User talk:Kirill Lokshin

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Please sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~) and add comments on a new topic in a new section. I will respond on this talk page unless you request otherwise. Questions, requests, criticism, and any other comments are always welcome!

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[edit] Nomination for deletion of Template:Pbrk

Template:Pbrk has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Alarbus (talk) 02:34, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know; I've commented there. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 09:36, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Ping

I think that the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#WikiProject_Conservatism would benefit from another WT:COUNCIL regular. It's yet another round of "these people shouldn't be permitted to collaborate on their areas of interest, much less to tag articles that interest them". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, I suppose; I'll try to comment there if I have some free time. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 09:50, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] User:Mursel

In monitoring the behaviour of this long-term nationalist troublemaker, I am looking for an ArbCom case called 'Azerbaijan-Armenia-Iran-Kurdistan-Turkey', but can find details nowhere -- can you help? Cheers Buckshot06 (talk) 05:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

There's never been a case by that name, but I suspect that you're looking for either Armenia-Azerbaijan or Armenia-Azerbaijan 2. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 05:41, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] On article-level discretionary sanctions

Dear Kirill, upon re-reading this discussion (in which I, unfortunately, was not able to participate) I realised that some arguments are somewhat questionable. You write:

"In principle, it's possible to create an article-level 1RR restriction from a literal reading of the provisions for discretionary sanctions, if we assume (a) that the editnotice on the article constitutes a sufficient warning as required by ¶2,..."

However, this is not correct. ¶2 implies that a warning is issued to the editor, who "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia". In other words, a situation when some editor, who committed no violation of WP policy, simply by reading the edit notice found himself sanctioned (edit restricted) is totally counterintuitive. In actuality, the full sequence of the events that lead to application discretionary sanctions is:

Some editor working in the area of conflict "repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia";
A warning has been issued for him (obviously, this warning is supposed to contain a reference to some wrongdoing)
If violation continues, sanctions are imposed.

In other words, the article wide sanctions do not meet these criteria: (1) a good faith editor coming to the area of conflict has committed no violations by the moment he opened the article's page; (2) the edit notice is not a warning at all, because it cites no violations committed by this particular user; (3) the sanctions are imposed before any violations took place.
I think the article wide discretionary sanctions issue should be revisited, because I see a direct violation of basic WP principles there.
Regards, --Paul Siebert (talk) 20:06, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

You're quite correct in that the sequence of events you've outlined is the normal way by which discretionary sanctions are imposed. I'm not convinced, however, that this particular sequence is necessarily mandated by the discretionary sanctions provisions as they currently stand. The paragraph regarding warnings merely states that:

Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning with a link to the decision authorizing sanctions; and, where appropriate, should be counseled on specific steps that he or she can take to improve his or her editing in accordance with relevant policies and guidelines.

There is no explicit requirement that the warning contain a reference to a prior violation; the only requirement imposed on the warning itself is that it include a link to the authorizing case. Implicitly, the wording of the second clause ("where appropriate, should be counseled", emphasis mine) suggests that a warning may be issued without stating any "specific steps" for improvement—and, since any mention of a specific violation would necessarily indicate something that the editor being warned might improve upon, suggests that a warning may be issued without stating a specific violation as well.

In broad terms, my interpretation of the current discretionary sanctions provisions is that the "repeatedly or seriously" test is applicable only when an actual sanction is to be imposed, and not when the preliminary warning is issued. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 09:56, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

I cannot agree that there is no explicit requirement that the warning contain a reference to a prior violation. The text you quoted says:

"Prior to any sanctions being imposed, the editor in question shall be given a warning..."

That mean that the warning is given to the editor, whose previous behaviour is questionable, which directly implies previous violation. I cannot imagine a situation when a warning (e.g. a WP:DIGWUREN warning) is being issued to some users without serious reasons. By contrast, the edit notice is addressed to all editors who happen to express interest to some particular article, which implies that they are considered as questionable by default, simply by virtue of their interest to this topic. Therefore, the edit notice you mean should be considered as information, not a formal warning, otherwise that would be a gross violation of AGF.

Re your last paragraph, I cannot agree that the 1RR edit notice is not a real sanction. Usually, placement of some user under 1RR is a sanction. In addition, by converting normal 3RR to 1RR for everyone, we restrict the editor's editing privileges, which may convert good faith editors into involuntary edit warriors: thus, it is much easier to unintentionally exceed 1RR limit then 3RR (even a single interleaving edit, which you may simply overlook, makes you a violator; that is exactly what happened with me when I got my only block).

Moreover, per the same discretionary sanctions at least one article had been indefinitely fully protected, which is tantamount to topic ban of all WP community from its editing, which is the actual sanction, not a warning. The possibility to apply the same sanctions to another article is currently being discussed. In my opinion, this is a very dangerous tendency.

I see no problem with application 1RR to a wide range of the users, however, they should be only the strictly limited list, which includes only those users who had already committed serious violations of our policy. For example, if 1RR is applied per WP:DIGWUREN, it should affect only those users who have already been sanctioned/warned per WP:DIGWUREN. The edit notice (which is a notice, not a warning) should just inform everyone that the users from this list are 1R restricted, or prohibited from making undicussed/unsupported edits to this particular article, and everyone who will edit war will be added to this list. However, the users who committed no violations in this area should not be restricted.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:10, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

PS Let me provide some positive example. The WWII article is a good article, and there was no edit wars there for a long time. The editors working on this article achieved a consensus that all non-minor edits should be discussed on the talk page before they have been made. This rule is being observed voluntarily, and it works perfectly. I agree that in some cases that is not possible, however, the admin may forcefully apply the same rule without restricting the user's editing privileges. It may work as follow:

The edit notice is added to the article similar to that in the WWII article with small addition: "editors violating these rules will be sanctioned per ... (e.g. WP:DIGWUREN)
If some user violates this rule, he may be reported and AE sanctions may be applied to him (including 1RR, topic ban, etc).
The edit made by this user may be reverted by anyone.

As a result, the privileges of good faith editors will not be affected by the discretionary sanctions, and all questionable users will eventually found themselves sanctioned. --Paul Siebert (talk) 16:59, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Informative private e-mail

Hiya. I have received a private e-mail from someone who is currently the subject of a discussion at WP:AN/I. In the e-mail, he makes some statements about himself which I believe may be very relevant to that discussion. Please advise regarding how I should proceed in this matter, if I should do anything at all, that is. John Carter (talk) 21:05, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a bit difficult to provide a firm recommendation without knowing more details about the topic of the current discussion and the nature of the statements in question. Generally speaking, however, the contents of private correspondence should not be disclosed on-wiki without the consent of the author; depending on the correspondence in question, this may be easy or difficult to obtain.

On the other hand, if you have significant concerns regarding any Wikipedia-related email that you've received, you're welcome to forward it to the Arbitration Committee for review. Kirill ^{[talk] [prof]} 09:44, 27 February 2012 (UTC)