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Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

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Request for arbitration is the last step of dispute resolution. Before requesting arbitration, please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom).

Dispute resolution
(Requests)
Tips
Content disputes
Conduct disputes
Arbitration Committee proceedings

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

[edit]
Open cases

Currently, no arbitration cases are open.

[edit]
Recently closed cases (Past cases)
Case name Closed
Yasuke 13 Nov 2024

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

The Arbitration Committee considers requests to open new cases and (exceptionally) to summarily review new evidence and update the findings and decisions of a previous case. Review is likely to be appropriate if later events indicate the original ruling on scope or enforcement was too limited and does not adequately address the situation, or if new evidence suggests the findings of fact were significantly in error.

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. If you are going to make a request here, you must be brief and cite supporting diffs. If your case is accepted for arbitration, the arbitrator or clerk will create an evidence page that you can use to provide more detail. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person against whom you lodge a complaint.

0/0/0/0 corresponds to Arbitrators' votes to accept/reject/recuse/other. Cases are usually opened at least 24 hours after four accept votes are cast. When a case is opened, a notice that includes a link to a newly created evidence page will be posted to each participant's talk page. See the Requests section of the arbitration policy page for details.

This is not a page for discussion, and Arbitrators or clerks may summarily remove or refactor discussion without comment. Please do not open cases; only an Arbitrator or clerk may do so.

See also



How to list cases

Under the Current requests section below:

  • Click the "[edit]" tab on the right of the screen appearing above the section break line;
  • Copy the full formatting template (text will be visible in edit mode), omitting the lines which say "BEGIN" and "END TEMPLATE";
  • Paste template text where it says "ADD CASE BELOW";
  • Follow instructions on comments (indented), and fill out the form;
  • Remove the template comments (indented).

Note: Please do not remove or alter the hidden template

Current requests

Añoranza

Involved parties

Añoranza has edited hundreds of Wikipedia articles removing "propaganda terms" and apparently will not rest until they are all gone. He quickly assumes anyone opposing him is engaged in a personal attack. He never accepts no for an answer and always has to have the last word.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried (If not, then explain why that would be fruitless)

Statement by Añoranza

Ideogram's first edit at my talk page was informing me about this request for arbitration.
NSLE blocked me with an absurd summary, then for "evading a block", committed by anonymous IPs signing with my name. Checkuser showed they were unrelated to me. I am very glad an admin behaving like NSLE who never apologized for what he did to me got desysopped.
The countless misdeeds of Zer0faults are noted at his RFC case and started well before the operation name disagreement. As an illustration, of his last 1000 edits more than 5% were at the administrator's noticeboard. I find his continued attempts to discredit me by misrepresenting facts extremely tyring and note that jointly writing an encyclopedia is not about wasting each other's time.
Several users personally attacked me when I noted the obviously propagandistic nature of military operation names like "operation just cause", "operation iraqi freedom" or "operation peace for galilee" that should be avoided for the sake of neutrality. I even got blocked for a 3RR violation that was none by an admin who was in a conflict of interest. He never apologized either and instead invited others to block me. For the sarcastic comment that he should learn to count I got a whole week block while others could vandalize my user page, call me "rabid anti-American", "disgusting", "intolerable troll", "POV pusher" and whatnot without any penalty. As to the admins who allegedly all agree about my naughtiness, please note this: [1]. I see that some people have hot feelings about their military, however, official policy is to avoid propaganda names as article titles, and the explanation as well as the mere policy of NPOV clearly show they should be avoided if possible altogether. Añoranza 23:35, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Zer0faults

After noticing Anoranza attempting to remove operation names from Wikipedia, I filled an incident report. [2] I was hoping to find out if this was permitted action and to seek clarity. THe whoelsale removal of the term Operation Iraqi Freedom from wikipedia seemed to be a form of censorship, it was also never discussed prior to the action. I filed a second one after it seemed the first wave had ceased and a second had begun, this is after reverting some of the edits and tellnig the user I feel they are doing something they should not. During this time User:Cyde had stated Anoranza edits were overzealous. [3] Another debate took place in that incident report. After the user became aware of the two incident reports they filed a RfC against me. This user has also filed an RFCU against me since then [4] and a 3RR violation report, where I was stopped an anon user from creating a redirect that had not been discussed. [5] The anon aol user has since been banned and continued to evade their block afterwards. I have tried to resolve the RfC with this user [6] but they became hostile and ceased to participate. Myself an admin have asked Anoranza to participate in a discussion regarding the oepration names [7] however they have not yet and continue to cite a guideline that is focused on titles, as proof articles should not contain operation names. I am personally at my wits end, this user does not seem to want to take advice, or even find middleground. I have offered numerous starting points for a compromise, however they have not even taken then into consideration it seems. --zero faults |sockpuppets| 14:09, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:NSLE

User talk:NSLE/Archive 12#Warning for personal attack - shows the user's incivility, as well as unco-operativeness, despite a logical and clear defense of my actions by both Gmaxwell and Ian13. This edit summary shows more of the above. I had blocked Anoranza for personal attacks and incivility for a week (during which the desysopping incident occured), after a complaint had been made to WP:ANI. This user has made absolutely no attempt to get along with others. While I admit "intollerable troll" was incivil on my part, this user needs to stop assuming bad faith.

The way I see it, there are two parts to this request.

  1. The user's constant assumptions of bad faith and incivility.
  2. The user's refusal to co-operate and insistence on making his non-constructive edits.

NSLE 09:34, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by User:Haizum

Since the editor in question has cited me (disingenuously) in his/her defensive reponse[8], I believe I have a right to comment. Any attempt to question this editor's intent on his/her talk page, or even an article talk page results in bombastic NPA and AGF warning templates and unenforcable blocking threats. Attempting to remove these unwarranted templates has resulted in the reversion of the cleanup and the addition of more templates. This user then weaponized an Incident Report against me[9] that was quickly deleted by an Administrator [10]. The links to my talk page history are as follows: [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] -- Haizum 00:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ecophreek

Actually I have no idea what to write, any disagreement with this user and it immediately starts posting NPA tags everywhere, then when you remove them it gives you empty warnings, that it can't back up because there were no personal attacks to begin with. This was translated into "POV Pusher" which is somehow an "attack", "trolling behaviour" was translated as an "attack", "rvt vandalism by blocked user" was translated into an "attack",... you begin to get the picture? This user is on a "holy crusade" and any infidels in it's way are to be dealt with in an incivil and uncompromising fashion. Once it gets on your nerves so bad by constantly changing your userpage to add crap and useless threats and you DO get a little incivil it starts bemoaning your incivility. Frankly, I'm just tired of the stuff this user starts up. It's day just isn't complete unless it manages to tick someone off. IMHO it should be like it is with English (British) vs English (American) vs et al. Whatever country the subject is dealing with, the article should be in that language, if it's about American operations, it should use American Operation names. (Actually both should be in the article.) If it was written by an American, then the American usage should apply. It's really simple, however this user refuses to reach a compromise. I can guarantee that the discussion the user is involved in below is going nowhere, if it's agenda is not met or the consensus reached does not agree with it's goals it will continue in the same vein it is currently engaged in. And when shown the WikiProject MILHIST guideline/proposal so that it could join in the discussion instead started posting selected parts of it as it's new mantra as you can see above in it's statement as "official policy" when it is no such thing. This has been explained over and over ad nauseum to no effect. That's really all I have to say on the matter, except for the fact that statements like "I am very glad an admin behaving like NSLE who never apologized for what he did to me got desysopped." is typical, even though the user is suddenly pushing the POV that what happened to NSLE was in direct correlation to it rather than what actually happened.← ΣcoPhreek 07:10, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Kirill Lokshin

First, a minor clarification: the "policy" Añoranza refers to is (a) just a WikiProject guideline, with explicit warnings about not applying it blindly and (b) in reference to article titles.

The original cause of the dispute here—that Añoranza had not been willing to discuss the issues with using operational names—seems to have been resolved, since he has joined the ongoing discussion regarding a guideline for their use. While there may indeed be a potential case here based on civility and general behavior issues, I suspect that this affair can be concluded more-or-less amicably if the underlying content dispute is resolved. I would therefore ask that the Committee allow more time for discussion—and possibly Mediation—before allowing this request to proceed. Kirill Lokshin 11:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Habap

Having just been accused of vandalism by Añoranza, I feel compelled to add my name to the list of complainants. I did not remove a dispute tag twice (as the quoted description of types of vandalism states). Importantly, the policy states "Please note that placing or removal of dispute tags does not count as simple vandalism".

Añoranza is quoting a proposed project guideline as Wikipedia policy, which is very deceptive. His edit summaries have been sometimes POV and other times deceptive. I think WP:POINT may be a good read for him. --Habap 04:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Ideogram

My attention was drawn to this case by this. Upon examining the RFC I noted a long threaded conversation in defiance of basic RFC policy. In response I created the talk page and posted this. You can also see Anoranza's initial response there.

You can see all the ensuing discussion on Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Zer0faults.

My initial impression of Zer0faults was positive, so I posted this to the project page.

I observed that the threaded discussion was continuing, so I posted this.

I also noted that the primary participants seemed to be Zer0faults and Anoranza, so I posted this.

I thought I would drop a comment on User:Gorgonzilla's talk page, and found Anoranza and Zer0faults already there. So I posted this.

In response I received this.

At this point I got curious, so I looked into Anoranza's edit history. I found it very disturbing. Ideogram 14:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Cyde Weys

I haven't looked at Anoranza's edits in detail, but I do agree with him that, in the interests of neutrality, we refer to events by their colloquial names rather than their propaganda names. Notice how 2003 invasion of Iraq isn't located at Operation Iraqi Liberation. Besides being chosen for propaganda purposes, the military opreational names are not used by other countries involved in the conflict and will be almost totally unknown in countries other than the United States. Someone from Australia might reasonably be expected to find Iraq War or 2003 invasion of Iraq. The articles are already located at these appropriately neutral names, so they should be referred to correctly from other articles as well. --Cyde↔Weys 19:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

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

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

Involved parties

(Provide links to the user page of each party and to all accounts they have edited with. Briefly summarize case. No details.)

After heated discussion of WP:BLP in the context of legalistic use of WP:3RR and other policies in the editing of personal bios of Charles Whitman and Houston McCoy (who is still living), user user:sbharris was informed that he'd been permanently blocked for making a legal threat. He denied this, but since had had been blocked, had no recourse to WP:DR. Through the intercession of another administrator user:lethe who saw no threat and lifted the block, user:sbharris now is free to bring the case before ArbCom, but under the assumption that as a non-administrator being blocked by an administrator, he may not have much time.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
(Provide diffs showing where parties other than the initiating parties have been informed about the request for arbitration.)

A note will be placed on the TALK page of user:Essjay after this template has been posted.

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried (If not, then explain why that would be fruitless)

User user:sbharris has emailed User:Essjay pointing out that general observations of legal problems which may result from actions ("If you speed, you will probably get a ticket"), are not personal threats of legal action. Result: return email from Essjay affirming permanent block without reasoning given.

Request for mediation is deemed inappropriate. Drastic punishing action taken unilaterally by a single administrator is not in keeping with a small dispute, or with much else but coming here.

Statement by party 1 (sbharris)

[440 words]

I am user user:sbharris, a 6-month novice on WP, still relying a bit on WP:BITE. I have edited hundreds of pages, mostly in subjects of physics, chemistry, and Old West history. I have never been blocked or threatened with blocking, till now. I have, along the way, seen many outright vandals blocked for only 24 hours, and therefore assumed WP's blocking policies were not likely to ever apply to me, since my work and intentions are good, IMHO.

Recently I have been interested in the medical aspects of a biography Charles Whitman. Soon after beginning to edit it, and argue with editors on its TALK page, I received private email from a party claiming to have been permanently blocked from WP for messing with it. I ignored the warning. Bad idea.

Yesterday, I received the following notice on my Talk page, which contains its own internal references, which are useful:

Per your legal threat here, you have been blocked indefinitely, pending the conclusion of litigation or your withdrawal of all legal threats and assurance of future adherence to the No Legal Threats policy. You may make contact with BradPatrick, Foundation counsel and interim Execuitve Director, to discuss legal issues. Essjay (Talk • Connect) 06:06, 18 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Going to the admin request page I found the block was indeed permanent. Please note that I made no legal threats, and certainly never repeated any. As noted, another administrator (see my Talk page) lifted the ban, which allows me to come here.

My final statement is that I never intended any threat. I am not a litigeous person, and have so far managed to get to the age of 49 without ever being party, or even witness, to any suit, civil or criminal. [With exception of a few traffic ticket disputes :)].

I appeal to ArbCom, whose authority I recognize and in whose good sense I trust. I believe that having a situation in which a lone administrator can permanently block an editor in this fashion without wide consultation and without appeal, is not a situation in WP's interests. I'm completely surprised it's even permitted. I do not see why such admin abuse does not deserve sanction. In particular, such a block (unless somebody takes pity on the victim, as in my case) prevents the blocked party from participating in any WP:DR processes, and leaves him with no recourse but to write email to Jimbo Wales or Brad Patrick (which I admit I did), but who I'm sure have better things to do than read such stuff. It is against everything WP stands for, as I read its philosophy. But that question is why I'm here.Steve 00:55, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Sam Blanning

This looks premature to me. I would have thought WP:RFC/USER would be a more appropriate forum to get a review of the block. Unless Essjay has made a habit of premature threatbans, and AFAIK he hasn't, there isn't much meat for the Arbcom here. --Sam Blanning(talk) 09:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What I believe was an incidence of Essjay permablocking another new user prematurely was posted here, but removed by the clerk as part of a thread. Since you seem to think such other cases relevant as "meat," I will here edit and repost it, as per the clerk's instructions. A new User named Fatman!! was blocked indefinitely by Essjay on April 3, the reason being "Only contributions personal attacks". Alas, the truth of the matter is that the unfortunately named Fatman!!, whoever he was, didn't GET any chances to make many contributions. He'd shown up 4 days before, wanting to talk about X-Box games, and was immediately subjected to a homosexual slur from another user on his talk page. He responded by going to the talk page of the user who had attacked him (according to the log) and said several obscene things in return. Then he reverted the slur on this own page. Fatman was then summarily blocked indefinitely by Essjay. There is no evidence given that he was a sockpuppet or prior vandal. There was no prior warning. But he's now gone to wherever it is that banned new users go. This is not how treatment of Newbies WP:BITE is supposed to go. Some lecturing on how easy it is to get into TALK:page insult wars on WP would have been in order, first, I would think. But why do I need to point this out? Essjay's comment about a person’s ONLY contributions being personal attacks, regarding a Newbie who'd been attacked by somebody else the day he first showed up, 4 days before, was unfair. What else would you all expect? Also, it was strictly-speaking untrue, as one of Fatman!!’s 3 total actions was to try to revert the vandalism on himself. Steve 03:00, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Johntex

Essjay performed the block as a result of a notice I posted to ANI. The section is Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Sufficient_indication_of_legal_threat_for_blocking.3F. In my post, I said:

Hello. Sbharris (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has made a post [16] which I believe consititutes a legal threat. I cautioned him,[17] and he has essentially reiterated the threat.[18] Is there community consensus that this does in fact consitute a legal threat and is there community consensus for an indefinite block? I also see much evidence of incivility both at the article where the legal threat was made as well as elsewhere in the user's edit history.

I would like to call the arbitrators' atttention to Sbharris' first statement (provided in full in my first diff of my ANI posting):

...There are ways of verifying the source of material involving notaries, and when they need to be employed in legal action, the footer of the expense bill is generally the person who is/was the skeptic (unless of couse they were right). So again, beware. Cause you're putting your money, and the Wiki Foundations's money, where YOUR mouth is. And the Wiki Foundation is very conservative about such things. When they get complaints, they tend to block pages until legal issues have been settled. Sbharris 18:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

The warning about potential financial damages to an editor is what I think is a thinly veiled legal threat. I believe these statements were an attempt to prejudice the discussion in a particular direction. Namely, to bias the editors towards accepting the word of HoustonMcCoy (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) that he is in fact Houston McCoy, and to go along with HoustonMcCoy's proposed changes to the Houston McCoy article, including deleting that article or merging it into Charles Whitman.
If Sbharris is allowed to return to editing either of these two articles, I urge that he be strongly cautined to avoid anything that might be possibly be interpreted as a legal threat and also anything that might be a violation of WP:Beans. Houston McCoy has been involved in litigation unrelated to Wikipedia, and someone claiming to be John Moore, attorney to Houston Mccoy, has edited both Houston McCoy and Charles Whitman and has even reached the radar screen of Jimbo Wales.[19] This could be seen to have been a WP:OFFICE action, though it was not announced as such, and to my recollection the article was never put under protection.
Further, I urge that HoustonMcCoy either be made to certify that he is in fact the subject of the Houston McCoy article, or that he be made to change his username under the policy against inappropriate usernames. Johntex\talk 18:53, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I mention these facts pertaining to User:HoustonMcCoy because:

  1. I feel they are relevant to the atmosphere (legal issues, WP:OFFICE actions, involvement by Brad Patrick and Jimbo Wales) on the page at the time User:Sbharris made his remark.
  2. If Sbharris is allowed to continue editing this page, I urge he be strongly cautioned against any such remarks in the future as they can easily be interpreted as legal threats in such an atmosphere.

Johntex\talk 20:05, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

COMMENT by Sbharris

There is no threat in the statement above, "thinly veiled" or otherwise. I'm suggesting that libelous actions may result in libel lawsuits, certainly not that *I'd* be bringing them. I don't know any of these people from Adam, and made that clear. Furthermore, I'm not the lawsuit bringing type (though I have to say that this entire episode makes me understand such people a little better; certainly my own anger level is way over the top, after this).
As for the the rest of what JohnTex says about John Moore, Houston McCoy, and what Houston McCoy should be "made to certify" or not (by WHO?), NONE of it applies to ME. It's irrelevent. It does however, illustrate how people can end up suffering "guilt by association" if they happen to be on the same side of an argument with losers. Which these people evidently are, since they aren't administrators. Sorry, guilt by implication and association are not good arguments.Steve 19:25, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by Deryck C.

I don't often comment on RfArbs unless the case relates to public interest on Wikipedia or content disputes of topics I'm interested in. However, this case is IMO ridiculous. From the statements and descriptions above, I (perhaps incorrectly, if is the case please correct me) inferred the following interpretations:

  1. Sbharris had been arguing for a long time in the content dispute before he was blocked, and so far received no warning nor preceding blocks.
  2. Afterwards, owing to this comment, which IMO reads no apparent "legal threat", Essjay blocked Sbharris permanently, again with no warning.
  3. When Sbharris asked Essjay for the reason behind his blockade, Essjay made no explanation.

My conclusion following the reading of the above passage is: what a ridiculous case. Especially when Sbharris claimed (I assumed AGF) that he has never been blocked. Usually blockades start from 24h after previous warning didn't stop the troublemaker, then 7d or 14d, 1mon or 1yr then finally infinity after an arbitration. However as a veteran sysop Essjay skipped all the prepending steps and jumped directly to the capital punishment without a single trial throughout the process. Is this a proper behaviour of a sysop?

As a sysop on Cantonese Wikipedia, my knowledge about being a good admin is that a good admin must be able to make neutral, deep-thought decisions and contain his anger whenever he's about to use an admin privilege, particularly blockade of users. Even severe cases of talk-page flaimbeiting or uncivil discussion habits are only liable for a maximum of two-week block for the first blockade, so under what working principle could Essjay use his privilege so recklessly and anti-customly and used just a single short paragraph to explain it? This is totally ridiculous.

Therefore, I think this case could be closed following a total unblock of Sbharris (and a serious warning), and the arbitrators should instead investigate how many innocent, kind-hearted editors have been driven out of Wikipedia by Essjay's careless blockades and other punishments. --Deryck C. 08:25, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

Extensive threaded dialog has been removed. Please feel free to restore but do so in a non-dialog form in a section headed with your username and signed with your username and the datestamp (~~~~). --Tony Sidaway 19:51, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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

  • Accept Fred Bauder 01:24, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject. I don't think this is a case.If there is indeed no legal threat here, could this be settled by agreeing that there is no legal threat involved and perhaps revising of the comment that led to the block to make that clear, and then this editor being unblocked? Mindspillage (spill yours?) 03:11, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Reject. I agree with Mindspillge, and also note that since the editor was already unblocked, and since this is still being discussed on WP:ANI, it is premature. If Sbharris is not appealing a ban but requesting action against Essjay, then Sam's advice is wise. There ought to be previous dispute resolution in the form of RFC (or otherwise) beforehand. Dmcdevit·t 04:16, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]


The use of spoiler tags in List of locations in Spira and other media

Involved parties

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

Statement by Ryu Kaze

User:Megaman Zero feels that the use of spoiler tags -- the practice of their use being a Wikipedia guideline -- "limit the presentation of information" and are "unencyclopedic," while I feel that they do not limit information at all and that what they actually do is give readers the choice between examining an overview of a subject or completely immersing themselves into its full scope. Given that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, many people can find themselves here by accident (either through links on external sites or links given to them through IMs) and they may find themselves viewing information they may not have wished to yet.
The use of spoiler tags is an accepted matter of courtesy and consideration for others on Wikipedia and across many places on the internet at large, regardless of the elapse of time, but Megaman Zero is suggesting that they be removed from the pages of any media that have already been released (our dispute started with the removal of a spoiler tag from List of locations in Spira), including those media that are front page Featured Articles, read by many daily regardless of past familiarity with the subject matter. Of further consideration is the fact that Wikipedia is regarded by many as the number one source for acquiring information on a new subject quickly. Many people use the encyclopedia daily to perform surface-level research on a subject they've learned about as part of the process of deciding if they're interested in the subject and would like to learn more about it, purchase it, etc. This is especially true where media such as movies, books, and video games are concerned.
While the use of spoiler tags is not a guideline practiced by paper encyclopedias, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia, a fact which it even strives to emphasise. As such, all those who wander here may not have done so intentionally, and even if they have, they may not necessarily want to learn all information about a subject right away. While one may argue that they should not be near an encyclopedia if they don't want spoilers, there is again the fact that Wikipedia is not an ordinary encyclopedia, and that it has the reputation of being one of the best places to quickly acquire information of varying levels of detail. I would even wager that the use of spoiler tags has helped the encyclopedia gain its vast user-friendly connotation, and given that the use of such tags are an accepted guideline of style, many other editors most likely agree.
You can read more detailed information about this dispute in the articles linked under "Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried" if my position is not yet sufficiently clear. Thank you for your time.

Statement by Zero

Now this is just a little bit silly for arbitration. So the situation now is that I've deleted many spoilertags from articles and is thusly a blockable offense by action of violations. Nobody wants crap in wikipedia, I certainly don't. And it doesn't address the issues at hand when constructing the article: useless templates that rather a lot of people seem to think are quite useful instead of concentrating on the relevant content.

As per an earlier comment to ryu concerning this situation, my wholesale deletion of inappropriate content such as this will of course continue.-ZeroTalk 00:33, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Dionyseus

I am an uninvolved party and I have never met either of these two, but as a fan of the popular science fiction book series Dune, I have used the spoiler tags in every article I've created about Dune characters. I believe these spoiler tags are very helpful because they inform the reader that they should stop reading further if they do not wish to be spoiled. Dionyseus 02:07, 17 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

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

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


User:8bitJake

8bitJake's continued edit warring, misuse of various mediation tools, lack of civility, and neglection of community consensus has caused disruption in WP's article space, and the situation as such has caused at least one editor to consider leaving leave the project entirely.

Involved parties

(Provide links to the user page of each party and to all accounts they have edited with. Briefly summarize case. No details.)
Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request
Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

In my statement, I link to the results of a mediation request w/User:Dan100 from December of 2005. I am unable to find the diff for the actual request at this moment, but I will add it as soon as I'm able to. Mediation request. --badlydrawnjeff talk 11:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by badlydrawnjeff

(Please limit your statement to 500 words. Overlong statements may be removed without warning by clerks or arbitrators and replaced by much shorter summaries. Remember to sign and date your statement.)

Essentially, 8BJ has been disruptive to the point of driving an editor to leave the project . [24]. 8BJ was first involved in a mediation dispute about content [25] in December 2005, where thoughts about notability, verifiability, and published sources were given to him. They didn't matter, as he began warring recently at Henry M. Jackson [26] [27] [28], eventually being blocked for 3RR twice in a three day span, and three times in less than 10 days, and at Christine Gregoire [29] [30]. 8BJ has also shown incivility in his edit summaries ("Biased gang-bang editing", "Someone has an axe to grind", "Sour grapes editing") misleading edit summaries (Citing nonexistent talk consensus here as well), and various false and often incivil arguments on article talk pages ([31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36]). He has consistently ignored consensus at both Jackson and Gregoire, and has also been known to blank warnings on his talk page, making it difficult for passing admins to deal properly. [37]

Statement by Bazzajf

I find this RFA a futile ego-driven exercise. It is evident that 8BitJake has a useful contribution to make if you look at his list of contributions. It is churlish of you to take a dispute to this arena. Disputes over content of an article should take place in the discussion page of the relevant article, you are as guilty of as many reversions as himself on disputed articles. I find your recourse to this action pathethic and not worthy of further investigation as it reflects a personal witch-hunt on your part without any substance of note. I move that you apologise to 8bitjake for taking this action and desist from your ill-conceived and foolhardy finger-pointing forthwith.

Bazzajf 12:04, 9 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by 69.178...

I have no knowledge of 8BitJake or his edits, but I take issue with badlydrawnjeff's statement above, "...driving an editor (User:FRCP11) to leave the project". Also see FRCP11's prior page. I agree with Bazzajf's assessment of FRCP11's demeanor ("galling", "self-righteous", "...imposing one's opinion on others relentlessly") here[38]. FRCP11 appeared to self destruct with obliging help (strict enforcement) from several admins after many, many tirades. I have had extremely contentious edit situations on alt med, and although FRCP11 responded with some formal civility, he was among the worst to repeatedly rush past simple facts, without investigation, to try to cram his opinion down without any meaningful discussion, most intransigently, and in preference to previous, other far better qualified, vociferous critcs of orthomed. Apparently FRCP11's opinion and prejudgement are more important than basic subject definition in the articles (according to his points in talk[39][40]).--69.178.41.55 01:22, 12 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Clerk notes

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

Conspiracy theories in History of South Africa in the apartheid era

Involved parties

User:Phase4, User:Kuratowski's Ghost, edit war in History of South Africa in the apartheid era under "Destablization and Sabotage" subsection regarding the inclusion of the text:

Although South Africa agreed to cease supporting anti-government forces, their support of RENAMO continued. In 1986 President Machel himself was killed in an air crash in mountainous terrain near the South African border after returning from a meeting in Zambia. South Africa was suspected of sabotaging Machel's Soviet-built presidential aircraft.

On December 21 1988 UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson, was en route to the signing ceremony in New York, whereby South Africa was to cede control of Namibia to the UN, after over a decade of defiance of Security Council Resolution 435. Carlsson was among 270 people killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie in Scotland. Because foreign minister Pik Botha and a 22-strong South African delegation were due to travel on the doomed flight — but cancelled their booking at short notice — some also suspect South African involvement in the PA 103 sabotage.

Statement by User:Kuratowski's Ghost

User:Phase4 insists on including the above conspiracy theory text at the end of the section. It includes original research claiming South Africa continued to aid RENAMO after the Nkomati Accords. It includes weaselly repetition of the conspiracy theory that SA somehow sabotaged Machel's plane, already receiving questionably large coverage in the Samora Machel article. It repeats the conspiracy theory that SA was responsible for the Lockerbie bombing already given ample coverage in the article Pan Am Flight 103. These fringe conspiracy theories do not belong in the section, at most there could be a sentence mentioning conspiracy theories of ongoing sabotage by SA linking to the articles dealing with them, but it makes no sense to give detailed repetitions of these bizarre claims as if these are substantiated cases uncovered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and / or other Commissions.

Statement by party 2

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Clerk notes

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

Requests for Clarification

Requests for clarification from the Committee on matters related to the Arbitration process.

Dyslexic Agnostic

Is the ArbCom probation restricted to article/project pages, or does it extend to talk pages as well? Titoxd(?!?) 05:32, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Any appropriate page at all, talk pages included. Dmcdevit·t 07:56, 16 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Article probation remedy for Election

Does the ArbCom intend that Phil Sandifer, a party to the Election case, have the same power to ban other editors from the articles involved that the ArbCom is granting to administrators in general in Remedy 2.1? If not, could that please be made explicit? I am concerned about the chilling effect on editors such as myself who wish to continue editing the articles but do not agree with Phil in certain respects which could invite the abuse of this new remedy. I'm not opposed to the remedy for other admins in general; nor am I suggesting that Phil would likely ever take part in such a clear conflict of interest. It's just that I, and I think others, would be more likely to help improve the articles if this unlikely possibility were considerably more remote. 71.132.140.65 08:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators involved in a conflict are never supposed to use their adminship to gain the upper hand in the conflict. If he were to, arbcom decision or no, it would be wrong. I don't see any reason to make a specific remedy to this effect, especially since there has been no evidence presented of him abusing adminship in this case. Dmcdevit·t 15:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

3RR violation by dispute tag insertion?

Two of the parties in the dispute giving rise to some questions have refused mediation. Since I don't want any sanctions against any of the parties involved in the dispute, or any other remedies, I'm just asking for arbitrator opinions on the questions at Wikipedia talk:Three-revert rule#3RR violation by dispute tag insertion? Thank you. Publicola 18:55, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitrators generally don't exercise authority except when they accept an arbitration case. I don't see why they shouldn't answer the question as experienced and trusted users, but this section is normally used for clarification of their intent in earlier rulings. --Tony Sidaway 19:04, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I see; I'm replacing the questions with just the pointer to the policy talk page, then. Publicola 20:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Note, user has also filed Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2006-06-19_Banu_Nadir related to the same issue. Also my explanation for refusing to be involved in a mediation case (which are usually for content anyway). pschemp | talk 19:07, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]
In fact, I filed that request before these questions came up, based on subsequent edits to a different but related page. Publicola 20:38, 20 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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