Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests: Difference between revisions

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Request name	Motions	Initiated	Votes
Wikipediocracy-related conduct		21 October 2024	4/3/2
Marine 69-71	Motions	26 October 2024	0/0/0
Covert canvassing and proxying in the Israel-Arab conflict topic area		6 November 2024	0/0/0

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Backlash to diversity and inclusion	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	10 Oct 2024	24 Oct 2024

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Recently closed cases (Past cases)

No cases have recently been closed (view all closed cases).

Clarification and Amendment requests

Request name	Motions	Case	Posted
Amendment request: Palestine-Israel articles (AE referral)	Motion	(orig. case)	17 August 2024

Arbitrator motions

No arbitrator motions are currently open.

The last step of dispute resolution is a request for 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.

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. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person you lodge a complaint against.

This is not a page for discussion, and arbitrators may summarily remove discussion without comment.

Current requests

User:STP

Statement by party 1

Personal attacks, abusiveness, POV pushing, general obnoxiousness. [1] [2] [3] [4] to start. I may move this to requests of clarification as I look into some talk I've heard that he's a sockpuppet of Alberuni. Snowspinner 23:47, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC

Sockpuppet evidence

This is adapted from an e-mail sent to me privately. I will note that the sender has had great success identifying Alberuni sockpuppets in the past:

First of all, it's clear STP's a sockpuppet. His third edit on Wikipedia refers (correctly) to "original research", something no newbie is aware of. [5]

Next, look at STP's telling edits on Muhmmad al-Durrah and Anne Frank; immediately upon noticing Muhammad al-Durrah has been added to Category:Hoaxes, he removes the Category[6] and adds it to Anne Frank instead[7], echoing the analogy Alberuni had made between the two months earlier.[8]

Now lets look at STP's editing pattern. As with Alberuni's other sockpuppets, he starts by editing unrelated (likely random) articles, but quickly zeros in on articles relating to the Arab-Israeli conflict. As well, his edits, when not pushing his POV or pretending to be a non-native English speaker, are high quality copyedits; e.g. [9] [10] [11] [12]

Now compare STP's edits: [13] [14] [15]

Finally, his comments in Talk: and on his edit summaries match Alberuni style. Snowspinner 01:47, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

I was against having this arbitration, simply because I felt it was better to have Alberuni in plain view, rather than using anonymous IPs and creating new sockpuppets (as he has gone back to doing). As it is, since he has been outed, he has currently abandoned this particular sockpuppet. However, since the case has been started, and complaints have been made that the evidence isn't good enough, here are a few examples of the problematic edits:

POV editing
- Lists Anne Frank under Category hoaxes [16]
- Adds Judaism to the List of purported cults under "Destructive cults", with the text "The Jews killed Jesus, among many others." and the edit comment "And they're still at it today"[17]
Personal attacks
- Refers to User:BM's revert of his edit as "Zionist racist censorship" [18]
- Refers to User:Modemac as a "Zionist troll"[19]
- Refers to User:Ta bu shi da yu as "a known Zionist apologist" [20]
- Refers to User:SlimVirgin as a "hypocrite"[21]

I trust that's enough evidence to get the ball rolling. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:40, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Comments by Third Parties

How can the Arb Comm decide whether to accept this case on the basis of these four pieces of evidence? The first two represent one incident, similar edit summaries ("delete POV whining") made on two reversions of an edit. The third is the reversion of an edit made to a Section title on a Talk page. The section title in question accused "editors" of bigotry for removing an NPOV tag in the article. This was not a personal attack but a general comment about "editors", and in any case, STP did not make it originally, but only reverted the removal of it. The fourth example is STP objecting on her Talk page to SlimVirgin accusing him of vandalism and characterizing the accusation as trying to "censor everything you disagree with by calling it vandalism". This last statement can't be evaluated without looking at the accusations of vandalism to which he was responding. So, an accusation of "POV whining" -- not the most egregious personal attack to be found on the Wikipedia, and two other less clear episodes. Maybe this case is justified, and everybody knows it, but this isn't a kangaroo court, and Snowspinner should do his homework and present evidence, especially when the complaint is so comprehensive as "personal attacks, abusiveness, POV pushing, general obnoxiousness". --BM 12:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Well, if "everybody knows it", including you, who STP has referred to as a "Zionist racist censor", why don't you add to the evidence? Jayjg ^(talk) 18:31, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because I'm not the person bringing the Arb Comm case; Snowspinner is, and he hasn't done his homework, apparently expecting the Arb Comm to just go along with him because STP has made a lot of enemies. Besides, I don't care that much about personal attacks against me. As far as I'm concerned, even people who call me a "Zionist racist censor" deserve to be treated with procedural correctness. Or, if this is all just a charade, and the Arb Comm is here basically just to whack people whom "everybody knows" deserve to be whacked, then let them dispense summary justice and skip the window dressing. It would be a lot more honest, not to mention, efficient. --BM 18:45, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Four diffs, a reccomendation from an arbitrator that they might want to look at this, and a sockpuppet accusation seemed to me to be enough to list. Not to convict, but to list. If any arbitrators want more, though, please ask. Snowspinner 18:59, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (3/2/0/1)

For the moment, I'd be amazed if Alberuni was silly enough to act detectably. But I'll ask the devs for info. The edits (and particularly the personal attacks) look remarkably similar in style to me. I'd like to hear in more (a lot more) detail from those who've dealt closely with both STP and Alberuni. If STP is a sock, he would of course be blockable immediately - David Gerard 08:40, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- I asked Tim Starling on IRC and he said the login data from Dec/Jan is largely gone, but I've asked them to look at other things for correlations. In the meantime, amassing a pile of edit evidence will probably help convince people on WP:AN/I, even given the querulous - David Gerard 15:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Holding off on voting until we hear back on a possible sockpuppet connection. If a link is confirmed, view this as a "reject" vote with advice to shoot the sockpuppet. If a link is explicitly nonexistent, view this as an "accept" vote. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 14:33, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC) ~~Accept, due to lack of technical evidence of sockpuppetry; we'll need to make that decision on other forms of evidence. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 19:08, 2005 Apr 8 (UTC)~~ Reject, in light of contributions no longer coming from this account. As there's significant consensus to simply block the account as a sockpuppet, I'd suggest you do so. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 20:40, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)
Accept, based on [22] Fred Bauder 14:40, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
Accept as is, since sock can't be proven technically. The diff Fred cites is a perfect example - David Gerard 03:30, 9 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Accept ➥the Epopt 16:58, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Reject as Grunt

Requests for Clarification

If you need to clarify the precise meaning of a previous decision of the Arbitration Committee, your request should go here.

User:GRider/Schoolwatch

For the purposes of the injunction against GRider (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/GRider), is User:GRider/Schoolwatch a "deletion related page"?

Comments from arbitrators

I've been considering this carefully, and I'm afraid I have to say that I believe we need to pass this back to the community. This hinges on the question of how much autonomy users are given in their user space - something that we have traditionally been quite flexible about. As an contributor and admin my opinion is that we should not worry about this page - unless the use of the page is actively causing a problem, then we should allow GRider to edit it as he likes. The page is not related to our deletion process, even if it refers to deletion pages - it can be easily ignored in all respects. As an arbitrator, I say that this is an administrator and community decision - as the ruling says: "Determining what is "deletion-related" is left to the discretion of the blocking administrator". -- sannse (talk) 10:47, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I fear I have to agree with Sannse: it's for administrators to decide, though I'm glad to see it's being actively discussed on WP:AN/I and a block/unblock war hasn't ensued. The wording could be reasonably interpreted to include such, though as an editor and an admin I'd really not worry about it. Probably we should have made it clear at the time and we'll have to clarify this in future - David Gerard 11:13, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'd personally prioritise user space over the concept of a deletion-related page; after all, we never said he can't edit discussion pages related to deletion - just the pages themselves. Since this user space page isn't a page that directly impacts deletion decisions, I would say leave it. However, as DG and sannse have said, this is best a decision for the community. -- Grun t 🇪🇺 20:45, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

Other comments

I don't think it is reasonable for the arbitration committee to make an insufficiently precise ruling and then duck responsibility by saying "you guys figure it out". I think the committee has an obligation to clarify rulings when it becomes necessary. The fact that there is a long discussion on this point proves that it is necessary now. --Zero 13:51, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
- Well, yeah. At least I admit I haven't a clue as yet. My Magic 8 Ball is still saying "Reply hazy, ask again later." The AC is not supposed to make rulings that outrage the interpretation of community norms, so the question is whether this one has done so in the case of user pages. I must admit the question of user space had not occurred to me during the vote. I swear to God we're still trying to find a sensible way to resolve this one and aren't just punting it back to the sensible, sober and reasoned discussion forum of WP:AN/I ... - David Gerard 15:40, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  - I believe the problem here is that Wikipedia:Watch/schoolwatch is a public and neutral project aimed at improving school articles, whereas User:GRider/Schoolwatch is self-admittedly POV and primarily used for vote spamming - in other words for the kind of VfD disruption that the ArbCom case was about. R adiant _* 09:57, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)