy Abdu, chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, reported that Ahmed Al-Jamal, Abdullah Al-Jamal, and the latter's wife were all killed after Israeli forces stormed the home by ladder. Al Jazeera disputed IDF allegations that Abdullah Al-Jamal had been one of its journalists, stating that he had contributed to an opinion piece published on its website but had no other involvement with the network. Abdullah Al-Jamal had contributed to the Palestine Chronicle, a nonprofit online publication based in the United States. The Palestine Chronicle claimed inconsistencies in the Israeli narrative,but a Wall Street Journal investigation found that the Al-Jamal family had been known for its close ties with and support of Hamas. Locals criticized Hamas for placing hostages in civilian areas.
FortunateSons (talk) 14:20, 7 May 2025 (UTC)- @Smallangryplanet, I’m honestly agnostic on the question of what a fair and reasonable standard would be, though I would genuinely appreciate it if ArbCom or the community came up with one of those, preferably in a manner that doesn’t decimate most of our CTs. And for the record, I would obviously comply with one of those, as I believe you would.
- For the engagement with my specific response, my reasons were rather simple: a statement about BLPs was made based on sources that I consider to be insufficient, and just because the issues I believe this source to have are bias towards instead of against the person doesn’t mean we should use bad sources for BLPs. From an ideological basis, which I believe was not part of the motivation for my argument, declaring a journalist to be engaged in hostilities, even if I personally (and retrospectively, likely correctly) believe that they are, should be based on better sources than were available at the time, particularly as there is WP:NORUSH.
- Concerning my vote, it’s a 3 sentence length policy based argument (with a little bit of WP:OTHERSTUFF sprinkled in for good measure) supporting what I believe to be a pretty neutral name (removing the factual, but contentious “rescue” and the subjective “massacre”), based on the title of a similar but less contentious article. One can find this style of argument to be convincing or not, particularly considering I currently believe that the best standard for massacre would be “can a reasonable person make an argument that a significant percentage of the killing wasn’t grossly illegal?”, which has absolutely no chance of gaining consensus here, despite probably justifying a rescue and massacre title for this article. Having said all of that, I do not believe that my vote is similar enough to anyone’s to garner genuine suspicion of coordination, and do not mind if someone wants to run an SPI to make sure. I’m likely to disengage with this not to clutter up the discussion further than it needs to be. On that note, while I understand that defending oneself in this situation requires lots of words, I do hope that I’m not overstepping by asking you for a little bit of brevity, considering you’re at almost 3k words based on my count. FortunateSons (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Click here to add a new enforcement request
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For all other problems, including content disagreements or the enforcement of community-imposed sanctions, please use the other fora described in the dispute resolution process. To appeal Arbitration Committee decisions, please use the clarification and amendment noticeboard. Only autoconfirmed users may file enforcement requests here; requests filed by IPs or accounts less than four days old or with fewer than 10 edits will be removed. All users are welcome to comment on requests except where doing so would violate an active restriction (such as an extended-confirmed restriction). If you make an enforcement request or comment on a request, your own conduct may be examined as well, and you may be sanctioned for it. Enforcement requests and statements in response to them may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. (Word Count Tool) Statements must be made in separate sections. Non-compliant contributions may be removed or shortened by administrators. Disruptive contributions such as personal attacks, or groundless or vexatious complaints, may result in blocks or other sanctions.
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Srijanx22
| No action against Srijanx22. For their comments in this thread, Maniacal ! Paradoxical is topic-banned from India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed. An exception is made for participation in the forthcoming WP:ARCA request Indian military history and any resulting case. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 15:41, 8 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Srijanx22
The editor is not only engaged in battleground issues, but they obviously lack competence as evident in the above diffs, where they cannot distinguish between reliable and non-reliable sources. Heraklios 20:55, 2 April 2025 (UTC)
Discussion concerning Srijanx22Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by Srijanx221. None of those nominations are frivolous but are moving towards successful deletion. HerakliosJulianus is falsely claiming just any nomination of his articles as a "revenge nomination",[109] when when the nomination does not involve me, instead of addressing the issues with his articles. It is ironic that he is talking about competence when he does not even understand that JSTOR is not a publisher but a collection of various sources regardless of their reliability. Even right now, HerakliosJulianus has failed to confirm how any of his sources verify the subject in question. This shows HerakliosJulianus lacks understanding of even WP:V. 2. Anyone can see none of the sources used here are "deprecated", contrary to the false claim by HerakliosJulianus. 3. I made this edit per WP:BOLD since all the cited sources term it as an Indian victory. I don't recall a years old discussion which will have to be ignored and new discussion will have to be initiated since the former was infested with this sockfarm. 4. It is embarrassing that you are treating this edit as "constructive" and cited WP:BRD while completely omitting the whole talk page discussion against edits like that.[110] 5. This edit remains unchallenged to this day. Calling it disruptive can be treated as nothing more than a personal attacks. Srijanx22 (talk) 13:38, 3 April 2025 (UTC) @Rosguill: To be honest, the Islamic Research Institute which owned the journal at the time of the publication of the source in question was a research division under the Pakistani government. Since government authorized publications may not be WP:HISTRS, I did not consider it as academic at the time. Maybe we shall need a discussion on RSN if the government owned journals are reliable enough or not, depending on their press freedom. While Ram Hari Gupta is not such a clear-cut example, his early publications were too old and not very reliable as being discussed here. Instead of providing a description for each of them, I just thought of directly coming to the point if any of those sources support the war in question. This was entirely a content dispute and had to be resolved on AfD, rather than filing AE. @Firefangledfeathers: I have clarified my comment on the sources. I disagree with your assessment. I failed "to respond to Valereee", as I am busy IRL and the last time I had edited was on 16 April, days before Valereee commented on 18 April.[111] Nevertheless, I trimmed my comment. I am not alone with nominating the articles of HerakliosJulianus, as others also successfully did it days before me,[112] and now one experienced editor is also raising concerns over his copyright violations.[113] As for pinging specific admins, I pinged those admins who are experienced in this area because nobody was attending this report filled with false accusations by 2 editors for 14 days now. As per my experience on AE, this noticeboard is no longer as actively managed as it was sometime ago. I hope you agree. Srijanx22 (talk) 13:02, 26 April 2025 (UTC) Statement by Maniacal ! ParadoxicalApart from what the above problematic diffs have been presented, this user has a long shot history of:
Result concerning Srijanx22
Srijanx22, you are now at 855 words, which is 355 longer than you are allowed. I strongly suggest you cut that wall of text by at least 500 words, as you may need a few words to respond to workers here who have questions. The shorter the better. Valereee (talk) 18:29, 18 April 2025 (UTC) Reviewing the diffs in the initial complaint:
Reviewing the diffs from Maniacal ! Paradoxical
Overall, I find the case presented here unconvincing, although there is one clear example of tendentious argumentation by Srijanx22 with respect to how they went about challenging the sources presented by Heraklios. At most I could see considering a logged warning about assuming good faith and engaging with sources in response to that edit. While I'm unimpressed by the rest of the edits presented by Heraklios, I don't think they're quite so frivolous as to require a logged warning at this time (but let's not make a habit of it). The participation by Maniacal ! Paradoxical, however, has been a complete waste of our time here, and is a clear expression of battleground attitude in how deeply into Srijanx22's editing history it dug to find essentially nothing. Coming so soon after being unblocked, with the prior block being for a range of tendentious behavior in relation to IPA topics, I think that a topic ban for them is warranted. They are clearly not using their return to
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79.77.194.92
| Closing with no action. Explanations of ARPIA have been given and further disruption by the IP will be met with a block. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:36, 7 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning 79.77.194.92
None that I'm aware of.
I have only ever made three (unrelated) edits to the Mossad article and none since June of last year; my only edits to Talk:Mossad prior to this issue were cleanup from an unrelated LTA vandal, or archiving old conversations. Because this involves behavior that would be unacceptable regardless of the subject matter area, I'm requesting two separate sanctions here: A TBAN for this user from the A-I topic under the auspices of the CTOP; as well as blocking the user as a standard administrative sanction for repeated personal attacks and harassment. At a minimum, they need a 1-way IBAN, but I have no confidence that they even understand what they did wrong, so I have little confidence that any sanctions short of a block will be sufficient to prevent future harm, as this IP appears to edit in the same topic areas that I do (military and defense). I'd also note that they seem to be having difficulty with understanding WP:RS in a completely unrelated (and outside the A-I CTOP) discussion on Talk:Sukhoi Su-57#No trusted source of Algeria buying Su-57, where they're insisting that sources cannot be used if they're not on the "perennial" list at WP:RSP, and already throwing around accusations at other editors like
Discussion concerning 79.77.194.92Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by 79.77.194.92I'm just a hebrew speaker that pointed out a false translation and i gave many sources. Anyways, i dont care.
Statement by (username)Result concerning 79.77.194.92
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PadFoot2008
| PadFoot2008 is topic-banned from India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, broadly construed, and is warned for canvassing. An exception to the TBAN is made for participation in the forthcoming WP:ARCA request Indian military history and any resulting case. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 13:00, 8 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning PadFoot2008
References
There are many instances where this user has been repeatedly making pov ridden edits, I'll not be surprised if one would find more diffs by digging into PF's contributions. The careless moves are still being disruptive, causing burnout of others precious time and their poor reverts of poor additions should not be overlooked. Srimant ROSHAN (talk) 13:28, 16 April 2025 (UTC)
Discussion concerning PadFoot2008Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by PadFoot2008Ridiculous filing, it is quite clear from the entire request that the nominator's POV differs significantly from the scholarly consensus on the outcome of the Tripartite Struggle and thus, the nom wants to conflate a sack that occurred a century after the tripartite struggle. Nominator should attempt to discuss this issue in the talk page instead.
Statement by Kowal2701There is currently an ANI thread about Padfoot's conduct at Talk:Maratha Confederacy#Requested move 17 April 2025. There has also been Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1125#PadFoot2008 - LTA RGW editing where four experienced editors raised concerns about anti-Indian POV pushing and persistent OR. It was archived without admin input. If those concerns are substantiated, this guy should be nowhere near Indian history articles. Kowal2701 (talk) 16:45, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by ShakakartaThe user has some serious issues when it comes to falsely interpreting the source and citing an outdated source authored by British administrators in India. I thought bringing such issues here would be appropriate. Padfoot cites the wrong volume [167] of The Cambridge History of India which falls under WP:RAJ. I don't know why anyone would cite such a weak source to back
References
Statement by DympiesPadfoot engaged in a disruptive behaviour for a long time, much of which largely went unnoticed. No doubt they lost their page mover hat due to their pov pushing page moves. Padfoot made statements such as:
Padfoot created several articles by POV-forking. I believe this warrants renewed administrative attention.
Multiple other articles created by Padfoot were also deleted after being identified as POV forks: Statement by AlvaKedak(responding to ping) Yes, I have noticed their addition of unsourced maps as well, and am concerned about it too. In fact, I have tried to reached out to them about this matter more than once [170] [171], but aside from a a few replies that only addressed the Tripartite Struggle map situation, I have not received any response since. Regards, AɭʋaKʰedək (talk) 11:51, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Mithilanchalputra7I am really surprised that no one still address the root cause of these behaviour by Padfoot which I think his religious (possibly Hindutva) views. Maybe this is because these editors doesn't have much interaction with Padfoot like me. I have so many interaction with Padfoot and discussions.
Result concerning PadFoot2008
My evaluation of the evidence
Overall, the most serious thing that I see here is the canvassing, although as I've noted we're also lacking an adequate response to #4, #10 and Shakakarta's concerns and I would want to see what PadFoot2008 has to say about that. signed, Rosguill talk 03:50, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
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DaltonCastle
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning DaltonCastle
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- Tamzin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 01:09, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- DaltonCastle (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gender and sexuality
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 23 March (not GENSEX but presented as background): Removed an R&I CTOP alert from Generalrelative as
drivel from a partisan editor
- 17 April (pre–CTOP awareness):
But hey, people have their biases and agendas. Will be interesting to see what happens when all the USAID funding finally stops.
— Implying that a GENSEX FA is a covert government operation. - 24 April: Removed my GENSEX alert as
rubbish from a partisan editor
- 24 April: Removed my request to explain or retract the accusations against me and Generalrelative, again as
rubbish
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- AMPOL AE block in 2016, appeal declined
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- [176]
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
- Obviously editors can remove CTOP alerts, but they are not exempt from WP:NPA in doing so. I am not aware of anything I've done that would reasonably give DaltonCastle the impression that I am a partisan in this topic area: I did not participate in the discussion that spurred the alert; I have never been accused of partisan bias in the GENSEX articles I've written; I have tended to be a moderate in GENSEX content disputes; and, not that it should matter, I have middle-of-the-road opinions on most trans issues. The only thing I can think of that would give DaltonCastle the impression that I am partisan is that I am nonbinary, which is a rather unfortunate stereotyping that assumes I'm too self-centered to base my worldview around anything other than my gender. I note that Generalrelative indicates they/them pronouns and "dubious and undisclosed gender" on their userpage, while Generalissima, the apparent target of the USAID-funding accusation, lists she/it pronouns, giving the impression of a gender-based pattern in who Dalton personally attacks. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 01:09, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Just10A: I didn't say I'm a political moderate. (I have somewhat esoteric political views that don't map neatly onto any camp.) I said I hold moderate views on most trans issues, because I do; and that there is no reasonable basis to assume that I don't, because there isn't. Someone inferring such a bias based merely on my opposition to Donald Trump (currently the position of a majority of Americans, including plenty of transphobes) would be betraying a battleground mentality even deeper than one that leads to inference based on identity. I get that some people on this site sometimes pull the "Well you can't prove I have XYZ bias" schtick, and it's obnoxious when they do, but I'm not saying "You can't prove it"; I'm saying it's not true. My actual POV on trans issues is not a secret [177] [178] [179] [180] [181]. I think going any further into that would be off-topic for this 'board, but feel free to inquire on my talkpage. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 19:18, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Voorts: Just to note, in removing the notification for this AE thread, DaltonCastle has added a hidden comment reading
unwarranted harassment for a personal vendetta will be reported
. As with the accusations of partisanship, they have not presented any evidence that anyone is harassing them, for personal vendettas or otherwise. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 01:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Voorts: Just to note, in removing the notification for this AE thread, DaltonCastle has added a hidden comment reading
- @Just10A: I didn't say I'm a political moderate. (I have somewhat esoteric political views that don't map neatly onto any camp.) I said I hold moderate views on most trans issues, because I do; and that there is no reasonable basis to assume that I don't, because there isn't. Someone inferring such a bias based merely on my opposition to Donald Trump (currently the position of a majority of Americans, including plenty of transphobes) would be betraying a battleground mentality even deeper than one that leads to inference based on identity. I get that some people on this site sometimes pull the "Well you can't prove I have XYZ bias" schtick, and it's obnoxious when they do, but I'm not saying "You can't prove it"; I'm saying it's not true. My actual POV on trans issues is not a secret [177] [178] [179] [180] [181]. I think going any further into that would be off-topic for this 'board, but feel free to inquire on my talkpage. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 19:18, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
- [182]
Discussion concerning DaltonCastle
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by DaltonCastle
Alright, fair enough. Perhaps I have been too emotional. I will take a break and be more civil. DaltonCastle (talk) 00:30, 26 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Generalrelative
I only recall one brief series of interactions with DaltonCastle, where they sought to remove language on race being a social construct from a section of Intelligence quotient. See Talk:Intelligence quotient#Race, where I invited them to engage. Could be they looked at my user page and saw my pronouns, but perhaps more likely they just assumed I'm "a partisan editor" because I disagreed with them about race. Generalrelative (talk) 02:37, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Just10A
I'm traditionally a very big fan of the community pushing WP:CIVILITY (I don't think we do it enough), but I think this is jumping to conclusions. This shouldn't be much more than a trout for being rude.
Also, the statement "The only thing I can think of that would give DaltonCastle the impression that I am partisan is that I am nonbinary"
is a little presumptive. Tamzin, you are aware that there is legitimately outside reliable source coverage of your politcal views, correct? We don't need to hold a referendum on those views. Wikipedia editors are allowed to hold almost any views they wish, but those views are not particularly moderate. There are plenty of ways DaltonCastle could have come to that conclusion beyond identity politics. Your views are public knowledge, and he could have come to that conclusion through the media coverage or even just by interacting with you on this site. However, we can't just say: "He said I was partisan, and I'm trans, so therefore he must harbor some sort of deepseated anti-LGBT agenda and deserves a GENSEX sanction." That's a huge leap in logic. Also note that he's been similarly rude (which, again, I do not endorse) to editors with no such gender statements on their page [183]. This isn't a GENSEX issue, he's just being a jerk and needs to be more civil.
DaltonCastle, I encourage you to act with a little more restraint and maybe not be so preemptively dismissive. This should serve as a stern warning, and maybe a trout. Just10A (talk) 17:18, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
- @Tamzin I agree. Like I said, we don't need to hold a referendum on the actual views. Wikipedia editors can mostly have whatever views they want. However, I don't think the position of: "The only possible way this person could think I'm partisan is because I'm trans" is accurate given the data. Again, your views are public information. Or even better, as pointed out by @Generalrelative he also could've formed such an opinion from just interacting with your work on the site like any other normal editor. It's still uncivil, I'm just pointing that there doesn't seem to be any GENSEX relation here. He's just being indiscriminately moody. That's worthy of reprimand, but not GENSEX sanctions. Just10A (talk) 19:44, 25 April 2025 (UTC)
Result concerning DaltonCastle
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
- I am inclined to take no action given that Dalton has promised to take a break and remain civil going forward. I would add, @DaltonCastle, that you should focus on edits, not editors. Do not accuse other editors of being "partisan" (I agree with Just10A that this isn't related to gender) or make snarky political comments (e.g., your USAID quip) about them on talk pages. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:41, 28 April 2025 (UTC)
- I'm leaning more towards a warning, at least as long as the hidden comment is still there, as it's not a leap to think this is meant as an attack towards certain editors. On the one hand, we've got a promise from Dalton to take a break and be more kind. On the other hand, we've got an editor who's been here long enough to know better. Happy to close with no action once DaltonCastle has acted on their words. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Dympies
| There is consensus to refer this matter to WP:ARCA. I aim to put together the evidence for a referral today, or failing that within the next 72 hours; if I'm unable to for some reason, I'll revert this close.Separately, Dympies has been TBANned by Bishonen as a unilateral admin action. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 11:12, 8 May 2025 (UTC) |
|---|
| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
|
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Dympies
I am filing this report after seeing the concerns raised by Bishonen with this user,[184] because the recent edits by this user are creating problems well across WP:ARBIPA.
These problems are long-term despite multiple topic bans and blocks. Capitals00 (talk) 23:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)
@Asilvering: I have cited 11 diffs of which 8 diffs postdate the SPI. They are just 6 days old. You had yourself agreed that a new AE against Dympies should be filed. SPI was not a get out of jail free card. We are here discussing an editor who is unrepentant about his long-term editing problems as clear from his response here and also here despite multiple topic bans and blocks. Capitals00 (talk) 06:28, 30 April 2025 (UTC) @Bishonen: Can you be more specific about whom you are referring to? As Valeree has clarified to Asilvering, the filing of report was pre-discussed because the earlier one was filed by a sock and a number of experienced editors had also raised issues with Dympies.[186] I am a regular on AE. You can see a total of 4 AE filings from last 12 year from me. All of them resulted in a block or topic ban.[187][188][189][190] The demands to block me are without any basis. You won't find me doing any kind of tendentious editing. I don't disagree with what Abecedare said there. For example, you can see the presence of AlvaKedak on this report, who is demanding "an IPA ban or perhaps an indefinite block"[191] on me without any evidence even though this report did not even concern him. This amount of "battleground conduct" remains unprecedented in this area. Capitals00 (talk) 17:13, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Discussion concerning DympiesStatements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by DympiesCapitals00 became hostile towards me ever since I supported a move proposal (on 19 April) which they had opposed at Talk:Maratha Confederacy. On the same day, Capitals00 made a comment in the previous AE report against me (archived two days back) promising admins of providing good diffs within 24 hours [193]. They must have tried finding some strong diffs. But, upon failing, they filed a frivolous SPI against me [194]. Now they are here again to harass me with some weak diffs. I wish to respond to the diffs one after one : 1. That wasn't wrong on my part. On 29 March, Sitush expresses his disagreement with my proposed content. He keeps on giving arguments against proposal and on 27 April he admits that he hadn't seen all the sources by then! 2. Koshuri Sultan had been repeatedly expressing their disagreement with my representation of sources [195][196][197]. At last, I reminded him of the basic meaning of "synonymous" and "interchangeable" as I thought it was necessary. 3. On Talk:Rajput, multiple users had been giving their personal opinions without taking sources under consideration. To stop that, I gave those remarks. 4. I said to the admin what I had observed in the discussion. The way RS were being ignored, my observation was fair. 5. Strange. You're reporting me for neutrally assessing sources? What a complete waste of time. I found two sources that provide decent coverage of the event, so I voted accordingly. How can that be problematic for you, of all people? It seems voting against your opinion offends you the most. 6. The content was indeed added by PadFoot around 8 to 10 months ago [198][199][200], and was backed by poor sources. You have falsely linked the wrong version in order to portray me in a negative light. 7. I have nothing to say if you think that the crux of the page i. e. Anglo-Mughal war (1686–1690)#Events is well sourced.[201] 8. I had added a bundled citation which included six references. MyInd was among them because I was unaware of its reliability issues. I didn't respond to the comment on the talk page of the article because some other users had already responded appropriately that omitting MyInd and moving on with other sources was the right approach as too many RS were supporting the content. 9. Reproduction of a contemporary painting is still better than a painting drawn after Shivaji's death. The painting in question is indeed considered the most reliable portrayal of Shivaji. 10. I had copied all entries from the page Chitpavan Brahmins and wrote in my edit summary: 11. The accusations weren't false. Sitush literally said twice that there may be COI involved in my editing at Rajput page as if I am affiliated to Rajputs [202][203]. Such behavior violates WP:AGF and WP:COI. As far as WP:OR is concerned, see Sitush's comments at Talk: Rajput. In a comment, he makes an exaggerating claim that there are hundreds of sources to counter the proposed content[204], but could not produce a single one in a one month period. Despite using strong words like "nonsense" for my proposed content,[205] he didn't care to discuss sources but heavily relied on his original research. However, considering his seniority, I later struck WP:COI and WP:OR from my AE comment out of respect[206], but Capitals didn't mention that! Dympies (talk) 01:26, 29 April 2025 (UTC) @Bishonen, your comment is not helpful[207]. I don't find my editing to be tendentious. On my talk page, I provided you clear evidence of Sitush's problematic behaviour[208] (which I have also discussed above in my primary response), but you didn't appear to have taken note of that. And now you appear here with desire to put sanction on me on the basis of such a weak report. Dympies (talk) 17:30, 30 April 2025 (UTC) I am assuming that all talks in admins' section regarding "tagteaming" and "battleground behaviour" pertains to Capitals00 as I haven't reported any user here in recent past. I am rather a victim. Dympies (talk) 01:53, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by AlvaKedakThis report is beyond frivolous and almost vexatious, especially coming right after an ill-considered SPI filed by the same user. I would refer admins to these comments by Ivanvector [209] [210], which express concern over the conduct of Capitals00. Most of the issues raised here are content-related and fall well within the realm of editorial discretion and some are outright disingenuous. Given this pattern, I request that AE admins consider placing a restriction on Capitals00 from filing further AE reports. Considering they have already received a logged warning [211] for failing to assume good faith, I believe an IPA ban or perhaps an indefinite block should be considered. AɭʋaKʰedək (talk) 17:16, 29 April 2025 (UTC) Statement by Ivanvector (re: Dympies)I was pinged, so I'm responding. Block everyone. There is no point wasting our time reviewing the complaints and counter-complaints here because no matter what happens, someone will file a new report in a few days with slightly different complaints or a slightly different group of editors involved, or maybe they'll try SPI again instead, or they'll try some other board to eliminate their enemies. It just goes on and on forever here. There comes a point, and in this topic the point is long since past, where we need to stop letting ourselves be used for these games and just start kicking the tendentious editors out. Blocking everyone involved is the best way forward for Wikipedia. Ivanvector (Talk/Edits) 17:36, 29 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by AirshipJungleman29(Warning: a probably unhelpful statement follows.) I have no dog in this game, save for the one who is increasingly barking at how Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/History has been majority Indian MILHIST for weeks, if not months (as asilvering is definitely aware). From what I can see looking at those innumerable AfDs, there is tendentious editing of every sort from every side so that it is impossible to form a collaborative working enviroment. I am not in the least surprised that AE and SPI have become equally viable areas for these disruptive editors to fight their proxy disputes. Please, either do as Ivanvector says and block literally everyone, or send the whole shebang to ARBCOM. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:15, 30 April 2025 (UTC) Statement by Kowal2701Like with PIA5, blocking everyone mostly benefits the sockmasters, who will continue to sock unperturbed especially now that their main 'opponents' who will be most familiar with their patterns are gone. A CT descending into a tendentious and polarising mess where everyone becomes complicit is a predictable thing and it will happen again and again. There needs to be a more constructive way to handle this, and guide topic areas back to collaborative spaces. An unorthodox way could be to address the polarisation by encouraging a couple of the most reasonable and least tendentious regulars from each side to interact off-wiki or in a less combative environment, and use that bridge. Or maybe give someone the option of, instead of being blocked, being under stronger neutrality restrictions such that any conscious POV push or battleground filing becomes blockable (having the same neutrality bar for everyone devoid of context seems counterintuitive). Ultimately some creativity here wouldn’t go amiss. Kowal2701 (talk) 22:54, 30 April 2025 (UTC) Statement by EkdalianI am not going to repeat what I had already mentioned in the last report here recently. I believe the admins here have already noted the diffs related to Sitush's comments! I don't want to add further comments which go against Dympies since it hardly adds more value to this report. I would only like to add that Dympies is using the logged warning (for personal attacks) as a tool to negate my opinion, which is not acceptable; please see this comment by Dympies! Thanks & Regards. Ekdalian (talk) 09:54, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by AkshaypatillI hate delving on these non-productive pages, but I guess a comment is due here. I believe, I was recently tried under one such frivolous complain as mentioned by Ivanvector. Fortunately, the involved admins quickly realized what was happening, and the filer was formally warned for filing a frivolous complaint [212]. Capitals00 was also involved and tried to get me sanctioned based on 3-4 years old edits and warnings from my initial days on Wiki, who ended up receiving a WP:AGF warning [213]. I guess the statement from Fowler&fowler regarding the filer's and Capitals00's conduct helped very much and I am thankful for it [214]. Anyways, the purpose of my comment was to bring attention to the damage these 'teams' have done to the articles. Along with whatever actions that will be taken, the content also needs to be fixed. I would purpose restoring the affected pages (at least the major ones) to at least their one year old versions. I am not sure whether that will be enough, but we have to start somewhere. Akshaypatill (talk) 12:08, 1 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by Abecedare(Comment below not about Dympies per se but motivated in part by related report on Bishonen's talkpage) As an admin active in this area I completely share the observations that:
The place where I, and I assume many other admins, are stuck is what to do about this.
In theory, I still prefer the first approach, and would love if someone(s) would take the initiative to see it through. But I am slowly coming to the view that the second approach may be more feasible...though I may flip-flop again. :). Abecedare (talk) 05:46, 8 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by (username)Result concerning Dympies
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Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Fyukfy5
Procedural notes: Per the rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals, a "clear and substantial consensus of uninvolved administrators" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.
To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).
- Appealing user
- Fyukfy5 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – 331dot (talk) 10:23, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Sanction being appealed
- 3 month block for my edit request about Israel's identity on Israel's talk page. (I don't know how to link to specific past requests but the sanction can be found on my talk page and the edit history on Israel's talk page).
- Administrator imposing the sanction
- 331dot (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
- Notification of that administrator
- User pinged me and I moved the request here. 331dot (talk) 10:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Fyukfy5
The reason given for my block is that "Israel's identity is an integral part of the conflict" and therefore I cannot make edit requests about Israel's identity. I find this to be a troubling view because every detail pertaining to Israel is part of its identity and would not be allowed to be discussed about by non EC users. Everything from Israeli street names, to Israeli weather, to Israeli sports teams and Israeli inventions are part of its identity and if it's true that Israel's identity is integral to the conflict, all articles that have to do with those topics and so many more should be EC blocked and so should their talk pages. My edit specifically was about adding Israel's identity as a Jewish state to the lede of the Israel article and didn't mention Israel's neighbors, Palestinians, war, or any other mention of the conflict. I hope we could all agree that the sole statement "Israel is a Jewish state" is not one which discusses conflict just as the statement "Bread is comprised of carbohydrates and wheat protein" is not one discussing Celiac's disease. As a bit of an Orwellian fear, if this sanction stands then the same reasoning could be used by sanctioning users against any user they dislike or disagree with that has ever made an edit regarding anything in Israel or Palestine. Both these places are so much more than the conflict between them and they shouldn't be reduced or minimized to it.
All that being said I hold no ill will towards the sanctioning user. I dont know them but I have no reason to dislike them and I believe they were just trying to do what is best for this platform. Fyukfy5 (talk) 10:03, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Hello all, I'd like to clarify a few things in response to what I've read on my case:
1. If it is the consensus opinion on wikipedia that stating Israel's Jewish Identity is controversial/part of the conflict I'd like to apologize. While I evidently disagree I still respect the consensus opinion and truly didn't mean to make that claim as part of a controversial request.
2. The one point I'd like to rebut is @Rosguill's of my edit requests being narrowly focused on the conflict. Of the few topics I'm interested in editing and taking part in on wikipedia like American sports, medicine/biology, and this conflict, the latter is the only one that is broadly EC protected. Therefore, of course my requests are almost entirely on the topic of this conflict because it's the only one where I have to make requests and can't edit the page myslef. With that, as @Chess stated, I have been trying to make my requests more on the topic of semantics and such and not adding/retracting information because I know that that is more controversial. If semantics is also deemed a controversial edit request I need some more guidance on what is and isn't allowed. Fyukfy5 (talk) 13:46, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by 331dot
- I blocked due to having two prior AE blocks(see their user talk), and the topic seems connected to the CTOP area to me. I'm happy to remove the block myself if it's felt it's not sufficiently connected. 331dot (talk) 10:26, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Chess After their second AE block they were advised to stay away from the topic area. They didn't. 331dot (talk) 21:40, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- SilverLocust After two prior AE blocks I woukd expect someone in their position to tread very carefully in the topic area, and maybe ask if something is a violation first. It's well pointed out that these topic areas are interpreted broadly. 331dot (talk) 14:41, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (involved editor 1)
Statement by (involved editor 2)
Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Fyukfy5
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by CoffeeCrumbs
I find this explanation extremely unconvincing. The core identity of Israel as a Jewish state is undeniably one of the fundamental issues central to the Israel-Palestine conflict, yet the editor outright states that one could say the same about Israeli weather or Israeli sports or about the carbohydrates in bread vis-à-vis celiac disease. I daresay that the violence in the region is not connected to the Köppen climate classification for Israel nor is there sectarian violence over the nutrional content of bread, with this possible exception.
If this argument is made in good faith, it represents someone should not be editing in this sensitive area at all at this time, even to make an edit request. If this argument is made in bad faith, it's a specious one that seeks to decontextualize the whole conflict, with the same ultimate conclusion. Given that this is not the first offense, and at no time has Fyukfy5 displayed a good understanding of what WP:ECR entail, I would ask ArbCom to topic ban Fyukfy5 from the area, broadly construed, with an appeal after six months and 500 good-faith edits. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 14:15, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Chess
The three month block here is probably too harsh. The basis of the sanction is a link that was made by the blocking administrator and not by the user themselves. As a general rule, we're more lenient on editors that unknowingly violate restrictions or are attempting to conform their behaviour to those restrictions. Rosguill points out that Prior edit requests were all narrowly focused on the Gaza war, the label of "genocide", and tactics used by Hamas
. This indicates that this user is moving away from what is clearly within the conflict, which indicates that they are listening to admins on what the definition of the topic area is.
There's no disruptiveness beyond the WP:ECR violations. The purpose of ECR isn't to prevent new editors from editing, it's to make it harder for sockmasters to influence Wikipedia. If Fyukfy5 wasn't constantly getting blocked they could just make 258 edits and there wouldn't actually be an issue for Arbitration Enforcement to deal with.
A narrowly tailored restriction would be to t-ban Fyukfy5 from making edit requests until they get the extended confirmed right. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:14, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- @331dot: The issue is Fyukfy5 not understanding or claiming not to understand the boundaries of the topic area. It might be necessary to be more specific than just siteblocks or Israel-Palestine t-bans, e.g. A ban on edit requests as a whole.
- It's also unclear what Fyukfy5 has to do to successfully appeal the indefinite t-ban being proposed here, because it will literally be impossible for them to violate WP:ECR once they hit 500/30. At that point, the ban can't prevent disruption even if Fyukfy5 has zero understanding of WP:ECR. That's why I proposed the edit request t-ban until 500/30, since it takes away the one loophole that non-WP:500/30 editors have to interact with WP:PIA as Fyukfy5 isn't able to understand when to make edit requests. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:38, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (uninvolved editor 1)
Statement by (uninvolved editor 2)
Result of the appeal by Fyukfy5
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
- The failure of this appeal to recognize that this is their third PIA-related block in less than six months seems like a nonstarter. While I can sympathize that it can be frustrating that sectarian conflicts permeate the cultural production of the groups involved, that is the fact of it (and is true of pretty much every sectarian conflict, with similar provisions for those designated as contentious topics like Armenia-Azerbaijan). Further, it's not like the proposed edits were about say, Israeli musicians with minimal involvement in the conflict: their most recent edit request was specifically about the character of Israel as a Jewish state and homeland, which is very much the center of the territorial dispute (regardless of one's opinion on the underlying history and moral questions of the conflict). Prior edit requests were all narrowly focused on the Gaza war, the label of "genocide", and tactics used by Hamas. I'm inclined to agree that an indefinite topic ban is needed given the degree of the disconnect between Fyukfy5's comments here and the reality of their past activity. signed, Rosguill talk 14:28, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- There's nothing I can say here that CoffeeCrumbs hasn't already said. -- asilvering (talk) 22:43, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- The block was for making an edit request (this one) "requiring discussion". Had Fyukfy5 previously been told that the edit request exception to WP:ARBECR only extends to non-controversial changes (which isn't explicitly stated there)? If not, I don't really think a 3 month block was "reasonably necessary to prevent damage or disruption" (WP:CTOPAPPEALS). – JensonSL (SilverLocust) 06:58, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- The text at WP:EDITXY that explains how to make an edit request, linked to by ARBECR, specifies that edit requests must be uncontroversial, and explains what that means in terms of consensus process and discussion. signed, Rosguill talk 22:11, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- It does, though even assuming one has read it, it would be quite easy to think that requirement is specifically about fully protected edit requests (given that the entire paragraph is about fully protected edit requests). JensonSL (SilverLocust) 03:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- The text at WP:EDITXY that explains how to make an edit request, linked to by ARBECR, specifies that edit requests must be uncontroversial, and explains what that means in terms of consensus process and discussion. signed, Rosguill talk 22:11, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
Etcnoel1
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Etcnoel1
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- Vanezi Astghik (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 20:37, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Etcnoel1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- Wikipedia:General sanctions/Armenia and Azerbaijan
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 16 February 2025 Edits an article that non-extended confirmed users are not allowed to edit, which I cautioned about
- 9 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation
- 21 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation
- 21 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation
- 22 April 2025 In addition to being another GS/AA violation, Etcnoel1 is citing Justin McCarthy (American historian) as a source
- 23 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation
- 23 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation
- 18:57, 24 April 2025 Another GS/AA violation, in addition to evidence of sock puppetry, which I will explain in addition comments
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- 19 February 2025 Blocked for sockpuppeting
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- Gave an alert about contentious topics in the area of conflict to another editor, on 19 February 2025
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
I noticed on the Leo V the Armenian edits violating GS/AA that Etcnoel1 is using the Swedish version of Google Books. I suspect this user is sockpuppeting with IP 2A02:AA1:1000:0:0:0:0:0/37 which also uses Swedish Google Books.[215] And this isn't just a case of editing while logged out, because Etcnoel1 was banned from 19 February to 7 April, during which time the IP was editing the same articles Etcnoel1 edits, such as Agha Petros and Battle of Aqra Dagh (1920).
I understand the sockpuppeting evidence alone would belong on SPI. Given the various issues, I wanted to include everything in one post to avoid possible forum shopping. I can open a separate SPI if requested to, though personally I think this is a WP:DUCK. Vanezi (talk) 20:37, 30 April 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
Discussion concerning Etcnoel1
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Etcnoel1
RE Vanezi: The sockpuppet issue regarding me was already addressed on my talk page, I believe everything here has formally been addressed and resolved. Etcnoel1 (talk) 00:09, 1 May 2025 (UTC)
RE Rosguill: I’m confused, what in those pages did I do in order for me to basically break the rules? I’m fully aware of my past notice. Etcnoel1 (talk) 15:02, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Okay thank you for telling me this, I wasn’t aware of this, my apologies. Etcnoel1 (talk) 17:21, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Etcnoel1
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
While a few of the cited diffs could be considered unrelated, such as the edits to the Enver Pasha image or the Sayfo details, the edits at Battle of Sardarabad and Andranik are clearly within scope, and Etcnoel1 had received a prior notice. Etcnoel1, can you please address why you made these edits despite having received prior notice? signed, Rosguill talk 21:56, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- Vanezi Astghik, my understanding is that the editing while logged out was identified and addressed during their unblock request at User talk:Etcnoel1#Block for ‘‘sockpuppet’’. Overall, I find the quality of Etcnoel1's edits thus far to be low and consistent with ethnically-motivated POV-pushing. However, given that they are focused on inserting mentions of Assyrian identity, rather than directly relating to Armenia/Azerbaijan dispute, I don't think it would be appropriate to issue a harsh sanction at this time. I find the explanation of ignorance plausible, while noting that it's not entirely exculpatory given that editors engaging in WP:CTOP editing are expected to be fully mindful of best practices and relevant policies and guidelines. I'm thus finding myself gravitating towards a logged warning against Etcnoel1 for ethnic POV-pushing in the lead and infobox of articles, but would appreciate input from other admins. signed, Rosguill talk 19:14, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Listen, I’m not trying to be biased—I do my best to stay neutral on Wikipedia. I’m not here to push Assyrian identity over anything else. If some of my edits came off as low quality, I’m sorry—that wasn’t my intention and I promise you that. Etcnoel1 (talk) 19:29, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Etcnoel1: Please keep comments in your section, including responses to others. I've moved your responses there. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:44, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Etcnoel1, the general understanding of WP:GS/AA is that, as it is "broadly construed", any edits relating to Armenian history and claims to land are out of bounds. Edits to articles specifically about Armenian-Ottoman military conflict during WWI (Battle of Sardarabad) and one of the leaders of the Ottoman-era Armenian national liberation movement (Andranik) are definitely covered. signed, Rosguill talk 16:59, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
Merline303
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Merline303
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- Petextrodon (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 00:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Merline303 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- WP:CT/SL
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 1 April 2025 Adds misleading statement about International Court of Justice from a poor primary source (see additional comments for more details)
- 18 April 2025 Re-adds the same statement without engaging other editors who removed it
- 25 April 2025 Re-adds the same disputed content to a related article after being removed
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- Alerted about discretionary sanctions or contentious topics in the area of conflict, on 18 April 2025 (see the system log linked to above).
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
Merline303 has been engaging in a tendentious editing to push a POV in Tamil genocide and related articles. Tamil genocide has attracted several bad-faith SPAs and I suspect this recently created account is another one. His earliest edits were about public figures and NGOs who recognize Tamil genocide and are mentioned in the Tamil genocide article. His edit history in some of these articles is tendentious as he gave prominence to minor events in such a way to discredit these figures. In Vijay Thanigasalam (which is also his top edited page), a Canadian MPP who introduced the Tamil Genocide Education Week Act, he framed the MPP's entry into politics negatively by highlighting a tabloid-generated controversy in excess words. Another editor further expanded the controversy. When I condensed the paragraph to comply with WP:BLP guidelines, Merline303 reverted my edit saying it was RS. When I restored the content with explanation specifying the issue was not about RS but BLP, specifically NPOV, as his edits were giving undue weight to a controversy, he replied in the Talk page making it a RS issue once again. When I once again made it clear the issue was with undue weight, he once again made it a RS issue and asked me for re-explanation. I explained to him that this was a "sealioning" behavior for which editors get sanctioned.
In Tamil genocide article itself, he added content from a primary source court document of the Ontario Court of Appeal to both the lede and a section. It stated that "the International Court of Justice has not found the Sri Lankan state responsible for a genocide," which is misleading since only states are allowed to submit genocide cases to the ICJ and no state had done so in the case of Tamil genocide. He further added that, "This judgement was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada," which is a deliberate distortion since the cited source (another primary source court document, 29 words in all) only states that the Supreme Court dismissed an application for leave to appeal from the judgment of the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal's judgement was with regards to the constitutional validity of the bill "Tamil Genocide Education Week Act", and the mention of the ICJ was only an incidental background detail. The purpose of adding these two misleading statements was to create the false impression that ICJ had rejected the claim of Tamil genocide which is why he insists on using this particularly poor primary source when a better secondary RS would have made it clear that no such a case had been submitted to the ICJ by any state in the first place.
Another editor removed the repetitive content from the lede explaining the appropriate section already had the same content. Later I removed the whole thing, explaining it needed a better secondary RS. Weeks later, Merline303 re-added the content to the lede without even engaging other editors either in the edit explanation or the Talk page. I left an edit war warning in his Talk page, clearly explaining that he was "repeatedly changing content back to how you think it should be, when you have seen that other editors disagree," to which he replied the same sealioning response of not being able to understand it.
Days later, I removed the same misleading content that he had added to the main article of Tamil Genocide Education Week Act, explaining that he needed a better secondary RS and that the phrasing was misleading. He reverted that days later, despite the edit war warning that had advised him to discuss in Talk, claiming that WP:RSPRIMARY allowed it although WP:PRIMARY states that such sources need to be used with care because "it is easy to misuse them" which is what he was doing.
After another editor had removed his re-added content from the lede of Tamil genocide article, he finally opened a Talk discussion, insisting on re-adding the same content to the lede, claiming that WP:RSPRIMARY allows it. Even after the other editor re-added the content to the appropriate section as a compromise, he keeps insisting it should be re-added to the lede itself, rejecting any compromise and repeating the same sealioning behavior of not understanding.
This seems to be a case of Clearly not being here to build an encyclopedia.--Petextrodon (talk) 00:19, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- @SilverLocust
- 1) That statement you cited is only a summary of the preamble in the bill itself. Edits on Vijay Thanigasalam should speak for themselves.
- 2) Deliberate distortion: The court document Merline303 cited to support his statement goes against the very principle that he himself had cited: "descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source". It was an original research on his part and he should have known better.
- 3) ICJ: Yes the court document doesn't note that context which is why it's a poor source to use in the way he repeatedly did even after other editors had challenged its reliability and appropriateness.
- Problematic behaviors I had listed should not be seen in isolation but as a whole. As they say, once is a mistake, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.---Petextrodon (talk) 15:28, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
Discussion concerning Merline303
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Merline303
I am lost for words? I reject Petextrodon's accusation of POV pushing, badgering and edit waring. I have been creating articles and expanding on gaps in Wikipedia. However, Petextrodon seems to be targeting me for some reason.
- Vijay Thanigasalam - Petextrodon had removed content [217], [218] and I attempted to engage in Talk:Vijay_Thanigasalam#Content_removal_by_Petextrodon, which Petextrodon didn't taken an effort to. I even took Petextrodon's queue to move content to a topic of its own Bill 104, Tamil Genocide Education Week Act.
- Bill 104, Tamil Genocide Education Week Act - Petextrodon removed content [219] without engaging in the talk page until 1 May.
- Tamil genocide - I initiated the discussion on Talk:Tamil_genocide#Judgement_of_the_Canadian_Federal_Court_of_Appeal, and there was progress until, Petextrodon jumped in yesterday [220] with accusing me of badgering.
- International Truth and Justice Project - Petextrodon removed content [221] with a vague comment on 22 April only engaged in the Talk page on 1 May.
I am not going explain the content dispute on the FCA case, instead I would urge everyone to read the discussion in the talk page Talk:Tamil_genocide#Judgement_of_the_Canadian_Federal_Court_of_Appeal. I believe its self-explanatory. I will be happy to answer any questions anyone has. Now I am concerned about making any more edits as I feel these would be portrayed as POV pushing if Petextrodon doesn't agree with me. Merline303 (talk) 05:23, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Merline303
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
- A topic ban at minimum is warranted. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:47, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
- voorts, do you still advocate a topic ban after additional comments have been made in this discussion? Liz Read! Talk! 02:41, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- It doesn't seem to me that Merline303 is trying to discredit those who recognize the Tamil genocide given that Merline303 created an article with the statement "
the Tamil community in Ontario had families suffering the effects of the genocide that the Sri Lankan state perpetrated against the Tamils during the civil war from 1983 to 2009.
" I think Petextrodon may be mistakenly attributing a denialist POV to Merline303, but I'd welcome clarification of my confusion. Nor is it likely to be "deliberate distortion" to refer to denial of an appeal (by a court with discretionary jurisdiction) as upholding the lower court's decision. People frequently mistakenly think that the denial of a discretionary appeal (such as certiorari) expresses agreement with the lower court opinion. In any event, it certainly allows the ruling to stand. Nor would I sanction them for thinking the thing about the ICJ not having "found the Sri Lankan state responsible for a genocide" was an appropriate use of a primary source. That certainly qualifies as a "descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source". It might be "misleading" not to note that no nation has asked the ICJ to consider that question, but that is context that the court decision also doesn't note. As to the two reverts on April 18 and April 25, I wouldn't impose sanctions for that. It is at most very light edit warring. @Petextrodon: I will give you an additional 150 words if you would like to respond (especially to my first paragraph). (Your filing was already more than 200 words over the limit of 500.) – JensonSL (SilverLocust) 05:52, 2 May 2025 (UTC) - I think I align with SL's reading here, noting that it appears to be Merline303 who opened discussion on the talk page, and has not continued the edit war since then. I'm a bit more skeptical of the propriety of citing a court case out of the blue, without reference to a reliable secondary source, but unless there's evidence of this being a pervasive pattern, against clear consensus, it does not rise to the level of sanctions. signed, Rosguill talk 00:03, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
MilesVorkosigan
| Closed without action Sennecaster (Chat) 00:24, 8 May 2025 (UTC) | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. | |||
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning MilesVorkosigan
User_talk:MilesVorkosigan#Notice_of_Arbitration_Enforcement_noticeboard_discussion Discussion concerning MilesVorkosiganStatements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by MilesVorkosiganI'm a bit baffled to find myself here, I did not make any edits to the article in question and was only there because I saw a request for a Third Opinion. I was discussing it on the talk page. Also, the article does not have any connection *that I can see* to the Arab-Israeli Conflict? None of the three editors commenting said anything about the conflict, either. But if anyone feels it necessary to block me from that article and talk page... I won't argue about it. Please let me know if there's anything else I'm supposed to add! MilesVorkosigan (talk) 21:22, 2 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by M.BittonThe claim that they don't understand why they are here doesn't hold much water. I linked to WP:ARBECR twice: once before before leaving a CT alert on their talk (diff) and once after that (diff). The discussion at their talk page speaks for itself. As for their claim that the article has no connection to PIA: I don't see how the mentions of the Palestinian authority, Gaza and Israel can possibly be missed.
@Asilvering: I added two more diffs to the "Diffs section". I didn't add the edits that they made prior to their awareness of the rules. @Liz: 1) Their current edit count stands at 516. 2) They made a total of 38 edits between their first edit to the article and their last edit to the project, including 9 edits to the article's talk page (here's the last one). Their last edit to the article was their tenth edit after that, which means that they started editing the article with an edit count of 478, and by the time they finished, they had an edit count of 488. To be honest, I wouldn't have reported them if they didn't insist (while accusing me of vandalism, article ownership and lying). That said, the root of the problem is with another editor (see collapsed section below). Given their involvement in this report and to avoid creating a separate one, would it be possible for an admin to waive the "two parties" limit? Thanks. M.Bitton (talk) 13:26, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by ClosetsideTechnically M.Bitton has a point, that MV violated the A/I restriction, broadly construed. However, MV was unaware of that and thought it only refers to editing regarding the conflict itself (narrow construction). Furthermore, they are less than 10 edits away from XC and could gain it and then “reinstate” their A/I edits in accordance with the rules. However, MB is guilty of disruptive editing at Talk:Besor Stream. They refused to acknowledge the sources I presented that conflict with their position and insisted I wait for a 3O on a matter despite saying they don’t disagree with me on it. They have been previously blocked for disruptive editing and this bad behaviour has resumed Closetside (talk) 22:42, 2 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by (username)Result concerning MilesVorkosigan
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Wikipedious1
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Wikipedious1
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- Kautilya3 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 13:19, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Wikipedious1 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- WP:ARBIPA
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 18:56 30 April 2025 Original edit
- 00:53 3 May 2025 Reinstatement
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- Gave an alert about contentious topics in the area of conflict to another editor, on 28 April 2025
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
RegentsPark has placed the page 2025 Pahalgam attack under Active Arbitration Remedies, which include an enforced BRD. The edit notice on the page states: You must follow the bold-revert-discuss cycle if your change is reverted. You may not reinstate your edit until you post a talk page message discussing your edit and have waited 24 hours from the time of this talk page message.
Wikipedious1 added content in diff 1, and, after it was reverted, reinstated it in diff 2 without any discussion on the talk page. Even worse, he has not even answered the talk page discussion that I myself initiated.
It seems like a clear violation of the Arbitration Remedy.
- Since the editor has now reverted their reinstatement, I am happy to withdraw the complaint. I would just note that if the reason for revert is not clear, it is perfectly fine to query it on the talk page. There is no need for this kind of drama. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 01:24, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like I was hasty in expressing my willingness to withdraw the complaint, since the user's WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude continues even on this page.
- "Pakistani" and "Muslim" are identities that they are bringing to the table. They were neither mentioned by Deutsche Welle nor by me anywhere in the discussion. Clearly, the editor is seeing the whole discussion as an identitarian battle and the substance of the discussions is completely escaping their notice.
- I had used the phrase 'supposed historian and political analyst' for the expert named by Deutsche Welle, because what he states is completely contrary to what I had written earlier in that talk page section [222], where the description given in the Harvard Law Review as well as Indian constitution's provisions were analysed. The expert's claim that the said land laws violate the Indian constitution is unsubstantiated, and completely devoid of fact. The ability to purchase land and settle down anywhere in the country is part of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution, and laws can be enacted to restrict it only under the exceptions mentioned in the constitution. The expert is claiming the exact opposite.
- The editor is also peeved about the term "narrative", which they believe applies to themselves in some way. My edit summary said,
Removing "settler colonialism" narrative; present your evidence on the talk page
. From this it should be clear that it is "settler colonialism" that has been called a "narrative", not the edit or the editor. My talk page discussion had already explained why it remains a "narrative", which the editor seems to have neither read nor understood. Another scholar had described all this as a "mass-scale hysteria".
- It seems that the editor's unwarranted defensiveness, inability to follow and comprehend the discussions in a timely manner, and inability to follow quite straightforward edit restrictions, would seem to warrant a topic ban from this page. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 14:40, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- It looks like I was hasty in expressing my willingness to withdraw the complaint, since the user's WP:BATTLEGROUND attitude continues even on this page.
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
Discussion concerning Wikipedious1
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Wikipedious1
I made the edit Kautilya3 has linked above, which I regarded as a "bold edit" per BRD. My understanding is that it was fine for someone to revert this edit so long as they followed BRD, i.e., (quoting from BRD) "briefly explain why you reverted. You can encourage the bold editor to start a discussion on the article talk page if they want to learn more about why you reverted. Alternatively, start a discussion yourself on the article talk page about the issue."
Later, I saw that my edit was reverted by Kautilya3. I was not aware that Kautilya3 started a talk page discussion about this content, and I only learned that this discussion was started after seeing it linked above in this very noticeboard discussion. It seems Kautilya3 created a sub-section under an earlier discussion, and did not ping me, so I was not aware of it, as I only checked for recent talk page discussions. All I saw was their revert which completely removed my additions and their edit summary: "Removing "settler colonialism" narrative; present your evidence on the talk page"
I thought their edit summary was ambiguous and hostile ("your narrative", "present your evidence"), and that it violated BRD, mainly because their edit summary did not present an actual dispute with the content and instead gave a vague command. I felt confused as to how to follow the command since I did not know what narrative or evidence Kautilya3 wanted to discuss, I also felt offended that my edit was being dismissed as a narrative, and that Kautilya3 was putting me on the defensive about my edit when I did not know exactly what they disputed. I felt that because it was Kautilya3's dispute with the content, it was on them to, at the least, explain their exact reason for reverting, and at most, start a talk discussion with their specific disputes. Though in reviewing BRD I understand the onus of taking it to talk was on either of us, – and I realize now that, in any case, Kautilya3 did indeed start a talk discussion before making the revert. Not knowing this I reverted Kautilya3's revert and told them to discuss in the talk page in my edit summary.
After reverting Kautilya3's edit I left this message on their talk page expressing that I believed they violated BRD. Kautilya3 then informed me that for this article, BRD applies "after your edit is reverted". I did not understand this prior to reverting Kautilya3's revert. Understanding this now, I am totally willing to comply, but I do find the instruction confusing because BRD begins with a bold edit and does not begin with a revert. In any case, per Kautilya3's suggestion I have manually reverted the disputed content. I think this is a misunderstanding on my part, and I am willing to discuss any disputes harmoniously, just as I have been. Wikipedious1 (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- This kind of drama? Do you mind explaining why someone would want to engage with you civilly when, before any discussion happens, you dismiss their edits as a "narrative", and when you use language like
- "A supposed "historian and political analyst" called [Pakistani Muslim name]"
- from the talk page discussion you created and linked above. Is there something wrong with that name?
- You can obviously do whatever you want, but I want to hear what uninvolved admins have to say now, so no, I would advise you to not withdraw the complaint. (Edit) And to be perfectly clear I still would engage with you and anyone else with civility. But from reviewing the aspects of the complaint and what led up to it, and your rhetoric, I do now want to hear what admin have to say. Wikipedious1 (talk) 03:57, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Wikipedious1
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
So, having agreed that the initial edit by Wikipedious1 was a good faith lack of understanding of the relevant sanctions in force and that they now understand what not to do, this has devolved into petty bickering. Wikipedious1, unless you have additional diffs demonstrating that Kautilya3 has a habit of dismissing Pakistani and/or Muslim sources on frivolous grounds, there is no basis for any sanctions. I think "this kind of drama" quip was unnecessary, I can understand being put off by it, but I can't fault Kautilya3 for expressing displeasure for receiving a long and imperious lecture when they were in the right. I would recommend closing without further action unless you have additional diffs to present. signed, Rosguill talk 22:53, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- voorts (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 23:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe#Contentious topic designation
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 3 May 2025: OR RE Bajgora offensive. None of the sources mention this offensive by name.
- 20 April 2025: More OR. (See user talk discussion.
- 5 April 2025: More OR.
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
n/a
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
Alerted 7 September 2024.
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
- This editor has been warned several times on their talk page regarding original research and use of reliable sources. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti: The link you've shared doesn't work for me, but even if it did, citing an entire non-English book without providing a page number is not helpful. voorts (talk/contributions) 16:52, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- Dr. Kurti basically admits that the Bajgora offensive article is OR: Special:Diff/1288902321. voorts (talk/contributions) 12:22, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Another response in the AfD: Special:Diff/1288965135. I think some sort of editing restriction is warranted here. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:36, 5 May 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
Discussion concerning Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti
The offensive is mentioned by name in the book i referenced by the professor Dr Sabit Syla.asa.edu.al/site/ih/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/01/Revista-Studime-historike-3-4-2020-223-248.pdf I request you remove my article from deletion and check this link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti (talk • contribs) 09:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)
- What page? Can you quote the source material? Mooonswimmer 07:49, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
To be honest, the edits I find most concerning here are the provision of offline book-length sources without page numbers (and particularly doing so to make sweeping claims about cultural patrimony, as in the second diff that the report cites. Dr Dijon Ethem Kurti, you need to acknowledge this and refrain from making further unverifiable edits. signed, Rosguill talk 23:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Mkstokes
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Mkstokes
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- FactOrOpinion (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 00:39, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Mkstokes (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 18 April alleges to another editor that I ignore policy and reject article content due to bias, states that he disagrees with WP:BLP applying to BLP content in non-biographical articles, and cuts off a BLPPRIMARY sentence to suggest that it’s OK to use court documents to supplement RSs for BLP content
- 18 April similar reasons to Diff #1, except it’s now an allegation about many editors (including me)
- 22 April made a baiting comment to me at 22:41, another editor (MilesVorkosigan) reminds him about CIVIL, and he then alleges that my entire editing history shows bad faith and that civility isn’t necessarily required; both the baiting comment and this one again allege bias
- 23 April alleges MilesVorkosigan is politically biased, uncivil comment about “feeding the trolls”, makes a false claim about MilesVorkosigan’s article editing
- 24 April makes a baiting comment to MilesVorkosigan, implies political bias
- 24 April says he was conducting a “little behavioral experiment” on his fellow editors
- 24 April after I pointed out that 5 of 8 sources he’d suggested were GUNREL, he repeats that it was part of his experiment
- 26 April insults me again (e.g., the Dunning Kruger reference), and presents a purported quote to bolster his argument; when I then asked him to provide the source (on a suspicion that the purported quote was AI-generated), he insulted me again
- 29 April insults me again, and says he thinks WP is a game
- 29 April added a court document as a citation for BLP content in the article, even though it had been pointed out that this is contrary to BLPPRIMARY
- 29 April added OR to the article (the phrase “without providing proof,” which the source he cited doesn’t say/imply), and indicated on the talk page that it came from his own assessment of the court document
- 1 May added OR to the article (“Abrego Garcia claims” and “His claim contradicts”, which the sources don’t say/imply); on the talk page he indicated that these come from his own reading of a court document and assessment of news
- 30 April through 2 May This is a subthread in which I asked him to work with me to come to consensus about some article content (the text included what I consider an UNDUE block quote he’d added twice), we go back and forth with me making some concessions and him not making any; he eventually says that he just wants to stick with the text he added and claims that he has consensus for that.
- 3 May I had asked on the talk page about whether a source he cited for an edit with BLP content is self-published (and so subject to BLPSPS), and when he did not resolve it with me there, I went to the RSN for an outside opinion. He again alleges bias, falsely claims I’ve challenged all of his edits, claims all political articles on WP are misleading, and later challenges WP’s policies: “I'm for getting the story 100% correct, period. Wikipedia's policies ensure the opposite.”
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- 22 January 2024 AE TBAN for two BLPs
- 15 March 2024 1 month block for violating the TBAN (discussion here)
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- Previously blocked as a discretionary sanction or contentious topic restriction for conduct in the area of conflict, see the block log linked to above.
- Previously given a discretionary sanction or contentious topic restriction or warned for conduct in the area of conflict on 22 January 2024 by Red-tailed hawk (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA).
- Alerted about discretionary sanctions or contentious topics in the area of conflict, on 3 January 2024 (BLP) and 24 February 2024 (AP2) (see the system log linked to above).
- Gave an alert about contentious topics in the area of conflict to another editor, on 27 April 2025
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
He only has ~500 edits, and has mostly edited BLP and/or AP2 content. The diffs above are just a sample of comments that I see as problematic, but all fall into the same categories as above (e.g., allegations that others ignore policies due to bias, insults, pushing to use court documents for BLP content). I have gone to his user talk three times re: my concerns (here, here, and here). When I looked things up to fill out this form, I saw that others had previously expressed concerns that overlap with mine.
- @TarnishedPath, done. I'd thought the talk/noticeboard exchanges would be easier to follow with comment links, sorry. FactOrOpinion (talk) 03:46, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
User_talk:Mkstokes#Notice_of_Arbitration_Enforcement_noticeboard_discussion
Discussion concerning Mkstokes
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Mkstokes
Statement by TarnishedPath
@FactOrOpinion, the links you've provided above under the heading Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it are not diffs. For example the corresponding diff for your first link is either [223] or Special:Diff/1286190422.
Can you please update the links provided so that they are diffs. TarnishedPathtalk 01:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Much of the evidence provider by FactOrOpinion in this filing resembles the behaviour I experienced prior to filing the report from which Mkstokes recieved a topic ban from two BLPs.
- In particular them:
- WP:WIKILAWYERING on the meanings of sections of WP:BLP, in particular the prohibition on the usage of court documents in BLPs laid out in the BLPPRIMARY section,
- WP:AGF and WP:CIVILITY violations, and
- WP:GASLIGHTING other editors during content discussions.
- Given the continued behaviour in BLPs, which has spread to AP2, I think something firmer than a topic ban is in order. TarnishedPathtalk 05:20, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Aquillion
Additional diffs:
- [224]
What does Wikipedia use? It's own editors. So it's definition of "reliable sources" is ny nature biased. So let's stop the preaching, okay. Furthermore, reputable researchers value secondary sources over primary sources, period. So let's stop with the bullshit.
...So what the he'll are you talking about? So-called "high quality" sources got it wrong! So spare me the bullshit, okay? All you've said is that the media machine has a monopoly on the truth. Welcome to Orwell's 1984, then.
- [225]
Okay, @FactOrOpinion, drop the obtuseness and look out in the world to find me more than 2 sources that have the language "around 2011 or 2012."
...I'll wait for your results, but I know what it will be and I know you'll dance.
- [226]
Thank you for staying consistent and constantly moving the goal posts.
Most of their recent talk conversations have related to the dispute above, but here's some slightly older diffs in other topics, just to make it clear that this extends across all of WP:AP2 and not this one article:
- [227]:
Honestly, this topic discussion is useless and not even allowed on Wikipedia as we are supposed to assume "best intentions" unless there is evidence to the contrary.
- [228]
I'm not suggesting you should be concerned with anything I say. In fact, given your proud bias I'd be shocked if you could be objective about anything.
In addition to the obvious incivility and presumption of bad faith, these diffs make it clear that they're here to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS.
Also note that immediately before this was filed (when concerns with their conduct were raised), they asked for the narrow topic ban noted above to be lifted, here, which I feel shows a startling lack of awareness of their own recent conduct. --Aquillion (talk) 21:13, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Mkstokes
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
Diffs 3, 4 are plainly unprovoked personal attacks that merit an NPA block in themselves. Given the pervasive nature of the barbs included in the rest of the evidence and the past disruption, that's going to be an indefinite block as a regular admin action. The sheer quantity of examples given their short editing history and their singular focus on US politics controversies essentially make this a case of someone who is WP:NOTHERE. signed, Rosguill talk 23:24, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
M.Bitton
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning M.Bitton
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- Closetside (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 18:47, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- M.Bitton (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- Wikipedia:ARBPIA
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- [229] Refuses to acknowledge a map of a RS and calls my reading of it an "interpretation." Furthermore, incredibly arrogant by refusing to recognize there even is a dispute, considering themself a mere purveyor of what the RS say.
- [230] [231] Insists I wait for a 3O despite stating they don't disagree with me on those points (I previously assumed they did)
- [232] Baselessly calls my perspective OR, despite previously providing sourced despite previously providing RS to back up my position
- [233] [234] [235] [236] Again, refuses to acknowledge the sources I brought up to support my position, even though a 3O explicitly told them they were ignoring my sources beforehand.
- [237] Despite the dispute being hashed out well already and advised by a 3O, they insisted we go to DRN. While this may be fine, they subsequently haven't opened up anything on DRN yet despite their insistence.
- [238] Refused to acknowledge a legitimate rebuttal to their interpretation of the sources they cited.
- [239] Insisted on coming here despite me giving them one last chance to correct their behavior and avoid this report.
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- [240] Blocked for disruptive editing (quite similar behavior) 2 months ago.
- [241] Blocked for disruptive editing in 2015.
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
I would like to respond to the allegations M.Bitton raised against me a few days ago.
- I rewrote the lede after the RM was resolved. At the time, I thought the dispute was whether the Wadi Gaza and Besor Streams were one stream or two, and I thought the RM settled it as one. I was unaware of M.Bitton's notion of it originating near Hebron and did not revert their revert once they reverted it. My other rewrites were bold attempts at compromise per BRD and I did not revert their revert
- My last declaration of retirement [243] was way before the AE report on MilesVorkosigan, so no, I wasn't gaming the system.
- In Nahal Hevron removed "which is in the Palestinian Authority" for consiceness, not to declare that the West Bank was part of Israel. In fact, later on in the lede, I updated the jursidictions of the stream in Israeli territory and omitted Israel's administrative divisions in the West Bank, which implies the West Bank is not in Israel.
- Nahal Hevron is the article name and the COMMONNAME. It deserves to be first (Hebron River/Stream is not the "official name" or anything), and providing a Hebrew translation for the transliteration is appropriate. The Arabic names remained in the main text in the first sentence. Compare this to the Nahal Be'er Sheva, an article I created about a stream entirely in Israel, where I relegated the Arabic to a footnote.
In conclusion, this editor has returned to their disruptive editing despite being blocked for a month a mere two months ago due to it. I wish they took the off ramp, but alas they didn't, so here we are.
- Now to respond to M.Bitton's statement.
- 1) From the maps in the very source M.Bitton quoted in the statement, the Nahal Hevron ends at its confluence with the Nahal Be'er Sheva, so it is not in Gaza. Furthermore, when the very quote lists the Nahal Hevron's names, including both its Arabic names, Wadi Gaza is not one of them. Because the stream is not in Gaza, removing it from the Gaza category was justified.
- 2) MilesVorkosigan thought they were giving a 3O. M.Bitton even opined that 3O was a waste of time, which was an acknowledgement that there was a 3O. And this was before Richard Nevell, so this was a clear reference to MilesVorkosigan.
- 3) I had a legitimate challenge to Richard Nevell, which I asked, and Richard Nevell has chosen not to respond to while editing elsewhere, as he may. His comment was a mere suggestion, not an ironclad recommendation, as evidenced by the "perhaps." Regardless, this is Wikipedia where all editors are equal. Experience does not confer privilege in discussions, a lesson M.Bitton hasn't internalized.
- 4) With the RM, all editors are equal. I had my position, Richard Nevell had his, and the closer closed it as no consensus. Richard Nevell never accused me of incivility, and contrary to M.Bitton's framing, the "speaking time" in the discussion was roughly even.
- 5) I did not violate the 1rr, edit war, or unilaterally change the title. Furthermore, all my three edits conform to BRD; the second and third were attempted compromises, as evident from the edit summaries. The first two also occurred when I was unaware of the locus of the dispute (i.e. the origin of the Besor). So no, at least as far as I can tell, I did not repeating my past errors. Furthermore, this is about past, not ongoing behavior; I haven't edited the page in a week as I wait for the dispute to be resolved. Sanctions address ongoing, not past behavior per WP:NOTPUNITIVE. Closetside (talk) 22:14, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- 6) The accusation that I was "recruiting a friend" is ludicrous. MilesVorkosigan, came to me, not vice versa, in response a report this very M.Bitton reported against MilesVorkosigan. Similarly, the bludgeoning accusation is ludicrous; my arguments evolved throughout, including during my reply to Richard Nevell. M.Bitton's argument (two RS support the notion that the Besor originates in the Hebron Hills, while none oppose) was repeated by M.Bitton like a broken record, even as I cited opposing RS and eventually rebutted the claim those 2 RS support the notion. To hit this point home, he once referenced a comment by Bergman which they claimed supported the notion and dropped it in subsequent formations of his argument, referring back to only their 2 RS. Furthermore, they refused to engage with my rebutals whatsoever. Closetside (talk) 23:34, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
Discussion concerning M.Bitton
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by M.Bitton
Since this is in response to my question to the admins, I'll copy and paste here what I mentioned previously:
- Apart from the fact that Closetside has been canvassed, I will note that they have have a history of gaming the system (pretending to be "retired" when feeling the heat) and disruptive editing: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive322#Closetside and Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive351#Closetside. Interestingly, after the last report, they went straight back to one of the articles that they edit warred on: despite what they claimed in that report
I self-reverted those changes and I will not reinstate them until there is consensus
(diff), they did not reinstate the sourced content that they removed; and a month later, they removed again the mention of Palestine (without consensus). As for them mentioning a block, all I can say to that is: that's rich coming for them. I will also note that their response to me suggesting we take the dispute to DRN is puzzling (to say the least). - These edits are also worth looking into: casting aspersions in an attempt to recruit a friend and removing the "retired template" (after I commented on it, even though others questioned it long before that). Being accused of bludgeoning by an editor who bludgeoned all the discussions (with walls of text) to death is a first.
More worrying though is the:
- Disruptive editing and POV pushing: 1) Closetside removed the mention of the "Palestinian Authority" (West Bank) and Gaza (including the category), even though both are mentioned in the only cited source in that article, and 2) they added Hebrew to the lead to make it 100% Israeli. They did this in the middle of the discussion about a related subject. The cited source says: "The Hebron stream has many names: Wadi Al-Khalil, Wadi Al-Samen and Nahal Hevron. The stream originates in the Hebron Hills in the West Bank running southwest along 45 km crossing Be’er Sheva in Israel, and ending in Wadi Gaza and the Mediterranean Sea."
- This edit is in line with the above: they adjusted the content to suit their POV and then started a RM (to make all the shared rivers and the streams 100% Israeli).
- They edit warred over this content removal (which reeks of nationalism) until they were blocked by SRF for a week.
with regard to some of their comments:
- I stick to every word that I wrote in this comment. The reliable sources that I cited here are very clear.
- There was no 3O response.
- Here's what an experience editor said. Obviously, Closetside didn't agree with them. They also drove them up the wall during the RM discussion that they bludgeoned (while refusing to compromise).
- I didn't open a DRN because I didn't edit for the last 3 days and I was awaiting a response to this request. M.Bitton (talk) 21:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
In conclusion, I don't think Closetside is capable of editing PIA related articles without pushing a nationalist POV, as evidenced by the two previous reports (September 2023 and April 2025) and the PIA related block. M.Bitton (talk) 21:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Liz: I was told that I couldn't complain about them in the other report because the scope of a discussion is limited to the "conduct of two parties". The section was collapsed and my request to add their name to the report was ignored (this report was made after they saw my request). I responded to what is worth responding to, the rest is them complaining about the fact that I don't agree with them and their attempt to censor properly sourced content that doesn't align with their POV (this is not a one off either). I will ping the other editor who is familiar with the discussion. @Richard Nevell: your input would be highly appreciated. Thanks. M.Bitton (talk) 11:36, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- What MilesVorkosigan (a non EC editor at the time who violated the ECR policy) is claiming is far from what happened. They accused me of ignoring the sources, and when I asked them which sources they are referring to, they provided what can only be described as "non answer", with a battleground approach to boot. M.Bitton (talk) 17:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- The source that was mentioned by Fiveby was used in a specific context: to prove that even the author of the map (that was presented by Closetside as a source that contradicts those that I cited) does not deny the West Bank origin of the stream. M.Bitton (talk) 17:22, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Liz: the two are related. I cannot ignore the fact that they only started this report after realising that I was about to start one about their behaviour. That I don't agree with their interpretation of what happened is a given: they removed properly sourced content (the root of the issue), dismissed all the reliable sources that don't align with their pov, cited less explicit sources (not to prove another origin, but to disqualify the other and justify the sourced content removal), insisted on only using their
preferred description
(which they characterised, without a shred of evidence, as the " typical description"), etc. Luckily, Richard Nevell (who followed the discussion from the start) provided a third-party perspective. Had this been a one off, I would have dismissed it as a simple content dispute, but it's not, and the fact that, in the middle of the dispute, Closetside did the same thing to another PIA related article (mentioned above) is a serious cause for concern. M.Bitton (talk) 18:21, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Fiveby
For a quick primer on the content dispute here i'd suggest admins take a quick look at figure 1 in "Analysis of extreme rainfall trend and mapping of the Wadi pluvial flood in the Gaza coastal plain of Palestine" (WPL Springer link) (the abstract of which MBitton has quoted on the take page) which illustrates the main channel of the stream and the drainage basin of all the tributaries. Not to decide the content issue but to determine if editors are making valid arguments and representing sources appropriately on the talk page. fiveby(zero) 14:07, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Richard Nevell, there is no controversy or confusion as to the physical geography here, a mundane bit of content with concepts and terminology we should have all learned in middle school. How and why such controversy and confusion has been manufactured on the talk page is an exercise for the admins here. While there are many ways of describing our water body we should not entertain those which move the source to the Hebron Hills nor those which have the course somehow reaching the Med without passing through Gaza. I submit that neutral editors would realize both that there are important issues concerning the tributary waters from the West Bank and that there is no need to alter the course in order to provide that content. fiveby(zero) 10:45, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (MilesVorkosigan)
In his statement, M.Bitton says that there was no 3O. That is only very, very technically correct, because I saw the request on the 3O page and went to the talk page for the article. I asked both users some questions, ClosetSide responded, M.Bitton refused to engage and just kept repeating that he would only use the one source that agreed with him. He would not explain why he chose to ignore the other sources mentioned on the talk page or why he would not discuss them. After I reminded him of policy, he filed a complaint here, trying to pretend that asking him about his sources violated the Arb decision about Israel/Palestine.
Then he removed all of my comments from the talk page.
MilesVorkosigan (talk) 17:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- Note that M.Bitton is perhaps slightly misleading in his most recent reply when he calls me a 'non-EC' editor. As he knows, it turns out I was at *that* time eight edits way from EC, and I am now well past that number, as pointed out by neutral editors in his complaint against me.
- That is the reason that the most recent recommendation in his complaint is to close it without action.
- As to the 'battleground' statement, I'll point out that M.Bitton has three blocks for edit warring in that last few months. I have none.
- MilesVorkosigan (talk) 17:42, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- He edited his prior statement with an unclear edit summary, so now, after I mentioned it, it is correct. MilesVorkosigan (talk) 18:19, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Richard Nevell
I am commenting here as both parties have pinged me in their comments. My previous involvement on the talk page largely been around the article title. I have watched the discussion about the current points of contention unfold but contributed little as my available time is unpredictable and I didn't want to join a conversation and go quiet.
There is some talking at cross purposes and not much meeting in the middle. M.Bitton has been quoting explicit statements from sources (eg: "The Khalil Besor river originates in the West Bank") whereas those used by Closetside are less explicit. Closetside has been making special pleading that the sources provided by M.Bitton define the watercourse in a different way to other sources. Even if that is the case, that does not negate the sources provided by M.Bitton it means we need to work out how to reconcile those differences.
Though not raised by Closetside in their opening statement, there is also the issue of the removal of sourced content about the Wadi Gaza Nature Reserve, which Closetside justified as being undue. Five sentences explaining the reserve's extent, ecological issues, and rehabilitation not only seems like useful information but an appropriate level of detail for the article in question. On reflection, I should have said as much on the talk page as the situation unfolded.
Closetside's approach is to make their point and set conditions which need to be met to 'disprove' them. It is a rhetorical approach which attempts to control the discussion and treats it more as a debate to be won rather than being based on consensus building. The contribution of the 3O giver was unhelpful as they misunderstood the ARBPIA restrictions and reacted poorly to being informed that they were not yet eligible to engage by accusing M.Bitton of owning the page, and I thought the mention of a topic ban read like a threat.
As a non-expert in this subject area I would look for secondary sources explicitly stating "the Besor Stream originates xyz". Speaking of which, thank you to User:Fiveby for pointing to fig 1 in Bergman et al 2022. That and the text from the same source quoted by M.Bitton suggests that there are different ways to describe the stream. It would explain how the sources M.Bitton and Closetside have been taking different approaches. Reading more of the article I think the way forward, content wise, is to emulate the description in the 'Introduction' section, noting the main channel and tributaries. As the source describes the Besor as having multiple headwaters trying to select a single one may be overly reductive. Richard Nevell (talk) 18:31, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by Samuelshraga
Full disclosure: M.Bitton and I have a history, and I am the one who filed the recent AN/I thread which led to their month-long block.
The reason I am commenting here is because I don't think that M.Bitton's behaviour has meaningfully changed. They are fresh off a block for a litany of behavioural violations. I detailed then, for one, IDHT and invoking contrived interpretations of policy (then it was NPOV), without specifying what in the policy supports their position. In the Besor Stream dispute here, they similarly invoke WP:OR vaguely even when confronted with sources[245], [246], or just throws it at any opposing argument.[247]
This behaviour is not specific to this dispute or topic area (in fact the earlier behaviour was in a completely different topic area). Their POV-pushing there is still evident - here they tell an editor that their content doesn't belong on the Morocco page and to place it in the more obscure Germany–Morocco_relations[248], only to then revert that editor there 3 times in a row [249][250][251]. M.Bitton proceeds to template this editor (twice) for edit-warring. That editor has 352 edits by the way, so WP:BITE is a real concern, but I don't think that this would be proper conduct to anyone.
One of the reasons that M.Bitton got blocked is that when they were being reported for aggressive behaviour, they doubled down and went on the offensive. This is another instinct that has not changed since their block, if their first response above is anything to go by.
All I sought last time was for M.Bitton to recognise the problematic behaviours and change them. M.Bitton ended up apologising when they were caught for block evasion, but I am not aware of any instance of them recognising why they were blocked in the first place and undertaking, no matter how casually, to improve. Rather they've returned and within a month are embroiled in intractable content and conduct disputes across multiple topic areas.
Is it possible that this whole dispute with Closetside could have been avoided by starting it with a touch more civility and a lot fewer aspersions and assumptions of bad faith?[252][253] I think so. And if M.Bitton doesn't see the problem with their behaviour, is there any chance they're not going to be brought back again and again by far less experienced editors who they've attempted to beat into submission? Samuelshraga (talk) 20:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning M.Bitton
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
- Hello, M.Bitton, it seems like your comment in this discussion is making further accusations against Closetside and not responding to the points they brought up in their complaint against you. Since Closetside opened this complaint and not you, it would be helpful if you could consider the examples they brought up and either confirm them or contest them rather than starting a brand new complaint against them. Otherwise we have two separate complaints going on at the same time. Thank you. Liz Read! Talk! 04:14, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- M.Bitton, you are correct that due to recent changes, complaints at ARE now can only concerns details about two editors, the filing party and the editor whom the complaint is about. So, that is why your comments about Closetside were not welcome on the other complaint but suitable for this one since Closetside is the filing party. But my own comment made yesterday was to encourage you to engage with Closetside's opening critique rather than bringing up unrelated complaints you had against Closetside. Liz Read! Talk! 02:20, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Yarohj
This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below.
Requests may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs (not counting required information), except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Request concerning Yarohj
- User who is submitting this request for enforcement
- UtoD (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 04:40, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- User against whom enforcement is requested
- Yarohj (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)
Search CT alerts: in user talk history • in system log
- Sanction or remedy to be enforced
- WP:CT/SL
- Diffs of edits that violate this sanction or remedy, and an explanation how these edits violate it
- 6 May 2025 Continously removes content from the page of Mullivaikkal massacre insisting there is no RS despite the other user who added it again naming the RS and the same RS being discussed in talk page.
- 7 May 2025 And again reverting to remove the same content while insisting no RS. No talk page activity and clearly didn't even check it out.
- 6 May 2025 Adding large blatant WP:SOAPBOX copy-paste section dumps on the Sri Lanka Armed Forces page. No talkpage explanation either as the exact issue has been discussed and solved through RC.
- 7 May 2025 Uses reverting to try and force back the content and again, no talk page activity.
- 7 May 2025 And reverted again. No talk page activity which makes me give them a warning and notify them of CT sanctions despite them being previously active in SL pages under CT just in case if they are unaware.
- 7 May 2025 Ignores the warning and reverts yet again and dumps the massive WP:SOAPBOX section despite already being warned and notified of the CT sanctions in place.
@Femke: Note that user Johnwiki states the main citation is the UN panel report in Mullivaikkal page which is also present in the in-line citations. Also note that for Sri Lanka Armed Forces the issue has been discussed before and also an RfC decision for the page not to content dump WP:SOAPBOX sections which are already present in more relevant pages on it but to have a concise section in History explaining the things and give links to relevant articles which is already present. However the issue being reported is user Yarohj edit warring and trying to push them through by force even after being warned -UtoD 10:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- Diffs of previous relevant sanctions, if any
- If contentious topics restrictions are requested, supply evidence that the user is aware of them (see WP:CTOP#Awareness of contentious topics)
- [254]
- Additional comments by editor filing complaint
- Notification of the user against whom enforcement is requested
[255]
Discussion concerning Yarohj
Statements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator.
Administrators may remove or shorten noncompliant statements. Disruptive contributions may result in blocks.
Statement by Yarohj
The source you linked literally says "The UN says most of those civilians died in government shelling as they were crammed into ever-diminishing “No Fire Zones” – though the Tamil Tigers are also alleged to have committed grave abuses including suicide bombings and the use of human shields.", I don't how you can mention allegations as established information, and make a big claim that LTTE has done massacres against Tamils in NFZs, while its well known established fact, that Sri Lanka Armed Forces have committed countless genocidal atrocities against Tamils in NFZs, backed by a lot of sources as mentioned in that article and @UtoD has removed a whole section of content from Sri Lanka Armed Forces page too, it was relevant content copy pasted from other articles with attribution, I don't know how any of this is WP:SOAPBOX, significant notable activities that happened in the civil war, how can that be WP:NPOV, portraying as if nothing happened, like there is no cases against them of genocide, war crime and human rights violations, not mentioning any of this is WP:SOAPBOX, a propaganda recruitment page for Sri Lanka Armed Forces. Yarohj (talk) 08:21, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Statement by (username)
Result concerning Yarohj
- This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.
- Yarohj: I see you've not yet found your way to talk pages. When an edit is reverted, the standard route is to open a talk page discussion, to see if you can come to a consensus, for instance via compromise. This is called WP:Bold, revert, discuss. When you repeatedly revert, this is edit warring. I don't see any recent discussions of sourcing on Talk:Mullivaikkal massacre on either side. Can you explain why you believe the cited source ([256]) did not support the statement? Maybe you're unaware that the infobox does not always repeat citations for the rest of the article. Or do you believe that Channel4 is unreliable? These discussion need to happen on talk, not via repeated reversions in edit summaries. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:36, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
- I will just say (without having looked at the complaint in detail) that this is not a valid CT notice: the rule on awareness is that
Only the officially designated templates should be used for an editor's first contentious topic alert
, and more importantly I don't think "CT sanctions apply to these articles" is at all useful for a new editor who likely has no idea what CT even stands for. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 10:45, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
Manyareasexpert
| AE lacks jurisdiction to enforce this community sanction.
That said, speaking here as an individual admin in a non-AE capacity: @Manyareasexpert: Please take this as a strong warning to familiarize yourself with the scope of your TBAN. If you have not read WP:TBAN already, please read it now. When you are banned from a topic, that ban applies to all aspects of articles that are primarily about the topic (as with the example, in the policy, of a ban from weather applying to the article Wind). The question of whether a part of a page falls under a TBAN only matters when the page primarily isn't in scope (as with the canonical example of California § Climate). If you can't get the hang of how TBANs work, you should stop editing anywhere even vaguely near your TBAN's scope; otherwise, sooner or later you will find yourself indefinitely blocked, whteher it's on the second violation or the tenth. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 09:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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Request concerning Manyareasexpert
Not applicable.
They received the TBAN less than a week ago and their first edit in Article space is on Azov Brigade. This editor has no intention of following the restrictions placed upon them. There is no way anyone could in good faith assume that Azov Brigade isn't covered by the restriction.
Discussion concerning ManyareasexpertStatements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by Manyareasexpert
Statement by caeciliusinhorto
Statement by (username)Result concerning Manyareasexpert
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Sarvagyalal
| Initially topic banned as AE action, then blocked as NOTHERE as normal admin action. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:13, 7 May 2025 (UTC) |
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| The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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This request may be declined without further action if insufficient or unclear information is provided in the "Request" section below. Request concerning Sarvagyalal
Discussion concerning SarvagyalalStatements must be made in separate sections. They may not exceed 500 words and 20 diffs, except by permission of a reviewing administrator. Statement by SarvagyalalStatement by Toddy1I do not think that Sarvagyalal has sufficient understanding to contribute to Wikipedia.
-- Toddy1 (talk) 14:14, 7 May 2025 (UTC) Statement by (username)Result concerning Sarvagyalal
I topic banned Sarvagyalal from IPA, with the exception that they can comment on their own conduct in this discussion. I redacted and revdelled the BLP vio mentioned in diff #6. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 13:55, 7 May 2025 (UTC)
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