Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions/Workshop

This is a page for working on Arbitration decisions. It provides for suggestions by Arbitrators and other users and for comment by arbitrators, the parties and others. After the analysis of /Evidence here and development of proposed principles, findings of fact, and remedies, Arbitrators will vote at /Proposed decision. Anyone who edits should sign all suggestions and comments. Arbitrators will place proposed items they have confidence in on /Proposed decision.

Motions and requests by the parties

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Proposed temporary injunctions

Request for injunction on page moves while the ArbCom case is in-process

1) One of the issues in this case is that certain users have been engaging in hundreds of non-consensus page moves. However, even after filing the ArbCom case, Yaksha (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is continuing to engage in more non-consensus page moves, with no attempt at RM procedure for these articles, and in violation of WikiProject consensus that's already been reached as to how those articles should be named (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Buffy/Episodes). I request that those moves be reverted, and that Yaksha be warned to stop engaging in controversial moves while the ArbCom case is in-process. Also, it is my plan to present evidence which points to the current state of certain categories, and if Yaksha (or anyone) is disrupting those categories, it will make it difficult and confusing to properly present my case. --Elonka 23:24, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

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Despite a polite request by Thatcher131 to avoid engaging in moves [1], Yaksha has indicated an intent to continue with moving pages, unless specifically blocked by an injunction: [2]. --Elonka 01:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

(additional diff from Yaksha) "ArbCom doesn't mean we have to stop at all." [3] --Elonka 01:50, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, you should stop quoting bits and pieces of someone's words and taking them out of context. Thatcher's comments on my talk page implied that i shouldn't move articles because there was a case pending. I said no, because having an ArbCom case going doesn't mean the world stops revolving. If an temporary injunction is needed, then the ArbCom will pass one. It's as simple as that. --`/aksha 02:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI, even the Medcab mediator believed consensus was reached. [4] —Wknight94 (talk) 02:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that an injunction against further moves outside of the RM process would be appropriate, but I fail to see how seeking the views of Wikipedia as a whole through the RM process is disruptive. I encourage the committee to reject this proposed injunction, but instead issue an injunction against television episode page moves outside of RM. Since the majority of editors do not believe that a formal move request is necessary for these articles, using RM is a considerable compromise, and would also be appropriate to gauge community feeling about such moves. I see no reason to paralyze a section of Wikipedia during this arbitration; the RM process, by its nature, is not disruptive. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I see that Yaksha (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is again launching on massive moving sprees, without RM. Can we please get some administrator/ArbCom intervention in this? --Elonka 21:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

As people have pointed out many times already, RM is only required in the case of controversial moves. Has there been one word of complaint about the moves of either Buffy or Angel? Is there any reason to believe such moves were controversial, other than you unilaterally declaring them so? --Milo H Minderbinder 22:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

And Elonka, since you mention "without RM", if moves were to be made with RM would you still complain about them and try to block them with proposed injunctions and other means? --Milo H Minderbinder 22:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Recent and ongoing move requests have shown that there is consensus to conform to the guideline.[5] [6] [7] While Elonka continues to deny the existence of consensus against pre-disambiguation, there is clearly no consensus to change the guideline to support her view, so the guideline should stand. Allowing this injunction essentially endorses the use of ArbCom to subvert consensus and negate the application of a guideline just because there is not unanimous consent. Additionally, if the moves are deemed "controversial", I ask that any injunction at least allow for the moves to be continue through the normal WP:RM procedure. –  Anþony  talk  23:48, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Given the contentious nature of this case, and the fact it revolves around page names, it would be in the best interest of all if people just let it be until the end of this. I endorse this proposed injunction, as it will attempt to reduce conflict during this procedure. Daniel.Bryant ^{[ T · C ]} 01:45, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI, even the Medcab mediator believed consensus was reached. [8] —Wknight94 (talk) 02:38, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, you can just point to past versions of articles if you want, instead of current ones. There's no need to stop moves just to make presenting evidence easier for you. You're claims are also misleading, as Anþony pointed out, there is clearly consensus for the moves. There is also no need to take every page move through a Request Move. Either way, even if a tempoerary injunction is passed to stop me from making moves, Request Moves is still open. With every past Request Move poll finishing at a 4:1 or 5:1 ratio (in favour of support), what makes you think any future Request Moves will proceed differently? Or are you going to ask for a tempoerary injunction to stop me from filing in Request Moves as well? --`/aksha 02:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka has now attempted to use her proposal of a temporary injunction to dissuade closing admins using official-sounding language invoking ArbCom's name[9] [10] from closing move requests that have clear consensus.[11] [12] The RMs have followed all appropriate procedure and have been open for longer than the required 5 days. It should also be noted that the first of these move requests was proposed by Milo H Minderbinder (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), not Yaksha, and so is not even covered by the proposed injunction. –  Anþony  talk  04:06, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose - Personally I think such an injunction serves only to further the interests of one party at the expense of many others. I feel it would be disruptive and therefore I do not think it is feasible nor advisable. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 23:16, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Support - Per the massive volume of Yaksha's page moves, refusal to comply with warnings by both Thatcher131 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) and Jossi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) to reduce her page move amounts, I hereby rescind my opposition and support this motion. ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 22:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Without taking a stance on the naming convention itself, I'll really stick my neck out here and take a stance on the undeniable fact that there is controversy here. FACT: there is currently 215K of postings on the Workshop page, and 115K on the Evidence page. FACT: nearly every "involved party" here is posting dozens of times a day on this issue, with point/counterpoint. If it looks, smells, tastes, feels like a controversy, that's what it is. I honestly don't understand how it can be controversial that there's a controversy here, or disputable that there's a dispute. -- PKtm 22:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

While I certainly agree there's a controversy going on, I think it's obvious that it's about Elonka's disruptive behaviour and not about the guideline itself. If I went to WP:MOS and spent two months insisting that all articles should be in red text, engaging in revert wars, editing the guideline without consensus, and unilaterally declaring MOS "in dispute", I bet it would provoke much heated response and likely end up in arbcom if I didn't stop doing it (probably much quicker than this has). But despite the presence of "controversy" you wouldn't insist that an editor finding an article in red text leave it instead of changing it to black, would you? --Milo H Minderbinder 23:02, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - With all due respect, Yaksha (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) has been sending up red flags with the volume, both in warnings by Jossi (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) prior to Arbitration, the warning Thatcher131 (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) to cease while the arbitration was ongoing, and not to mention my own warning. As well, she's been lighting up pgkbot on the vandalism control network as a high volume wheeler mover for days now. She needs reigned in, at the very least, in my opinion. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 23:09, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

If such behavior truly is disruptive, then there are outlets to deal with that without resorting to an ArbCom injunction. Jossi and Thatcher131 are both admins and could block Yaksha if they felt strongly that he should stop. Several other admins are well aware of the situation and have found nothing wrong. That no admin has yet decided to block Yaksha should be a clear sign to the arbitrators that there is no evidence of disruption and therefore no reason to grant this injunction. –  Anþony  talk  02:37, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Really, this has been here for days and so far, the ArbCom clearly hasn't considered this in need of an "emergency injunction". In case you haven't noticed, this case has been VERY very very publicied. Both from the initial invitations for opinion. And later for Elonka's requests to have me blocked. Moving large amounts of articles is not an offense. So far, Elonka hasn't shown any evidence (let alone proved) that the moves are bad in any way. Having an ArbCom case doesn't mean the rest of Wikipedia has to stop - if something needs to stop for the case, the ArbCom will grant an emergency injunction.

As for setting of your precious bots - exactly what do you expect me to do? Make one move per minute? I'm sorry, but i really don't have that much time to waste. I use tabs, i get all the articles ready. And then i go and click the "move article" button in one go. It saves me time. I'm afraid i really don't care what the bots think.

Either way, we have just one TV series left - the oh so precious Star Trek articles. Almost ironic that Star Trek ended up last. --`/aksha 11:33, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI, Yaksha's next stated tactic is going to be to tomorrow propose a move on one single Star Trek episode page per series, and if she and her allies can pile on to prove a "consensus," she is going to use that as justification to move hundreds of Star Trek articles. [13][14] For the record, I protest this tactic. It is in contradiction to the stated naming guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek#Nomenclature, it is escalating tension during this ArbCom case, and it's just plain tacky (dare I say bad faith?) to propose a major move like this in the middle of the holiday season, while many editors are taking breaks from Wikipedia. --Elonka 03:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for temporary injunction that all television episode moves must go through WP:RM until the arbitration is concluded

1) This is a modification of Elonka's proposed injunction above. I do not believe that proposing moves through WP:RM is disruptive. However, it may be appropriate to restrict moves outside of the WP:RM process during this arbitration. Most of the editors at WP:TV-NC believe that the prior established consensus for that guideline means that WP:RM should not be required for these moves, and Elonka and her supporters believe that it is disruptive to move these articles without proven consensus. Therefore, an appropriate compromise for the duration of this arbitration would be to have all such moves go through WP:RM. It is neither necessary nor appropriate to attempt to stall current move requests which appear to have gained consensus through the normal Wikipedia page moving processes [15] [16].

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This is a good compromise. As Josiah pointed out, we can't have the entire page move portion of Wikipedia stopped for one person. —Wknight94 (talk) 05:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind this either. Request Moves takes a lot longer (5 days + entries get backloged), but it's better than nothing. However, this doesn't seem to be Elonka's interpretation. She has requested that Request Moves be stopped because of this Arb case [17] [18]. I find this to be very inappropriate, the ArbCom has yet to comment (let alone approve) of her proposed injunction. Those two Request Moves were also opened last week, before this case begun. And both of them have technically finished (been open for more than 5 days, we're just waiting for a closing admin now.) Her statement makes it sound like the ArbCom has already approved of her proposition, and that all moves including Request Moves are to be stopped by order of the ArbCom. --`/aksha 05:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Comment - Perhaps we should limit the scope of this to the articles in question? Right now there is significant scope creep in this proposal as it seems to include all TV episode articles on EN - which is simply unfeasible and unnecessary to restrict. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 23:20, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe it would have to be limited specifically to articles regarding single TV episodes, where a move is used to move the article from "<name of episode> (<name of TV series>)" to just "<name of episode>". However, if the ArbCom considers this, i'd like them to keep in mind that a consensus in RM to move one episode article of a TV series basically means there will be consensus to move all the other episode articles in the same TV series. Putting 50+ articles at a time through Request Moves is messy, and it seems like closing admins tend to avoid them (one of the ongoing RM for only about 20 articles has been backlogged for several days now). --`/aksha 00:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment Do you realize just how many single TV episode articles there are on the English Wikipedia? Such an overarching injunction puts an undue burden on the entire user population. I'm not saying it's unreasonable, per se, but it is unfeasible. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:23, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i was the one who went through them to compile the need-to-be-moved list =P. Well, i'm not exactly in support of an injunction at all. But if Elonka decides to push for it, i'd rather this than her earlier proposal. --`/aksha 23:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Request to place a "Disputed" notice at the top of Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)

1) Multiple disputants have indicated intent to continue moving articles, even while the ArbCom case is proceeding. A request for an injunction on these specific types of moves has not yet been responded to by the committee. In the meantime, it seems to me that it would make sense to at least place a "disputed" tag at the top of the guideline, since it is repeatedly being referred to by disputants as a "consensus guideline." Multiple attempts to add a dispute tag are just being reverted [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34], to the point that the page has been protected multiple times [35][36]. I request that ArbCom issue a ruling that the guideline should be marked as disputed, until the case is concluded. --Elonka 23:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

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It seems to me that placing a "disputed" tag on the guideline is roughly equivalent to admitting Elonka's claim that the guideline does not have consensus, which is presumably one of the subjects of this arbitration. If there is consensus for the guideline, then by definition it is not significantly disputed. A handful of people who disagree with a guideline do not constitute a dispute, no matter how vocal they are. Contrariwise, if there is a dispute, then there is not consensus. This is the very heart of the matter under debate.

Elonka is effectively asking for a verdict while the trial is still ongoing. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:11, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I am not asking for a verdict, I am asking for a cease-fire. Especially with Yaksha pushing through hundreds of page moves "per TV-NC", it would seem reasonable to at least flag the "episode naming" section of the guideline as currently being one of the issues of this ArbCom case. I would be happy even with a simple {{note}} in that section. --Elonka 03:28, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

These page moves are apart of normal activity, they are not an attack on someone. "Cease-fire" would not apply here. They do not hurt your argument, or help it. -- Ned Scott 03:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

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Just so we're perfectly clear, Elonka, do you consider the presence of a "disputed" tag on a guideline to mean that that guideline is suspended and that people shouldn't use it while the tag is present? --Milo H Minderbinder 23:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I mean for the tag to notify those who are reading the page, that elements of the guideline are in dispute. It can draw their attention to the talk page, or to the ArbCom proceeding, and anyone reading the guideline can then make up their own minds from there as to whether or not they wish to follow the guideline while the ArbCom proceeding is in-process. I believe that it is unprofessional to not have a tag on the page, since it implies that all elements of the guideline are non-controversial. As a compromise, I would be willing to accept a tag which flagged only the "episode titling" section as controversial, rather than marking the entire guideline. Or, just put wording directly into that section of the guideline, stating that the naming convention is controversial, and drawing people's attention to the talk page or ArbCom ruling. It doesn't have to be an official tag, but there does have to be some sort of notice there. --Elonka 23:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka's clear intent is to add prejudicial language to the guideline supporting her view that the guideline does not have consensus support and is not in effect. When she has been (temporarily) successful in marking the guideline as disputed, she has used that tag subsequently as reason not to apply the guideline.[37] If a vocal minority were sufficient to mark a guideline or policy disputed, most of them would require such a notice. Elonka and Matthew Fenton have been only people to push forcefully for the tag. A few more have acquiesced just to end the edit war, but there is clearly no consensus to add it. –  Anþony  talk  23:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

There is NO dispute about the guideline itself. Our dispute isn't about changing the guideline, or about whether it's right or wrong. The disput is about how to use the guideline - mainly the issue of whether wikiprojects can have exceptions. And Elonka's insistence that the moves are causing wikipedia-wide havoc and disruption. It's almost funny how this thing turns out. Elonka adds the disputed tag, someone removes it, it gets added again, then removed...etc. Then a talk page section is created to argue about whether we want the tag. Then Elonka goes "look, there's OBVIOUSLY a dispute", pointing at the edit war on the guideline page and the argument on the talk page. When in actual fact, both of those things are the result of Elonka adding the tag in the first place. --`/aksha 01:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed final decision

Proposed principles

Guidelines and exceptions

1) Guidelines are recommendations which by definition, (and by WP:IAR), "not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception"

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I like it. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Per my comment below, the key words here are common sense. Anyone wanting an exception should be prepared to have a very convincing, rational argument for it, and rigourously defend its continued use over time, to be able to go against guidelines that are the product of consensus in the wider Wikipedia. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a wiki and it's a guideline. Can't agree more TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Exceptions must be backed with reasoning

1) Guidelines should be treated with "common sense", especially when it comes to applying exceptions. Ignore All Rules also works on the premise that ignoring a rule will "improve wikipedia". These two principles therefore do NOT allow for exceptions that are not backed up by any reasoning.

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Definitely agree. IAR is not a loophole out of anything and everything. -- Ned Scott 21:37, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. They must also be continually defended as still valid over time. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

A new concensus theoretically can always be reached. As such new/changed principles/guidelines will always be needed. You can see this even clearly in this case. The rule was a non-issue up untill September, simply because there was too little scope for enough people to care. Now that there is scope apparently discussion needs to take place again - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Reasons for exceptions

1) If something is wrong, then it's never too late to correct it. "That's the way it's always been" is not a valid reason for an exception.

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an important principle in this case, and support it strongly. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

A very good point. -- Ned Scott 21:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. Wikipedia is not paper. --BlueSquadronRaven 01:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Not paper indeed. However point 1 does not treat a reason for an exception. If something is factually wrong then so be it. However an exception to a guideline does not necessarily relate to that. Exceptions should be exceptions because they don't fit the "generalized scope" fully. If they do fit the scope then either the guidelines need to change, or the so called exception should be fixed. Other options are expanding into more detailed scopes, or allowing more freedom in a more "general scope". - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus

1) Consensus does not mean everyone must agree.

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

There's some overlap with two principles below. These all need to be consolidated somehow IMHO. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Exactly which two are you referring to? --`/aksha 11:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:43, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. We have guidelines about this as well don't we ? - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Stalling

1) Using stalling methods to drag on a dispute is disruptive

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Withdrawn. I'll re-propose this at the bottom with a better explaination of 'stalling'. --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

What do you mean by "stalling?" I'm not sure in what cases this principle would apply. Thanks, TheronJ 14:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

To me, "stalling" most applies here in that several good compromises and arguments were completely ignored in this case. Not agreed to, not refuted - simply treated as though they had never been uttered. I'll be adding a section to my evidence on this subject soon since it played a very big role in escalating tension and fueling incivility instead of quelling it. The latest example is the MedCab guy's ruling that consensus had been reached. There has been no acknowledgement of that fact. It's as though it never happened. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - Perhaps you should clarify the wording here so it is obvious what the intended meaning of "stalling" is. WP:SNOW may be a good, and very applicable reference here. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 23:23, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProjects

1) WikiProjects do not have power, because all editors are free to join or leave a wikiproject at any time. Wikiprojects exist to help coordinate editors of similar interest, they do not have authority or ownership over articles.

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

• I would clarify that WikiProjects do not have power by being a project alone, but can be a place where consensus building discussion can happen. In that sense, they are a tool rather than a "governing body". -- Ned Scott 09:15, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose - Wikipedia is built on consensus. The members of Wikiprojects do not have any less, or any more, value that of any other Wikipedian. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 23:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

umm...did you misread my proposal or am i misreading your comment? Because that's exactly what i'm saying - that Wikiprojects (and editors in them) on their own don't have any 'special' power over their articles. --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - The implication is that members of a Wikiproject are useless and the project itself is as well. This is a very abhorrent implication for Wikipedia, as it denies the fundamental basis of Wikipedia. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 17:24, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

They're not useless. As the proposed principal says, wikiproject exist to help coordinate editors. But in terms of authority, they are useless. Since when did a wikiproject ever have 'power' over articles? --`/aksha 23:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

How about one of these:

1. Wikiprojects exist to help coordinate editors of similar interest, not to claim authority or ownership over a group of articles
2. Wikiprojects exist to help coordinate editors of similar interest and must not violate WP:OWN
3. Using Wikiprojects to claim ownership of articles is a violation of WP:OWN
4. Using Wikiprojects to claim extra weight in disputes is a violation of WP:OWN

Any of those sound good? Am I on the right trail at least? —Wknight94 (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I like #1 best — it seems the most neutrally worded. The word "ownership" in #1 should be enough of an indication towards WP:OWN — if not, you could pipe it as "ownership". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I would go with #1 as well. -- Ned Scott 21:41, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

1. 1 has my support. --BlueSquadronRaven 22:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I think Ned's comment is the more appropriate. --BlueSquadronRaven 01:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Although they do not have control or ownership, I always consider them to do have a sort of "creative authority" over the articles that they focus on. Many wikiprojects have their own sets of guidelines about formatting of their articles. I usually have these guidelines at the same level as the MoS in my perception. They are not set in stone, but usually they simply DO benefit the clarity and readability of the articles they apply to. Most ARE based on the primary guidelines and policies and they were usually the result of concensus by a set of editors. The WPs might have a very high rotation, but the club of editors that reach most of the policies and guidelines is not soo small either, with also a very high editor rotation. - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

We're simply saying that placing a label of "WikiProject" does not give one authority alone. Guidelines, exceptions, additions, etc, are always welcome with reasonable logic and open discussion. So I'm not sure if we actually disagree here. Consensus building discussions should be given weight, which can and does happen in WikiProjects. I'm apart of a few WikiProjects where we've come up with localized guidelines and advice, but I believe it's our discussions that gives those guidelines power, not our label of "Project". -- Ned Scott 02:53, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Small consensus vs. large consensus

1) A consensus among a small group of editors can be over-ridden by a consensus amoung a larger group of editors (e.g. a wikipedia-wide consensus).

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is also a key element in this dispute, and I support its inclusion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. I'd also like to add that one could see the same with small group vs small group or large group vs large group, because consensus can change. Just because one group came to a conclusion does not mean that is the end of it. In the case of small vs large, though, we should default to the large (e.g. Wikipedia-wide) and have the small take the burden of changing the consensus. The fact that the small is attempting to do this does not actually change consensus or create a lack of consensus. -- Ned Scott 07:01, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed, or there would be chaos. --BlueSquadronRaven 01:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. diversity and numbers of the wider group even though perhaps slim in representation is simply the most powerful and the way the whole of wikipedia is ruled TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Request Moves

1) Request Moves is a fair and open way to propose a potentially controversial move.

Comment by Arbitrators:

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Proposed --`/aksha 12:30, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Related to this, is WP:RM mandatory? That is, is it absolutely necessary to follow those procedures if consensus has already been determined using other methods or if the issues are substantially the same as a recently successful move request? –  Anþony  talk  04:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

No, it's not. The Request Moves page itself instructs that not ALL moves *have* to be made through Request Moves. --`/aksha 10:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

An interesting question is the definition of "controversial". I can see someone using the existence of this ArbCom case as proof that every television episode article move is controversial. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

In which case, put it through Requested Moves and let it flow. If there is a compelling argument it is not an impediment, and the results of the request can be used to uphold the move at a later time, if someone were to move it again without consensus. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by BlueSquadronRaven (talk • contribs) 12:04, 13 December 2006 UTC.

They are controversial if they don't fit the guidelines. Beyond that everything should be free until reverted by others. If reverted reach consencus. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines and polling

1) By longstanding Wikipedia tradition, guidelines are established by discussion, not voting.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Supported. Polls are good a good indicator, but it's the discussions that establish the consensus and therefore the guidelines. --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The poll was just one form of feedback, and not the decision making process itself. -- Ned Scott 07:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Absolutely. Discussion with rational arguments should be the de facto standard for establishing consensus on a matter, not polls. --BlueSquadronRaven 00:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. guidelines are established trough discussion backed with arguments. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Incomplete. Guidelines are primarily determined by convention, and convention is primarily determined by behavior. Discussion is used to work out conflicts, and polling is sometimes used to measure the level of conflict. --Serge 21:27, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Polling and consensus

1) A poll may be used as a crude gauge of editor opinions, but does not by itself establish consensus.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

That depends on how you word the vote of course. If you are pushing for getting concensus, then you can't expect people to react as if it's not about that. Always word your vote to make clear you are asking for opionions and not about what you want to mark as "concensus". TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree. --Serge 21:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Just for clarification, Serge, are you agreeing with the proposed principle or with DJ's comment? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:35, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

If a poll is flawed, that is not an argument to hold another one.

1) As Wikipedia:Discuss, don't vote says, "If a poll was called on an issue recently, there is usually no reason to call a second poll, even if you think that consensus may have changed or that the first poll was conducted unfairly. If you disagree with the "majority" opinion, simply remember that the poll is not binding and continue discussions."

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I would agree with this, TheronJ, as long as discussion took place afterwards. In this case, it did. Also, in this case, there was no proof that the first poll was flawed anyway. On the contrary, a canvass of people who voted with the majority resulted in several of those people affirming their position and none of those people agreeing that the poll was flawed. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is true, but I think it's worth clarifying that even if the poll had been flawed, that would not be a reason to hold another one. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this principle. If a poll or survey is conducted, but it's an obvious mess, it's reasonable to scrap it and start over. Especially if multiple participants are calling for it to be restarted, and other participants are repeatedly referring to the results of the (bad) poll to reinforce their arguments. --Elonka 20:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

To be fair, I wrote that paragraph yesterday, with this specific dispute in mind. I think it's right, and it seems to have gotten acceptance from the editors active on DDV, but I would be interested in hearing other opinions. TheronJ 14:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Oops! I should have checked the history. Well, it's a fine and intelligent sentiment anyway. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:05, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, especially as polls are non-binding. If everyone's opinion has come out in discussions, there's no need. --BlueSquadronRaven 01:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

As long as the premise/intent of the vote was clear to all parties. Most often polls are edited because voters are not fully getting the premise of the original question. However a poll trough it's comments usually represents a much better answer, then trough it's vote results. Ergo repeatedly "appealing" on "technicalities" is undesired and unnecessary. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Discussion and consensus

1) In discussion, Wikipedia editors will propose, support, or reject arguments. When an editor's arguments gain little or no support, it is appropriate to say that they are unsupported by consensus.

Comment by Arbitrators:

This has been my experience. It's usually easy enough to tell. Best to abandon solutions most don't like. Fred Bauder 22:12, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This is unclear as currently written. If 6 editors argue "A", and 3 editors argue "B", I agree that there is clearly no concensus for "B". The trickier question is whether there is a consensus for "A". Which did you mean to imply? Thanks, TheronJ 14:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I meant to suggest that if 20 editors argue "A", 3 editors argue "B" and the arguments used by the supporters of "B" are clearly rejected as unsupported by either Wikipedia guidelines, practices, or logic, there is a consensus for "A". But I'm not sure how to say that in a way that doesn't seem like "majority rules". I'm trying to say that when there is both a supermajority and reason on one side, and a tiny minority using faulty arguments on the other, there's a consensus for the former. Any suggestions for improvements of wording are welcome. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

The most relevant guideline is the "Consensus vs. supermajority" section of WP:CONSENSUS. I'm not sure which way it cuts in this case, though. TheronJ 19:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Obtaining consensus to move one page, does not imply consensus to move all pages in that subject area

1) If there is any controversy about a move, WP:RM procedures should be followed. If it is intended to move a group of pages, then all affected pages should be listed in the RM, and notices should be placed on the talk page of all articles to be affected, so that editors who are involved with those articles can be alerted to the discussion.--Elonka 18:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Oppose. The proposal is way too vague since "subject area" can be very small or very huge (i.e. 'science' is a subject area, then again, 'lost episodes' is also a subject area). --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I very much disagree with this. The idea here is that the same arguments and rationales would apply to each RM. There's no point in having the same discussion over and over again like that. -- Ned Scott 07:09, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Arbitrators should consider that this would allow a small minority, even a single person, to force a pointless and lengthy procedure for thousands of moves when the outcome for each is clear. Enforcing any changes to the naming conventions guidelines would become completely unmangeable. –  Anþony  talk  19:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. I see this a management hell for the other editors in wikipedia. If there is consensus on one page/issue or even set of pages, then that concensus should apply to all similar pages untill concensus is reached that the similar pages don't fit the original consensus (ergo are not similar enough). Additionally the proces of tagging and keeping track of all that is in the same category/scope as the disputed article is simply an impossible task TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

A majority does not mean a consensus

1) Wikipedia does not run by "majority rule", it runs by consensus, which is achieved by civil and good faith communication between interested editors. When there is significant opposition to a proposed course of action from multiple editors, even if those editors are in the "minority", consensus has not been achieved. --Elonka 18:51, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Whether this applies depends on the sort of issue which is at stake. If a core guideline is under discussion, that is one thing; if a trivial naming convention is at issue, that is another. Fred Bauder 22:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

I might like to see this fleshed out. As is, it leaves every issue the opportunity to end up at ArbCom as long as a single editor alleges - not even proves but just alleges - bad faith. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:21, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I did not phrase it as "single editor". I phrased it as "significant opposition ... from multiple editors." --Elonka 20:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

True. The point I clumsily tried to make (too many sentence fragments in too many windows) was that there's no definition of "significant opposition". Three people could claim they are "significant opposition" - or even one person yelling really loud - even in the face of 25+ people clearly stating their opinion to the contrary. Who says what constitutes significant? —Wknight94 (talk) 21:00, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if a few or a lot are opposing, what matters is how rational their argument is. I don't think anyone disagrees with how Wikipedia is run. (at least in the context of this debate). -- Ned Scott 22:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This is poorly worded. How many is "Multiple?" Two? Three? Twenty? What percentage of the minority? 1%? 2%? 15%? Can you imagine if two editors were able to force months-long disputes on items the rest of Wikipedia has taken for granted for years? Where is the line drawn between "No consensus" and "disruptive behaviour"? --BlueSquadronRaven 00:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka - since a majority doesn't automatically mean consensus, then why are you so insistent on redoing the poll? If the poll had been redone and had the same result, you'd still say there was no consensus (since majority /= consensus). And if a second poll miraculously had the opposite result, then the other side could claim there wasn't consensus (since majority /= consensus). "Majority doesn't equal consensus" seems like an argument for less polling, not more. --Milo H Minderbinder 14:48, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

A poll is useful for testing consensus. It would provide a structure to clarify the exact issue that is being discussed. It would also provide a format by which all interested editors could participate in an equal way. The discussion at NC (and now here at the RfAr) has been fast-moving, difficult to follow, contentious, and with a large number of editors, many of whom self-admittedly have been having trouble keeping up with everything. We've had what, seven archives now, in six weeks of discussion? It's not reasonable to assume that most editors would take the time to read all of that. However, many of the editors do have opinions on the matter, they're just not interested in spending hours each day keeping up with the discussion, nor stating their own opinions over and over and over again, nor are they interested in wading into a discussion with as much acrimony and incivility as has been evidenced. A clean poll would remove the ambiguity and claims of "deck-stacking" that existed with the old one. It would also show for sure just who's still interested in the issue.

I'd like to see agreement on wording ahead of time, then a strict format of each editor posting their opinion and their reasoning at this stage in the discussion. Further, the structure should be "one editor, one comment", rather than every time someone "votes," they immediately get 2 or 3 people arguing with them (a problem we've had with other polls). Rebuttals and further opinions should go in a lower "Discussion" section. The poll should be allowed to run for a minimum of one week (probably two, considering that it's running during Xmas and not everyone will be on Wikipedia every day).

Let's run a poll, let individual editors speak for themselves as to their current stand on the situation, and see what we've got. Maybe consensus will be clear, maybe it won't, but at least we'll have a solid "this is what people currently think" section to help us figure out how to proceed. --Elonka 19:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure which editors you have in mind that allegedly wanted to participate but didn't. Who are they? And why didn't they participate in the three Requests for Moves, which were easy to follow, only required giving a statement once, followed a strict format, and ran for at least a week? I'm a bit shocked that you're still proposing that the poll be redone - people have had plenty of opportunity to state what they think, the last thing we need is to ask everyone to state their position again. --Milo H Minderbinder 19:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"Deck-stacking" - that's a refreshing new twist. How do you propose to eliminate that? Tell everyone involved so far to not vote until a certain day? The unfairness of that is part of what dissuades folks here (like Radiant! and WizardryDragon) from wanting to do a poll at all. This idea of keeping things nice and quiet so timid people can vote in peace is contrary to community discussion and also has not been proven to be an issue - PKtm is the single person I've heard saying that he simply did not vote because of the conditions (and he's done a poor job of proving that out as well). If anything, it sounds a little more like meatpuppetry. —Wknight94 (talk) 19:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Majority might not automatically connect to Consensus, however it is a strong indicator for the consensus. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is reasonable for a WikiProject to create guidelines for the articles within its sphere of influence

1) A group of interested editors, such as with a WikiProject, may choose to create reasonable guidelines for the articles that they are dealing with, to provide for a consistent look and feel in those articles.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Sure Fred Bauder 22:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 20:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good - as long as their opinion is not given some undue weight because of their project membership. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

"Consistent look" within reason. Generally, WikiProjects, just like any other group of editors, should follow the WP:MOS and so on. Also, WikiProjects should not look for reasons to be exempt, and the value of following consistent style guidelines wikipedia-wide should be emphasized. A WikiProject is free to make these suggestions, but such guidelines are not binding and can be reevaluated at any time (just like everything else). -- Ned Scott 22:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Yep. And if the guidelines appear to come into conflict with Wikipedia-wide guidelines, the members of a WikiProject should be able to explain why their particular set of articles benefit from an exception from general Wikipedia guidelines. If no such explanation is forthcoming (or the explanation is "because we like it this way"), the larger guideline should prevail, as it presumably reflects the views of a wider spectrum of Wikipedia editors. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Isn't Wikipedia as a whole one big project? Of course any group of editors may choose to create "reasonable guidelines" for a group of articles. But Wikipedia as a whole also creates "reasonable guidelines" for all wikipedia articles (things like the manuals of style, WP:D, naming conventions...etc.) Small consensus shouldn't have higher piority than a larger consensus. --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

What happens when an article is within the "sphere of influence" of multiple projects, and they have different guidelines? Thatcher131 23:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

What happens to good-faith edits made by those outside of the WikiProject that aren't in keeping with guidelines? And is this to imply that WikiProjects can overrule established Wikipedia-wide guidelines if they agree upon it? This proposal seems in conflict with WP:OWN, except that it is the members of a Project, rather than an individual editor, that are claiming it as theirs. The Project should have to justify every exception granted them, and be prepared to continually defend it as valid over time. --BlueSquadronRaven 00:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiprocess should take care of most conflicts. You can't expect a casual editor to conform to arbitrary naming conventions, but no reason not to move a newly created article to a new title. Fred Bauder 22:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

This would appear to be a critical aspect of "coordinating a group of editors with similar interests" - the purpose of a wikiproject. Once a wikiproject has a standard which works for their project, they should consider proposing it as a guideline (possibly more generalised) for applicable parent/wider scope wikiprojects, MOS, naming conventions etc., or documenting the exception (with reasons) as appropriate. To answer Thatcher131 about conflict between projects: discussion and consensus may lead to modifications from both groups, or exceptions documented by either of them. This must happen all the time with wikiprojects focussed on types of geographic feature (such as mountains or rivers) overlapping with wikiprojects for countries or regions. --Scott Davis ^Talk 03:34, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

A wikiproject is a collaboration and coordination effort between editors with a similar interest. As such they usually are just as much a concensus as many discussions end up being. The projects discussion is just more focused on one location and more bound to a tight group of editors. Their power stretches as far as their edits are condoned by the policies and guidelines and the larger group of wiki editors. If a higher platform (that means any proces in which editors from outside the project's focus contribute) comes to the concensus that the edits of the project editors is not benefitting the greater good of wikipedia, then the WikiProject should adapt their guidelines in my eyes. - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines are backed by consensus

1) Per Wikipedia:Guideline, a guideline represents the consensus recommendations of Wikipedia editors. If an element of a guideline does not represent consensus, it should either be removed, or notated as being controversial.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 20:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, this supports my removal of the Star Trek example from WP:TV-NC. -- Ned Scott 07:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Which, i must add, is what set this whole ordeal off. --`/aksha 14:15, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Per my comments under A majority does not mean a consensus above, how few editors out of the discussion constitute a lack of consensus? --BlueSquadronRaven 00:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

In this case (the Star Trek episodes exception), there was no traceable discussion (And I trust quite a few editors have tried to find it) that showed why the exception had been added and what the benefits of said exception was. In that case there clearly never was consensus. I'm guessing that this is the premise of this point. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe that Elonka is referring to her efforts to have WP:TV-NC labelled as a disputed guideline. That the argument she is proposing also supports the removal of the Star Trek example is merely an irony. The unresolved question here is exactly how widespread an objection needs to be before a guideline can be characterized as "controversial" or "disputed". —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines are not policies

1) Wikipedia guidelines are recommendations, and not policy. They are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 20:26, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is now covered completely in the "Guidelines and exceptions" principle proposal above. Elonka, if you agree with this, you should sign a "support" there. Let's try and keep this as simple as we can. --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

How does this differ from #Guidelines and exceptions above? They seem to be saying the same thing (something I, and I think most Wikipedians, would agree with, by the way). —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

The key words above are common sense. Anyone wanting an exception should be prepared to have a very convincing, rational argument for it, and rigourously defend its continued use over time, to be able to go against guidelines that are the product of consensus in the wider Wikipedia. --BlueSquadronRaven 00:58, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

 Clerk note: Please do not strike out proposals that you did not write. Also, comments of others can be moved to the appropriate place but should not be deleted. Thatcher131 21:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I assumed before that Elonka somehow missed #Guidelines and exceptions, but in "un-withdrawing" it, she confirms that she feels the principles are distinct. In what ways are they different? Are you trying to stress that "guidelines are not policy"? It seems like a red herring. Following WP:IAR, even policy is subject to exceptions, if less frequently than guidelines. –  Anþony  talk  22:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka wrote this proposal but Yakasha struck it out, which was improper, but no harm done. Having variations on a theme for the arbitrators to look at is not necessarily a problem. Thatcher131 23:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka un-struck it herself[38], meaning she must be aware of the comparison to #Guidelines and exceptions but still feels this principle is necessary. I'm not opposed to working out the right phrasing, but the implication is that somehow the sentiment here is different. I'd still like to know what Elonka thinks that difference is. –  Anþony  talk  23:33, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Apologies for striking this one out. I'd assumed Elonka had simply missed my first proposal, so since the two are basically the same, i didn't think she'd mind. Anyhow, i'd also like to pose the question to Elonka now - how exactly is this different from my first principal proposal? --`/aksha 23:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose: Policies aren't set in stone either. Both have a very strong level of being a "semi-law". The policies have this the strongest, but many of the guidelines have a reached a similar strong feeling. Policies mostly deal with the primary premise of wikipedia and with editor behaviour within the wikipedia world. Guidelines are mostly there to help the editors shape their articles to make wikipedia a well readable encyclopedia. The guidelines serve the encyclopedia reader more then they serve the editors you could say. Both are not set in stone, but both are very much a selfgoverning rule. It simply is all about "common sense". TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

It is reasonable to conduct a poll or survey when large numbers of editors are involved

1) When many editors are involved in a fast-moving discussion, it is reasonable to conduct a poll or survey to help gauge opinion. Though not intended as a binding vote, a survey provides a structured format such that all parties are clear on exactly what is being discussed, and ensures that all editors' voices are heard in an equal way. --Elonka 20:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 20:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

This is another issue I don't think anyone actually disagrees on. The disagreement comes later on, on how significant or how vital a poll is. -- Ned Scott 22:27, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Ned here — I think we all agree on this. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 22:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

If we are all in agreement on this, then why were you so opposed to running a survey at the NC page? --Elonka 01:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

We're not. We ran a poll. Between that and the discussion during and after, community opinion was clear. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:01, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

How large a number of editors? If not binding, it should not be insisted upon over consensus reached by discussion, per the above. --BlueSquadronRaven 01:00, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Stalling (2)

1) Stalling is disruptive. Stalling here means deliberately acting to length a dispute and/or stir up unneeded debate. This mainly refers to editors selectively ignoring compromises and sound arguments to create the illusion of there still being an 'active dispute'.

Per WP:SNOW, editors should not be "using wikipedia policies and guidelines as a filibuster", if something doesnt' have a 'snowball's chance in hell' of gaining consensus, there's no need to run it through all the process (e.g. polls, mediation, request moves).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 01:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

In general, I agree with this. I'd say it would be ok if someone wanted to keep talking about an issue, but those editors should at least acknowledge that they are challenging the consensus not creating it or saying it doesn't exist. -- Ned Scott 07:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. It should be grounds for a block, given suitable evidence. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm with Raven on this one TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Hey...I found a yellow snowball with an "E" on it! Let's hope it doesn't come to that, Blue. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 21:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Episodes of the same TV series

1) If a Request Move shows consensus to move one episode article of a certain TV series, then it's safe to say there is consensus to move all the other episode articles of the same TV series.

For example, This Request Move shows consensus to move Clash of the Turtle Titans (TMNT 2003 Episode) to just Clash of the Turtle Titans. It's therefore safe to say there would also be consensus to move all the other episode articles from the TMNT03 TV series given that they're being moved for the same reason (i.e. to remove unneeded disambiguation).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 01:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC) - Withdrawn and re-proposed as per Anthony's suggestions below. --`/aksha 11:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Anthony, below. Informally, it certainly makes sense to say that the existing move requests show a pattern of support for the naming convention, and that further move requests are likely to have the same effect. From that, one can logically extrapolate that further move requests in compliance with that naming convention are unnecessary under WP:SNOW. However, I don't think that this wording is clear enough to be used as a "principle". Perhaps the underlying principle you're looking for here is: "If a series of move requests in compliance with a naming convention consistently yield the same result, it is reasonable to extrapolate that result into support for that naming convention." —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

This is too specific and too general at the same time. If there is consensus to move "Episode Alpha (Series)" to "Episode Alpha", that does not imply that there is consensus to move "Episode Beta (Series)" to "Puple Monkey Dishwasher". Try: Moving an article to comply with an established naming convention which has broad consensus support does not require a formal move request. –  Anþony  talk  03:10, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i was specifically referring to moves of "<name of episode> (<name of TV series>)" --> "<name of episode>". But i guess you're right. I'll cross this one out and use your working for it. --`/aksha 11:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Purpose of the title

1) The purpose of the title of an article is not categorization, grouping, or to 'give context' to a topic.

The Category namespace on Wikipedia serves the purpose of categorizing similar articles (e.g. grouping together all episode articles of one TV series). The title of an article does not serve this purpose.

The first sentence of an article serves the purpose of giving context to a topic (e.g. "Dark Angel" is an TV episode from the TV series...etc). The title of an article does not need to serve this purpose.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 01:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Support, although this seems so obvious to me that it's somewhat flabbergasting to think that Arbitrators would need to state it. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:38, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. It's so basic it shouldn't need to be here, but, that's been thought of a lot of Wiki's principals on style. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:47, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Disagree, I think. What is the purpose of a title? IMHO, it's to describe the material in the article accurately and uniquely. Given that context, a title might give context to an article. (Certainly, if I proposed to rename "Dark Angel (TV series)" to "0100100111" or "Dark Angel (second article on Wikipedia with that name)", that would present problems). TheronJ 20:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

A counterexample is Don Denkinger. Do you know who that is? If not, does that mean I need to call it Don Denkinger (umpire)? Don't know what an umpire is? How about Don Denkinger (baseball referee)? Don't know anything about sports so you don't know what a referee is? Now I'm at Don Denkinger (baseball game judicial person). Where does it end? WP:NC says to use the most common name for a subject. WP:D says to only use a disambiguating tag when an article title is ambiguous, meaning more than one subject share the same name. There's nothing ambiguous about "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues". WP:D says "A disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses". It doesn't say "An explanatory word or phrase..." or "A decorative word or phrase..." or "A consistent word or phrase..." —Wknight94 (talk) 21:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd also like to point readers to my comment here, when I pointed out,

The job of a Wikipedia article's title isn't to provide context for the article's subject: the article does that. Nor is it to categorize them: the category system does that. The job of the title is to provide a file name that's clear, accurate, and unambiguous. Just because most readers won't know the names of episodes of The Simpsons is not an argument for moving Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire to Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire (The Simpsons episode).

(See also the context of this comment. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 21:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. The first sentence is there to create the "setting" of the article. This is not up to the title of the article. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• Likewise agreed. Sometimes basic points such as this are what get forgotten during contentious debates. I believe this be a core principal to this case, which leads directly to the understanding of when/if disambiguation is appropriate. It's paralleled in point two of my proposed finding below. --Leflyman^Talk 21:10, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
• On the other hand, if there is any doubt that a title has one ubiquitous use (if there is a chance in hell that it might later need to be moved, if the idea of adding parentheses doesn't sound completely absurd), redirects from the more specific titles to the stand-alone titles can and should exist. At a minimum they will help avoid the creation of duplicate articles. For example Don Denkinger (umpire) should clearly redirect to Don Denkinger, to aid accidental links (which need not be "fixed", when they aren't broken, as they might have to be changed back if another person with the same name gets an article). It's just a matter of planning ahead. This technique may also be useful for certain templates which assume a consistent naming convention for linking (when in fact there isn't). More importantly, trailing redirects should rarely be deleted following a page move (unless the move was to revert vandalism, or the previous title was patently misleading). Looking at the move logs, I see that Not in Portland (Lost) was deleted instead of kept as a redirect back to Not in Portland. Why is this? — CharlotteWebb 09:44, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Not in Portland's deletion was unrelated to this situation. It's an un-aired episode and the article was deleted because we did not have adequate sources for the title itself (I think it was deleted 2 or 3 times for this reason, actually). -- Ned Scott 11:04, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The page history for Not in Portland doesn't have record of it being moved from Not in Portland (Lost). Since it was deleted ealier for being an un-aired episode - it must have been created without the disambiguation in the first place, so Not in Portland (Lost) never actually existed. May as well go make one now. --`/aksha 11:11, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not imagining things [39] . — CharlotteWebb 11:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, but that move was on October 29. The page was subsequently deleted (and recreated, and deleted again several times). The current incarnation, which "stuck", was created on December 7. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 11:43, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Admins regularly delete redirects like the ones you are proposing, CharlotteWebb. The idea is that no one is going to type in "Don Denkinger (umpire)" if they want to find an article about Don Denkinger. That makes it a speedy delete candidate per WP:CSD#R3. I've seen admins delete such redirects and I've seen others refuse to delete such redirects. Maybe that's a good topic for a separate discussion. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:14, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

If that occurred it would be an improper use of the "implausible typo" criteria — because the title is not implausible, nor does it contain any typographical error. They might not enter "Firstname Lastname (occupation)" in the search box, but they might link to it from another article if they do are unaware that we currently have only one article about a person with that name (or that the person they are thinking is considered more notable than any others that might exist, in the case of primary topics). RFD guidelines say "avoid deleting redirects if they would aid accidental linking and make the creation of duplicate articles less likely". — CharlotteWebb 23:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I still can't get behind this. Who would accidentally link to Don Denkinger (umpire)? That clause is for something like Pfizer, Inc. which someone might link to not knowing that Pfizer already exists. That's a plausible typo. Using your logic, every article would have a dozen redirects to it or more. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Who would link to Cricket (sport)? Somebody who (just like I said above) doesn't know that their intended target is actually the primary topic or maybe even the only topic, in the case of Denkinger. "Typo", by the way, is a gross mis-characterization... none of these examples (yours or mine) have anything to do with typographical error. — CharlotteWebb 04:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

If you want to actually debate this then it probably should be done somewhere else. Back on topic, the redirect deletion of Not in Portland was unrelated to this issue. -- Ned Scott 06:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Alternative forms

1) In cases where there are two or more acceptable form of spelling or title, disambiguation and redirects are used to assist the reader in finding articles on the subject. In instances where there is no clear basis for preference of one usage over another, an arbitrary decision may be made, for example, in the case of British versus American spelling the article created first determines the title.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Support. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. there is no point in doing it in a more complex way. However if consensus can be reached that for instance the importance of one the articles has become so much more relevant that a change is in order that still would always be possible of course. You could argue for instance that a 2 year TV show is much less important then an equally named 400 year war. Howver if the name of that show became popluar lingo/slang for instance that might change. (and let's not try and discuss this example) TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Conscious responsible editing

1) Wikipedia editors and administrators are expected to notice when a conflict occurs between alternate forms and to use and accept an effective decision making process, arbitrary if necessary, which settles the conflict.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Serious disputes should only occur over vital matters. When a squabble develops over a trivial matter the responsible thing to do is to figuratively flip a coin and move on. This could be expressed as a straw poll. Fred Bauder 22:33, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Support this. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Support, with strong emphasis on the "an effective decision making process, arbitrary if necessary, which settles the conflict" part. --`/aksha 11:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! --BlueSquadronRaven 19:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Definetly. conflicts can't persist forever. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Use of parenthesis for disambiguation

1) Parentheses are frequently used for disambiguation on Wikipedia, Wikipedia:Disambiguation and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages) but their use is not a required method.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Fair enough. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Partially agreed. Personally I always try to avoid parentheses, unless disambiguation can only be achieved trough "categorization" of the different names. We need to remember however that in this case the things in question all have very specific names that were rewarded to them by mostly their writers. The name needs to be distinguisable from the "added" disambiguation in that case in my opinion. Adding quotes (the preferred way of writing the episode name) to all the article titles seems more redicilious to me than adding the disambiguation in parentheses - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This would only be relevant if alternate methods of disambiguation (such as punctuation Jeopardy!, pseudo-prefixes Florida State Road 5, commas Eugene, Oregon, etc.) had been proposed, which doesn't appear to be true. The "not a required method" clause was meant to address the possibility of other options for titles that are not unique and/or ubiquitous. The dispute here involves, for the most part, titles which are currently at least unique. — CharlotteWebb 10:55, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Making arbitrary decisions

1) When an arbitrary decision is called for, it should be made by those users and administrators in a position to do so. Sometimes any decision is better than no decision.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Makes sense to me. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:40, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems unnecessary in this case. Eluchil404 09:16, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. If enough time and discussion has passed something needs to be done. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Accepting an arbitrary decision

1) When an arguably arbitrary decision has been made, unless there is a substantial basis for changing it, the decision should be accepted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Agreed, in principle. I think in this case the dispute falls on whether there was a substantial basis for changing an arbitrary decision or not. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah. There's no need to war over a decision that everyone admits was simply arbitrary. --`/aksha 11:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --Elonka 02:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines not binding

1) Wikipedia:Guidelines, while recommended, are not binding, and may be varied from in appropriate circumstances.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Sure, as long as the "appropriate circumstances" can be explained to people who were not part of the decision to vary. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 04:42, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Something we all agree on. Good additional points by Josiah and BlueSquadronRaven. -- Ned Scott 21:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

From the Highways case. Thatcher131 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Key words again are "appropriate ciscumstances", which need to be rationally argued as applicable, and defended over time as being still applicable. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Moving articles to comply with naming conventions

1) Moving an article to comply with an established naming convention which has broad consensus support is not 'controversial' and does not require a formal move request

Comment by Arbitrators:

Accepted Fred Bauder 22:36, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 11:35, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Consensus does not mean lack of controversy. If there are objections, then a move should go through RM. --Elonka 02:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

If there's enough objections to force a move through RM, then there's no consensus. If there is consensus, then one person complaining doesn't force a move through RM. --`/aksha 09:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. That's why we have guidelines, so we don't have to have the same discussion over and over. Almost anyone can stir up a debate, so a debate alone is not enough to debunk consensus. Of course, we should consider reasonable concerns, if present in a debate. -- Ned Scott 21:33, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. It should be expected, as long as the reason and which guideline is being followed is in the edit summary. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:51, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Support - If it's a convention in WP:MOS, then it has vast community support and should be considered non-controversial. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. I'm not sure what this principle is getting at. Sure, you can move any article you want (see WP:BOLD), but if someone reverts the move, you either need to work it out with that editor or take it to Wikipedia:Requested moves. TheronJ

To give this a little context - Elonka has insisted that any move of any TV episode article is not just controversial, but "disruptive" and has tried to block editors over making moves. She's disagreeing that we can be bold and move articles, and trying to make a blanket declaration that all episode moves are "controversial" and require RM. This point is merely saying that as RM says, it is not required for all moves, and editors can go ahead and make the moves with out having to go through the red tape of having to go through the RM process every single time (which would be disruptive). It's not saying that editors shouldn't be able to dispute moves, just that they shouldn't be able to somehow dispute all moves. --Milo H Minderbinder 21:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Try this hypothetical: I oppose all page moves. I think whoever named a page first knows best and all pages should stay where they are. By Elonka's apparent definition of controversial, I could force every page move to go through RM, even though my reasoning is unsupported and consensus is against me. Clearly, Wikipedia as a project wouldn't put up with that for very long. At some point, you have to make the decision that the minority view has been heard and properly considered, but ultimately rejected. Otherwise, we'd never do anything but argue about pointless things like TV episode naming conventions. –  Anþony  talk  01:17, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Well written Anþony. I totally agree TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree. Still, perhaps the wording should be changed to "Moving an article once, simply to comply with an established naming convention which has broad consensus support, is not "controversial" and does not require a formal move request. If an objection to that move—rather than the established consensus—is made, submit it for RM." Poor wording can be a proposition's greatest weakness. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 22:07, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Move fraud/locking

1) Making minor edits to redirects after page moves in an effort to win move wars is uncivil and disruptive and only serves to escalate move warring.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Dirty pool. Has someone been doing this? Fred Bauder 22:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes unfortunately. Proposed findings of fact are #Elonka, MatthewFenton and Ned Scott intentionally blocked return moves and #Yaksha makes intentionally inconsequential edits to disable the ability of move. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it escalates move warring, since the editing the redirects serves to prevent anyone without admin powers to move the article. Therefore freezing any move warring.

But i do agree it is uncivil, disruptive, unethical, and only helps to build up more tension against editors. --`/aksha 01:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

I'd change the name of this point to something more NPOV than "move fraud" (maybe make it a short active sentence?) - the point itself is a good one though. Orderinchaos78 01:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

"Move fraud" is a term that Thatcher131 (talk · contribs) pointed out - I think it came from a previous ArbCom proceeding. —Wknight94 (talk) 13:49, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Irrespective of its provenance, it's not a term that elevates the tone of the discussion.... How about "move locking" or something like that? Newyorkbrad 15:04, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

ArbCom will use whatever term they want anyway so I'm not sure what the big deal is. Anyone is free to change it. Besides, I don't hear anyone involved saying that this term is inappropriate and, other than MatthewFenton's weak defense, I don't hear anyone denying that the "locking" was in bad faith. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:12, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Eh, I don't think it's really a NPOV issue, but it sounds funny. It makes it sound like a move was faked or something. I don't really care or anything, since it doesn't matter what we call it. -- Ned Scott 00:16, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Redirects should have only one edit to them. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 22:14, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Decisions on Wikipedia take time

1) Though in the case of minor or non-controversial situations, it is recommended to be bold and move forward with changes, controversies on Wikipedia can take time to resolve, especially when opinions are being solicited from multiple editors. Major decisions should allow time (weeks or sometimes months) to give infrequent editors a chance to participate.

Comment by Arbitrators

I think it is more a matter of letting the situation develop. Today decisions are routinely made that would not have commanded attention 4 years ago. They were good questions then, but the body of users was not ready for the question. Adequate sourcing is a good example. Fred Bauder 22:41, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 19:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems like a long shot to make it into the final decision but good luck. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:56, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

This and the three following sections (1 2 3 4) all seem to be trying to get at the same thing, but miss the point. Generally speaking, people would agree with such statements, but those issues were not a factor in this debate. -- Ned Scott 21:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose - Being bold says nothing about only being limited to minor or non-controversial situations. Infrequent editors should be listened to, and their opinions given weight, but Wikipedia shouldn't slow down for them. Anything changed can be changed back if the infrequent editors build consensus. --Brian Olsen 21:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose - if we had to wait weeks or months to make changes that may be major or controversial, not only would nothing ever happen, but the section of the project would lose the interest of a considerable number of people involved. Orderinchaos78 01:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose - Consensus might take some time, but decisions do not. We can't wait for "occasional" editors to weigh in. Mostly because they usually don't weigh in regardless. If something is controversial, many people will butt in and that is enough. If no one cares to butt in, then there is no reason to wait (i'm assuming here you have made the "proposed changes" known in areas where editors of such topics can read it). TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are not expected to participate on an hourly or daily basis

1) The Wikipedia project is maintained by volunteer editors, who are often taking time out of otherwise busy schedules to participate. Very few editors check Wikipedia on an hourly basis, or even daily. An "active" editor is considered to be someone who makes over 100 edits per month. And even if an editor is participating more frequently, this does not mean that they are necessarily checking every item or talkpage on their watchlist each time they visit. Thus, if an editor does not participate in a discussion every day, it does not necessarily follow that they are "ignoring" the discussion -- it may just mean that they are working in other parts of Wikipedia at that time, or that they are giving thought to a reply before posting (a procedure that is actually recommended, in discussions that have become confrontational or emotional).

Comment by Arbitrators:

This looks like grasping for straws. If there is a point to be made, someone will make it. Fred Bauder 22:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 19:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It's irrelevant. It's true no one's expected to be on wikipedia 24/7. But when someone manages to make a huge long reply on a daily basis arguing their points, but completely fails to respond to other people's comments, it's a sign they're deliberately ignoring them. --`/aksha 01:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed — this seems to be a straw man argument. No one is suggesting that anyone should participate on an hourly or daily basis. All that is being suggested is that when civil, good-faith questions are asked of a participant in a discussion, it is appropriate for that participant to respond to them rather than proceeding as if the comments had not been made. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:49, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The funny thing is that I've actually argued on behalf of editors who I disagreed with, because I respected their view and those editors were not available at the time. As long as we are respecting each other's views (within reason) this shouldn't be an issue. -- Ned Scott 07:22, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Not entirely applicable to this case. When an editor has time to repeat substantially the same argument as has been refuted previously, then they have time to address the concerns raised previously.[40] Therefore, it does follow that they are ignoring valid criticism, which is not helpful for the purposes of the discussion or reaching consensus. –  Anþony  talk  21:54, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

What, precisely, does how often an editor posts or how many edits hey make in a month have to do with naming conventions? Please clear up how this benefits the issue. --BlueSquadronRaven 08:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Haven't the three Requested Moves that have taken place been an opportunity for editors who don't post often, or want to take their time, to participate? They have all run at least a week, the third is still open at eight days and counting. I'd agree this is a straw man, especially since no evidence has been provided that anyone has complained that people weren't participating fast enough or often enough. --Milo H Minderbinder 15:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how this applies at all to the case. I don't think it should be taken into account during this arb. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Editors who post frequently, do not have more say in a dispute than those who post less often

1) Just because one editor (or a group of editors) has more free time to spend on Wikipedia, and thus makes many more posts in a particular discussion, does not give their opinion more weight than the opinions of editors who are only able to participate once a week (or less).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 19:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that anyone in this case has rejected an opinion or an argument simply because it was made by a less frequent editor. Opinions and arguments have been rejected because they were unsupported by Wikipedia guidelines and policies. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Weak Oppose - Those who contribute more frequently and for longer periods of time usually have a much greater grasp of the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:15, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Semi Oppose. It has little to do with frequency and more about acceptence of the larger group. By your definition wikipedia adminstrators that spend a lot of time on wikipedia get their "power" from their frequency instead of from their skills as acknowledged by the community. That is simply not the case. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Stating the same opinion multiple times in a discussion, without giving other editors a chance to respond, can be considered disruptive

1) One of the elements which has exacerbated the conflict in this case, is that a few editors have been posting and re-posting fundamentally the same opinion, and "pouncing" on any opposition to immediately disagree, often within minutes. This has contributed to page clutter and a rapidly-scrolling discussion. It has also had the effect of intimidating other editors from participating, both because of the attacks, and because of the difficulty of getting caught up on the existing conversation.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 19:59, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Not only did we give time for others to respond, but we've clearly waited for such responses. This was not an issue in the dispute. -- Ned Scott 07:25, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Comment - Or it can be considered assertive. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

This is ridiculous. Are Wikipedia discussions supposed to adhere to a time-table? There's nothing wrong with posting a response "withing minutes". Responding critically to an argument is not an attack, no matter how fast it comes.

When someone puts forth the fundamentally the same argument which had previously been refuted with valid criticism, it is entirely appropriate to respond with fundamentally the same criticism. Arguably, repeating the argument without responding to the criticism is the disruptive act, leading to a rapidly scrolling and repetitive discussion. –  Anþony  talk  21:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an environment where everyone contributes to the extent to which they have the ability, time, etc to do so - having such does not confer any more rights or ownership on the more active participant. However, if one wants to get involved in fast-moving, active discussions on a site with a million plus users and many thousands active at any one time, one can't really expect the site to wait for less active contributors. People who wish to express an opinion on any part of a discussion are free to do so, or can state their agreement with other editors or points of view so that their voice can, in effect, be counted by default as consensus is being reached. Orderinchaos78 01:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Ludicrous. We're supposed to wait half an hour afterwards to respond now, or some such? And, may I remind, people on both sides of the debate have "been posting and re-posting fundamentally the same opinion". --BlueSquadronRaven 08:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Stupid point. There is no timetable and limit on the times you may give the same or a similar argumented answer to each and every instance that deserves said argumented answer. It's like saying you cannot point people to WP:NOT each and every time someone doesn't keep it in mind. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary decision

1) As an arguably arbitrary decision without a substantial basis for changing it, the Television Naming Convention guideline should be accepted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed, applying the Highway case ruling. –  Anþony  talk  21:40, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Withdrawn, not a principle. –  Anþony  talk  22:04, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Polls should be avoided

1) As Wikipedia is not an experiment in Democracy, voting in and of itself should be avoided. Majority does not rule on Wikipedia, consensus does. However, there are some other fundamental points why polling should be avoided, explained in Polling is evil:

• Polling discourages consensus
• Polling encourages false dichotomy
• Polling encourages groupthink
• Polling isn't fair, either
• Polls are misleading and encourage confusion

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I'm not sure what context this is in. In general, we should avoid polls, but polls are not always bad. Is this talking about the first poll, or Elonka's request for a second poll, or both? -- Ned Scott 00:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Though I agree that discussion is preferable to voting, I still see polls as a very useful tool. --Elonka 06:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 18:15, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, this is a principle rather than a finding of fact. –  Anþony  talk  20:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, i think facts have to actually be "what happened". So they're specific to this case. What you're proposing are general principals which we should be following. --`/aksha 01:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Moved. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus is Preferred over Majority

1) According to the First Pillar of Wikipedia, wikipedia is not an experiment in Democracy. It is not ruled by sheer majority rule, but rather by consensus. From WP:VOTE:

Wikipedia is not a democracy, and according to the following meta-wiki essay: polling is evil. Decisions should be made by consensus decision making rather than a strict majority rule. However, on occasion it is useful to take a survey of opinions on some issue, as an indication of which options have the most support. Surveys should never be thought of as binding. (emphasis mine)

Also, from a previous Arbitration, the Giano case:

Advantages of consensus
4) "Because it seeks to minimize objection, it is popular with voluntary organizations, wherein decisions are more likely to be carried out when they are most widely approved. Consensus methods are desirable when enforcement of the decision is unfeasible, such that every participant will be required to act on the decision independently.
Consensus_decision-making#Purpose."

The effect of failure of consensus
6) Failure of consensus in a difficult case does not abrogate Wikipedia:Consensus as the optimal method of making decisions in a way which maximizes support for decision.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

I don't think anyone has really considered the TV-NC poll binding, but it's just an easy reference that shows the same thing discussion showed: a consensus to disambig only when necessary. One could see the poll as a summary of our thoughts, rather than a vote. -- Ned Scott 00:25, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment From the meta-essay linked - Seeing a list of participants in a poll encourages people to add their names. It's easy to just add your name, especially if one side is clearly "winning". Polling factionalizes users who might not even have been that strongly opposed—or that strongly in agreement. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 21:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 18:05, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems to be a principle rather than a finding of fact. Regardless, it should be pointed out that consensus does not necessarily mean unanimity. After all proper and due consideration, it is sometimes appropriate to override the objections of a small minority in favor of moving forward. –  Anþony  talk  20:22, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Moved. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Refusing to accept a consensus decision and attempting to block consensus action are disruptive.

1) When consensus is reached, those disagreeing should accept it and allow actions to be taken. Fillibustering, wikilawyering, and otherwise attempting to stall or block consensus are disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

These last five principles proposed by Milo are very well worded do a good job of assessing our situation. I completely agree. -- Ned Scott 21:08, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Strongly agree. I think this is a very important point to our problem. --`/aksha 01:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Declaring a guideline "in dispute" without a consensus to do so is disruptive.

1) Declaring a guideline "in dispute", which can discourage editors from following the guideline, should only be done as a consensus decision. Doing so without consensus is disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

This is a bit of a paradox. If there is a "consensus" that a guideline is bad, then it gets re-written or deleted. If we agree that a guideline is good, we keep it as-is. If some people think it's good and some people think it's bad, then the guideline is disputed. The disagreeing sides might debate the merits of a guideline without reaching any "consensus". That would be the defining characteristic of a disputed guideline, more or less. The parties might also debate whether or not to use the "disputed" tag, but it would be unreasonable to expect the second debate would be any closer to reaching "consensus" than the first debate. If there's a dispute, editors should be made aware of it. I don't see how this is disruptive. — CharlotteWebb 10:33, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea is that a guideline does not get debunked every time someone disagrees with it. If that happened, everything would slow to a crawl and nothing would get done. -- Ned Scott 11:08, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

(edit conf)

This just says that a person cannot unilaterally declare a guideline in dispute when there really isn't a dispute. Doing so prejudices casual editors against following it, even though the guideline has consensus support. When there is an active debate, that should be self-evident to even those wishing to keep the guideline as-is. WP:N received an appropriate disputed tag recently which was not seriously contested while discussion was ongoing. The difference here is that the discussion was already settled when Elonka tried to put the tag up. –  Anþony  talk  11:25, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The existence of mediation or arbitration does not automatically suspend a guideline.

1) If parties are in, or considering mediation or arbitration in regard to a guideline, that does not mean that the guideline is suspended and should be ignored during those proceedings.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I very much agree. -- Ned Scott 04:01, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed: Status Quo of the guideline should be in effect TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

The considerate approach would be for both sides to avoid contradicting (or enforcing) a guideline that is the locus of the dispute, for the duration of the case. But that would not be enforceable without a temporary injunction or something. Acting on an attitude of "I'll get all my edits/pagemoves in now, before this case closes" would be disruptive whether their actions complied with the guideline or not, and whether or not they are an involved party. After all, there are a literal million other things they could be editing in the meantime. — CharlotteWebb 23:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

What you see as "considerate" I see as pandering to disruptive editors refusing to accept consensus. Cases can go on for weeks or months, as long as there's consensus to make the pagemoves, I don't see that as trying to get them in before the case is over. Why drag something out unnecessarily? We all just want closure here. --Milo H Minderbinder 13:46, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

For further evidence that the guideline isn't really in dispute, see here. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:11, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Guidelines should generally be followed

1) While both guidelines and policies allow exceptions, that doesn't mean that they should be ignored. Following a guideline, particularly when consensus agrees to do so, is normal Wikipedia behavour, and not "enforcing as policy". Simply because guidelines are not policy does not mean they should be ignored. Exceptions to following guidelines should be explained in a reasonable fashion.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

support --`/aksha 01:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This is an important point that I believe Elonka consistently misunderstands. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:54, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

One of the core elements of this dispute, has been disagreement about the difference between guidelines and policy. My own opinion is that guidelines are recommendations. They are advice which reflect consensus and actual practice. In the case that actual practice differs from a guideline, I think it is worthwhile to examine whether or not the guideline needs to be changed, as opposed to forcing thousands of articles into adherence with a guideline that is out of touch with what is actually being done. --Elonka 06:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Comment - I have reworded this a bit from the original version. I hope this is okay. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)}

Agreed. ignoring != being creative. Guidelines are not there to shove it into the face of every new editor the first day, but they are there to formalize "accepted editing ideas". TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed! This isn't a case of "being out of touch with what is being done", but rather of not having a sufficient reason for going against consensus. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:29, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Classifying editors into groups is divisive and contrary to the spirit of consensus.

1) Classifying editors into groups is divisive and contrary to the spirit of consensus. Editors are individuals and may agree or disagree with other editors depending on the issue. Listing editors in "groups" can misrepresent the views of editors and give a false impression that they are a "block" that has decided to take collective action.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:15, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Another strong agree. People have not been pleased by the groupings [41] [42] --`/aksha 01:12, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Strong agree: However in some cases it might be required to show certain forms of abuse. If it can be proven that sets of people are banding up against "the wider group of wikipedia editors" trough for instance "user page advertising", it might be helpful. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Code of Conduct

1) The fourth pillar of Wikipedia is Wikipedia has a code of conduct. Editors are expected to act with respect, civility, and cool. Editors should act in good faith, assume good faith of other editors, and avoid disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:05, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

No need to add this point into the discussion. People have insulted and have been insulted. It's why we ended up here, but not the point of the arb. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

At least one of the arbitrators who accepted this case did so "to consider user conduct during this dispute", so this is relevant. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:58, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Tendentious editing

1) Refusal to acknowledge a clear consensus, and editing in spite of it, is tendentious editing and may be considered disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:52, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This I can support. The refusal to acknowledge consensus is a big reason why things have gotten this far. -- Ned Scott 01:46, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Reworded - I hope this is okay, I thought it would be more appropriate to cite a policy than an essay, and that it would lend the claim more strenght. I kept the old version in a comment if you wish to restore it. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 00:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:14, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Believe it or not I am trying to help out here :) Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:30, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Unchallenged. And please continue to do so.  :) —Wknight94 (talk) 01:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Good point. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. This has smacked heavily of WP:POINT from the start. --BlueSquadronRaven 08:38, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Disruptive editing

1) Per Wikipedia:Disruptive editing, an aggressively disruptive editor may be blocked or banned if a community consensus is reached that the editor has been disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. This is a little closer to what I was going for above. And it's a guideline rather than an essay. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Reworded once again - I took this from a proposal I was just going to post that was more or less the same, so I "merged" the two together. Original, as before, is preserved in a comment if you wish to restore it. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Administrators should set good examples

1) Wikipedia administrators are expected to set an example of good behavior.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 23:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree, admins should be a good example, as they have been. I don't see the point of this either. --`/aksha 07:59, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Wha? The admins have state good examples. What is the point of this? Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 23:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Administrators should act to de-escalate disputes

1) Wikipedia administrators are expected to take action to de-escalate disputes, rather than intensify them.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 23:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Administrators and abuse of tools

1) Wikipedia administrators are expected to avoid use of their tools in situations in which they are involved.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 23:33, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I am unaware of any of the involved administrators using their admin tools in relation to this dispute. -- Ned Scott 07:29, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

See Admin Radiant! evidence. He protected and unprotected pages, and blocked one of the users in the dispute (MatthewFenton). --Elonka 00:13, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Canvassing and campaigning

1) Per WP:SPAM (esp. WP:SPAM#Canvassing), canvassing is controversial and can be disruptive. It has also been actionable.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed --BlueSquadronRaven 09:09, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Straining at gnats

1) It is disruptive to make a big fuss about a small thing.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Proposed Fred Bauder 22:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Agreed, strongly so. It's disruptive and wastes everyone else's time. --`/aksha 07:10, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

• Ugh, don't remind us! (But agreed!) --BlueSquadronRaven 09:21, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Although true, this certainly applies to both sides in the dispute. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:29, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
  • While I agree with you, if you look closely (which is painful to do in this case), you'll notice that the majority "side" thought the dispute was over weeks and weeks ago (in fact, we thought it was just a discussion at that time, not even a dispute). But, each time, Elonka would suddenly reappear with something like "Okay, here's the new poll wording - let me know if you disagree soon because I'm going to RFC soon!" Then over a dozen people actively watching the page all shook our heads, gnashed our teeth, etc. What should we have done? Take a look at #Elonka's conduct has been tendentious and disruptive and a supporting example at /Evidence#Minority engaged in passive incivility (fueling active incivility). I suppose maybe a RFC or RFAr should have been filed a month ago over the disruption alone. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:09, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

• I'd tend to agree with that - basically Elonka was making a fuss (I don't know how else you'd charactarize trying to dispute a guideline, trying to get people blocked, insisting that consensus actions were disruptive, repeatedly insisting on redoing polls, etc). The other side has mostly just been telling her that there's consensus and that we should all finish up renaming (which Elonka has accused me of being disruptive for doing) and move on. The options I see are giving up letting Elonka take actions on her minority view, ignore Elonka (which Elonka interprets as "so I don't see any objections!" or getting Elonka blocked, which seems to be the direction we're headed now. If there's a better way to handle someone who simply refuses to accept consensus until arbcom decrees it, please suggest it. --Milo H Minderbinder 14:22, 23 December 2006 (UTC)
• Comment • If I may be so bold as to make an assumption, I think that this was somewhat direct towards Elonka's actions, that Fred feels she was worrying about little things when the overall consensus had been reached, and she ignored it over these little things. This however is only my interpretation of it, and Fred can feel free to clarify or correct me if he feels I am wrong. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 21:34, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Consensus holds that pre-disambiguation is unnecessary, and contrary to established guidelines

1. Consensus at Disambiguation and Naming conventions guidelines generally holds that disambiguating the naming of the actual article is only necessary when a title can have more than one meaning. Specific naming conventions, such as at WP:TV-NC, are understood to be framed within the general guidelines of WP:NC.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Thanks for proposing this, Leflyman. I don't know whether the ArbCom will go into this territory, but you are correct that this is the core of the original argument. There is an undisputable, Wikipedia-wide consensus against preemptive disambiguation. The TV-NC dispute is over whether television episodes, or episodes of a particular television show, merit an exception to this principle. (Of course, it seems to me and many others that there is a consensus at TV-NC that they do not, but it's important to note that we're talking about exceptions to a standard Wikipedia practice.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

In re-reading it, perhaps this might do as well as a proposed principal, rather than a finding of fact. I think that there may be some misunderstanding among certain parties as to whether the fact of "Wikipedia-wide consensus against preemptive disambiguation" actually exists, and we would benefit from ArbCom weighing in. I would further suggest that, "Precedents for exceptions are not created if certain article titles, or sets of articles' titles, conflict with established general guidelines." In other words, just because editors of Star Trek episodes may have started using a different naming scheme does not mean that editors of other articles should follow suit.--Leflyman^Talk 21:40, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Full support on this one. -- Ned Scott 03:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed: Leflyman^Talk 17:16, 21 December 2006 (UTC). I believe this to be at the crux of this dispute, which has been lost in the heated distraction over incivility: that preemptive disambiguation is an unnecessary means to naming unambiguous articles, even when they are part of a "subset" of a particular category. Redirects are a sufficient compromise to those wanting more specific titles.

Agree. And I agree this is at the crux of the matter. Wikipedia really needs a ruling on this one way or the other. --Serge 21:41, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Rather than going into detail about all of the many, many, many, many, many different aspects of Wikipedia this would affect or outright overturn, I'll just point out that this is a content issue and therefore not something ArbCom should be deciding. –  Anþony  talk  23:14, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• I don't see this is a content issue, at all-- it's a naming conventions issue; and this being an ArbCom for Naming Conventions, it's clearly within the scope to discuss. I'm afraid I also don't see how this would affect any of the pages you listed. In fact, it is in keeping with most of them, except for those "exceptions" which themselves have remained in dispute. See, for example the discussion of changing the US naming conventions from this August, and the extensive debate over disambiguation of Naming conventions (settlements) of recent weeks. The guidelines for WP:NC:CITY which were supposedly applicable for all US settlements, are no longer followed for major cities, such as New York City (after a long poll and deliberation on the title in 2004); Chicago (which had an RM poll in August 2006); Philadelphia (which had a similar RM Poll in October). While one of the links you provided, Wikipedia:Naming conventions (names and titles) specifies to "pre-emptively disambiguate", it actually just provides a guide to standardised names of royalty, which actually do come in the form "Charles, Prince of Wales" and "Elizabeth I of England" (see, for example, [43], [44])-- thus making them perfectly legitimate titles for articles. However, in response to your concerns, I've amended the fourth item to soften the claim, noting that the consensus "generally holds". --Leflyman^Talk 00:53, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

You say tomato, I say content issue. We may be talking about a naming convention guideline, but the content of that guideline is not really at issue. That's contrasted with issues of user conduct, which is what ArbCom is likely to be looking at.[45]

Regardless, this issue is being hotly debated in several other areas of Wikipedia right now and if ArbCom really wants to take a side, this one issue probably deserves an ArbCom case of its own, open to many different editors to make their case and provide evidence. Deciding such a major issue as an afterthought to a tangentially related case is not the way to settle the debate. –  Anþony  talk  03:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

• Further discussion at Talk page--Leflyman^Talk 04:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
• As per my comment above, section retitled and moved to proposed principal. The following redudant points, which restate similiar proposed principals, have been redacted:

1. Pre-disambiguation or "preemptive disambiguation" herein refers to the use of specific, standardised parenthetical text in an article title, when no other article has a similar title which would cause confusion.
2. The principal means of organisation on Wikipedia is not the title of articles, but categories, lists and links from other articles.
3. In cases where readers may search for more specific titles, articles can have multiple redirects, which effectively act as "aliases" for a single name, obviating the need to pre-disambiguate the article title itself. (Examples: Sydney, Australia redirects to Sydney; Whatever the Case May Be (Lost episode) redirects to Whatever the Case May Be.)

--Leflyman^Talk 20:46, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Deleting other users' posts is an uncivil act

1) It is uncivil to delete another user's post. Aside from escalating tension, it also makes archives more difficult to review.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. And before the wiki-lawyers descend upon me, I'll freely admit that there are some cases, such as with abuse, vandalism, or personal attacks, where posts should be deleted on sight. But in the case of a good faith post, it's uncivil to simply delete it. --Elonka 23:19, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Template

1) {text of proposed principle}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Comment by others:

Proposed findings of fact

Consensus was not achieved in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)

1) Though a majority of editors were in agreement on a proposed course of action at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television), a majority does not necessarily mean consensus. A significant number of editors had good faith objections to the majority wording. As such, all interested editors should proceed to mediation, or in some other way attempt to establish a compromise wording of the guideline, even if such compromise is merely to include multiple views and the wording, "This section of the guideline is controversial." While controversy exists, multiple methods of implementing the guideline may exist. This may lead to arbitrary decisions, but as has been previously discussed in other ArbCom cases, sometimes an arbitrary decision is better than no decision. /Evidence - (controversial moves were causing disruption) (list of involved parties)(list of editors supporting alternatives to WP:DAB)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Seems to me that consensus was reached. Fred Bauder 16:20, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 01:41, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm very much opposed to this summary. Consensus was reached, etc etc. Also, what does "good faith objections" even mean? You can't just slap on the words "good faith" to anything just to make it seem better. Good faith has nothing to do with this. [46] "attempt to establish a compromise wording of the guideline, even if such compromise is merely to include multiple views and the wording" is also impossible. It's like asking for a middle ground between on and off. -- Ned Scott 02:58, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

When a counter-argument proves an 'objection' to be invalid and flawed...i'm afraid i just don't have enough 'good faith' to accept it. --`/aksha 00:57, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Elonka, if you don't feel that a majority indicates consensus in this case, what would it take for you to accept consensus? It sounds like you think every situation where those outside the consensus have objections should go to mediation. That's the vast majority of decisions on wikipedia - sending them all to mediation would stop anything from ever getting done. And what do you propose as a compromise? What are these "multiple methods of implementing the guideline"? Declaring it "controversial" would basically give editors permission to ignore it - that's not a compromise, that's exactly what you've wanted all along. (and every guideline and policy on wikipedia would have a tag saying it's controversial) While the opinion of the minority should be respected, it still is the minority. It's not always possible to make everyone happy, but that doesn't mean that the unhappiness of a few people should be part of a guideline page. Your position on this makes it seem like while you say you're willing to compromise, you will only accept an outcome where you get what you want (something in the guideline that you can use as grounds to make exceptions, with consensus or not). To you, it's not consensus until you say it is. --Milo H Minderbinder 03:03, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

How about we agree that there is a dispute, agree that there are multiple editors on different sides of it, and try mediation? I'm still a firm believer that with a good middle-person to help us communicate and ensure a civil discussion, we still might be able to find an acceptable compromise. We came close a couple times, but kept getting side-tracked. Why not try for the win-win, instead of a win-lose? --Elonka 04:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Did you not notice the Medcab decision? —Wknight94 (talk) 04:32, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I think that Wikiezach was confused as to what role he was to be playing (to my knowledge, he'd never been a mediator before). I don't see a mediator as someone who "makes a decision" and then enforces it. I see a mediator as someone whose job it is to facilitate communication between different sides in a dispute, and help guide them to a consensus that they agree to of their own free will. Nobody in a mediation has to accept a compromise -- everyone is free to say no, at any time. The trick is finding a mediator that we're all willing to accept (Thatcher131 would be my first choice, but anyone at Wikipedia:Mediation#Mediators would be fine with me). It's really an interesting process that I wish we'd at least try. What's the worst that could happen? :) --Elonka 04:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The worst that could happen would be this debate dragging on for months and months, with everyone making the same points they've been making over and over again, gaining no headway and finding more and more ground for mutual acrimony and bad faith. We tried to get mediation off the ground, but it crashed and burned, in large part because you insisted on edit warring on the RfM page, and then used other editors' comments responding to your actions as evidence in an AN/I complaint — not exactly a course of action conducive to the trust necessary for mediation to be successful. I fear that the time when mediation could have worked is past. We need closure on this, not interminable prolonging. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, thanks for validating my comments here. Assuming all the good faith I can muster, I can't help but think that you're not going to drop this until you get your way or until ArbCom forcibly slams the door on this. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:33, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

With this in arbitration, there's zero chance of this getting sent back to mediation. This arbcom needs a result that will end the dispute, period. We need closure. "Agreeing there's a dispute" isn't really an option as long as Elonka is going to use any agreement as "evidence" that the guideline shouldn't be followed. And I simply don't agree that there is a dispute, I think this is simply a situation where consensus was found and one editor refused to accept it and tried to block consensus with whatever disruptive behaviour she could think up. And given Elonka's unwillingness to compromise, I'm unable to imagine what she would agree to in a mediation that would be acceptable to the consensus. Elonka, what offer of compromise have you made that doesn't include text that could be interpreted as a loophole, giving implicit permission to ignore the guideline? If you honestly believe that a compromise is possible that is a "win" for all parties, by all means make a proposal - I proposed an addition to the guideline that specifically mentioned exceptions[47], and you didn't even respond to it (MatthewFenton just called it "a catch 22 situation" and refused to comment further[48]). Elonka, for the record, if the guideline contained "this section of the guideline is controversial", would you consider that as giving permission to make exceptions and not follow the guideline? --Milo H Minderbinder 13:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

In my fresh eyes (only started looking at the case today), consensus was definetly reached. It was not a unanimous concensus, but there is concensus. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 03:59, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

• As a point of order, this appears to be a proposal for a finding of fact, rather than a proposed principal.--Leflyman^Talk 20:59, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, this is a fact. It's a (proposed) statement of something that's already occured. Elonka - can you move it? Or is it okay for someone else to just move it, when a proposal is clearly in the wrong section? --`/aksha 07:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The three Request Moves that were conducted resulted in consensus

1) Three related Request Moves have been carried out throughout this debate. All three resulted in a clear consensus for moving. See /Evidence#All page moves made to remove unneeded disambiguation were supported by consensus.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Accepted, this confirms consensus Fred Bauder 16:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. This is a fine example of what "another poll" would have told us: the same thing. -- Ned Scott 07:27, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. Comments attached to these votes showed clear thought as to why and under which guideline they should follow. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:52, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - appears to show clear consensus in favour of changes, also as per BlueSquadronRaven above. Orderinchaos78 01:34, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No need to cite the "vote" totals in the finding since they aren't what demonstrates consensus. Eluchil404 09:23, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Just trying to make life easier for the ArbCom guys who're going to have to read all of this =) --`/aksha 14:20, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

There is no evidence of disruption caused by article moves

1) There is no evidence to support the claim that the article moves caused any disruption. See /Evidence#No evidence page moves were disruptive (rebuttal to Elonka).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Very very false. I'll be supplying plenty of evidence that shows that the moves were causing quite a bit of disruption, with complaints from multiple editors, and move wars. --Elonka 02:43, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Then i suggest you start. Because this is a very important point of the case. Talking about what you will supplying is irrelevant, the case has started, if you have evidence, then start supplying it. And some diffs to the "complaints from multiple editors" would be nice, since you have a tendency to misinterprete people's words when you quote. --`/aksha 09:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. I saw no evidence of disruption by the moves themselves, but only by the people who complained about the moves. -- Ned Scott 06:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Evidence that there was indeed considerable disruption: /Evidence#Controversial moves were causing disruption in many areas around Wikipedia. --Elonka 01:24, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

There is no evidence that the initial poll was flawed

1) There is no evidence to support the claim that the initial poll (ending with a 80% supermajority) was invalid. Everyone who voted support on the poll where contacted, but not one of them believed they had been misrepresented in the poll.

1) There is no evidence to support the claim that the results of the initial poll were ambigous or invalid. Everyone who voted support on the poll was contacted, but not one of them believed they had been misrepresented in the poll. See /Evidence#The results of the initial poll conducted in the RfC were valid (rebuttal).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Accepted Fred Bauder 16:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Strong disagreement. The poll was flawed in many ways. Its format was changed multiple times through its run, editors' comments were being copy/pasted to different places, multiple people complained, and there were multiple calls to scrap it and start over. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to think about how a poll could be more flawed than this one was. Diffs will be placed in my "evidence" section. --Elonka 02:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: ( Evidence that the October 30 poll was seriously flawed and needed to be redone). --Elonka 06:48, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Technically speaking, you could say the poll was "flawed". However, we still pulled completely useful and relevant information from the poll. I would word it as, the poll fulfilled its duty. -- Ned Scott 07:23, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Ned makes a very good point. I would say that the poll was "flawed" but not "invalid". The flaws in the poll were overcome by subsequent discussion. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:05, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I vote we change the wording of this proposal: "There is no evidence that the results of the initial poll were flawed". Or "There is no evidence that the results of the initial poll were ambiguous". Or we could scrap it entirely in favor of #Consensus was reached from the initial RFC, poll, and discussion below. That's more general too. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I want to keep this, since this is much simpler. So it may be a lot easier for this 'fact' to be established as a 'fact' than "Consensus was reached from the initial RFC, poll, and discussion". This woud then support "Consensus was reached from the initial RFC, poll, and discussion". Anyway, i've changed the wording as you've suggested. --`/aksha 02:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. The fact that all others were contacted shows tremendous good faith on the part of the editor who did so. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:53, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Disagree, strongly. See my comment here. I never voted in the poll, due to the increasing acrimonious and personal nature of the discussion and due to the poll being a constantly moving target. -- PKtm 22:45, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'd recommend giving examples of the unprovoked acrimony that you're alleging. The story I tried to assemble in my one evidence section counters your implication - and shows examples. —Wknight94 (talk) 23:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I am utterly astonished that you don't agree that the dispute has been marked by considerable acrimony, and I must say that it is actually quite difficult for me to AGF when faced with that kind of blatant denial; hence, as I've already said, I'm not interested in a repeated back-and-forth on this. I also really don't have the time or patience to compile endless diffs of the obvious, so I'll just crib a few from what's already been cited elsewhere, and perhaps add a couple more:

• [49], [50],[51], [52],[53], [54], [55], [56], [57], [58]. There are easily dozens more, including abusive edit summaries [59], blatant and personally directed sarcasm [60], and just plain disrespect [61], [62].

Given those citations, I don't see how anyone could use the word "alleging" about my observation that acrimony has marked the dispute. -- PKtm 03:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

You actually did weigh in at the discussion [63] on 2006-10-30 where you stated that you are "someone who is very peripheral to this discussion, on which I don't have immensely strong feelings". That sounds like a clear "Abstain" to me but please correct me if I'm wrong. Also, most of those diffs you listed above were from November 10 and after. As I stated in my evidence, I fully agree that there was incivility on both sides after that date, but a nontrivial amount of it was provoked by the majority being flatly ignored at various turns. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

My "weighing in" occurred precisely 10 hours into the poll, and it continued on to say (from the diff that you cite above) that "people are using the "Pro" and "Con" statements above to implicitly argue for their bias, rather than present a neutral laying out of various approaches." In other words, I was saying that the language of the poll was already skewed. The poll went through many text changes and shifts after that, and people continued voting for a number of days. At no point did I abstain from voting; rather, I was waiting for things to gel into a votable situation, but they never did. As for the incivility, I'm equally astonished (and again, greatly discouraged) to see a WP admin make excuses for repeated and rank incivility with the defense that it was "provoked". -- PKtm 04:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

At that point in the page history, the meaning of the poll choices was quite clear and the pros and cons don't detract from that. A "Support" or "Oppose" at that point would have had no ambiguity. As far as being astonished and discouraged, I share your sentiment - although I won't be quite so pointed in what I'm astonished and discouraged by. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:14, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Come on. Again, I am having trouble when I see what seems to be denial of the obvious. In addition to the indisputable fact that the poll changed a LOT after that point, with numerous users expressing confusion (here for example or here) about the very ambiguity you say wouldn't have existed, it's also a fact that by that point in the poll, just ten hours in, we'd already had people removing other people's votes here, a proposal that "the two propositions just be merged" here, and even a mini-edit-war on a comment/con, here and here. Can it be that surprising that I was waiting for the text and poll to actually settle down before stating a stance? -- PKtm 04:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The diffs of Izzy Dot (talk · contribs) are indeed unfortunate and I'd be a fool to deny that (he was later blocked and appears to have left the project or I'd be calling for action against him regardless of his opinion). But at the risk of being too technical, the diffs you mention of people being confused were dated after your edit. Chuq's is 91 revisions after yours [64] and Argash's is even later. I still fail to see how people being confused 91+ revisions after your edit means that, at the time of your edit, you couldn't decide which choice you supported. But this is all probably better said on the evidence page. —Wknight94 (talk) 05:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, come on. I feel that your response obscures what should be undeniable. Number of intervening edits aside, both Chuq's and Argash's expressions of confusion were in fact made only the very next day after mine (and in fact, I specified the word after above, before citing those diffs). And my point stands about all the shenanigans that had already occurred in the first 10 hours, meaning yes, I couldn't decide which choice I supported (again, how can that be surprising to anyone?). The poll and discussion started out confusing in its first 10 hours, and only got worse. Now, the only choice I can feel clearly in support of is the cause of civility. My (or anyone's) view of the disambiguation issue is almost irrelevant now after all that's transpired; I feel that the far more important battle is now about the basics of how people need to treat others on Wikipedia. -- PKtm 06:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I believe I reverted the poll after Chuq's comments, thus addressing his concerns. [65] -- Ned Scott 07:29, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Confusion during the poll, maybe. But [[66]] talk page section is very hard evidence that no one actually ended up voting wrongly. That is, the poll didn't actually misrepresent anyone. --`/aksha 09:07, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

There have been claims that there have been "many" editors who wanted to participate but didn't because the poll was either too confusing or too hostile. Elonka:"I've been receiving many complaints from people who say that they want to weigh in on this discussion, but they're confused as to what exactly is being discussed." [67] Following the poll, there have been three Requested Moves relevant to the situation. These were a perfect opportunity for anyone put off by the initial poll to participate and give their opinion in a forum that was clearly laid out, didn't change, was open for a known length of time, and was closed with an end result determined by an administrator. Yet those three RMs ended up with an almost identical result to the initial poll, and the "many" editors who were supposedly confused by the initial poll failed to make their presence known. Three times, editors have chosen with clear consensus to make moves, to take actions that bring articles into compliance with WP:TV-NAME. If that's not obvious consensus support for the guideline, I don't know what is. While the poll wasn't run very well, the end result was that many people gave their opinions, and most confirmed them at the end. Given that the following RMs have been consistent with the result of the poll (not to mention the extensive discussion before and after it), what reason do we have to believe that redoing the poll would result in a different outcome? --Milo H Minderbinder 14:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The RM polls were on specific and very peripheral issues about a few pages of specific TV series, like "Should these Lost articles be moved," "Should this TMNT article be moved," etc. Further, they weren't well advertised, and have been criticized for being held at the NC page instead of in the locations that were being affected. Most importantly, they weren't about the guideline itself. Or let me turn it around and ask you: If you're so convinced that the participation in those RMs proves a consensus, then why not hold a new poll to confirm what you think you already know? Why continue to cling to the results of a biased poll from six weeks ago, rather than just running a fresh one? Let's agree on wording, set up a structure, inform everyone to post their opinion, and let it run. Not "a vote," but a simple "one editor, one comment" structure to see where everyone stands. --Elonka 20:11, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

While the RM's weren't about the guideline itself, the reason for the moves was that given in the guideline. I assume if someone opposed the guideline, they would also oppose those moves. If any of these RM's failed to pass, it could be considered to indicate that there was genuine opposition to the guideline. But such opposition didn't materialize. If people feel so strongly against the guideline, why didn't they participate in those RM's (which were well advertised, they were listed at WP:RM as well as the pages being moved, and in the case of The Wire, on the episode list and the show's main page for a total of twenty notifications)? If you felt the RMs weren't advertised enough, why didn't you make that objection during the week or more each was open? Why not hold a new poll, you ask? Because it's redundant, because it wasn't biased, because regardless of the process and result of a new "clean" poll, someone would likely complain about the way it was run and dispute the outcome (quite possibly you), and most of all, because Polling is Evil [68]. Not to mention that with previous attempts to redo the poll, you have insisted on incredibly biased wording that favors your position, and you tried starting a second poll without agreement on wording. And what's with your continual strawman argument of "clinging to the results"? I think it was a bad idea to do a poll in the first place (I didn't even participate in it), and I think doing another would just make things worse. I have repeatedly said that I have no objection to ignoring the result of the poll since the discussion surrounding it shows clear consensus. Editors don't need a "structure" to offer their opinion, they can speak their mind at any point, and their opinion will be noted. I'm not sure why you feel that this one guideline requires that editors be coddled to get their opinions. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:38, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

The initial poll reflected a large supermajority

1) The initial straw poll resulted in an 80% support for "disambiguate only when nessasary". 1) The initial straw poll reflected the large supermajority in favour of "disambiguate only when nessasary". See /Evidence#The results of the initial poll conducted in the RfC were valid (rebuttal).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Certainly a sufficient expression of opinion Fred Bauder 16:25, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Strong disagree. The poll was a mess. --Elonka 02:48, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Mess or not, these are the results that we've been able to verify. -- Ned Scott 06:32, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The poll proved nothing. See (evidence that the poll was invalid) and (evidence of editors who supported alternative naming methods). --Elonka 06:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Assuming the initial poll was flawed, and that a "clean" poll would have a radically different result, as Elonka seems to feel, why did the three following RM discussions have results almost identical to the initial poll? If those three had about 80% supermajority support, and clear consensus (at least the first two, which have been closed by admins - I assume the third will have the same result shortly), what reason is there to believe that a redo of the initial poll would have a different result? --Milo H Minderbinder 14:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment and also Strong Oppose - I think everyone that's mucking around with polls forgot to read about polling being evil. Wikipedia is not a democracy experiment, it is an encyclopedia. Decisions should be made by consensus, not by sheer majority rule. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 18:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

There might be some confusion with this one. Voting is evil has actually been cited by both sides of this debate. One of the points that others and I have made is that we could disregard the poll completely and still have the discussion to support the consensus. Maybe we should word this to: "The initial poll reflected a supermajority"? -- Ned Scott 00:18, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

"when supermajority voting is used, it should be seen as a process of 'testing' for consensus, rather than reaching consensus." While decisions on WP aren't made by voting, I think it's worth noting to what degree there was agreement shown by the poll. I agree with the idea that if people object to the poll, just ignore the poll and determine consensus from the discussion before and after it (not to mention the three RM's that all passed). I think consensus is extremely clear whether you look at the poll or not. --Milo H Minderbinder 18:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

There was no consensus among Star Trek editors to always disambiguate

1) The "Star Trek" convention of always disambiguating their episode articles was created (and the articles initially moved) by just one editor (Cburnett in March 2005) [69]. See also /Evidence#Claims that there was 'consensus' to deliberately ignore naming conventions have been false.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. No other evidence of discussion was found. -- Ned Scott 07:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

False. The Star Trek editors had a very clear consensus on naming, as can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Star Trek#Nomenclature. --Elonka 00:05, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If you look into that page's history, you'll find that that section was added by Cburnett here, with the edit summary "(Posed on talk page for over a week and not a single comment, so I assume no one cares)". Cburnett later tried to amend the guideline into something more in compliance with WP:D, but his addition was commented out by E Pluribus Anthony, with a comment that seems to suggest a lack of understanding of WP:D. E Pluribus Anthony later tweaked the WikiProject nomenclature guideline into its present form; no other WikiProject editor appears to have commented on the matter. So that's one editor suggesting preemptive disambiguation for ease of article creation, and later adjusting that recommendation in keeping with WP:D, and another editor preferring the original preemptive method. It's not exactly a consensus based on thorough discussion, reason, policy or any other legitimate basis for an exception. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Just because the change was made by one editor, does not mean it's invalid. There have been multiple "Naming conventions" discussions about the Star Trek naming conventions on the talkpage. Naming conventions INaming Conventions II, Naming Conventions III. We have also had multiple Star Trek editors engage in the NC discussion to indicate their support of the "consistent suffix" naming system: Marky1981, Mnemeson, EnsRedShirt, and myself. See my evidence section for diffs. --Elonka 07:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out those discussions. They show the history of the Star Trek naming conventions:

• In March 2005, Cburnett proposes titling all Star Trek episode with a suffix. Some discussion of what suffix to use follows (e.g. "Voyager episode" or "VOY episode").
• In August 2005, Acegikmo1 points out that the guideline is not in keeping with WP:D. Cburnett explains his original intent, and says, "If an article for an episode exists, then I don't have a problem with moving it to remove the "(TLA episode)" provided the redirect stays put so "TITLE (TLA episode)" is still a valid link." There are no further comments.
• In March 2006, Cburnett recommends that the project no longer "force dabbed names". E Pluribus Anthony and Royboy speak in favor of preemptive disambiguation, and Cburnett demurs.

So, to summarize, since the conflict with WP:D was pointed out, there have been two editors at the Star Trek WikiProject who have spoken against preemptive disambiguation, and two who have spoken in favor of it. Doesn't look like a consensus to me. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:44, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Also, it's slightly disingenuous to describe yourself as a Star Trek editor, if by that you mean to indicate a member of the Star Trek WikiProject; you only joined that project on November 25[70], well after this debate began. To me, this suggests that you care less about Star Trek episodes per se than about retaining a bastion of preemptive disambiguation in television episode articles. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Josiah, why does it matter? The Star Trek categories have been stable for months. They've got a consistent naming system, the links all work, and the editors are working together constructively on other projects. How is it helpful to Wikipedia to try and force through hundreds of page moves there? The discussion will cause disruption, moves would cause a ton of work, break links, require fixing of redirects... How is this helpful to Wikipedia? --Elonka 08:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

If someone is willing to perform the moves, and perform them properly (repairing double redirects), there shouldn't be any broken links. And if there's a consensus in support of the moves, and someone is willing to do the work, then there's no harm done. On the other hand, if there isn't a consensus, the moves shouldn't be performed. That consensus should be determined by a wide spectrum of Wikipedians, not just those who work on the Star Trek articles. (By the way, I'm increasingly of the belief that the Star Trek articles really should go through WP:RM.)

It's helpful to Wikipedia for articles to be titled in accordance with Wikipedia-wide consensus, not just local consensus. If Wikipedia as a whole supports the Star Trek exception, I'll advocate for it being put back into the guideline. But so far, it looks to me as if Wikipedia as a whole does not support making an exception for Star Trek. Why don't we just let the episodes be put up on WP:RM, follow the discussion, and see what happens? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:20, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, in the hundreds of page moves that have already happened, can you show any evidence of links not working, redirects not working, or editors no longer working together constructively (aside from yourself and those who agree with you)? And "causing a ton of work" seems hypocritical considering you're suggesting moving all the articles back. As well as insisting on doing RM's for every article even though the outcome is obvious at this point - you're just insisting that people to do extra bureaucratic work that doesn't accomplish anything. --Milo H Minderbinder 23:38, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The results of this move request, and the closing admin's comments [71], should also be considered with regard to this proposed finding of fact. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. There's little else this could have been except an attempt at disruption over consensus-backed moves. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:51, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The LOST mediation did not result in consensus to always disambiguate

1) The LOST mediation that occured earlier this year did not discuss the issue of how to name episode articles. See /Evidence#Lost episode naming guideline was not by consensus and claims otherwise were not retracted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the core issues of the mediation were not about naming conventions, they were about other matters relating to whether or not Lost should even have episode articles, and what guidelines that those episodes should follow. A result of the mediation was the creation of a set of episode guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Lost/Episode guidelines, which were to be linked from all episode articles. A naming convention was included on that set of guidelines, and (at that time) did not engender any controversy. In my opinion, if everyone's looking at it, and no one's objecting to it, that implies consensus agreement. Consensus was later confirmed when the naming convention was explicitly pointed out, and again, there was no objection, for weeks. When an objection did come up, from Ned Scott, editors from both sides of the mediation remained in agreement with each other that there was consensus on the naming issue.(see [72] for diffs on all this). Since then, things have blown up, mediation progress has been stalled, the carefully-negotiated compromise was ripped apart, our "mediation adherence chart" has been shredded, and the painfully-achieved consensus (and a fair amount of good faith) dissolved. But for a brief golden period of a few weeks back in October, we did have consensus (sigh). --Elonka 03:12, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Silence does not always mean consent. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"In my opinion, if everyone's looking at it, and no one's objecting to it, that implies consensus agreement." You've just summarized almost everything wrong about your view. Also, this change has done nothing to stop the improvements that were suggested by the mediation case. -- Ned Scott 07:20, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I added a diff showing that Wikipedical (talk · contribs), who agreed with Elonka at the Lost-specific mediation, did not agree that the episode naming convention was even discussed. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:26, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

A diff or two where she makes this claim would be useful. Thatcher131 03:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Added. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:08, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, you admit that the Lost naming exception was something that happened to be added when the mediation was transfered to the Lost episode guidelines, and not a part of that mediation. Since naming was not part of "the carefully-negotiated compromise", what exactly are you referring to when you say it was "ripped apart"? Looking at that compromise, I don't see anything that has even been brought up in this discussion, much less "shredded": Wikipedia talk:Requests for mediation/Lost episodes#Proposal 3. --Milo H Minderbinder 03:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

The strength of a mediation's outcome is based not on the words of the "final decision," but the willingness of the involved editors to themselves support the agreed consensus. In that respect, I saw the mediation as an amazing success -- editors went into it with a great deal of disagreement and bad feeling, but came out of it with an agreed-upon compromise and a spirit of cooperation. I was especially pleased with how PKtm and I (who had been on opposing sides of the mediation) were able to figure out new methods of communicating and working together constructively. We were both deeply committed to the consensus guidelines and were moving forward with the complex process of converting the episode articles, making great progress for weeks, until Ned Scott started jumping in, disagreeing with both of us, and changing both the guideline page and our mediation adherence table. Since then, progress on converting the Lost episode articles has been pretty much stalled, PKtm has gotten so disgusted with things that he's just about ready to quit Wikipedia altogether, and I've been spending more time trying to defend the guidelines than actually working on the articles. In other words, we put months of good faith effort into that mediation -- I am not going to give up on it lightly. --Elonka 00:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Again, the portion of the table I changed was the titles and status of needed page moves. This did not stop anyone from using the table itself for the issues that mediation did comment on. I edited cells of a table about article titles, something that was not an issue in mediation, and that is all. I assumed this table was usable to all editors who wished to be apart of WikiProject Lost and wanted to improve the articles. The mediation and the article titles are unrelated, and nothing is stopping anyone from applying the mediation recommendations. -- Ned Scott 00:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, I really don't understand how an issue that wasn't even raised in the mediation itself could cause the issues that were decided in the mediation to be derailed. Surely the episode articles could be brought into compliance with the mediated principles, regardless of how those articles are named. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The naming issue was part of the Lost compromise, as has been confirmed multiple times by both PKtm and myself. When the naming guideline went out the window, it took the wind out of the sails for the rest of it, too. It was like all our months of grinding through the mediation to come to an agreed compromise, were wasted effort. I'm not speaking for all television episode articles here, just the Lost ones, but it was pretty damn frustrating to go to that much good faith effort to get to a compromise, only to have it all crumble because of this one thing. And it's something I'd really like ArbCom guidance on, too. Specifically: If a group of editors goes through the dispute resolution process and comes up with a workable compromise, even though that compromise is not in strict adherence to other guidelines (such as WP:DAB), they should be allowed to stick to their compromise. "An arbitrary decision is better than no decision." There was no violation of WP:V or WP:NOR, it was just a naming issue. Having suffixes on those few dozen articles was not causing any great damage to Wikipedia, and it had great constructive benefit in helping a group of editors to work together in a positive manner. Articles were being written and edited and improved, and there was peace and harmony. This whole dispute about forcing articles into adherence with WP:DAB has been hugely disruptive, has antagonized editors all over Wikipedia, wasted months of time, and caused the moving of thousands of articles which didn't need moving. What great damage was being caused to Wikipedia by having articles with suffixes in their titles, that has been worth this amount of energy? It's just absurd. --Elonka 07:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I know that you have stated several times that the naming issue was part of the Lost compromise. I haven't seen PKtm comment on it, and another participant in the mediation[73], as well as the mediator[74], have said that it was not. Furthermore, the evidence in the mediation itself is clear: you brought the issue of naming up once, no one commented on it, and it was not part of the mediation summary. Silence does not always mean consent: the issue of naming was tangential to the dispute, and it seems likely to me that most of the other participants in the mediation didn't really care about it one way or the other.

That said, I actually agree with you that this dispute has been a colossal waste of time and energy. I will even admit that article titles with preemptive disambiguation do only negligable harm to Wikipedia. However, it does do harm to Wikipedia as a working environment if a small group of editors ignores an obvious consensus in the interest of protecting "their" corner of Wikipedia, in violation of WP:OWN. Elonka, I do respect the mediation process you and the other Lost editors went through. But the guideline discussion at TV-NC, while somewhat flawed in tone, was also a good faith effort of Wikipedians; as was the development of WP:D, which has the support of a far larger group of Wikipedians than those who participated in the Lost mediation.

If you, or any of the other Lost editors, had at any point presented an acceptable reason for why Lost in particular should be an exception to the general disambiguation practices of Wikipedia, I'm sure that the other editors at TV-NC would have listened. However, your arguments of "consistency", "context", "precedent" and "WikiProject consensus" (really, WikiProject [[WP:OWN|ownership) have all been rejected by a supermajority of the participants as flawed and unsupported by Wikipedia practices, policies and guidelines. This isn't about "forcing articles into adherence"; it's about respecting the larger consensus of Wikipedians over that of a small group. That's the important principle here — without it, Wikipedia could become Balkanized into dozens or hundreds of WikiProject fiefdoms with conflicting principles, interests, and perspectives. If ArbCom can provide some clarity on this issue, then something good may come out of this farce after all. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, was the result of the LOST mediation compromise "proposal 3" here: Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_mediation/Lost_episodes#Proposal 3 or not? Where in that proposal does it mention episode naming? You keep saying "the naming issue was part of the Lost compromise" but based on the evidence that looks like a flat-out lie. --Milo H Minderbinder 23:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, MatthewFenton and Ned Scott intentionally blocked return moves

1) During the article-move war over the LOST episode articles, these three editors intentionally blocked return moves by making small inconsequential edits to redirect pages (and therefore preventing return moves). Evidence for this has been detailed by Wknight94 /Evidence#Elonka and MatthewFenton intentionally blocked return moves

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Aye, it's true. I'm not proud of it. -- Ned Scott 02:48, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

"intentionally" - can you prove that it was intentional? Seems to me a large violation of WP:AGF. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:24, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

If it wasn't intentional, what was your reason for making these edits, in some cases edits of nothing more than whitespace? And I have to come clean here, I did this after a few page moves. I'm sorry I did it, and I won't do it again. Is "move fraud" mentioned anywhere in wp policy? If it isn't, it's probably a good thing to add. --Milo H Minderbinder 15:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what people are on about in regards to white-space however maybe she is talking about adding the print worthy tag? If so I would hardly call that "move blocking" -- more like stating a fact.. that the move is print worthy. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

It's in my evidence. Among hundreds of page moves by Elonka, those were the only occasions where Elonka added that little template. For your part, yours is ridiculously transparent - you just removed white space! And I didn't see where you had ever made a similar post-move edit prior to those occasions either. I'm not sure your concept of proof is what's at issue here. I figure the intention is what ArbCom is likely to address. Regardless, it might be worth putting a rebuttal in your evidence as "can you prove (it)?" is not a great case. I'll confess to not scanning every single page move done by both of you - Elonka has well over 200 in her history and you have several dozen. I'll happily retract if you can find evidence that trivial post-move redirect editing has been standard practice for either of you. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:44, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

"Is "move fraud" mentioned anywhere in wp policy?" <<no, because i think sometimes it can be useful to make small edits to redirects after moving pages. There's a whole bunch of templates for categorizing redirects, and blocking return moves is not *always* a bad idea. It's just bad when people do it to further their 'side' in a move war. --`/aksha 02:07, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Well said. Most of the issues here are only issues because they were used to be disruptive and to stall, rather than legitimate edits. -- Ned Scott 06:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

A couple of example diffs might be nice. Also, "move fraud" was a factor in a prior case here. Thatcher131 03:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I pointed people in the right direction in my evidence but we can't do diffs because the pages were eventually moved thereby deleting the "move fraud" history. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka's claims of incivility, harrassment/stalking and personal attacks

1) Throughout the dispute, Elonka has claimed that several other editors in the dispute were acting incivil, and had been harrassing/stalking her, and had launched personal attacks towards her. Based on these beliefs, she has left numerous warning messages on user talk pages. (evidence is here on the evidence page) However, she has yet to take any of these accusations through official channels (e.g. reporting personal attacks to WP:PAIN)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty much in agreement with this one. Yes, several editors were uncivil; yes, some of them were harassing me; yes, they were engaging in personal attacks; yes, I left a few warnings on various talk pages; no, I didn't take most of them through official channels via WP:PAIN, because I see that as a last resort (and a pain in the you-know-what to file the paperwork). Given a choice between working on a new article, or filing PAIN reports, I'd rather work on an article. --Elonka 03:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

We should probably make this clearer, that her claims ironically became harassment and uncivil. The dispute showed up twice at WP:ANI, and the dispute involved at least five different admins. It was pretty clear that Elonka was being heard, but that people were not agreeing with her claims of attacks and disruption. She appears to not want to accept that, and continues to press the issue to an absurd point. (Much like the over-all debate itself) -- Ned Scott 07:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to change the proposal now that people, especially Elonka herself, has already commented. But for the record, i agree with what you've just said there. It is the fact that her claims were empty and that her "warnings" on talk pages actually became disruptive that i'm trying to bring to attention. --`/aksha 14:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Not sure you can build a case on what someone didn't do. Thatcher131 03:30, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

The bit about not taking it through 'official channels' is meant to show how her claims have all been insubstantial. Despite this, she's been continously leaving warning messages on user talk pages, which has been disruptive. --`/aksha 11:21, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka's accusation of sockpupptery

1) Throughout the dispute, Elonka has accused (and still does) several editors of being sockpuppets, or otherwise involved in abusive sockpupptery. However, her accusations have not been backed with any evidence (e.g. a checkuser result). See /Evidence#Elonka has been engaging in disruptive and stalling behaviour and /Evidence#Followup to Yaksha's sockpuppetry evidence.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

You might want to add responses showing that all she had to do was look at people's user creation logs: [75][76] —Wknight94 (talk) 01:19, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka also notes that she does not have an idea of who the "first/second" account is, only that someone might be using a secondary account. [77] I don't know if people are using their "main" accounts or not, but it doesn't matter at all unless they are using more than one account in the same discussion. Second accounts are not a bad thing at all, if that is the case. (And even then, I see no reason to come to such a conclusion in the first place) -- Ned Scott 10:31, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Regardless, accusations with no supporting evidence is neither civil nor helpful. It's probably a longshot for getting into the final decision but it's worth a mention here. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Elonka's taking words out of context

1) Elonka often takes the words of other editors out of context, resulting in misleading representations of other editors [78] [79] [80] [81][82][83].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed --`/aksha 02:32, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I very much agree with this summary. -- Ned Scott 10:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Consensus was reached from the initial RFC, poll, and discussion

1) The initial RFC [84][85] and poll running at WT:TV-NC [86] in late October as well as the discussion which followed into early November adequately established a consensus to leave the WP:TV-NC guideline largely unchanged.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I say "largely" unchanged because it did result in the part about redirects which Cburnett (talk · contribs) suggested (if I remember correctly). —Wknight94 (talk) 20:26, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. But isn't this half the reason we're here (at ArbCom) - to 'prove' consensus was established? But anyhow, yes...consensus was defintely established back then. --`/aksha 23:59, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes it is, but I think they would make it official by putting it in the "Findings of fact" section of the final decision, so I'm adding it to our "Proposed" version of "Findings of fact". Clerk intervention is welcome if I'm being naive. —Wknight94 (talk) 00:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. There were a few very vocal editors (Wknight94, Ned Scott, Ace Class Shadow, Milo H Minderbinder, Yaksha, BlueSquadronRaven, Anthony) saying that there was consensus, but there were also many good faith objections. See ( evidence that moves were causing disruption), and ( evidence of multiple editors in support of other naming methods). --Elonka 06:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. Consensus was reached over and over again. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:56, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Passive incivility

1) Good faith constructive attempts at quelling the dispute were ignored thereby escalating the dispute. See /Evidence#Minority engaged in passive incivility (fueling active incivility).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:10, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. A lot of people tried making compromises, mediating, or calming down the situation. But they were all ignored. --`/aksha 02:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree, well put. -- Ned Scott 02:44, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

One of the recommendations in WP:CIVIL is to ignore uncivil editors. --Elonka 06:26, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but you weren't just ignoring uncivil editors (like Izzy Dot, whom we all agree was uncivil). You were ignoring civil posts like this[87], which I posted on November 7. Over the next several days, you posted to WT:TV-NC nine times[88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96], before finally deigning to reply on November 12[97], after being prompted by at least four different editors[98][99][100][101]. And this is only one example of a consistent pattern. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 07:23, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I've posted in the NC discussion over a hundred times within the last few months. Other editors posted dozens of times, or a small handful of times. Why should someone not posting be considered uncivil? If someone posts a questionnaire with 25 questions, am I obligated to answer every single one of them? People on Wikipedia participate as they can. If they don't feel the desire to reply to a particular post, there's nothing that says that they have to. Some editors don't feel the obligation to respond to every single thing (advice which I wish more people would follow!) --Elonka 07:51, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

It's all about the context of the discussion. You can't have a civil discussion if the comments of one side are being ignored. My understanding of a civil discussion is one in which each side attempts to understand the arguments being used by the other, and weighs them rationally against their own. This will not always result in agreement, but it should result in a modicum of understanding. I have tried to respond to your arguments in a manner that shows that I have heard them. I may not always have succeeded, but I've tried. It is better to hear an opponent's argument and dispute it, or even reject it, than to proceed as if it had not been made. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 08:34, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Further polling

1) Since consensus was reached by the first RFC, poll, and discussion, further polling for the same issue would have been disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. This is dependent on another proposed finding of fact so the phrasing may need work. —Wknight94 (talk) 05:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you should change it to "as long as consensus was reached by the first RFC...". Since half our problem is whether consensus was reached in the first RFC. --`/aksha 09:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I would add; an additional poll was unlikely to show anything new, and at times even seemed to be a stalling tactic, to help explain why it would be disruptive. -- Ned Scott 10:13, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention the fact that 3 further polls were conducted as part of Request Moves proposals. And they did all end up with similar results (5:1 in favour of move) So repeating the initial poll wasn't going to help at all, the results wouldn't have changed. --`/aksha 10:41, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

If you look at other RFAR cases, the final decisions are always much shorter than all that. That's what I'm going for here. From Thatcher131's suggestion, we're supposed to enter here what we think should end up in the final decision. I'm trying to keep these short and direct like the ArbCom tends to do. I'd like ArbCom to put a bullet in this issue so I'm trying to lead a trail there. Per Thatcher131, they'll change or fix or ignore these any way they see fit. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. Polling is a commonly-used tool, especially when large numbers of editors are involved, many of whom are calling for a new poll. (see evidence of editors who called for a new poll) --Elonka 06:30, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

And a poll took place. Is repeating a poll something that is commonly done? --Milo H Minderbinder 23:11, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Agreed. There was ample page space dedicated to making people's voices heard. --BlueSquadronRaven 19:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yaksha makes intentionally inconsequential edits to disable the ability of move

1) per the above comment that apprently I, Ned Scott and Elonka made "intentional" edits I would like to point out for example this and this. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:28, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Hmmmm. Well Elonka started quite the nasty trend, eh? Someone should delete and recreate the redirects that still exist like that. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:55, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Yeah, i did that. There's not much point deleting redirects like that. Elonka didn't start it. I've seen it done all over the place (i.e. redirect pages that have two lines in the edit history, the second being a minor edit). --`/aksha

Comment by others:

Matthew, here you claim that adding an "unprintworthy" tag is blocking, but above you claim that when you added a "printworthy" tag, it was not blocking. Which is it? --Milo H Minderbinder 15:42, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Where have I said that? This is merely a rebuttal to show something she apprently forgot to mention in her own post. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 15:45, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

You said it earlier on this page. You said "maybe she is talking about adding the print worthy tag? If so I would hardly call that "move blocking" -- more like stating a fact.. that the move is print worthy". How about just admit to deliberately blocking return moves? Because really...you have even less of a case to argue here, since you don't have any history of tagging redirects except in this case. --`/aksha 02:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Editing an article does not stop it from being moved. Only move protection does. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

You are mistaken, when a page is moved a redirect is left, a page move can be reverted, only if there is no edit history to that redirect page. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:27, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

MatthewFenton's right. See WP:MOVE#Moving over a redirect. Once a redirect has an edit history longer than one entry, a page cannot be moved back on top of it without an administrator deleting the redirect first. A redirect with only one entry in its history can be "deleted" by moving the page it redirects to back on top of it. It's called a "move over redirect". Like Thatcher131 mentioned, intentionally making a second edit to a redirect - thereby preventing the move over redirect - has been a factor at a prior RFAR. —Wknight94 (talk) 21:22, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary decision

1) As an arguably arbitrary decision without a substantial basis for changing it, the Television Naming Convention guideline should be accepted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

In case you need an official "party" to endorse this, count me in. —Wknight94 (talk) 22:16, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I would point out that the way that the guideline was originally worded, included wording for a Star Trek exception.[102] --Elonka 06:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, applying the Highway case ruling. –  Anþony  talk  22:06, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles consensus

1) There was no consensus to pre-emptively disambiguate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode article names despite claims to the contrary. See /Evidence#Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode naming guideline was not by consensus and claims otherwise were not retracted.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Aye, for it is true. -- Ned Scott 21:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --`/aksha 14:31, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

The straw poll was flawed

1) Reworded version below The straw poll conducted on the naming of television episodes was subject to so much reformatting, rewording [103] and editing [104][105] that voters became confused on what they were voting for [106]. Although performed in good faith, the later attempts to find out who meant to vote for what [107][108] added to the confusion rather than clarify the situation [109].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

"Messed up" sounds speculative. The section, Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)/Archive 5#Looking for anyone who objects to the last poll, is much less so. —Wknight94 (talk) 14:54, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Reworded to flawed, is also more in line with the fact above. Added refs to clarify. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:12, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Your last diff [110] doesn't show that "the later attempts to find out who meant to vote for what" gave the result of "added to the confusion rather than clarify the situation". It just shows that PKtm wanted to do a new poll regardless of the outcome of my canvassing and that he was confused during the first poll - it doesn't show anything about additional confusion. Continuing on the same path, PKtm's argument for being so confused by the first poll that he didn't participate was also very weak. In summary, you have a weak argument being improperly supported by another weak argument. This only further muddies the waters for the poor ArbCom people (who I'm sure are going to want to murder us all anyway). If this can't be cleaned up to some extent, I say strike it for the sake of mercy. —Wknight94 (talk) 15:40, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

How this muddies the water is not clear to me. This finding of fact is quite opposite to the one above, thus why you want it strike[n] for the sake of mercy is unclear. My reading of the diffs is different than yours. Please let the poor ArbCom people judge with which one they agree. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 16:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Heh heh, nice recovery with this edit - I had a different reply all ready to go with WP:AGF and you'll notice I didn't disagree with all of Elonka's proposals, etc. I'm not disagreeing with the fact that your proposed finding is opposite of my proposed finding, I'm disagreeing with the fact that part of your conclusion is based on evidence that doesn't actually support that conclusion. A break in the chain of evidence makes the finding useless and a waste of everyone's time. —Wknight94 (talk) 16:35, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I made a mistake there. I corrected it in 2 minutes. No big deal. We differ with regard to whether the evidence shows the poll was flawed. No big deal again. Let the commitee decide, thats what there for. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 18:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 14:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

While I think we'll all admit that the poll wasn't handled as well as it could have been, I think the relevant issue wasn't "was the poll flawed" but "did the issues with the poll invalidate the outcome". While some expressed confusion during the poll, is there any evidence that, at the end, any participants had their opinion misrepresented? Is there any evidence that suggests if the poll was more "clean" the outcome would have been any different? --Milo H Minderbinder 16:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The straw poll was flawed

1) (1.1) The straw poll conducted on the naming of television episodes was subject to so much reformatting, rewording [111] and editing [112][113] that voters became confused on what they were voting for [114]. Although performed in good faith, the later attempts to find out who meant to vote for what [115][116] were not accepted by all parties as a legitimate follow-up of the poll [117].

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Just so it's on record, PKtm's edit before anyone responded to the canvass could just as easily imply that he was worried that the results of the canvass wouldn't support Elonka's case (which they didn't). —Wknight94 (talk) 19:04, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

"Imply" is absurd. That's your interpretation, and it is completely false. As I've stated repeatedly, I haven't even taken a side on the disambiguation issue. Please do not assume that I am pushing "Elonka's case" in any way other than arguing for civility and pointing out the significant and undeniable flaws, from the start, in the poll and subsequent contorted discussion. -- PKtm 19:24, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Just because the efforts to clarify the poll were not accepted by some parties does not mean that they were not successful — in fact, they were. Not a single editor said that his or her position was misrepresented. The purpose of a poll is to gauge opinions; this poll (and the subsequent discussion) did just that. The poll may have been flawed, but it was not fatally flawed, and its flaws were largely remedied in the days and weeks following. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:21, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose this. We've shown that everyone knew what their final "vote" was, and it was counted properly. Most of the changes were undone before more people voted. [118] [119] [120] [121]. -- Ned Scott 21:10, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed, reworded based on comments (the one far above still states that the poll was not flawed at all [122], which I definately do not agree with). --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 18:31, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Many editors came back and defended their position, and even as such, there was a clear indication of which way editors were leaning. --BlueSquadronRaven 20:00, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No consensus for exceptions

1) Discussions following the original straw poll showed strong opposition to, and a lack of consensus for, an exception to guidelines regarding pre-emptive disambiguation for articles about episodes of Lost.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Sounds about right to me. If we want to point out that the poll showed a consensus, might as well point out that the discussion did as well, and specifically that no reasonable exception could be found. -- Ned Scott 09:00, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

We might want to go further and say there has been no consensus for much of what Elonka has been campaigning for - project-based beauracracy, re-starting poll, stopping page moves, whether a dispute tag should be used, etc. And yet, whether consensus exists or not, it is loudly claimed. Another thing I've brought up a few times but has been ignored (among other things) is that even if the original poll was messed up, maybe you'd get a split vote. I would think you'd need a pretty clear consensus in the other direction to warrant changing the guideline. With that in mind, we should have brought up WP:SNOW more often. —Wknight94 (talk) 12:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. --BlueSquadronRaven 22:27, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is a "remedy". A remedy is something we should do in future to fix the problem. This is more a statement of fact regarding something that happened in the past. --`/aksha 01:48, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

You're correct. My mistake. Moved to appropriate section. --BlueSquadronRaven 08:32, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka's conduct has been tendentious and disruptive

1) Elonka's refusal to acknowledge the existing consensus in this dispute, and repeated insistence on a new poll, has been tendentious and disruptive.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I draw everyone's attention to the definition of disruptive editing here, which says:

*Is tendentious: continues editing an article or group of articles in pursuit of a certain point for an extended time despite opposition from one or more other editors.
...
*Rejects community input: resists moderation and/or requests for comment, continuing to edit in pursuit of a certain point despite an opposing consensus from impartial editors and/or administrators.

Although Elonka has regularly attempted to follow the forms of Wikipedia dispute resolution, her actual conduct in this dispute betrays an unwillingness to actually listen to those who disagree with her, and adjust her position accordingly. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 23:37, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Elonka's behaviour here is the reason why this has dragged on for so long. --`/aksha 01:00, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Wknight94 was harassing Elonka

1) Administrator Wknight94 was engaging in a pattern of harassment against Elonka, nitpicking her edits on a daily basis. (see evidence)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 01:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

See my rebuttal, /Evidence#Elonka misunderstands harassment guideline (rebuttal). First, watching her contribs is not harrassment and second, with all the policy, guideline and etiquette lapses seen in such a short time (listed in my evidence - and I'm sure there's more), I'd say someone needs to do that job. —Wknight94 (talk) 02:47, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not see Elonka's evidence as showing harassment. -- Ned Scott 03:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Yaksha engaged in several hundred controversial page moves

1) Yaksha was engaging in a pattern of disruptive behavior by moving hundreds of articles without clear consensus to do so. Most of the moves were done without any attempt at WP:RM or even advance notification of the moves on the affected talkpages. Yaksha's actions, especially considering that multiple editors were asking Yaksha to stop, were disruptive and had the effect of escalating the tension of the dispute. (see evidence)

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. --Elonka 02:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

All moves had consensus (see evidence). There is no evidence of disruption caused (see this rebuttal and this proposed fact). --`/aksha 11:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

WP:RM is not a required part of the process for page moves, and three had been resolved strongly in favour of the moves. I don't think that makes them particularly controversial. Orderinchaos78 09:05, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. If they were without consensus they would have been moved back, with explanations, by someone not party to this dispute. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:31, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka has engaged in biased canvassing and campaigning

1) Elonka has engaged in canvassing and, more to the point, campaigning only to people who share her point of view in a way that is discouraged by WP:SPAM#Canvassing and WP:SPAM#Campaigning. See /Evidence#Elonka engages in talk page spamming and /Evidence#More of Elonka's campaigning.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Only half true • She's canvassed on my page too, and I am the one the proposed she be put on probation and admonished about several things. I hardly support her. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 21:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed per evidence. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:32, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Removal of RfC by administrator Radiant, exacerbated the dispute

1) The removal of the RfC from Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television) by Radiant [123][124] increased the intensity of the dispute rather than cooled it down, something that could have been anticipated by this experienced administrator.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

From the Non-notability ArbCom case. --Elonka 23:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Radiant didn't remove an RfC, he removed a poll (and one with wording that hadn't been agreed upon). To be honest, I think the repeated posting of the poll was the real cause for the situation getting more heated, particularly when it was posted with biased wording that people objected to instead of getting a consensus on how it should be phrased (which was exactly what people complained about the first time there was a poll). --Milo H Minderbinder 23:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Ned Scott has been uncivil

1) Ned Scott's interactions with others have frequently been uncivil and hostile. See Ned Scott was discourteous, Harassment by Wknight94 and Ned Scott, Multiple editors had cautioned Ned Scott about civility.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

Proposed. --Elonka 23:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Ace Class Shadow has been uncivil

1) Ace Class Shadow's interactions with others have frequently been uncivil and hostile. See Ace Class Shadow has been discourteous, Multiple editors had cautioned Ace Class Shadow about civility.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

Proposed. --Elonka 23:56, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Template

1) {text of proposed finding of fact}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

Comment by others:

Template

1) {text of proposed finding of fact}

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties

Comment by others:

Proposed remedies

Note: All remedies that refer to a period of time, for example to a ban of X months or a revert parole of Y months, are to run concurrently unless otherwise stated.

End dispute

1) Parties and participants of this dispute are discouraged from further disputing the issue. Failure to do so will result in X.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed... where X could equal "banning" or whatever. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the idea, but the wording is very vague. I can just see someone yelling "ban him!" after one of us mentions article disambiguation in some other situation. Or even having to explain the situation to other editors who were not involved here, but have the same misconception about consistency and disambiguation. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. -- Ned Scott 02:36, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Oppose - ArbCom is not a way to strongarm parties about content disputes. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Without this, there's a good chance this issue will never end. Certain folks are grasping at whatever straw they can reach to deny the obvious. That's one reason I've always been so opposed to a new poll - some other excuse would have been used to explain why the second poll wasn't corrupt - and then the same for the third poll, ad infinitum. However you want to phrase this, there has to be a way to end this issue once and for all. Otherwise, I guarantee you'll just be back here again in a few months - only without me because I wanted to be done with this issue weeks ago and I don't plan on pursuing it any further than this proceeding. Life's too short. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:07, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - More stronger enforcement in the vein of article probations, restrictions, and bans, will do just as good a job. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 00:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

"ArbCom is not a way to strongarm parties about content disputes" <<<this isn't a content dispute. If anything, it's a policy dispute. The dispute is about how to name articles, and about when articles should be exceptions to naming conventions. --`/aksha 01:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - That is a content dispute. ArbCom is about disruptive editors, not content. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:17, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

umm...can you explain how this is about article content? We're talking about moving "<name of episode> (<name of TV series>)" articles to just "<name of episode>". No one's arguing about what the name of the episode is, or what the TV series is, or how the article is written. It's more a matter of formatting - just how to name articles. --`/aksha 01:35, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Yaksha - To quote Morven's refusal of a similar case about airport names, Questions of appropriate style are outside the arbitration committee's remit and should be settled in the normal way - by talking and reaching a rough consensus.. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 00:23, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I see. I thought by content, you referred to the information in an article. Didn't realize you were including formatting issues. Anyhow, this dispute is as much about 'content' (how to name articles) as it is about user conduct. --`/aksha 11:55, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Move fraud (2)

1) Yaksha, Ned Scott, MatthewFenton, and Elonka are discouraged from making minor edits to redirects after page moves (which thereby block revert moves), especially while they are involved in a dispute involving those pages.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 17:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Supported. But with discouraged changed to "not allowed". The tags for categorizing redirects are not that commonly used anyway, so there aren't many reasons to edit a redirect after a move except to block return moves. --`/aksha 02:17, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Discouraged is fine with me. It was just a "heat of the moment" kind of thing, anyways. (at least, for me) -- Ned Scott 06:45, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Normally, I'd say there would be no reason to not edit a redirect, but this new feature (Redirects to sections) has me already making changes totally unrelated to this dispute. It's pretty clear when someone is editing to block a page move, so I don't think it should include all secondary edits to all redirects after a page move. So again I'd prefer "discouraged" over "not allowed". -- Ned Scott 06:52, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think this is all that relevant. The proposal specifically refers to editing "redirects after page moves", not redirects in general. I can't imagine why, after moving a page, you would need to edit the redirect created by the move to redirect to a section. --`/aksha 13:01, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Even if there were a reason, I wouldn't call that a "minor edit" to a redirect. Adding those rarely used templates or modifying white space is the minor edits I'm referring to - things that don't even affect navigation. —Wknight94 (talk) 13:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

So if this passed, we could still make an edit to such a page, but just not a "sneaky-under-the-radar" minor edit to lock the page move? Like you guys said, I can't really think of why I'd need to do such an edit, but it's usually clear when someone edits to lock a move vs something else. -- Ned Scott 00:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I think it's always pretty obvious when an edit to a redirect after a page move was for the purpose of locking the redirect. --`/aksha 01:44, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

What Yaksha said. Really, no one should be doing such things. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:58, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Support per Yaksha to avoid this further disruption. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:56, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Civility

1) All involved in the naming convention dispute are admonished to improve civility, including, but not limited to, ignoring the arguments of editors you are disputing with.

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

Proposed. I'm not even sure that's English - everyone is free to correct my grammar (I got a 430 on my English SATs). —Wknight94 (talk) 18:03, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this one. This is impossible to enforce - since civility is not an objective concept. It's hard to 'prove' whether someone is ignoring arguments. And i fear this will only encourage people to dump excess "civility" warning messages onto talk pages. --`/aksha 02:19, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

User A is doing an action - user B gives a reason not to do that action - user A, without even responding, continues to do that action. Either user A is new and unfamiliar with wiki communication or user A is being uncivil. If this form of incivility isn't documented already, it should be. —Wknight94 (talk) 03:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess this is alright. I mean, I would assume that we'd all try to "learn from this" to at least avoid a similar situation in the future. The "incivility", at least in a direct sense, wasn't really an issue, and what we saw is what you'd expect to see from a long and drawn out discussion. Like I said, this is something to improve upon, but it's missing the point if you're doing it just to put on a show. The issue wasn't the "Please" and "Thank you"s. -- Ned Scott 06:51, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

No moving by involved editors

1) All editors involved in this dispute shall not move articles on television episodes to other articles names for the period of one year. If they want articles moved, they can refer them invidually, or alternatively as a group per television program, to Wikipedia:Requested moves. They are obliged to report their listings at Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television).

Comment by Arbitrators:

Comment by parties:

All this is going to do is increase disruption. Why draw the entire community down into this mess?

All editors involved is not the same as the entire community. No one is indispensible, I'm sorry to say. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 16:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I mean to say that forcing involved people here to go to WP:RM for every move is almost like punishing the entire RM watching community. The RMs so far have passed so easily that many of them fall under WP:SNOW. So why disrupt the public RM watching community in that case? This is a punishment that doesn't match any crime and it's inflicted on the wrong people. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems like overkill to me. Many moves of television episode article pages are uncontroversial. For example, I'm a frequent editor of articles on Doctor Who. If a new editor creates a new episode article at an incorrect title, I should be able to move it to the correct title without going through RM. Similarly, Elonka and editors who work frequently on Lost episode articles should be able to make similar uncontroversial moves at Lost episode articles.

I would, however, be willing to support a remedy forbidding parties from moving articles from disambiguated titles to titles without parenthetical suffixes, or vice-versa, outside of the RM process. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:29, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

No, that is simply not acceptable. One side of this debate has been clearly in the right, backed by a consensus, and now we want to forbid them from taking action because another side was kicking and screaming about it? We've pointed out many times that the page moves themselves have caused no disruption (outside of people complaining about it, that is). There were a few short lived page move wars, but as I've said before, I think we are all willing to learn from that and improve how we handle such situations. This proposal is definitely over-kill. -- Ned Scott 20:57, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Opposed. No one's been abusing the 'move page' feature (despite all of Elonka's claims) and there's no evidence the moves have caused any disruption to anyone else. So I don't see why this is nessasary. --`/aksha 01:47, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 15:18, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

How do you define "involved editors"? --Milo H Minderbinder 16:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions#Involved parties, I would assume. — CharlotteWebb 00:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka Admonished

1) Elonka (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is admonished to gain consensus when making controversial page moves, to avoid page move fraud, and to avoid obstructing legitimate page moves.

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Comment by parties:

This is referring to how she's reverting moves right? I'd like to add "disrupting other editors who are moving pages with consensus". By this i refer to her talk page notes, requests/threats for bans, reverting both moves and edits, and giving misleading claims that there is no consensus for the moves on talk pages and user talk pages. --`/aksha 01:04, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply Please see above about Page Move Fraud, as proposed. This includes editing redirects that are edited to prevent reverting moves. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

This seems a bit redundant with Move fraud above. Am I missing something? -- Ned Scott 02:40, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - Specifically, this is the wording ArbCom would be looking for in a ruling. Look at past cases and you will see this is how they word it. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Postscript - I have also added an admonishment for her filibustering in the matter, obstructing page moves that had consensus. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:51, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 00:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed and it should be consensus gained through legitimate means and discussions, not just because she thinks it's there. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:34, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka placed on Probation

1) Elonka (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is placed on probation. She may be banned from any article or subject area where she disrupts page moves. All bans to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Naming_Conventions#Log_of_blocks_and_bans.

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I don't think this is necessary. While there is a disagreement about article titles, nothing about actual editing was really an issue. If you want to say "banned from making page moves to X", I can see that (for both sides), but to ban all activity on that article is unnecessary. -- Ned Scott 02:23, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - If you read the remedy, she would specifically be on page move probation - She may be banned from any article or subject area which she disrupts by page move fraud. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:53, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I really don't think this will work. Move fraud and reverting page moves have been annoying, but it isn't the main issue by far. Those can be easily fixed by a Request Move. The thing that needs to stop is Elonka's continued efforts to try and stop the page moves, and deny there's consensus. So i'm talking about things like popping up at the talk page whenever a page move occurs, and trying to stir up a debate with her claims of "there's no consensus". --`/aksha 01:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply to Yaksha - Unless I misunderstand the Highways case, that is included in the definition of page move fraud. Perhaps "page move disruption" would be a better wording? Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me • Support Neutrality • RFCU) 21:23, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, i guess "page move disruption". I'd assumed you where referring just to the minor edits which prevented return moves. --`/aksha 11:56, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Reworded. Tell me whatcha think. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 18:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, that's better. I don't think "move fraud" is a very widely used term. I've run into editors doing this several times before (and seem discussions about it), but i don't think i've ever heard of that particular term before. --`/aksha 08:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

See my support for the similar proposal below at #Elonka placed on probation (2). —Wknight94 (talk) 03:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 00:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed --BlueSquadronRaven 21:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

This is too narrow. Four people will guilty of the "move-blocking" exploit. Proposing broader remedy below. — CharlotteWebb 23:07, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Move-blocking parole

1) For intentionally making certain pagemoves irreversible without administrator intervention, Elonka, MatthewFenton, Ned Scott, and Yaksha are placed on move-blocking parole. If, in the opinion of any administrator, one these editors has deliberately made an edit which obstructs the reversal of a recent page move (not necessarily the user's own), he or she may be blocked for a short period of time, up to a week in repeat offenses. All blocks to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions#Log of blocks and bans.

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Unnecessary, as this really wasn't a major issue. I doubt any of the four of us would even be foolish enough to do this again, since it would be so obvious that we did it. Personally I don't see this as a continuous behavior that needs to be corrected, I see it as a bad decision made in the heat of a dispute. -- Ned Scott 04:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Feel free to adjust. Stopping the use of this tactic is probably the best thing that can be achieved here. — CharlotteWebb 23:36, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Reversal of irreversible page moves

1) Moved pages which have become irreversible by adding to the page history of the redirect page may be moved back without the necessity of a vote at Wikipedia:Requested moves.

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Comment by parties

Editing a page after a move does not make reversing the page "irreversable". It makes them irreversable by use of the move tab; any admin can reverse the move, and indeed it's common to do so when the target page has a trivial history. It was, as Fred Bauder said, "dirty pool" to use this tactic in this debate, but the final location of pages should be determined by consensus-supported guidelines, not by the history of how they were moved before. (A formal move request is necessary only if the move is genuinely controversial — if it's not, any admin can perform the moves without going through WP:RM.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

We also have CSD G6 for situations that do not require an RM. I would think this is a given. -- Ned Scott 04:56, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's what the speedy delete tag is for. Works like a charm. --`/aksha 10:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Copied from AndriyK. — CharlotteWebb 23:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

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Ned Scott, Wknight94, and Yaksha Admonished

1) Ned Scott (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log), Wknight94 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) and Yaksha (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) are admonished to avoid using polls as the sole determinant of consensus, as per m:Polling is evil.

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I still strongly oppose this proposition, as re-wording has not addressed my previous concerns. We should focus on the issue of this debate, rather than the polling vs not polling debate on Wikipeida as a whole. If the developers deleted any evidence of the poll, and we never mentioned it again, we would still have the discussion to show our consensus. We never used the poll as a "sole determinant of consensus" and I'm slightly offended that someone would suggest I would. -- Ned Scott 01:07, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose, the poll wasn't the sole determinant. We reached consensus through the discussion that followed. The poll demonstrates that consensus very nicely (as did the three Request Move polls). --`/aksha 07:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

What about everyone else? What merits singling out these three as opposed to the numerous other people who held similar viewpoints? —Wknight94 (talk) 01:34, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - Quite simply, they are the parties in the case, and that is what I feel is approprate, in my own personal opinion. I'm still formulating views on the others. Of course, on could have easily said "why single out Elonka?" when I posted the first two remedies I did - the answer is, I'm not, I'm simply human and cannot propose everything instantaneously. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair enough. Then I'll simply note that numerous others held similar views to my knowledge. That was part of the point - there were so many people in the majority that it was surreal that the discussion was even still going on after so many weeks. As far as why Elonka might be singled out, it's because she was nearly alone in active dissent. MatthewFenton would toss in a supporting statement once in a while but, without Elonka, this discussion would have ended long ago. The consensus would have been unquestionable in the record. —Wknight94 (talk) 01:57, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this. While I support the idea, this was not an issue for this dispute. I know polls should be used with caution, but Peter almost seems more concerned with making a point about polls than actually addressing this dispute. This arbcom case is not the place to push one's general view on polls and Wikipedia. (that being said, I don't disagree with that view) We've all said many times that we don't even need the poll to show consensus, but it was simply easy to reference as it accurately reflected the discussion. -- Ned Scott 02:19, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment — the wording of this proposal is problematic. If there was filibustering in this dispute, it wasn't by Ned, Wknight94 and Yaksha. Our article on the filibuster defines it as "an attempt to extend debate upon a proposal in order to delay or completely prevent a vote on its passage." The majority in this debate were not trying to extend debate — they were trying to bring it to a close, and advance on the assumption that a consensus had been reached. It was the minority, led by Elonka, who seemed to be using various tactics to delay or prevent action. It may be appropriate to encourage parties not to rely exclusively on polling in debates, but the accusation of filibustering here is misleading and misplaced. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 03:49, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply to above-raised points - The idea of the proposal is not to punish, if it were a punishment per se, it would be a restriction, probation, or ban. The idea is to warn parties to avoid conduct that would be disruptive. While I have other issues (and have not had time to post them), I have focussed on this one as it has not touched on, and needs to be. I understand that you probably did not intend to come off as using the poll as a be-all and end-all, but I, at least, am given this idea by the way it is presented in this case. The idea isn't to punish you for something wrong, as it is borderline at best, but rather to stem that behaviour before it starts. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

In either event, a "filibuster" isn't the right word to express what I mean, however, I will reword it. Please read the rewording and give me your thoughts. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 19:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka Cautioned

1) Elonka (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) is cautioned to avoid uncivil remarks, assume good faith, and avoid personal attacks.

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Peter, I'm not sure if most of your suggestions are helpful. They just seem like filler to me. These remedies are basically saying "Elonka was right" about her statements about personal attacks and uncivil remarks, which are greatly exaggerated. It would go without saying that we should all learn to better respect each other and to avoid needless disputes. Elonka's own behavior has shown that she basically leaves other editors no choice to be blunt. Before this dispute I got along with Elonka, and I have faith that both of us will not hold a grudge from this debate. -- Ned Scott 01:04, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Ned, if it went without saying that we should all avoid needless disputes, we wouldn't be here. "Avoid needless disputes" clearly does need saying. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 05:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Erm, let me put that in a different way. Had I known that this debate would have gone on this long, I would have done something else. I didn't know this would happen before, but I know now that it has happened, and from that I can try to avoid such a situation again. I do not enjoy these debates. However, this proposal isn't about saying "Avoid needless disputes" in the first place, so I'm not sure what you are trying to get at. I'm opposed to this because it suggests Elonka's exaggerations of personal attacks and civility are correct, and that is all. I'm not opposed to being more civil or learning from my mistakes. -- Ned Scott 05:48, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - Ned, that's the point. A caution is simply "you did something a little wrong, please don't repeat it." Perhaps Elonka was worse than you, it is, after all, why I suggested probation for her. I simply think that you and Elonka both need to learn from the mistakes you made in the civility department and move on, that's all. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me • Support Neutrality • RFCU) 21:20, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

IMO Elonka is the one who needs to be cautioned about being sensible with accusing other editors of misbehaving. There never was much incivility, bad faith or personal attacks, i don't see the need to 'caution' them about it. --`/aksha 07:36, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - If there hadn't been needless incivility over misunderstandings, it would not have made it's way to the top rung in the Wikipedia dispute resolution ladder. If there had not been user misconduct, the Arbitration Committee would not have accepted the case - it does not take on style and content disputes - that is not it's mandate. It's mandate is to address the disruptive behaviour of users. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me • Support Neutrality • RFCU) 21:17, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I think something can reach arbcom without both sides being "uncivil" or disruptive. I'm not saying I behaved the best I could, but Elonka's accusations of my behavior are simply inaccurate. I see no other evidence section regarding my behavior other than Elonka's, and it's majority flawed. -- Ned Scott 21:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the reason this has reached arbcom isn't incivility, but the disruption caused by Elonka's refusal to accept consensus and her attempts to block it. My biggest issue with this whole case is that it is being characterized as a dispute over a guideline when in fact the guideline is agreed apon. While it takes two sides to have a disagreement, I don't think that means both sides necessarily are at fault. --Milo H Minderbinder 21:45, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment Given Ned Scott's character and conduct in the arbitration, I'm more than comfortable with someone editing him out of this statement and leaving it at just Elonka. I think he's gotten the point and won't repeat his mistakes. ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" (Talk to Me • Support Neutrality • RFCU) 21:56, 20 December 2006 (UTC) postscript: I went ahead and did so. ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 22:38, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment by others:

Proposed. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 20:00, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Non-consensus page moves should be reversed

1) All page moves which were accomplished by the involved editors, which occurred outside of normal WP:RM procedures, should be reversed. In the case of pages under the scope of a WikiProject, the pages should be restored to the WikiProject-recommended titles, if any. In the case of confusion as to which was the "original" version of a page title, it should be restored to whichever title appears to have been the most stable version as of September 1, 2006.

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Proposed. --Elonka 23:28, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. Per what BlueSquadron said. This seems to be very much a case of "disrupting wikipedia to prove a point". You seem to be suggesting to do the exact same thing that you've been complaining about (me moving tons of articles.) Except in your case, you're moving them away from convention (without a reason other than to prove a point).

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From Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point#Examples: "If you're upset someone didn't follow process in making a change...do find out why they did it and attempt to convince them otherwise...don't reverse an arguably good change for no reason other than "out of process" --Milo H Minderbinder 23:47, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. This arbitrary date pulled out of a hat would only serve to infuriate a lot of editors outside this dispute further. In some cases, I know for a fact no article existed as of September 1, 2006. This seems to be solely a case for trying to push a point. Furthermore, it also makes the assumption, once again, that WikiProjects should be able to arbitrarily go against a much wider consensus in article guidelines, which is counter-productive, given the considerable time and consensus-building put into the existing guidelines for good reason. --BlueSquadronRaven 08:54, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - Sure, I can give you non-consensus moves. The moves that were made, however, were not against consensus, so this does not apply. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project • Request CheckUser ) 18:45, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka, just for clarification, which moves specifically would be defined as "non consensus page moves". Without indicating which moves you have in mind, I don't see how this could even be considered. I believe there was consensus for all the moves that have happened. --Milo H Minderbinder 20:48, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Reply - That's what I was saying, Milo. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 00:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

My bad, that question is intended for Elonka. Couldn't decide if I should indent that one or not. --Milo H Minderbinder 00:56, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka placed on probation (2)

1) As a tendentious editor, Elonka is placed on probation for a year. She may be banned from any page or talk page which she disrupts or where she ignores consensus.

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I endorse this, 100%. There are three or four Hall of Fame baseball articles that are still stubs because I've been wasting my time on this non-argument instead of working on them. And now tonight I'm trying to convince her that The Dillinger Escape Plan is notable. I have one of their albums sitting on my own shelf and they've toured with Slayer and Fear Factory and AFI, but she's threatening to remove encyclopedic info just because the exact issue number of a magazine is missing. 100% endorse... —Wknight94 (talk) 03:52, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Also see my evidence section /Evidence#Elonka misunderstands harassment guideline (rebuttal) for more examples of probation-worthy issues. (Sorry if Radiant! already covered all that with his evidence). —Wknight94 (talk) 04:00, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

For anyone interested, Wknight94 is referring to this post which I placed on the article's talkpage. [125] I have reviewed it, and stand behind my comments 100%. If Wknight94 is saying that I should be placed on probation for requesting a citation on a statement like that, then I think that says more about Wknight's judgment than it does about mine. --Elonka 04:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Just another example where you're way way off - and yet you persist. Just as Radiant's overall proposal here is alluding to. The amount of encyclopedia writing time that has been wasted for the past seven weeks is simply astounding. All hail Radiant for so succinctly summarizing that fact with a single edit to the evidence page. I implore everyone to read it. —Wknight94 (talk) 04:22, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Fully support this. I've got several hundred articles needing to be merged - something that i was planning to finally get done these christmas holidays. But instead i seem to be spending an awfuly large amount of time trying to build this ArbCom case.--`/aksha 09:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

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Proposed. Simple and effective. Without Elonka, this debate would have long been concluded. (Radiant) 15:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

• Hear, hear. WP:Oh I say, what are you doing? Come down from there at once! Really, you're making a frightful exhibition of yourself. Cheers, Oons 216.91.240.14 21:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
  • Gotta admit. That keeps being funny :D regardless of how sad the situation. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 04:19, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment - perhaps we should consider merging this into my own probation proposition above? Support, either way. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 00:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

They're different sentiments, I think. I prefer this language because it addresses a key problem related to this dispute: Elonka refusing to accept consensus. Subsequent action following any such refusal is only disruptive because it lacks consensus support. –  Anþony  talk  01:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! Support whole-heartedly! --BlueSquadronRaven 09:26, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Elonka restricted from canvassing

1) Elonka is restricted from canvassing in a biased manner as indicated by WP:SPAM#Canvassing.

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Proposed. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:02, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

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Oppose - Simply unacceptable remedy for the accusation. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 18:03, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Ridiculous. Flawed reasoning, it is inherently impossible to seek support from people who do not agree with you. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 18:40, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

What sounds better? WP:SPAM even specifically says that talk page spamming has been a subject at other RFAR's. —Wknight94 (talk) 18:43, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Comment • Probation simply isn't an acceptable remedy in this case. I would suggest, perhaps a restriction from Elonka posting any sort of canvassing material. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge ( Talk to Me • Neutrality Project ) 20:13, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay, sure. Is the new wording less objectionable? I don't want to be out of line with previous RFARs. —Wknight94 (talk) 20:25, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The current version certainly sounds more logical. --Cpt. Morgan (Reinoutr) 13:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Partial agree Instead of being admonished, it should be a blockable offense. --BlueSquadronRaven 21:36, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wknight94 counseled

1) Administrator Wknight94 is counseled to avoid seeking out negative interactions with other users with whom he is involved in a dispute. In the event that he feels that administrative action with such a user is required, he should request it from other administrators rather than issuing warnings himself. Wknight94 is also counseled to avoid using vote-counting to determine consensus, to be more open to the possibilities of compromise, and to be more respectful of the decisions made by other administrators. He is directed to re-familiarize himself with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, especially Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Civility, and he is encouraged to improve his cooperation with other editors, so as to be able to interact with them in a collegial way.

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Proposed. --Elonka 00:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

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Proposed enforcement

Enforcement by Block

1) Should any user edit an article from which they have been banned under the remedies in this decision, or are found by the administration to be in violation of their probation, they may be briefly blocked: up to a week in the event of repeat offenses. After 5 blocks the maximum block shall increase to one year. All blocks to be logged at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming_Conventions#Log of blocks and bans.

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Proposed. A cornerstone of Arbitration Enforcement. Cheers, ✎ Peter M Dodge aka "Wiz" ^{(Talk to Me) (Support Neutrality)} 01:27, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. --BlueSquadronRaven 09:25, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

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